Social domain theory: interpreting intercultural communication
The domain of contextual resources
Those who write about intercultural communication routinely point out that claims about the cultural traits of whole nationalities are very dubious. Blommaert (1998), for example, asserts that 'nationality in itself is a bad index of cultural identity', adding 'as a Belgian, I am rather well placed to make that assertion'! Nevertheless, it is our contention that such a linkage does follow implicitly from research which conflates the elements in the social world that we see as distinct. Only by separating out the respective contributions of structure, culture and agency is it possible to explain what is wrong with the commonsense generalizations such as those found in certain kinds of popular discourse. (Examples include tourist guide-books, such as the following: 'Greeks tend to socialize mostly outside their homes ... Greeks are not big drinkers ... Greeks don't generally eat breakfast.')
Nation-states cannot equate with 'cultures', because they are different kinds of entity. Nation-states have a material reality, insofar as they occupy a physical space. That this space is denoted by a particular name is to some extent a discursive, rather than a material, fact, and obviously the way different areas of land have been named has changed over time as the result of political action. Furthermore, 'resources such as land, food, weapons or factories' (Archer 1995: 175) are not discursive products, and their differential distribution among human beings contributes to the 'contextual resources' with which we are concerned here.
Crucial to this domain are observations about how social relations are structured within any given nation-state, as well as what contrasts are to be found between different countries. Perhaps because of its provenance in industrial training, some of the intercultural communication research takes a particular interest in social inequality, using tolerance of inequality as an index by which to compare different 'cultures'. For example, Hofstede (1991) carried out a questionnaire survey with a large number of respondents (116,000) who were employees of IBM, in 72 of its national subsidiaries. One of the 'cultural dimensions' he identifies as a result of this comparative research is labelled the 'power distance index' (PDI), glossed as 'the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally' (p.28). Hofstede describes how the 'mental software' that children acquire differs along this dimension. In a low PDI culture children are likely to be afforded a status much closer to that of adults, whereas those born in a high PDI culture will be expected to show obedience and respect. These differences are observable at school and in the workplace, so that '[i]n the large power distance situation superiors and subordinates consider each other as existentially unequal; the hierarchical system is felt to be based on this existential inequality' (p.35).
Our contention would be that degrees of inequality within a country (not a 'culture', since systems of ideas cannot themselves demonstrate inequality in this sense) are a product of structured social relations. What is at issue can be seen at the level of social interaction as 'the processes of exchange and power, involv[ing] the use of resources, namely political sanctions, liquid assets and expertise' (Archer 1995: 297). Different social agents are endowed with differential bargaining power, based on the availability to them of these various kinds of resources. (The ability to command a particular language variety is of course a resource in itself.) When resources are concentrated in few hands, there will be a bigger differential between 'haves' and 'have-nots'. Analytical dualism allows for the possibility of heterogeneity among these groups, however, so that those with most expertise are not necessarily those with most political power, nor either of these with most wealth - although they may be.
Furthermore, and this is an important point, there is no necessary connection between culture and structure in these relationships. Hofstede (1991) makes a point of avoiding 'the ecological fallacy' (i.e. 'confusing the level of the individual with the level of the society' p.112), and counsels 'against conceptualizing a culture as though it were a personality writ large' (p.255). However, he seems not to distinguish between the existence of inequality and people's tolerance of it, representing culture as 'a set of likely reactions of citizens with common mental programming' (p.112), a metaphor which suggests a relatively inert and predictable range of responses to circumstances such as material inequality. Archer (1995: 175), however, points out the need to maintain the distinction not only between what different individuals may believe, but between these beliefs and the distribution of resources:
... material relations may [be] and frequently are legitimated by reference to ideas, but the two should not be elided, for a material relationship can be sustained by coercion and manipulation, thus its legitimation is not a matter of necessity.
Using Hofstede's scores, 'Australia' would be classified as placing a greater stress than 'Germany' on individual achievement and rights, expecting individuals to focus on satisfying their own needs; 'Australia' is characterized as a culture in which social encounters are open to more individual variation than in 'Germany', where people are more comfortable with routine and ritual. However, instead of positing global contrasts between 'Germany' and 'Australia', as places from which Joanne and her interlocutors derive contrasting 'cultures', we might do better to picture two capitalist political economies, with some shared and some specific history of intra-national conflict and negotiation. Both Joanne and her fellow students are structurally located with access to the resources of education and international travel (in the context of the exchange program), to which large numbers of other citizens in both countries do not have access. In this respect, there may be more in common across sub-groups of national populations than there is between groups within a given country. This, of course, is why it is often in the interest of the powerful to bolster concepts about nationhood from propositions in the cultural system, in the service of sustaining particular political arrangements; but these are always vulnerable to interpretation by the human agents who are exposed to them.
That Joanne expects some areas of commonality to follow from her social position, even if she is unlikely to have articulated it in terms such as these, is implicit in much of what she says. Although, as we have seen, her own frames of reference differ in detail from those of her colleagues, her expectations about her social location are — reasonably enough - that it will be consistent with what she is familiar with from Australia. It is not difficult to imagine a context where, by dint of structured social relations over which she has no control, her location in another country would be considerably different. For example, to be seen in an extremely poor neighborhood (in either Germany or Australia) with certain clothes and accessories might well invoke a much sharper contrast than the one she describes here, as would seeking an educational exchange with a country where female education is prohibited.
Another charge which can be levelled against some of the mainstream literature on intercultural communication, then, is that it is de-politicized, neglecting to explore the ways in which structured social relations condition the interactions in which it is interested. Blommaert (1998) makes a similar point, reflecting on the fact that, although '[i]f "cultures meet", they usually do so under rather grim socioeconomic circumstances, with a clear societally sanctioned power difference between the various parties involved', yet there is 'a multitude of books and training programs on contact with South East Asian people (notably the Japanese)', but a dearth of such material 'for interactions with the Sudanese, the Angolans or the Samoans'. While employees may - to some extent - share a vested interest in minimizing miscommunication during commercial transactions, other categories of interactant, such as asylum-seekers (Blommaert 2001b) or migrant workers (Roberts et al. 1992), may encounter much less goodwill in their efforts to bridge communication problems.
Thus the domain of contextual resources is always and inevitably implicated in interactions in the social world. It is tempting to elide the macro level of 'nation-state' with gross 'cultural' differences, but we would claim that there are very good analytical grounds for refusing to do so.
