Identity as Collectivity, Power Inequality, and Intercultural Conflict

An unambiguous link between identity and intercultural conflict is suggested in the works of researchers associated with the Critical School. Critical intercultural researchers broadly share a conception of identity that is largely based on a stable, discreet, and non- negotiable social category (including culture) to which an individual is ascribed.

Such a categorical view of identity underlies the basic thesis commonly shared by critical scholars that intercultural conflict is a natural outcome of intergroup power inequality and even a necessary means for advancing the aim of challenging the relational status quo between groups. This claim of intercultural conflict as being rooted in intergroup power inequality is evident, for instance, in Tsuda’s (1986) criticism of the Western ideological domination as the genesis of “distorted inter- cultural communication” around the world.

Tsuda argues, in particular, that the domi­nance of English language imposes an overt restriction on non-Western peoples’ freedom of expression and damages their collective identity. Similarly, Hedge (1998), based on interviews with 10 Asian Indian women in the United States, characterizes the adaptation experiences of these women almost exclusively in light of their identity struggle and “dis­placement.” These experiences are attributed by Hedge to the “contradictions” between their internal identity and external “world in which hegemonic structures systemati­cally marginalize certain types of difference” (p. 36). Opposition to assimilation of “mem­bers of marginalized communities” is also suggested by Flores (2001).

From this critical perspective, at least two theories take into account variations among individual communicators in their responses to conflictual intercultural encounters. The cocul- tural theory (Orbe, 1998; Orbe & Spellers, 2005), informed by the muted group theory and the standpoint theory, explains how indi­vidual members of cocultural (or marginal­ized) groups (e.g., non-Whites and women) “negotiate attempts by others to render their voices muted within dominant societal struc­tures” (Orbe, 1998, p. 4). Orbe argues that cocultural group members generally have one of three goals (or preferred outcomes) for their interactions with dominant group members:

(1) assimilation (e.g., becoming part of the mainstream culture and acquire its identity);

(2) accommodation (e.g., accepting dominant group members while trying to get the domi­nant group members to accept the cocultural group members); and (3) separation (e.g., reject­ing the possibility of common bonds with the dominant group members). Combining these interactional goals with individual cocultural group members’ communication approaches (aggressive, assertive, or nonassertive), Orbe presents a typology of nine communication strategies (e.g., nonassertive separation, asser­tive accommodation, and aggressive assimila­tion) that cocultural group members employ in intercultural encounters with members of a more dominant group.

Likewise, individual variations in responses to conflictual intercultural communication are explained in Collier’s (2005) cultural identifi­cations theory, which is an updated version of the original cultural identity theory (Collier & Thomas, 1988). Motivated by a recognition of the structural constraints against members of historically marginalized groups and a desire to seek “social justice” through “progressive social change” (Collier, 2005, p. 236), cultural identifications theory offers an interpretive framework for examining the dynamics of “cultural identification systems” as “lived, situated experiences” (p. 242). Employing a broad definition of cultural identity to include national, racial, ethnic, class-related, sex- and gender-based, political, and religious identi­ties, the theory posits that cultural identities are “formed through processes of avowal (self views) and ascription (views communicated by others)” (p. 240) and that individuals have a range of cultural identities that vary in salience across situations and over time. To understand the dynamics of identity negotiation between intercultural communicators, Collier empha­sizes the importance of “[paying] attention to structures, institutions, representations, and ideologies that constrain agency, and are the root of injustice, patriarchy, and oppression” (p. 242).

In both of these two critical theories, the root cause of intercultural conflict is the insti­tutional or structural intergroup inequality marking the dialectic tension that exists in specific intercultural encounters. Given such underlying tension, the nine interaction strate­gies identified in the cocultural theory suggest a variety of ways individual members of a nondominant group respond to, and navigate, their intercultural encounters. Similarly, the cultural identifications theory provides an interpretive framework for understanding dif­ferent ways in which individual communica­tors, particularly members of a nondominant group, negotiate their collective identities.