Handbook of intercultural training. Volumes I, II, III

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for hair tonic; lugger, someone who is paid to bring in customers to certain shows; dip, a pickpocket; cleaner, the man who takes paid players aside and recovers the money or prizes they have won to make an impression on the crowd; and slum, cheap goods to be given as prizes.” Each of these and the many other examples help us understand the group using them. The book includes a forward by Stuart Berg Flexner that explains Maurer’s contribution to language studies. There is also a long introduction written by the editors. This section is useful in that it attempts to explain Maurer’s research methodology. For example, Maurer’s interview techniques, methods of validation and authenticity, recording devices, crosschecking procedures, and the like are discussed. The volume concludes with an epilogue by Maurer (“Social Dialects as a Key in Cultural Dynamics”), and a general and key word index. Admittedly Maurer’s research procedures seem unsophisticated by today’s standards (we are never told specifically how many subjects he interviewed or the length of the interviews), and many of the groups he studied seem obscure (“North Atlantic Fishermen,” I‘Moonshiners”), yet the articles and glossaries help us appreciate Emerson’s observation that “Language is the archives of history.” The words and definitions in this collection tell us of the history, both past and present, of groups other than our own. It is this information that is often the key to effective communication. To that end, I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in intercultural communication-to anyone who accepts the notion that language and behavior are so intertwined that it is often difficult to say which is the voice and which the echo. Larry A. Samovar San Diego State University San Diego, California

HANDBOOK

OF INTERCULTURAL VOLUMES I, II, III

Dan Landis and Richard

New York: Pergamon

TRAINING.

W. Brislin (Editors)

Press 1983, 951 pp., $100.00 (hardcover)

Brandt introduce the Handbook of Intercultural analysis of the history of intercultural relations. They choose as their starting point the march of imperial armies, followed by both religious and mercantile interests (Mars, God, and Mammon as the intercultural trinity, so-to-speak). Brislin,

Landis

and

Training with a lighthearted

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It would be specious, however, to assume that intercultural contact was generally violent in its beginnings. The first intercultural experts were not officers in en imperial army, but rather women in exogamous marriage societies millenia before the first empire appeared. Traders were probably the next experts in intercultural communication. Imperial armies usually followed trade routes. not vice versa. Nonetheless, the necessity of dealing with the world’s cultural diversity eventually gave rise to our own, in the words of the editors, “contentious” field of intercultural training and evaluation research. These volumes are not “recipe books” of training methods. programs, and activities for the intercultural trainer; rather, they discuss important research about these areas. A more accurate title for the volumes would have been the Handbook qf Intercultural Training Research. The authors focus on the theory. design, implementation, and evaluation of training with a view of taking a large conceptual step toward a comprehensive theory of intercultural behavior and of the training which facilitates intercultural effectiveness. Volume I deals with issues of training theory and design. Volume II discusses training methodology with a particular focus on the context of training, and Volume III focuses on international education and on “area studies.” As is the case with most multiple-authored works, some of the contributions would fit appropriately into more than one of the sections. The bibliographies accompanying each of the 34 articles (authored by 42 researchers and trainers) are invaluable. Many interesting issues are raised by these volumes. For this reviewer the most intriguing issues were: I

What do we do about highly contrastive cultural differences when joint decisions must be made and joint actions taken? Whose reality prevails? 2. What, precisely, constitutes intercultural competence‘? 3. How do we resolve the central ethical question of intercultural training, i.e., do trainers have a right to challenge a person’s core values? 4. What does the emergent meta-theory of intercultural competence look like’? What does this imply for training and evaluation?

1.

Whose

Realit)?:’

Mestenhauser (Vol. II, p. 181) asks “[what do we do] behaviorally about. differences when we are faced with situations in which a response is necessary?” Dinges and Maynard (Vol. 11, p. 55) phrase the problem as, “One must ask whose reality prevails when action is required?” Alder and Kiggundu (Vol. II, Chapter 6) a U.S. citizen and a Ugandan presently

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working in Canada, present a culturally synergistic approach for dealing with such differences in their design for translator-based training programs, which grew out of Adler’s earlier work on cultural synergy. The editors take great exception to the word “synergy,” finding it “jargonistic” and that it “allow[s] unprepared trainers to hide behind a poorly explained concept” and “encourage[s] the unrealistic search for utopian solutions in situations where fast action is more appropriate than various cultures’ conceptions of reality” (Shirzuru, Landis, & Brislin, Vol. II, p. 7). However, Adler and Kiggundu state that this approach is for effectiveness over the long run when members of different cultures must interact with each other frequently and that “the one mitigating factor is that the greatest time investment is made prior to the first.. . program” (p. 143). Once one set of synergistic solutions has been developed for a particular context, this learning can be applied to future problems arising in that context. The editors do concede that Adler and Kiggundu cover ideas that are worth careful consideration, especially the direct analysis of conflict (Shizuru, Landis, & Brislin, Vol. II, p. 7). Dinges and Maynard (Vol. II, p. 55) after voicing concerns similar to those of the editors, point out the visionary aspect of such models in that “while difficult to use in their present form they are undoubtedly needed to guide the examination of complex intercultural dynamics in the future.” This proactive aspect of the culture synergy model is overlooked by the editors when they state (Vol. II, p. 7, p. 55) that “there is not a single well-documented case of synergy used in cross-cultural development or training programs despite the existence of a whole volume devoted to the topic (i.e., Moran & Harris, 1982).” The key word must be well-documented, meaning by the rules of evidence of classic social science research. There are also many examples in the handbook volumes themselves of allusions to culturally synergistic dynamics (e.g., Moscovici in fviestenhauser, Vol. II, pp. 172-181; Ruben & Clark in Baxter, Vol. 11, pp. 303-304; Kunihiro & Mitzutani in Ramsey & Birk, Vol. III, p. 252, pp. 255-257; Hughes, Vol. III, p. 42; Pedersen, Vol. II, Chapter 12; Chatterjee, Vol. III, pp. 214-215; Spodek, Vol. III, p. 189; and Casino, Vol. II, p. 221). These dynamics seem very closely related to the three classic variables seen as conducive to positive intergroup relations: equal status; nonsuperlicial, intimate interaction; and the mutual pursuit of superordinate goals (Brislin, Landis, & Brandt, Vol. I, p. 26, distilled from Allport, Amir, Brislin, Riordon, Sherif & Watson ). What is exciting in light of the emerging importance of situational variables in accounting for intercultural effectiveness (Detweiler, Brislin, & McCormack, Vol. II, Chapter 5) is that the cultural synergy concept may be defined in terms of an environment characterized by the display of mutual respect. Perhaps the fundamental intercultural competency is in fact the

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ability to behaviorally display respect in a wide variety of cultural (see Kealey & Ruben, Vol. I, Chapter 6).

settings

2. Intercuitural Competence But what exactiy does intercultural competence entail? Mumford (Vol. II, p. 85) observes that there is no clear portrait of cross-culturally trained individuals and that in practice they can look very different. These volumes contain lists and lists of both generic and specific traits, attitudes, behaviors, and skills, as well as background, intervening, and situational variables pertaining to intercultural competence (e.g., in Adler & Kiggundu; Casino, Paige, Kealey & Ruben; Dinges; Dinges, & Maynard; Ramsey and Birk; Levy; Brislin; etc.). For example, Levy’s excellent article on intercultural competence and bilingual education teacher training programs in the U.S. (Vol. III, Chapter 3) refers to discrete competencies for bilingual educators. Dinges (Vol. I, Chapter 7) gives a very complete review of the intercultural competence research. Of particular value is his discussion of Klemp’s concept that the integration of behaviorally inferred competencies allows persons possessing different combinations and degrees of competencies to produce functionally equivalent behavior. Much of the prior competency research grew out of traditional trait psychology, but this has proved to be a relatively dead end because so-called traits are not stable across situations. Brislin makes an important distinction between a trait and a skill, a trait being defined as “a product of the person’s unique heredity and experience and as acquired without formal training” (in Dinges, Vol. 1, p. 185). Because of the complex person/setting dynamics involved (Detweiler, Brislin, & McCormack, Vol. II, pp. 103-104), an adequate model that integrates the variables involved in intercultural competence still has not been generated. The etiology of intercultural competency variables is almost completely uninvestigated (Dinges, Vol. 1, p. 185). Brislin, Landis, and Brandt’s cognitive behavioral picture of intercultural behavior (Vol. 1, p. 4) outlines the possible psychological dynamics of such a model. However, the tasks that one has to perform and the situations in which one has to perform them are not yet part of this model (see Gudykunst & Hammer, Vol. I, p. 148; Kealey & Ruben, Vol. I, p. 169; Brislin in Dinges, Vol. 1, p. 185, p. 204, Note 4; and Blake & Heslin, Vol. I, p. 204). Dinges (Vol. I, p. 198) aiso suggests that we begin “studying up” in intercultural competency research, that is, studying the affluent, powerful, and well-connected. People such as diplomatic personnel and multinational corporation executives are at the national level what “boundary role persons” (people who handle an organization’s external affairs) are at an organizational level (Dinges & Maynard, Vol. II, pp. 59-63). Studies could

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profitably include case histories of people who actively choose intercultural life as a preferred experience, figures such as great international impresarios, bold international entrepreneurs, or statesmen. Future studies might analyze traditionally affluent middlemen minorities, such as the Chinese, Indians, Lebanese, and Sephardic Jews, with generations-long international networks. As Dinges observes, such studies could help identify important contextual variables (Vol. I, p. 198) as well as help explicate the etiology of intercultural competence. To date, intercultural competence research has been biased by a preponderance of studies conducted with subjects who were embarking on their first intercultural experience, who may or may not have actively chosen that particular experience, who obtained their competence through formal training, and for whom the experience was likely to be stressful. People, however, who choose intercultural life as a preferred experience may, like Mumford’s intercultural program managers, seek stress rather than become accustomed to it (Vol. II, p. 94). Brislin, Landis, and Brandt (Vol. I, p. 5) might class this behavior with what they call “behavioral seeking.” This “seeking” seems to entail a positive orientation towards high levels of stimulus, uncertainty, and ambiguity. Brislin et al. admit that these “deviations from homeostatic levels always have been an embarrassment to theoreticians” (p. 6). Barna (Vol. II, Chapter 2) has written an excellent review of stress research and has related it to culture shock and culture fatigue. However, although she quotes Hans Selye in noting that there are two kinds of stress, “distress” (which is unpleasant) and “eustress” (which is perceived to be pleasant), she deals only with the distress associated with intercultural experience. The sojourn experience is described as being characterized by unpredictability, feelings of helplessness. threats to self-esteem, overstimulation, anticipation, uncertainty, and lack of situational control. The sojourn experience may well also consist of adventure and transcendance, of an opportunity to extend perceptual boundaries and to see the world from an alternative perspective and with increased clarity. Entering a new culture is also analogous to “entering” a work of literature. One suspends disbelief and immerses oneself in an alternative reality, and although cultures differ, they are not unpredictable for they are highly patterned. Each is a complex puzzle to be worked out (see Plueddemann, Vol. III, Chapter 6), a “context” to be “cracked” (Ramsey and Birk, Vol. 111, p. 25 1). When entering another culture, one is going to make mistakes. Pedersen (Vol. II, Chapter 12), in his work with his Triad Model of intercultural counseling, addresses two very important dimensions of intercultural competency: becoming less defensive in culturally ambiguous relationships and developing recovery skills for getting out of trouble when making mistakes. It is even possible to come through an error with increased rapport! In her final summary, Barna questions “whether or not a human being

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can be comfortable with diversity,” an “alien stimuli” (p. 43). Having grown up the child of a Southern Protestant father and an Irish/ French Canadian Catholic mother (I was a Christian Scientist) in the Southwestern U.S. in one of the few Democratic families in a largely Republican, Mormon neighborhood on a block where five languages were commonly spoken (Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Hebrew, French, and three varieties of English [American, English, Scats]), the above question seems moot, as it must be also for Chatterjee (Vol. III, Chapter 10) and other Indians who live with enormous diversity. Hetereogeneity is the norm. La@ is diverse.

3. Ethics of Intercultural

Training

The central ethical question in intercultural training is whether trainers have a right to change people, especially if the change involves a challenge to their core values. Baxter (Vol. II, p. 303) asks “to what extent, in what areas, are people willing to step outside their cultural styles and presuppositions to consciously make allowances for, or assume, non-native behavior patterns.” These questions raise what Paige and Martin (Vol. I, p. 56) call “the psychological dilemma of multiculturalism.” In Paige’s research into the experience of international students in the U.S. (Vol. II, p. 123) he gives us an example of this dilemma by discussing the “fears [experienced by the students] of changing [their] culturally acquired ways of behaving and thinking, [their] fear of becoming ‘Americanized’ and the related threat to personality identity.” Ramsey and Birk (Vol. III, p. 227) open their chapter on the preparation of North Americans for interaction with the Japanese with the question, “Do you feel change when interacting personally with Japanese? The answer has been overwhelmingly, ‘Yes. . ’ ” This “identity anxiety” surrounding personal change surfaced at the 1982 American Anthropological Association meeting in several sessions that addressed the emotional dimensions of being a participant observer in other cultural settings. Chatterjee (Vol. III, p. 198) states unequivocally that: the cross-cultural researcher has to be reconciled to the fact that during the period when he is immersed in the culture he is studying, along with the growth of his information and knowledge, certain concomitant changes are likely to occur in his cognitive structures, in his attitudes, affective moods, and even his values. Rigid, obsessive holding on to previously acquired views, compulsive commitment to selfstyled objectivity, refusal to modify images, stereotypes, and prejudices all foster bias, which is the bane of research in intercultural relations.

The ability to change is probably strongly associated with flexibility of self-image. The editors call this “liability of self-image,” and state, “It would seem that the most functional intercultural skill is the ability to take another’s point of view. And the greatest skill is actually to ‘become’ the other, to ‘walk in the other’s moccasins”’ (Vol. 1, p. 5). However, this is

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where negotiation as an intercultural skill fits into the model of intercultural competence (see Ramsey & Birk, Vol. III, p. 239). Intercultural competence, in addition to flexibility and adaptability, involves “the ability to inspire a willingness by others to adapt to you in return,” which is perhaps influenced by one’s ability to help others to interpret one’s own culture accurately and to develop “third culture” alternatives (Hughes, Vol. III, p. 43, p. 46). New conceptions of self are needed to encompass a self that is comfortable negotiating alternative realities and that displays behavior appropriate to each reality. 4. Toward a Meta- l%eory What emerges consistently in these volumes is that culture learning is an intricate process, as is the development and evaluation of training to facilitate such learning. The search for the method of training has at last been replaced by a more sophisticated approach (see, for example, Adler & Kiggundu, Vol. II, p. 143). As with interculturally skilled counseling, intercultural training must be varied in order to be appropriate to its purposes (Pedersen, Vol. II, p. 333). Trainers and evalutors must identify what skills can and are to be taught, in what sequence, by what methods, to what students, in what context, for what objectives (Hughes, Vol. III, p. 47; see also Paige & Martin, Vol. I, p. 51, Albert, Vol. II, pp. 212-213, and Baxter, Vol. II, p. 320). One of “the intricacies of culture learning” (Triandis, Vol. II, “Foreword”) is the diversity of learning styles for cultural content, both on an individual and on a group level. Ramsey and Birk (Vol. III, pp. 250-251) contrast Japanese and American learning modes. Paige and Martin (Vol. I, p. 51, p. 53) point out the different risks involved with different training activities in terms of both personal disclosure and personal failure. These risks affect the learning capacity of different individuals and culture groups in varying ways. There are many means of gathering information (Hughes, Vol. III, Chapter 2): the inductive, deductive, experiential, exploratory, empirical, ideational, linear, and contextual, to name just a few. One can proceed by bits or by gestalt. The culture assimilator (Albert, Vol. II, Chapter 8), for example, engages a cognitive approach to culture learning and teaches about another culture through programmed units. Many of the present training techniques are in this “teaching about” mode. Feedback as to the appropriateness of behavior and as to the accuracy of one’s “hypotheses” can be intensified by training techniques such as Pleuddemann’s praxis methodology (Vol. III, Chapter 6). This is an example of in-country training where tasks are assigned that require interaction with the culture. Later, each person is debriefed as to his or her observations, understandings, and behaviors. Spodek (Vol. III, Chapter 4) tries to achieve a simulated in-country experience in his university classroom with films and

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literature. He, too, debriefs them. Both these experiential methods of culture learning depend for feedback on a more experienced learner. This is similar to Casino’s (Vol. II, Chapter 9) recommendation that consultants confer with “old hands,” or Chatterjee’s (Vol. III, Chapter 10) recommending relationships with host country counterparts. This might be called the culture-mentor or mentored-immersion training approach. Paige and Martin’s chart of critical variables in cross-cultural training (Vol. I, p. 51), along with Gudykunst and Hammer’s classification scheme for training techniques (Vol. I, p. 126) and Blake and Heslin’s schematic representation of cross-cultural training and evaluation (Vol. I, p. 204), all advance us toward the day that Fontaine awaits when we will be able to provide alternative training activities for the development of particular competencies in various types of trainees being prepared to function in different intercultural contexts (Vol. III, p. 175). Someday we may even approach Hughes’ (Vol. III, Chapter 2) vision that the study of the subjective cultures of various contemporary cultures and of how to interact effectively across these cultural boundaries will be a part of every child’s basic education. The present volumes reflect the fact that the bulk of intercultural training and research to date has been done predominantly along one single cultural interface, that of the U.S. and the rest of the world. Hamnett and Porter address this dilemma directly in their contribution to Volume I, “Problems and Prospects in Western Approaches to CrossNational Social Science Research.” Also, Dinges (Vol. I, p. 177) states that the research so far is deprived of “the benefits of reciprocal perceptions.” Chatterjee (Vol. III, pp. 198-199) speaks of the inadequacy of western scales to delineate the sociocultural complexity that is India. He is talking of 6,000 years of cultural interaction; of enormous ethnic/linguistic/caste heterogeneity and complexity. As Victor Hao Li says in his “Foreword to Volume III,” our very mode of gathering and organizing data imposes preconceived or distorted frameworks on the data. There are other ways of measuring progress in civilization. He illustrates this point with a story from the Japanese Heian period, which describes the transformation over time of an angry Shinto spirit into a Bodhisattva of Compassion. This transformational process in which “the interrelat.ionships among Shinto, Confucian, and Buddhist elements help shape modes of thought in Japan about dealing with differences and coping with new ideas” (p. x) gives us an alternative to “modernization” and “development” as a model for progress. The division between intercultural researchers and practitioners manifests all the classic signs of culture conflict. To use Casino’s term (Vol. II, p. 235), the “exonymous” adjective, i.e., the label imposed upon “us” by the “others,” most frequently employed for each group respectively is “arrogant” and “dilettante.” The work of researchers is found to be “dry and

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boring,” while that of practitioners is “clap trap” or representative of some “fringe” element. This mutual lack of respect does not facilitate effective communication, as both researchers and practioners well know, from both their empirical and experiential data bases. This may be an example of one of Dinges and Maynard’s “problematic situations” characterized by differences of opinion on preferred procedures and on what is considered quality work (Vol. II, p. 71, especially editor’s note). These authors value “an inquiry that allows cycling between quantitative and qualitative approaches” and between the”inquiry/ research/science approach of the outside observer” and “the coping/sense making/survival approach” of the inside participant (Vol. II, p. 77). Endnote Graphically, the volumes can be improved. The pages are too large, with too many words on a page, in too long paragraphs and too small type. Some of the essays were marred by awkward sentences, especially the first two pages of Chapter 1, Volume I. Questions of economy undoubtedly dominated questions of format, but better visual design would make the contents more accessible to the reader. The various summary charts are most helpful in this respect. To complement Day’s (Vol. II, Chapter 10) historical essay on the Department of Defense’s intercultural training effort during the last decade, the volumes would have been strengthened by essays on training at the Peace Corps, U.S.Agency for International Development, the U.S. Department of State, the World Bank, and the U.N. Besides covering the overall training scene more extensively there would be an interesting contrast between an institution which was training to handle intercultural relations within its own organization and institutions which train its personnel to work inteculturally outside organizational boundaries. It was interesting to note the Department of Defense’s change of focus from altering individual attitudes through interpersonal training to tinkering with the structures of the organization to do away with institutional discrimination. Historical accounts of training efforts in other countries will also be a welcomed contribution to future publications. The usefulness of these volumes has been accurately identified by the editors in their preface to each of the three volumes as being for “the serious trainer and intercultural scientist.” Much in this handbook is of lasting value including the editors’ conceptual essays at the beginning of each volume. It is unfortunate, however, that the editors’ tone so often lapses into one of condescension, as it may prevent the excellent articles in these volumes from reaching the wide audience they deserve. Jacqueline Howell Wasilewski Research Consultant Washington, DC