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Abstract
Challenges associated with the recent proliferation of cultural claims are exacerbated by the complex heritage and perplexities of the term culture. These difficulties lead those who are called to respond to cultural claims in conflict resolution and other fields to risk either overstating or devaluing human difference. Conflict resolution and culture scholar Kevin CitationAvruch attempts to manage this problem by distinguishing between ‘political’ and ‘scientific’ uses of culture, but this strategy risks disavowing difference through an ethico-political dilemma with roots in European colonialism. Embracing and engaging the ambiguity of culture through Ernesto CitationLaclau's notion of the empty signifier suggests a more complete and self-reflexive way of conceptualising culture. This approach involves valuing ineffable human difference aside from claims to have or know culture, attending to the process of constituting culture, and opening to other ways of knowing human difference.
Acknowledgements
We want to thank Kevin Avruch, Roland Bleiker, Rebecca Duffy, and anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
Notes
1. There are by now a significant number of texts which survey and synthesise the conflict resolution field. Examples include CitationDruckman, Cheldelin and Fast, Conflict: From Analysis to Intervention; CitationDruckman and Diehl, Conflict Resolution; CitationGaltung; and CitationSchellenberg. For a list of sources which synthesise various dimensions of the conflict resolution field, see CitationMenkel-Meadow (320, n. 2).
2. See Kevin Avruch, Culture and Conflict Resolution; “Culture and Negotiation Pedagogy”; “Type I and Type II Errors in Culturally Sensitive Conflict Resolution Practice”; and his work with Peter Black including “Ideas of Human Nature in Contemporary Conflict Resolution Theory”; “The Culture Question and Conflict Resolution”; “A Generic Theory of Conflict Resolution: A Critique”; “Conflict Resolution in Intercultural Settings: Problems and Prospects”. Avruch and Black build on a range of other scholarship, including literature drawn from the sub-field of legal anthropology, for a sample see CitationGibbs; CitationNader and Todd; CitationGulliver; CitationCaplan; Rubinstein and Foster.
3. Cargo cults sometimes address European control of large amounts of material goods – ‘cargo’ – through rituals which presage the supernatural delivery of cargo at some time in the future.
4. Anthony CitationAppiah neatly captures some of the accompanying complexity. He states that “people have been inclined to fret about the export of Western culture; but among the most successful Western cultural imports has been the concept of culture itself – a concept that has then been mobilized against ‘cultural imperialism’” (119).