Social domain theory: interpreting intercultural communication
Culture in relation to structure and agency
The realist account of how cultures are constituted thus differs from this social psychological one in several respects. It maintains a clear distinction between ideas, social structures and human agency, as explained above, and it suggests that the process of 'socialization' is not one of consensus among people who arrange themselves into simply identifiable groups. As Archer (1988: 5) says:
Power relations are the causal element in cultural consensus building and, far from unproblematically guaranteeing behavioral conformity, they can provoke anything from ritualistic acceptance to outright rejection of the culture imposed.
In other words, the process of seeking to build cultural consensus can be thought of as the 'politics of legitimation' (Habermas 1987). The powerful engage in this process in order to effect their own political purposes or consolidate their positions of power, but there is no guarantee that the desired uniformity will result: indeed people may reject the culture outright. The presence of consensus at the level of observable behavior does not permit a direct reading of people's commitment to the culture at the level of beliefs.
Thus we can distinguish between the members of any given 'culture' and the relationships between: these people as contemporary human actors; the propositions, 'rules' and knowledge that make up the cultural system; and the enduring social relations which structure the context within which the people act. These distinctions can be illustrated with reference to the 'critical incident' quoted on page 129, whose authors want readers to be aware of a distinction between 'which behaviors directed toward one are role-based and which should be interpreted personally' (Cushner and Brislin 1996: 220). 'Mrs Simpson', they continue, 'was playing a role that could have been played by any of a hundred people.' This is a distinction which many social theorists would also wish to make, and not only in relation to intercultural interactions. In our account, individuals are confronted by pre-existing social relations, which include an array of social roles, including that of 'university department secretary'.
Roles ... are more important for understanding what is going on between landlords and tenants or bank cashiers and customers than their relations as persons. Moreover, the role has to be granted some autonomy from its occupant or how else do we explain the similar actions of a succession of incumbents, or that when promoted to bank manager our original cashier now acts quite differently? (Archer 1996: 682)
Inherent in this description is a notion of change, but it is important to recognize that the time-scales involved in change are different for structure and for agency. During the time that 'Mrs Jane Simpson' spends working in university administration, many structural changes may take place in the education system, including, for example, changes in legislation, in processes of accountability between employer and employee, in levels of investment in the public and private sectors respectively, and so on. So there are changes in the nature of her 'role', changes which would have taken place whoever occupied that position. Over the same period, she is responding personally to changes in the nature of her role, but is also gaining in experience, and interpreting that experience in the light of her individual priorities and values. Perhaps there is very little change in the role during her career at the university, with a consistent and stable level of 'system integration' (Lockwood 1964), whereas perhaps Mrs Simpson and the other actors participating in interactions in the department change a great deal. Antagonisms between her and her colleagues may develop without any threat to the organization of the university at all. Or, conversely, there may be considerable turmoil at the system level, but relatively smooth 'social integration' among this group of people. Thus the 'cultural' context within which the Indian student enacts his exchange with Jane Simpson is likely to be changing across a number of dimensions. Each participant may bring to bear in this encounter different propositions (explicitly formulated, or as unexamined assumptions) about the distinction - or lack of one- between a person and his/her institutional role. In addition to recognizing the part played by culture and agency, our theoretical position also gives weight to the influence of social structures. The authors of the incident have this to say in their commentary about the dimension which we would identify as structured social relations:
Another role aspect of this incident is that Indians from wealthy families often have had servants. An unfortunate fact is that often only wealthy families can afford to send sons and daughters overseas for their schooling, as scholarships are not easily available and are highly competitive. These wealthy students may adopt role-based behaviors in their interactions with others, taking on the role of superior when interacting with those they perceive to be fulfilling servantlike roles (as Mrs Simpson was perceived by this student in her role of secretary). (Cushner and Brislin 1996: 221)
From our position, these 'unfortunate facts' are the product of large-scale historical, political and economic processes which go beyond the interpretation by individuals of their respective social roles. The distribution of wealth and of educational opportunities, at both national and international levels, is a social fact over which neither Mrs. Simpson nor this student has any direct personal control. Remembering the observations about different time-scales which were made above, it is important to recognize that the social structures which constrain and enable the actions of present agents '... are the effects of past actions, often by long dead people' (Archer 1995: 148). These two actors occupy positions which are anterior to either of them, which stand in a necessary relationship to each other (university student and university employee), and which exist in a context where material resources are critically involved (availability of student places, fees to access them, and so on). This is not to say that there is no scope for differential or progressive interpretations of these realities. As Archer (ibid.: 70) says:
... whatever social structures are examined, they are only operative in and through the world of people which props the door permanently open because human action is typified by innovativeness, a capacity for interpreting the same material conditions, cultural elements, circumstances and situations in different ways and hence for introducing novel patterns or courses of action in response to them.
Analytically, then, there is a gain from recognizing this incident as involving culture and structure and agency, while consistently maintaining the conceptual distinctions between, and the specific characteristics of, each. This would preclude representing the incident as a manifestation of a clash between two reified entities such as 'Indian' and 'American' cultures. Scollon and Scollon (2001: 138) go some way towards recognizing this danger when they point out that '[c]ultures do not talk to each other; individuals do. In that sense, all communication is interpersonal communication and can never be intercultural communication', while Scollon (2002) finds the phrases 'cross-cultural' and 'intercultural' 'particularly problematical', because 'they tend to imply closely bounded social groups' (p.136). Similarly, Byram (1997) is wary of 'the dangers of presenting "a culture" as if it were unchanging over time or as if there were only one set of beliefs, meanings and behaviors in any given country' (p.39). He continues, '... we should not think in terms of encounters between different languages and culture systems, but rather of encounters between individuals with their own meanings and cultural capital' (p.40). And likewise Holliday (1999) explains clearly the fallacy of imagining that 'a culture' could be a causative agent, which follows from the reification of cultures: 'After reification, culture appears large and essentialist, and indicates concrete, separate, behavior-defining ethnic, national and international groups with material permanence and clear boundaries' (p.242).
So how are we to understand the connections between the set of propositions we have labelled the cultural system, the roles and relationships identified as social structures, and the people with the power actually to do things in the world, human agents? An approach which we have found useful here is that developed by Layder to describe the social world as interlinked 'domains'.
