The study of intercultural/international conflict is a daunting task.
Complex explanatory factors exist on multiple levels of intricacy. On the macrolevel, sociopolitical ideologies, globalization, and shifting cultural values can influence and shape conflict beliefs and standards and also scripts and frames enacted through various filtered communication channels.
On the microlevel, individuals have developed different routines or capacities in managing a particular conflict situation with different astuteness or competence levels. Cultural members from polarized identity communities often have contrasting images of how conflict should be properly handled and how conflict goals should be effectively attained. We define intercultural conflict in this essay as the implicit or explicit emotional struggle between persons of different cultural communities over perceived or actual incompatibility of cultural ideologies and values, situational norms, goals, face orientations, scarce resources, styles/processes, and/ or outcomes in a face-to-face (or mediated) context within a sociohistorical embedded system. While intercultural conflict often refers to microlevel to mesolevel influence of how an intercultural conflict episode actually plays out in an ongoing scene and within an interdependent relationship web or location container (e.g., see Chapters 25 and 30), international conflict often implies group membership conflicts on the exo- or macrolevel—especially with a strong influence of international and historical political overtone and flavor (e.g., see Chapters 26 and 28) between nation-states. Three other chapters (Chapters 24, 27, and 29) also address the diverse spectrums of macrolevel globalization influence to intergroup membership identity relating issues to microlevel conflict styles and tactics.In Chapter 24, Kim views the conceptualization of collective in-group identity as a motivational base of symbolic or real power in intergroup conflict situations.
This identitybased power also propels individuals into an “us-against-them” intergroup membership posture and, in turn, creates stress and conflict in the intercultural interaction process. Her chapter covers a wide spectrum of conflicts that involve sojourners and immigrants in their boundary-crossing experience. During this developmental adaptation experience, individuals’ identities evolve, adapt, and transform. Against this backdrop, her chapter provides answers to the following two questions: (1) How does an individual’s identity influence intercultural conflict and cooperation? and (2) How do intercultural conflict experiences influence an individual’s identity over time? Her chapter covers an extensive terrain grounded in the social science disciplines, particularly drawing from the social/intergroup psychology and intercultural communication studies. She also maps out the various approaches to the study of identity and systematically links some of the major contemporary intercultural identitybased theories with the theme of intercultural/ intergroup conflict.In Chapter 25, Orbe, Everett, and Putman focus their attention on interracial and interethnic conflict within the United States. They also make a clear distinction between interracial conflict (conflict between members of different races, e.g., African American/ Asian American) and interethnic conflict (conflict between members of different ethnic groups, e.g., Cuban Americans/Puerto Rican Americans). Their objective in the chapter is threefold: (1) to summarize existing research that addresses issues of race, ethnicity, and conflict; (2) to identify the limitations and gaps in existing lines of comparative ethnicbased conflict studies; and (3) to review and apply a co-cultural theoretical framework in understanding the various racial or ethnicbased conflict issues and also to outline important avenues for future studies and practical applications of interracial/interethnic conflict research.
In Chapter 26, Dorjee discusses His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s nonviolence and Buddhism’s Middle Way Approach to further research on intergroup and intercultural conflicts and resolution. Nonviolence (Ahimsa) is a cardinal guiding principle in Buddhism. Simply put, nonviolence in Buddhism means not to harm anyone through physical, verbal, and mental actions. The Dalai Lama argues that this century should be the century of dialogue and cooperation. Furthermore, according to the Nalanda tradition of Buddhism, individuals who aspire for liberation (Nirvana) and full enlightenment (Mahabodhi) must realize the emptiness (Shunyata) in all things physical/ metaphysical and social. Its basic principles are identifying and refuting the extreme views in various conflict situations, establishing and affirming the Middle Way, and cultivating deep insights into every communicative situation through the threefold practice of listening, contemplation, and meditation. The Middle Way Dialogue Approach contends that intergroup conflict can be resolved through productive dialogue especially if conflict parties show genuine mutual concerns for each other and the core conflict issues. The chapter is organized along the following lines: (1) discusses the nonviolence approach, drawing largely from the Buddhist literature; (2) introduces and reviews the Middle Way Approach and its philosophical underpinning; (3) extends and connects an intergroup perspective with various intergroup conflict communication strategies; (4) applies the intergroup perspective to the Sino-Tibetan conflict issues, which have been sorely missing in previous conflict studies; and (6) concludes with a summary of the core nonviolence ideas and future theoretical directions.
In Chapter 27, Stohl, McCann, and Bakar’s “Conflict in the Global Workplace” addresses the changing face of the global workforce and accelerated increases in participation by traditional minorities (e.g., women, Hispanic workers in the United States, Turkish workers in Scandinavia and Germany, South Asian workers in the gulf-states region).
While globalization has brought amazing opportunities to work smarter and more creatively with more people across time and space, it also brings challenges and greater possibilities for conflict. Studying conflict from a global communicative perspective enables the authors to address workplace conflict from multiple levels of the sociocultural system analysis. The chapter reviews and interconnects ideas along the following five central arguments in the global workplace nexus: (1) definitions of globalization, culture, and cultural variability and how these factors shape workplace conflict; (2) conflict dynamics occur at the interface of macrofeatures of the environment and the microcontext of the work group; (3) paradoxes of globalization create powerful tensions across the organizations and groups; (4) transnational teams are a primary site of workplace conflict; and (5) global alliances mirror the conflict dynamics found in teams. The authors argue that a global communication approach addresses how the dynamics of globalization via convergence are entrenched in the microprocesses of divergence and cultural variability, and also resulting in differentiating perceptions concerning justice and fairness issues at multiple standpoint levels.In Chapter 28, Broome offers the practice of intergroup dialogue as one of the key human activities for dealing meaningfully with differences and minimizing separateness. Dialogue is characterized by nonpolarized discourse in which individuals and groups trapped in conflict have an opportunity for enhanced understanding and healthier relationships. It refers to a process of creating meaning through talking and reasoning together. It represents a form of discourse that emphasizes listening and inquiry, with the aims of fostering mutual respect and understanding. The chapter focuses on ways in which dialogue can promote a culture of peace in situations of protracted conflict. Broome offers an overview of dialogue as a communication process, with a look at some of the dialogic approaches that have emerged in response to the challenge of building peace in protracted intergroup conflict situations.
Subsequently, the potential contributions of dialogue toward building a culture of peace are described. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the many challenges using dialogic processes in protracted and intractable conflicts. Protracted conflicts are often embedded in a context of longstanding differences and inequalities stemming from colonialism, ethnocentrism, and human rights abuses. Culture-sensitive dialogue offers the possibility for changing some of the destructive communication patterns that lead to intergroup violence and, simultaneously, developing new structures and common goal norms for more effective responses to conflict.In Chapter 29, Ting-Toomey and Oetzel review a classic intercultural conflict mode— the culture-based situational conflict model (CBSCM; Ting-Toomey & Oetzel, 2001) and some related research findings in the intercul- tural conflict arena. They then offer a critique of the gaps in the CBSCM and advocate for the importance of developing a multilevel model to capture the intricate complexity and nuances of studying a complex conflict case. The purpose of the chapter is twofold: (1) to offer a synoptic review and critique of the original conflict model, CBSCM, and (2) to propose an update model, the culture-based social ecological conflict model (CBSECM) in order to capture the dynamic change in the area of intercultural conflict communication theory and practice. They further emphasize the importance of studying any contemporary intercultural conflict cases from a multilevel, multi-contextual analytical viewpoint. A multilevel theorizing process may illustrate that a particular intercultural conflict case history contains both consistencies and inconsistencies at multiple levels of analysis. Additionally, a multilevel perspective helps illuminate the multitude of factors that shape macrosystem-level, institutional membership-level, immediate community-level, family socialization-level, and also individual- and interpersonal-level conflicts within and across the nested units of emphasis.
In Chapter 30, Fisher-Yoshida explores three primary concepts in culture-based conflict communication situations: self, other, and relationship. The author believes that by elevating the relationship frame as the highest order of context in intercultural conflict communication, this relational focus could lead to renaming the person or group we call “opponent,” to “partner.” Furthermore, she proposes that by framing cultural difference dimensions as paradoxes to manage, creative insights can be generated. The five paradoxes identified in the chapter are (1) paradox of knowing (knowing self and honoring others),
(2) paradox of focus (I-centric and we-centric),
(3) paradox of communication (communicating across difference—direct and indirect),
(4) paradox of action (doing and reflecting), and (5) paradox of response (short term and long term). By engaging in a self-reflexive and other-reflective approach concerning the five paradoxes as a starting point, conflict teams or individuals can generate positive energy and momentum in moving toward a transformational, shared-reality trajectory. Last, the author incorporates Barnett Pearce’s (2005) Coordinated Management of Meaning framework and its accompanying three principles— (1) coordination, (2) coherence, and (3) mys- tery—to help transform conflict parties’ habitual lens and also their visions of their conflict relationship.
In sum, from Chapter 24, on the theme of identity, to Chapter 30, on the importance of self-reflexivity and other-reflectivity, intercul- tural conflict theory and practice is at a vibrant stage of maturation and development. Motifs such as multilayered complexity, historical and global changes, identity shifting and differentiation, intergroup alliances and competitions, ethnopolitical conflicts, the intentional practice of nonviolence and dialogue, the importance of bringing spiritual awareness to our conflict practice, and the journey of personal and inter- cultural relationship transformation represent some of the chapters’ diverse yet complementary approaches.
References
Pearce, W. B. (2005). The coordinated management of meaning. In W. B. Gudykunst (Ed.), Theorizing about intercultural communication (pp. 35-54). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Ting-Toomey, S., & Oetzel, J. G. (2001). Managing intercultural conflict effectively. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.