World peace through intercultural research: From a research culture of war to a research culture of peace

Abstract

Nowadays, “world peace” has become a jaded expression. Rather than responding with utter cynicism or calling it a utopian dream, I would like to point out how intercultural researchers might contribute to making the world a better place. Intercultural researchers may hold a naïve presumption that just because we are in the business of understanding “the Other,” we are doing something good for humanity. Naïve scientism, which has believed in neutrality of describing the “other” culture chosen as a “field research,” has been heavily criticized. What had been praised as scholarly contributions have been shown to reveal hidden desires of domination. This shift in perception has created a crisis of cognition with regard to ways of understanding the “Other” This paper focuses on five different research trends that view the binary relation with “the Other” as camouflage for killing or ingesting the “Other”: (1) collectivism as the absence of individualism, rejecting the “Other,” (2) assimilating the Other to the self in acculturation literature, which reflects annihilation anxiety, (3) hidden ethnocentrism in theories, signifying that one is not open to the Other's experiences, (4) focusing on comparisons between culture-typed individuals rather than bi- or multi-cultural individuals, thereby implying a binary opposition between the self and the Other, (5) Host Communication Competence research, pressuring others to become similar to oneself. All this suggests the position of a “Research Culture of War”, seeking to define, dominate and absorb the Other. One's relationship with the Other is better as difference than as sameness. The very possibility of love arises from the existence of an Other that cannot be reduced to oneself or digested into sameness. I appeal for adopting the perspective of “Thou Shalt not Kill” in our intercultural research, welcoming the Other rather than trying to manage or dissolve it.