Write only at least 3 paragraph talking answer two of the the question from each chapter. Make it short and sweat. I have attached an article down. Chapter 4 Drawing on this chapter please address on
Sorrells, Intercultural Communication, Instructor Resources
Chapter 7
Privileging Relationships:
Intercultural Communication in Interpersonal Contexts
Lecture Notes: Chapter Overview, Objectives and Outline
Chapter Overview
Relationships within families, among friends, with romantic partners and co-workers as well as acquaintances made in schools, service sectors, entertainment and religious groups have become increasingly diverse and multicultural in the age of globalization. Enhanced mobility, economic interdependence, and advances in technology bring people from very diverse cultural, socioeconomic, linguistic and social positions together in unprecedented ways, creating both opportunities and challenges for intercultural relationships
In this chapter, relationships are “privileged” in the sense that we foreground interpersonal relationships in our study of intercultural communication. The chapter title, “privileging relationships,” also draws attention to how intercultural relationships in the global context are sites where cultural differences, power, privilege and positionality are negotiated, translated and transformed. The term “intercultural relationships” encompasses a broad and complicated terrain so we begin our discussion by exploring the topography of intercultural relationships. Interracial, interethnic, international and inter-religious or inter-faith relationships are defined and discussed as well as the impact of class differences, sexual orientation and intersecting categories of difference in intercultural relationships.
An overview of theories and models that help us understand how intercultural friendships and intimate, romantic relationships are formed and sustained follows. Particular attention is given to how histories of segregation and prejudice influence attitudes about intercultural relationships today. In the context of globalization, advances in technology, particularly expanded access to the Internet, have dramatically accelerated the likelihood of engaging in intercultural interpersonal relationships through computer mediated communication (CMC). The impact of computer mediated communication, specifically the Internet, on intercultural relationships is then addressed. A central goal of this chapter is to understand the critical role intercultural relationships can play in improving intercultural communication, challenging prejudices and stereotypes held by individuals and communities, and building alliances that advance social justice.
Chapter Objectives
To understand the challenges and opportunities of intercultural interpersonal relationships in the global context.
To examine how difference, power, privilege and positionality are negotiated and transformed in intercultural relationships.
To understand the impact of exclusion, prejudice and myths on intercultural relationships historically and today.
To explore intercultural relationships as potential sites of alliances for social justice in the global context.
Key Terms *indicated in bold and italicized letters below
Miscegenation Intercultural friendship development process
Antimiscegenation initial encounter phase
Intercultural relationship exploratory interactional phase
Interracial relationship on-going involvement phase
Interethnic relationship Relational identity/culture
Ethnicity
International relationship Four stages of intercultural romantic relationship
Inter-religious relationship Stage 1: Racial/cultural awareness
Class differences in relationships Stage 2: Coping
Class prejudice Stage 3: Identity emergence
Classism Stage 4: Relational maintenance
Sexuality in relationships Flaming
Heterosexism Fetish
Heteronormativity Intercultural ally
Intercultural alliance
Intercultural bridgework
Introduction
Relationships within families, among friends, with romantic partners and co-workers, etc. have become increasingly diverse and multicultural in the age of globalization.
Enhanced mobility, economic interdependence, and advances in technology create both opportunities and challenges for intercultural relationships.
Globalizing forces have magnified the frequency and intensity of intercultural relationships.
Intercultural relationships in the context of globalization are deeply embedded in the history of colonization as well as the anti-colonial and Civil Rights movements of the second half of the twentieth century.
Miscegenation:
Refer to “mixed-race” relationships, specifically intermarriage, cohabitation and sexual relationships between people of different races.
Antimiscegenation laws:
Laws that prohibited marriage between people of different racial groups, existed in over 40 states until 1967 when the laws were overturned in the landmark Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court case.
Interracial relationships are on the rise today, but there are stereotypes, myths, and prejudices associated with interracial relationships.
Topography of Intercultural Relationships
Interracial Intercultural Relationships
Interracial relationships are relationships that cross socially constructed racial groups.
Example: A friendship or romantic relationship between a Black person and a White person.
Example: Relationship between Asian and Native American people.
Historically, interactions between different racial groups in the U.S. and particularly between Blacks and Whites were vigorously discouraged, curtailed and in many cases prohibited by law.
Because race is a social construct and its meaning varies across places, the impact of race on the formation and maintenance of intercultural relationships varies in different locations around the globe.
Example: The experiences of an interracial couple composed of a Black or African American man and a Japanese woman who is racially constructed as Asian are likely to be different if the couple lives in the U.S. than if they live in Japan.
Interethnic Intercultural Relationships
Interethnic relationships are relationships between people who identify differently in terms of ethnicity or ethnic background.
Example: A relationship between an Italian American and Irish American
Example: A relationship between a Filipino American and Chinese American
Example: Between a Serbian and Croatian in the former Yugoslavia
People in interethnic relationships can belong to the same racial group.
Ethnicity refers to shared heritage, place of origin, identity and patterns of communication among a group.
Ethnic differences among European Americans have been blurred into a racial category.
People who avow or are ascribed an identity as White do have an ethnicity.
Ethnicity, as it is both distinct from and combines with race, plays a role in choices that are made regarding who develops and sustains friendships and romantic relationships.
International Intercultural Relationships
International relationships refer to relationships that develop across national cultural and citizenship lines.
Example: A relationship between someone who is from Turkey and someone who is from Germany or between someone who is Brazilian and a U.S. American.
Many international relationships are also interracial and/or interethnic.
International intercultural relationships enrich the lives of both partners through exposure and experience of multiple countries, languages and cultures.
International intercultural romantic, long-term relationships are often challenged by questions of where to live, legal rights of citizenship and power imbalances if one partner is perpetually perceived as a “foreigner.”
International intercultural relationships partners may confront differences in access to social and institutional power and assumptions of superiority (or inferiority) based on perceptions about countries of origin and race from the social networks surrounding the friends or partners.
Inter-religious Intercultural Relationships
Inter-religious or inter-faith relationships refer to relationships where people from two different religious orientations or faiths.
Example: Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity and Hinduism or Catholic Christians and Protestant Christians form interpersonal relations.
Changes in immigration laws within the U.S. since the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act and the forces of globalization have brought large numbers of practicing Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus to the U.S.
Christian immigrants from developing countries outnumber immigrants of other religious traditions with two-thirds of all new immigrants being Christian.
Research based on a survey of 35,000 Americans found that 37 % of adults in the U.S. are involved in inter-religious or inter-denominational marriages
It also suggests that interfaith marriages are correlated with less religious participation and higher divorce rates than same-faith marriages.
Children of interfaith relationships can catalyze religious pluralism.
Class Differences in Intercultural Relationships
Differences in class culture also impact intercultural relationships.
Class culture is a significant dimension of intercultural relationships (i.e. where one chooses to eat, hang out and socialize, manners learned as appropriate in given settings, versions of the language spoken at home, and what is expected in the university classroom).
Class also affects meanings and attitudes attributed to public displays of wealth as well as norms of raising children.
Class culture translates into the social capital to which one has access and manifests in our everyday lives in terms of our habitus—our patterns of perceptions, actions, sensibilities and tastes (Bourdieu, 1984).
Class differences manifest in forms of nonverbal communication such as proxemics—the use of space—and fashion.
Class prejudice: Personal attitudes individuals of any class culture may hold about members of other classes.
Classism: The systemic subordination of class groups by the dominant, privileged class.
Sexuality in Intercultural Relationships
Issues of sexual orientation in society and in interpersonal relationships are often experienced as either completely invisible or hypervisible.
Sexuality is generally unquestioned and heterosexuality is assumed.
When an individual or couple challenge the dominant norms of heterosexuality—in terms of gender norms, same-sex affection or attraction—then their sexuality is marked, underscored and made highly visible.
Heteronormativity: The institutionalization of heterosexuality in society. The assumption that heterosexuality is the only normal, natural and universal form of sexuality.
Heterosexism: An ideological system that denies and denigrates any nonheterosexual behavior, identity or community.
Heterosexism not only entails individual biased attitudes but refers to the coupling of prejudicial beliefs with institutional power to enact systemic discrimination.
Example: International lesbian or gay couples, who may experience homophobia on a daily basis, are also systematically excluded from marriage in most states in the U.S. and therefore, do not have access to spousal petitions for citizenship.
Multidimensional Cultural Differences in Intercultural Relationships
Intercultural relationships can and often do involve multiple and intersecting ethnic, racial, national, religious, class and sexual orientation differences.
Various geographic, cultural and national landscapes, institutional and individual racism, exclusion and differences in their access to power and privilege may test their relationship.
Children of intercultural, interracial, interethnic and inter-religious marriages are faced with both challenges and rewards as they cross, blend and blur cultural, linguistic, national and religious boundaries.
Textbox 1: : Cultural Identity: Intercultural Relationships
The textbox discusses an interracial and international relationship between a woman from Malaysia and an African American man from Georgia.
Interpersonal relationships between people of different racial, ethnic, religious, national, class and sexuality groups take place within historical, cultural, and political contexts which are instrumental in how we interpret and make sense of them.
Intercultural interpersonal relationships become sites where we develop and communicate shared and contested meanings of our identities, our sense of belonging to and exclusion from groups.
We also learn through our communication how we are positioned in relation to others.
Forming and Sustaining Intercultural Relationships
Cultural Notions of Friendship
The concept of friendships as “chosen relationships” assumes a typically Western, individualistic orientation to friendship.
In more group-oriented or collectivist cultures, friendships are often recognized as growing out of group associations, longer term connections to place, community and a sense of mutual obligation.
Collier’s (1991) research on African American, Latino/a and European American students found that for all groups the notion of friendship revolved around qualities of trust and acceptance.
While European Americans reported that close friendships developed in a few months, Asian Americans, African Americans and Latino/as report taking approximately a year for close friendships to develop.
Morality and cultural respect are important for Latino/as.
Family is critical for Asian Americans.
African Americans focus on pride in ethnic heritage.
Krumrey-Fulks’ (2001) research comparing Chinese and American expectations of friendship.
Chinese participants viewed friends as those who provided help or assistance.
American’s tended to look towards friends as good listeners.
Notions of what constitutes a friend, what behaviors are appropriate and what we expect to share in friendship relationships are shaped by the various age, gender, ethnic, racial, cultural, class, and national groups.
Intercultural Relationship Development Processes
Initial encounter phase,
In the initial encounter phase, people who initiate intercultural relationships are drawn to each other based on
Proximity to each other
Similarities in interests, values and goals as well as cultural, racial and socio-economic backgrounds
The ways in which the two complement and are different from each other
Physical attraction to one another.
In the initial phase of intercultural relationship development, it is important to challenge preconceived assumptions, stereotypes and prejudices regarding racial, cultural and ethnic differences.
We need to acknowledge, seek to understand and learn from the differences in communication styles, interactional patterns and cultural, racial and ethnic histories that do exist.
Communication scholar Rona Halualani and her colleagues (2004) found that in a context that promotes diversity, students have relatively limited intercultural interaction.
The study suggests that people from different ethnic/racial groups may utilize “different sense-making logics” when engaging interculturally.
For example, African Americans/Blacks may view intercultural interactions as a site of differentiation where cultural distinction and uniqueness is emphasized.
Asian Americans, Latino/as and Whites/European Americans may interact interculturally using a logic of similarities stressing sameness in the encounter.
Exploratory interactional phase
Intercultural relationships move towards greater sharing of information, increased levels of support and connection and growing intimacy.
A significant challenge for intercultural friendship relationships at this stage is the different culturally coded ways in which individuals from different groups have been socialized to achieve support, connection and intimacy.
International students in the U.S. frequently comment on the ease with which U.S. Americans share and self-disclose personal information about themselves.
Confusion often arises as international students in the U.S. are unsure how to make sense of high levels of self-disclosure, which are sometimes mistaken for increased intimacy and closeness, signaling a movement towards a deeper friendship.
Those who are accustomed to a more rapid pace and higher degrees of self-disclosure, often common in the U.S., may find the lack of reciprocal disclosure from their relational partner off-putting and unrewarding.
Textbox 2: Intercultural Praxis
The textbox discusses how intercultural praxis can be used to navigate the challenges of intercultural relationships.
On-going involvement phase.
Marked by greater connection, intimacy, involvement, shared rules of engagement, and norms that guide interaction with each other.
Marked by a turning point which promotes greater connection, intimacy and involvement between the relational partners (i.e. meeting family members, taking a trip together, greater self-disclosure).
Relational identity/culture: The system of understanding that is developed between relational partners as they coordinate attitudes, actions and identities within the relationship and with the world outside the relationship.
Intercultural relationships involve the constant and on-going negotiation of both the friendship relational identity and cultural identity.
Intercultural Romantic Relationships
Even though legal barriers to integration and laws prohibiting intermarriage are relics of the past, borders between ethnic, racial, cultural, religious, and class groups still remain.
Opposition to intercultural marriage may not only reflect bigotry but also fears about the loss of long-held cultural traditions, histories and norms as well as concerns about the challenges children and grandchildren may face.
The way interracial couples are treated in society tells us a lot about the construction or elimination of racial borders.
Intercultural Romantic Relationships Development
Myths that have informed research, societal perceptions and media representations regarding interracial couples.
Black people have an extraordinarily potent sex drive.
Blacks marry Whites for status, a type of socio-economic trade-off.
Whites choose Black partners out of rebellion, spite for their parents or as an effort to act out.
The genetic inferiority of children from interracial marriages and the psychological problems, particularly in terms of identity, of bi or multiracial children (Stonequist, 1937).
Recent research advances a more positive interpretation of bi-racial individuals highlighting their receptivity and adaptability to multiple cultures (Stephan & Stephan, 1991).
While bi-racial and bi-cultural people are often challenged by society’s obsessive need to categorize them and may experience marginalization in both ethnic/racial/cultural groups, bi and multicultural people use their ambiguous positionalities in constructive and creative ways.
Four-stage model for interracial romantic relationships:
Racial/cultural awareness
The first stage of intercultural romantic relationship in which partners develop awareness of similarities and differences as well as how they are viewed by others.
Coping
The second stage of intercultural romantic relationship in which couples develop proactive and reactive strategies to manage challenges.
Identity emergence
The third stage of intercultural romantic relationship in which couples take charge of the images of themselves, challenge negative societal forces, and reframe their relationship.
Relational maintenance.
The fourth stage of intercultural romantic relationship in which couples negotiate racial, cultural, ethnic, class and religious differences between themselves and with the society at large.
Cyberspace and Intercultural Relationships
In the context of globalization, advances in technology, particularly expanded access to the Internet, have dramatically accelerated the likelihood of engaging in intercultural interpersonal relationships through computer mediated communication (CMC).
The disparity between those who have access to the internet and those who do not still exist nationally and globally.
CMC presents both benefits and challenges to intercultural relationships.
Flaming: Abrasive, impulsive or abusive behavior online.
Example: African Americans have experienced comments and postings from European Americans in online conversations that are culturally ignorant or racist.
Three categories of interracial websites:
Sites related to multiracial organizations/support.
i.e. Multiracial organizations that celebrate interracial relationships, provide information about issues for bi and multiracial individuals and couples.
Interracial dating sites and pornography sites.
Offer opportunities to meet partners or find love across color lines are on the rise.
They often assume colorblind society and yet play upon racial and cultural stereotypes.
Example: mail-order brides, Asian women as “oriental dolls,” or women as commodities.
Individual choices are interconnected to the larger relations of power, shaped by stereotypes, racist assumptions, and the first world-third world dynamics.
In the Internet pornography industry, interracial sex is often turned into a fetish, a spectacle that is represented as a commodity that is sought after, purchased and consumed.
Example: Stereotype of hypersexuality of Black men and women, Black men are out to steal White men’s wives, or White women are either sluts or innocent, pure girls seduced by men of color and that Black women are erotic, sexual objects for White men.
Websites of hate groups.
The Internet has played a significant role in expanding the accessibility and networking of White supremacist groups in the U.S.
Interracial sexuality is presented as a threat to Whiteness, White identity and White power and biracial children are seen as destroying Whites and White culture.
The White supremacist websites promoting ideas that interracial relationships are deviant, unnatural and destructive are extreme; yet, Childs (2005) argues these ideas are similar to and extensions of comments, beliefs and ideologies she found in her research of White communities.
Intercultural Alliances for Social Justice in the Global Context
Intercultural friendships and intimate relationships can play a critical role in improving intercultural communication, challenging prejudices and stereotypes, developing allies and building alliances that advance social justice.
An ally is a supporter or partner who can be counted on to work in collaboration with another person, group or community towards a common goal.
An intercultural ally: A person, group or community who works across lines or borders of nationality, culture, ethnicity, race, gender, class, religion or sexual orientation in support of and partnership with others.
Intercultural alliance: Relationships in which parties are interdependent, recognize their cultural differences, and work toward similar goals.
Developing trust, a sense of interdependence and dialogue, where the space to speak openly and the ability to sit with the pain and difficulties of others, is critical in intercultural alliance building.
Intercultural alliances often call on individuals to bridge and translate different cultural standpoints, positionalities, struggles and histories.
Intercultural bridgework: Developing sensitivity, understanding and empathy and extending vulnerability to traverse multiple positions, creating points of contact, negotiation and pathways of connection.
Intercultural alliance can be a foundation of intercultural praxis toward a more just society.
Summary
Topography of intercultural relationships
Multidimensional cultural differences in Intercultural relationships
Forming and sustaining intercultural relationships
Cyberspace and intercultural relationships
Intercultural Alliances for Social Justice in the Global Context
