What I’d like to do with you today is to extend a conversation begun with a couple of blogs I have published recently, adding a specific application to the topic of assessing intercultural competence. One of blogs that I wrote in June held that was time to retire the iceberg as a metaphor for culture. There were dozens of responses to that blog, from far more people than I thought would be reading the blog. This led to a very interesting conversation that I think is related to intercultural competence. The other blog is one I wrote comparing intercultural competence to the idea of intelligence, particularly its measurement as IQ. The issue around both blogs is that of “reification” (I’ll give you the definition in a moment) and it is also the issue I believe we are dealing with in trying to talk about the assessment of intercultural competence. Basically, we need to “de- reify” the ideas of culture and intercultural competence back to some original root definition that would allow us to reestablish a more coherent approach to assessment.
Basically, we need to “de-reify” the ideas of culture and intercultural competence back to some original root definition that would allow us to reestablish a more coherent approach to assessment.
To put this talk in cultural terms, I’ll be taking a more European than American approach. Americans tend to start out very optimistic about everything and in the end they do a little criticism. Europeans tend to do the reverse; they start with being very critical and sometimes end up with constructive suggestions. Although I’m probably basically more American than European in my thinking, I’ll try here to practice something approaching the European approach.
The idea of reification in this context is attributing objective reality to a process, frequently through measurement. So for instance all of us human beings are participating in a process of defining ourselves vis-à- vis other people around us. This is the underlying idea of “identity.” But the moment we say “what’s your identity?” or “do you have an identity?” the process of generating our relationship with others becomes a thing that you either have or don’t have. That in a nutshell is reification: we objectify an ongoing process and thus turn it into a static thing.
But the moment we say “what’s your identity?” or “do you have an identity?” the process of generating our relationship with others becomes a thing that you either have or don’t have. That in a nutshell is reification: we objectify an ongoing process and thus turn it into a static thing.
Another example of reification in intercultural work is the concept of “culture shock.” Cross-cultural situations certainly generate some kind of disorientation. If they’re paying attention, people who to some extent are experiencing the world in a way that is unfamiliar are also experiencing some disorientation. However, to ask if you have culture shock is a reification of that experience, like asking if you have a certain kind of identity. Further, to assume that disorientation occurs on a U curve or a W curve in which something happens about this far into the process and then something else happens here and so on is an additional reification of the process associated with measurement. As Kay Barado and Bruce La Brack have pointed out, there is no systematic measurement support at all for these curves and we shouldn’t use them as generalizations about people’s culture shock experience.
When measurements of groups are applied to individuals, they always generate reifications. Sometimes, of course, such reifications serve us as useful diagnostic categories – a way to classify individual experiences. Such classifications need to be 1) supported by research and 2) useful for the purpose of the observation. Measurements are driven by the questions we ask. So, for instance, the original concept of culture shock generates attempts to measure a discrete kind of experience distributed among people over time; in other words, the U or W curves. Since these measurements appear to be unsuccessful, we may have asked the wrong question. Rather than asking “did you have culture shock, and when?,” we might ask “how are you dealing with the disorientation that is associated with being in another culture?” This is a different kind of question and it leads to a different kind of measurement. If we think that culture shock is a thing, then we figure out how to define that thing in such a way as to measure whether it is there or not. However if we think that people are engaged in some sort of process that involves being disoriented, then we need to inquire into the nature that disorientation and to see how it is educational or not in terms of the outcomes of the program. In other words, by staying closer to the process (i.e. reducing reification), we may enable more useful observations. I would say that this is certainly the case for “culture shock.”
Diversity is one pole of a dialectic, the other pole being “unity.” Diversity and unity need to be defined in terms of one another, like “left” and “right.” If we pull on one side or the other of a dialectic, it generates a reification.
Another example of reification in intercultural work is the way we talk about “diversity.” Diversity is one pole of a dialectic, the other pole being “unity.” Diversity and unity need to be defined in terms of one another, like “left” and “right.” If we pull on one side or the other of a dialectic, it generates a reification. So if we talk about either “left” or “right” without reference to the other, it implies that there is some kind of independent thing that has the quality of “leftness” (sinister) or “rightness” (dexterous). Similarly, talking about diversity without reference to unity leads us to posit all kinds of qualities and implications of “diversity,” as if it were a thing. Actually, left and right refer to the process of directionality, and diversity and unity refer to the process of differentiation. For directions, the more left you go, the less right you go, and vice versa. For differentiation, the more diversity you perceive, the more distinctions you make and the unity you perceive, the fewer distinctions you make.