Volume 4, Issue 2, Winter 2001

Reviewed by: Philip C. Ho, San Francisco State University

The development of communication and transportation technologies, the drastic change of demographics within certain geographical regions, the trend of globalization of economy, and other personal, political, ideological imperatives have fueled the proliferation of interactions between people from different regions around world. Such interactions have been variously labeled as "intercultural," "cross-cultural," or "international" and investigated in the scholarly field of intercultural communication since after the end of Would War II. In the continually growing and changing field of intercultural communication, Everett M. Rogers and Thomas M. Steinfatt's (1999) Intercultural Communication is one of such texts that generally aim to provide an overview of the field of intercultural communication, recommendations for future research directions, and strategies and approaches for effective intercultural contacts. Specifically, "this book seeks to build on the fascination that intercultural communication naturally holds for everyone" and "to raise consciousness about cultural differences and to help students become more competent in intercultural communication" (Rogers & Steinfatt, 1999, p. xiii).

The greatest asset of this text is probably the authors' assertion that understandings of communication and culture must be situated in the historical contexts in which "the backbone of future conceptions-constructions that define a people, their dignity, their status, and their connections" (Rogers & Steinfatt, 1999, p. 3)-was formed. Such an approach, however, is generally ignored by the traditional intercultural communication scholars. In the first chapter, Rogers & Steinfatt provide several narratives of historical events: such as the clash of religious faiths; the Mongol's invasion of Islam Empire; European colonialists' domination over indigenous people in Latin Americas, Africa, and Asia; the slave trade; the Opium Wars between the Chinese and British empires; European settlers' killing and subjugation of Native Americans. This undertaking of "a historical approach" of intercultural interactions, unfortunately, barely goes beyond the first chapter and the conception of history/histories (i.e., types of history, functions of history, impact of history) as well as the use of historical events are not explored or qualified sufficiently.

Further, in discussions of the development of intercultural communication, its methodologies, its central elements and concepts, and its research agendas, Rogers & Steinfatt seem to privilege the field's sociological roots (e.g., prediction of behaviors, scientific objectivity). Generally, in the studies of human social behaviors, the phenomenon of "paradigm wars" (Gage, 1989) has been an ongoing debate over the natures of knowledge (epistemology) and reality (ontology) as well as the relationship between culture and communication. These philosophical positions coupled with different research genres and goals, at least three research paradigms have emerged: logical empiricist, interpretive, and critical (Bochner, 1985; Littlejohn, 1996; Martin & Nakayama, 1999; Sprague, 1994). Although relatively new and non-dominant, intercultural communication research conducted, by Euroamerican or not, from the interpretive and critical perspectives are rapidly growing; these different philosophical, theoretical, and methodological positions have generated radically different understandings of culture and communication and directions for future research. The omission of these different perspectives in this text can lead to a skewed view of the field.

One specific area of debate is centered on the notion of culture. Although Rogers & Steinfatt (1999) recognize the existence of cultural variance and discuss the concept of co-culture, many discussions and examples in their text are still built on the generalized and unquestioned "national culture." Such a treatment of culture has been criticized or problematized in numerous scholarly works (e.g., Giroux, 1998; Ho, 2000; Moon, 1996, 1998; Nakayama, 1997; Ono, 1998; Yep, 1998, in press; Yep, Lovaas, & Ho, in press) for it tends to normalize and perpetuate the hegemony of the privileged cultural perspectives as well as homogenize the diverse views of various cultural groups within a nation by means of exclusion, trivialization, and marginalization.

Another issue related to, and arguably even more problematic than, treating national cultures monolithically is the authors' seemingly oblivious or unconscious Eurocentric and imperialist perspective on which their overall approach of selecting, reporting, and discussing intercultural communication is based. In many discussions and examples of intercultural interactions and cultural differences, people from Latin Americas, Africa, and Asia are depicted as backwards, unwilling to change or accept new ideas, uncompromising, xenophobic, superstitious, and so forth. "Most North Americans," on the other hand, "want [original emphasis] to become more interculturally experienced" (p. 222); they are usually described as frustrated, benevolent, able and willing to help, or simply indifferent in many examples of intercultural interactions used in the text. Such a perspective is always already pre-configured by the unexamined Western notions of "modernity," "development," "progress," "economic growth," "success," "civilization," "democracy," among others that are assumed to be of universal human interests. And through this discourse of universality, the "First World" nations are able to justify their (neo)imperialist expansions into the "poor," "uncivilized," "uneducated" "Third World" nations to show the "savage" a "better" way of life. In this view, then, the field of intercultural communication appears to serve the political, economic, ideological, and other self-interests of the powerful regimes of the "First World."

In sum, Rogers & Steinfatt fail to build on the historical approach they so advocate at the outset of the text; neglect to provide perspectives of alternative research paradigms in the overview of the field of intercultural communication and throughout the text; run the risk of perpetuating the existing power relations between cultural groups within a nation by not examining thoroughly the notion of (national) culture; and present the danger of providing justifications for continuing imperialist expansions by not reflecting their Eurocentric biases and examining various ideological assumptions of the West.

References
Bochner, A.P. (1985). Perspectives on inquiry: Representation, conversation, and reflection. In M.L. Knapp & G.R. Miller (Eds.), Handbook of interpersonal communication (pp. 27-58). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Gage, N.L. (1989). The paradigm war and their aftermath: A "historical" sketch of research on teaching since 1989. Education Researcher, 18, 4-10.

Giroux, H. (1998). The politics of national identity and the pedagogy of multiculturalism in the USA. In D. Bennett (Ed.), Multicultural states: Rethinking difference and identity (pp. 178-194). London: Routldge.

Ho, P.C. (February, 2000). Becoming "American"? An autoethnographic account of a sojourner from Taiwan on "Americanness." Paper presented at the Western States Communication Association Annual Conference (2000) at Sacramento, California.

Littlejohn, S.W. (1996). Theories of human communication (5th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Martin, J.N., & Nakayama, T.K. (1999). Thinking dialectically about culture and communication. Communication Theory, 1, 1-25.

Moon, D.G. (1996). Concepts of "culture": Implications for intercultural communication research. Communication Quarterly, 44, 70-84.

Moon, D.G. (1998). Performing identities: "Passing" as an inter/cultural discourse. In J.N. Martin, T.K. Nakayama, & L.A. Flores (Eds.), Readings in cultural contexts (pp. 322-330). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.

Nakayama, T.K. (1997). Dis/orienting identities: Asian American, history, and intercultural communication. In A. González, M. Houston, V. Chen (Eds.) Our voices: Essays in culture, ethnicity, and communication (pp. 14-20). Los Angeles: Roxbury.

Ono, K.A. (1998). Problematizing "nation" in intercultural communication research. In D. V. Tanno & A. González (Eds.), Communication and identity across cultures (pp. 193-202). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Sprague, J. (1994). Ontology, politics, and instructional communication research: Why we can't just "agree" to "disagree" about power. Communication Education, 43, 273-290.

Yep, G.A. (1998). My three cultures: Naviating the multicultural identity landscape. In J.N. Martin, T.K. Nakayama, & L.A. Flores (Eds.), Readings in cultural contexts (pp. 79-85). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.

Yep, G.A. (in press). Encounters with the "Other": Personal notes for a reconceptualization of intercultural communication competence. CATESOL Journal.

Yep, G.A., Lovaas, K.E., & Ho, P.C. (in press). Communication in "Asian American" families with queer members: A relational dialectics perspective. In M. Bernstein & R. Reimann (Eds.), Queer families, queer politics: Challenging culture and the state. New York: Columbia University Press.

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