Intercultural Consilience or Cacophony?

Darla K. Deardoff, 2009. The Sage Handbook of Intercultural Competence. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 560 pages. ISBN: 9781412960458.

I approached the challenge of reviewing this 500-page tome with some ambivalence. On the one hand, I was excited to dive into a rare publication that comprehensively addresses areas I have been passionate about for decades. On the other hand, the very reasons that make intercultural competence so perennially fascinating also make it very difficult to psychologically manage: it is difficult to feel like there are many clear answers to its various related problems. On these grounds, I braced myself for an anticlimax.

As several of the authors acknowledge, there has been little widespread agreement amongst specialists with respect to conceptual or methodological approaches, for example. I suspected that in any single publication, it was probably impossible to comprehensively represent the multifarious nature of this field, or perhaps I should say “fields.” It is almost an oxymoron to expect common agreement across such diverse disciplines that are linked to intercultural competence (ICC). It resembles the ever-growing love child of several, sometimes conflicting parent traditions including anthropology, sociology, social and cross-cultural psychology, linguistics and communication, education, training, management, and international business.

Is it possible to reconcile such an array of conflicting spheres of research and knowledge? Is it even wise to juxtapose value sets that are often defined by their contrast and reaction to (and frequently rejection of) other traditions? Kipling's provocation comes to mind: should we accept that “never the twain [East and West] can meet”?

Deardoff and her contributors have confronted this Hydra with Herculean courage to provide what is probably the most useful summary yet of ICC research and applications for the “scholar and practitioner alike” (Hofstede, back cover). The foreword identifies its audience as educators, students, administrators, trainers, and business people, an ambitious scope that, overall, I believe is well addressed.

There are 29 chapters by a virtual who's who of (mostly) well-known specialists in related areas. The first half of the book deals with conceptual issues, reflecting the overriding legacy of complexity resulting from such diverse disciplinary roots. The second section addresses applications of ICC, mostly related to education and other learning, while the last part relates to “research and assessment.” It must have been difficult to decide on themes with which to structure the book, but it does seem odd that assessment should be located in a separate section from learning and development, especially when authors such as Fantini (Chapter 27) affirm the need to integrate the two.

Both the book's reviewers and contributors are predominantly US-based and/or educated, perhaps a natural and inevitable product of the current center of gravity for work in this domain. However, this bias does need to be acknowledged when judging the representativeness and possible stilting of its contents. The foreword by Derek Bok, for example, is blatantly US-centric in its examples and assumptions about readers' origins, which is somewhat alienating to the majority of those who live in the rest of the world. It will be a welcome sign of internationalization when we see such a handbook that is more geographically and culturally balanced in its sources and perspectives.

The subject scope, however, does include some refreshing insights that are from more diverse cultural origins. Several chapters focus on illuminating culture-specific perspectives from Vietnam, sub-Saharan and North Africa/the Arab world, India, China, Germany, and Latin America. I found Chapter 12 on India particularly interesting and useful, as it explained some fundamental aspects of Indian worldviews and philosophies in clear terms, without assuming any overriding homogeneity across the subcontinent. The book also covers a broad range of disciplinary areas, including communicative competence, leadership, discourse analysis, and political and social emancipatory concerns.

The first chapter dives head first into the maelstrom of conceptualizing intercultural competence. Spitzberg and Changnon provide a very useful typology of some of the main types of ICC models that have emerged recently. The depth and breadth of these various conceptualizations, along with the lists of associated “concept and factor labels” totaling eight pages and hundreds of items, reflects the immense challenge involved in summarizing and methodologically managing the multifarious constructs associated with ICC.

It may sound picky, but the continued use of blanket terms such as Eastern perspectives (p. 4) do not seem helpful in a book ostensibly aimed at fostering greater category width and discriminant power. Even less coarsely grained descriptions, such as “North-East” or “South-East Asia” belie the historically, linguistically, and culturally distinct composite groups within each category.

What might have been useful either here, in a separate introductory chapter, or in a future edition, is some sort of superordinate taxonomy, such as identifying which philosophical and/or epistemological traditions have influenced respective models. Such a spectrum might range from Milton Bennett's “radical constructivism” to the logical empiricist approaches outlined by Van de Vijver and Leung in Chapter 24. In the spirit of effective cultural diversity management, the book tacitly (and appropriately) accepts a diverse range of such positions as both valid and valuable. However, a more explicit excavation of links between disciplinary legacies and the current work would be another way to make more sense out of the many models presented, which, when considered together, risk resembling an irreconcilable cacophony.

The authors do provide an insightful overview and commentary regarding the ICC state of play. For example, they point out issues related to the widespread assumption that various elements comprising ICC can be considered separable. They support the strong case to consider more integrated models that acknowledge humans as being influenced by a range of both conscious and less conscious, more emotional forces. Janet Bennett eloquently provides further support for this case in Chapter 6 under the rubric of “cultivating” ICC. No doubt this call to incorporate irrationality will concern traditionalists who lean toward exclusively cognitive explanations of intercultural phenomena and interactions.

Similarly, most of the subsequent chapters offer a succinct summary of their topic areas, as well as adding further value such as challenging common assumptions or identifying most needed future research avenues. In Chapter 3, for example, Pusch highlights the critical need for global leadership to include ethical dimensions and an inherent responsibility to help address critical global issues. In the following chapter, (Gert Jan) Hofstede extends this approach with a refreshing and accessible discussion of “moral circles” in ICC, integrating evolutionary biology and systems theories with the culture value dimensions frameworks his father is best known for.

While the catch cry global citizenship has been liberally thrown around educational circles in recent years, in Chapter 7 Ashwill and Oanh eschew the loose jargon for a clearly defined, succinct operational definition (p. 142) that casts a sharper light on what can be an overly obtuse concept. Their comparisons between US American and Vietnamese conceptions of global citizenship provide powerful insights into relative manifestations of patriot-ism, nationalism, and ethnocentrism. While not strictly in their own words, they also include a quote from an international education leader (New Mexico State University, 2008) that refers to a need to “compete and thrive in the world.” This seems like a puzzling contradiction to other definitional aspects that emphasize responsibility to all of humanity, rather than, for example, serving the single bottom lines of corporations or nations. This is more than a trivial distinction that often goes unheeded: much of the management and other ICC-related literature assumes that commercial competitiveness and superiority are universal motivators for developing ICC, whereas they may in fact run contrary to the values underpinning many of the conceptualizations contained in this book.

In the second, “applied” section of the book, Storti's chapter is ostensibly focused on human resources, though he actually addresses a much smaller, specific HR subset by providing an introduction for (presumably) novice cross-cultural trainers. He offers some advice that seems curious to this reviewer, such as “it's better not to start down the assessment road if you don't have to” (p. 281). Given the profound effect assessment inevitably has on the quality of learning, this precept appears problematic. He later claims that the future of cross-cultural training is “computer-based e-learning.” This also appears contentious: as other authors have pointed out, the mere acquisition of the type of surface knowledge that lends itself to such efficient forms of delivery has limited impact in developing ICC, compared with face-to-face, experiential, and other more authentic learning modes.

A few of the other chapters in the applied section also seem trite, adding little that is original or insightful. Chapter 16, titled “ICC in Business: Leading Global Projects,” seems little more than a perfunctory summary of some elementary project management strategies. Tacked on toward the end is a superficial summary of some basic intercultural concepts, including a self-citation that amounts to a paraphrasing of some of Edward T. Hall's seminal work. It concludes, with little segue, by describing Shackleton's Antarctic achievements as an illustration of a “great leader of a global project” (p. 301). The tangential (at best) relevance of this content contrasts starkly with most of the ensuing chapters in which veterans such as Michael Byram, Michael Paige, Fons Van de Vijver, and Kwok Leung provide essential reading in their respective specialty areas. For example, Chapter 25 on study abroad should be required reading for academics, administrators, and students—in fact anyone interested in maximizing the potential of international study to support intercultural learning.

One omission of note seems to be that of indigenous people's conceptions and issues relating to intercultural competence. Neither the word indigenous nor aboriginal appears anywhere in the contents or index sections. The only related mention is in the last chapter, significantly subtitled “An Epilogue,” where Trimble, Pedersen, and Rodela offer a cautionary tale in which researchers were sued for breaching the terms of their agreement with the Havasupai Native American tribe. The epilogue to this epilogue, which emerged since the book's publication, was the case being settled in favor of the Havasupai (Harmon, 2010). Given the range of ICC related, shameful, and persistent problems experienced by indigenous people's due to domination by other cultures across the globe, applying ICC to address inequities and improve their wellbeing and opportunities should be a conspicuous part of any intercultural research or applied agenda.

This handbook succeeds in “standing face to face” strong, rich, and contrasting traditions. It provides a valuable platform for enhanced interdisciplinary synergies, as well as its prime subject, intercultural competence. The strike rate of high-quality, valuable, and interesting chapters, compared with others of lesser standing, is admirably high. I suspect this will become a standard authoritative reference in years to come.