Non-Western Theory in Western Research? An Asiacentric Agenda for Asian Communication Studies

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A significant portion of this review article was presented as “Culture as Text and Culture as Theory: An Asiacentric Agenda for Communication Studies” at the 91st annual meeting of the National Communication Association in Boston, MA, November 17–20, 2005.

Acknowledgments

I am appreciative to Dr. James W. Chesebro for his keen interest in the role of Asiacentricity in future Asian communication studies. My debt of gratitude is due to Dr. Guo-Ming Chen, Dr. William J. Starosta, and Dr. Molefi Kete Asante whose human warmth and humanistic writings have inspired me to embark on the Asiacentric project. I also benefited greatly from a number of intellectual conversations with Dr. Steven Y. Miura who most willingly stands with me in the Asiacentric pursuit of knowledge. Finally, I am truly thankful to Professor Satoshi Ishii for planting the seeds of Asiacentricity inside me.

Notes

A significant portion of this review article was presented as “Culture as Text and Culture as Theory: An Asiacentric Agenda for Communication Studies” at the 91st annual meeting of the National Communication Association in Boston, MA, November 17–20, 2005.

1. A few years ago, I invited pioneering scholars including Dr. Kincaid and Dr. Dissanayake and proposed a panel entitled “Asian Contributions to Communication Theory” to the Rhetorical and Communication Theory (RCT) Division of the National Communication Association (NCA) for the annual meeting. The objective of the panel was to revisit the past endeavors to theorize about communication from Asian perspectives, to assess what kind of progress had been made over the previous couple of decades, and determine what future directions have merit. The panel proposal was rejected. The program planner of the NCA RCT Division, who “specifically sought out experts in Asian communication studies to review this panel,” stated:

[O]ne of the reviewers felt that the panel was potentially reproducing essentialist ideas about Asian communication, that is, emphasizing the inherent differences between Asian and Western communicators. The reviewer felt that the panel, and the book related to it, could benefit from some readings in contemporary discourse theory about the performativity of cultural selves. The reviewer cautioned the panelists not to replicate stereotypes in the interest of furthering knowledge about the specificity of Asian communication.

It is interesting, however, that no abstract of the proposed panel advanced any essentialist characterization of Asian communication. In fact, as his abstract indicated, Dr. Dissanayake, who is well versed in European critical theories and cultural studies, was planning to belabor issues related to poststructuralism and postmodernism in his presentation. Even before Asiacentric theorists were given an opportunity to be heard, they were silenced and told to learn Eurocentric theories of discourse and performance. What was worse, they received a warning about stereotyping Asians. This Eurocentric reviewer, whether Asian or non-Asian, did not appear to consider that Eurocentric researchers have always had the privilege of stereotyping Asians without learning from the intellectual traditions of Asia. She or he denied the agency and ability of Asiacentric theorists to address and appraise the issue of essentialism and advised them on what good knowledge was for them. One of our panelists wrote to us in response:

If such a criticism is taken at its face value, then it clearly applies equally to ALL of the rest of the panels submitted to the conference that represent communication from only a Western perspective. To single out Asian or Eastern and Western scholarship for a charge of replicating stereotypes is simply a prejudiced, if not arrogant, ethnocentric point of view. By “prejudiced” I mean simply “pre-judging” what the panel would do without allowing it to present its own findings on the matter at a professional forum.

This incident clearly demonstrated the Eurocentric nature and domination of the communication discipline. In passing, there was no single panel featuring non-Western approaches to communication theory sponsored by the NCA RCT Division at the annual meeting.

2. Several important conferences were held in the 1980s with a view to exploring non-Western models and theories of communication. The East–West Center in Hawaii coordinated and sponsored two international conventions on the theme “Communication Theory from Eastern and Western Perspectives,” in Honolulu, Hawaii on December 15–23, 1980 and in Yokohama, Japan on July 20–23, 1982. Out of these two key meetings, D. Lawrence Kincaid (1987) edited Communication Theory: Eastern and Western Perspectives. On October 15–17, 1985, the Asian Media Communication Research and Information Center (AMIC) in Singapore organized a three-day symposium, “Mass Communication Theory: The Asian Perspective,” at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand. Selected papers from this seminar were first published in Media Asia (Volume 13, Number 1, 1986) and then included in Wimal Dissanayake's (1988) Communication Theory: The Asian Perspective. On June 12–18, 1988, a National Endowment for the Humanities conference on “Rhetoric: East and West” once again brought together communication scholars from both sides of the Pacific Ocean at the East–West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.

3. It is unfortunate that Kim does not find relevant to her study the works of Asian pioneers in communication theory and research. By acknowledging and reviewing their writings more thoroughly, Kim could have honored Asian communication forerunners such as Godwin C. Chu, Leonard L. Chu, Wimal Dissanayake, Anura Goonasekera, Satoshi Ishii, Nemi C. Jain, Kazuo Nishiyama, Mitsuko Saito, Tulsi B. Saral, K. S. Sitaram, Majid Tehranian, Georgette Wang, and June Ock Yum. Non-Asian rhetoricians including J. Vernon Jensen, William G. Kirkwood, and Robert T. Oliver also evince intense interests in Asian traditions of thought and their impact on public communication. Their scholarly efforts are worthy of attention as well.

4. This centric position is similar to Shuter's (1990, 1999, 2000) idea of intracultural rhetorical and communication studies, but it is different from “cultural communication” inquiries: “Although a ‘cultural’ approach also examines communication within a society, the approach is so linked to ethnography that it is more a methodological alternative than a new model for theorizing about communication in cross-cultural or intracultural contexts” (Shuter, 2000, p. 3).Shuter (2000) outlines four objectives of intracultural communication research: (1) to conduct descriptive research to explore intracultural communication patterns as they are lived by the people; (2) to generate intracultural communication theory that pertains to a country and/or world region; (3) to critique existing communication studies and theories in order to uncover the intracultural bias of theories that purport to be objective and generalizable to cross-national populations; and (4) to produce intracultural research and theory that is relevant to the lives of people and, hence, has a practical and functional dimension. According to Shuter (1999), moreover, the intracultural rhetorical approach: (1) assumes that rhetoric and its critics are wedded to culture; (2) relies on grounded analysis, rather than established frameworks to do criticism; (3) challenges critics to immerse themselves intellectually in the culture of the community being studied; (4) requires critics to recognize possible effects of their personal backgrounds on the criticism; and (5) resists premature between-culture analysis opting, instead, for within-culture analysis.

5. Gudykunst (2005b) arrogantly comments: “The lack of theories of intercultural communication from outside the United States may be a function of the role of theory in different cultures (e.g., developing theories is not emphasized in scholarship in many cultures)” (p. 84). He then claims: “Asian ‘theories’ contained in Kincaid (1987) and Dissanayake (1988) are not theories. Rather, they tend to be perspectives or philosophical in nature. They may, however, form the foundations for developing indigenous theories” (p. 89). And yet, Gudykunst (2005a, 2005b) does not clarify what his definition of “theory” is (by which he is making such a judgment), how it is influenced by his metatheoretical assumptions, and why they remain “theoretical perspectives” according to which standard. It seems that Gudykunst (2005a) contradicts himself when he argues:

When evaluating theories, we must grant the theorists’ metatheoretical assumptions and examine their theories for logical consistency, explanatory or descriptive power, and heuristic value. It is important to understand the metatheoretical assumptions that theorists make. Theories cannot be evaluated fairly if we do not. The theoretical propositions in theories should be logically consistent with the metatheoretical assumptions on which the theories are based. The methods used to test theories also should be consistent with the metatheoretical assumptions. We can question a theory's metatheoretical assumptions, but when we evaluate the theory we must grant the assumptions and not impose other metatheoretical assumptions in our critiques. (pp. 63–64)

Despite the above statement, Gudykunst (2005a, 2005b) appears to be the supreme judge who decides what is “theoretical” and what is “atheoretical” by imposing his own metatheoretical assumptions. He quickly dismisses Martin and Nakayama (1999) as “theoretical discussions,” excludes rhetorical approaches for no reason, ignores writings on Latin America and Africa by saying they “tend to be focus on mediated communication” (p. 89). With this ethnocentric and Eurocentric attitude, he will not “find” any theory, whether indigenous or not, outside the theoretical realm of his own group. Gudykunst, Lee, Nishida, and Ogawa (2005) note: “Given the state of theorizing in intercultural communication, conducting atheoretical research is unwarranted. Research designed to test theories is needed to advance the state of our understanding of intercultural communication, not more atheoretical research” (p. 26). I wonder what kind of metatheoretical assumptions they are applying in making this claim.Gudykunst (2005b) criticizes my Asiacentric work because I wrote in English. He states: “[I]ndigenous theorizing cannot take place when authors write in English. Indigenous theories must be constructed in the theorists’ native languages; they cannot be constructed in English” (p. 85). Admittedly, if possible linguistic constraints and distortions are taken into consideration, he has some merit. If that is the case, however, it does not make sense to me for Gudykunst (2005b) to say, “After indigenous theories are constructed and tested in specific cultures, I hope they will be ‘translated’ into English so that theorists in the United States can incorporate them in their theories of communication in general and intercultural communication in particular to develop theories that are ‘universal’” (p. 85). If such translation is possible without the loss of linguistic subtleties, what is wrong with thinking in Japanese and writing in English?Gudykunst (2005b) is totally unaware of two things. First, I wanted to write about Asian scholarship, not about Japanese scholarship, for a wider audience in Asia beyond those who can read Japanese. Hence, following his logic, I cannot generate an indigenous Asian theory of communication because I cannot write in all Asian languages and because there is no single Asian language that all Asians understand. English need not be a common inter-Asia language, but I am incompetent in any Asian language other than Japanese. Thus, I did take advantage of the immediate accessibility of ideas written in English. Second, Gudykunst's (2005b) stance reflects his privileged position as a native writer of English. Why does he assume that native readers of English can just sit and wait for translations of indigenous communication theories without actively learning to read another language and studying materials in another language? Exactly because of this kind of attitude on the part of native readers of English, I feel compelled to write in English in order to get my voice heard. While native writers of English can spread their theories all over the world by writing them only in English, the case is not the same with native writers of Asian languages. Here lies the structure of linguistic power and privilege in international scholarly exchanges (see Tsuda, 1986, 2002).On a side note, Gudykunst (2005b) cites Dale (1986) for a summary of nihonjinron (theories of Japaneseness). A number of scholars in Japan studies, both Japanese and non-Japanese, criticize Dale (1986) for disqualifying non-Western natives from theorizing about their own cultures and for advocating for the superiority of Western scholarship. Dale's work (1986) is indeed one of the worst Eurocentric assessments of nihonjinron. See Lebra (2004) for a brilliant critique.

Additional information

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Yoshitaka Miike

Yoshitaka, Miike (Ph.D., University of New Mexico, 2004) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Hawaii-Hilo