An Introduction to Intercultural Communication. Fred E. Jandt
identity has been the basis for conflict, obviously national identity has been the basis for millions and millions of deaths from conflicts. Cultures provide diverse ways of interpreting the environment and the world as well as relating to other peoples. To recognize that other peoples can see the world differently is one thing. To view their interpretations as less perfect than ours is another.
How differences can lead to conflict can be seen in the evolution of the connotative meaning of the word barbarian from its initial use in the Greek of Herodotus to its meaning in contemporary English (Cole, 1996). To better understand the origins of hostilities between the Greeks and the Persians, Herodotus visited neighboring non-Greek societies to learn their belief systems, arts, and everyday practices. He called these non-Greek societies barbarian, a word in Greek in his time that meant people whose language, religion, ways of life, and customs differed from those of the Greeks. Initially, barbarian meant different from what was Greek.
Later, the Greeks began to use the word barbarian to mean “outlandish, rude, or brutal.” When the word was incorporated into Latin, it came to mean “uncivilized” or “uncultured.”
The Oxford English Dictionary gives the contemporary definition as “a rude, wild, uncivilized person,” but acknowledges the original meaning was “one whose language and customs differ from the speaker’s.” Conflict between nations often begins with the judgment that how others live their lives is in some ways less perfect than how we live our own. In Chapters 6 and 7, you’ll read about the values that come with national identity.
Class and Identity
Marx and Engels (1850) claimed that identities were created not by religions or countries, but in the relationship to the means of production—that is, the capitalists who own the means of production and the proletariat, or “working class,” who must sell their own labor. The opening sentence of The Communist Manifesto is “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle” (Marx & Engels, 1850). In this understanding of class, conflict is inevitable. The collapse of Communism, though, has demonstrated that this understanding of class is not pervasive or an all-encompassing source of identity (Cannadine, 2013). Max Weber believed that Social class was determined by wealth, status, and power rather than by one’s relationship to the means of production (Appiah, 2018). Following this, class refers to one’s economic position in a society. Basically, this is the basis of today’s use of the terms upper, middle, and lower class.
The drama television series Downton Abbey depicted aristocratic and domestic servant life in the post-Edwardian era. British society was characterized by marriage within one's class and hereditary transmission of occupation, social status, and political influence. Today, social status in the United Kingdom is still influenced by social class, with other factors such as education also being significant.
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While classes may exist in any society, how clearly defined they are and how much they are a source of identity varies. When asked to identify an example of social classes, some think of British television drama series such as Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey, two of the most widely watched television dramas in the world, which depict the lives of servants and masters. Others identify the Indian Hindu caste system as one of the oldest and most rigid. Based on heredity, castes ranked from the Brahmin to the Kshatriya, to the Vaishya caste of artisans, farmers, and merchants, to the lower castes of Shudra and Atishudra laborers. Below these were the Dalits (formerly known as Untouchables), who continue to experience social and economic marginalization 70 years after India’s constitution outlawed caste-based discrimination. Mehta (2014, p. 37) describes the social and economic inequality in India: “The one thing my sons are always amazed by when they visit India is the condescension displayed toward entire groups of people. They hate the way people speak to their maids, their drivers, their waiters—anybody Indians consider socially inferior.”
In France, the States-General established in 1302 provided a legislative assembly ranking members by hereditary class. The First Estate were the highborn sons of families who had devoted themselves to religion. The Second Estate were the highborn sons devoted to war. The Third Estate were the richest members of the bourgeoisie. The rigidity of the French hereditary system was one cause of the French Revolution.
The Great British Class Survey in 2011 clearly showed that class remains a source of identity. The top 6% had much higher income, education at elite universities, and a network of social connections to one another. The lowest 15% had the lowest income, irregular or unstable employment, little in savings, and few social connections to the classes above them (Savage et al., 2013). In Chapter 7, you’ll read more about social class in the United States.
Gender and Identity
According to feminists like Germaine Greer, gender identity is more significant than religion, nation, or class. In The Whole Woman, Greer (1999) wrote, “Before you are of any race, nationality, religion, party or family, you are a woman” (p. 11). Cannadine (2013), however, contends it is difficult to substantiate that there is a unifying identity solidarity among all women.
For at least the past half-century, various scholars have attempted to demonstrate fundamental differences among the genders. Rather than review that research and argue for separate gender identities, Chapter 9 in this text is devoted to how nations treat genders differently. Chapter 9 also considers nonbinary gender identities worldwide. How a nation deals with gender reveals much about that nation’s values. Gender identity may be influenced more by one’s national identity and other factors than by one’s biology alone.
Additionally, in Chapter 12, you’ll read about sexual orientation as a source of identity.
Race, Skin Color, Ethnicity, and Identity
While class and gender may not have the same strength of regulation of human life and identity creation as national identity, some will argue that race and skin color do. When people speak about Race, they usually refer to visible physical features such as skin color.
Why are we more aware of skin color than of other variables that distinguish each of us? For example, how aware are you of having detached or attached earlobes?
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From this popular biological perspective, race refers to a large body of people characterized by similarity of descent (Campbell, 1976). From this biologically based definition, your race is the result of the mating behavior of your ancestors. The biologically based definition is said to derive from Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist, physician, and taxonomist, who said in 1735 that humans are classified into four types: Africanus, Americanus, Asiaticus, and Europaeus. Race became seen as biologically natural and based on visible physical characteristics such as skin color and other facial and bodily features. In the 19th century, the “racial sciences” rank ordered distinct races from the most advanced to the most primitive. Such science became the basis for hospitals segregating blood supplies, Hitler’s genocidal Germany, and South Africa’s apartheid state.
While some physical traits and genes do occur more frequently in certain human populations than in others, such as some skull and dental features, differences in the processing of alcohol, and inherited diseases such as sickle-cell anemia and cystic fibrosis, 20th-century scientists studying genetics found no single race-defining gene. (Focus on Culture 1.1 considers whether one’s DNA reveals anything about one’s cultural identity.) Popular indicators of race, such as skin color