What makes multicultural dialogue truly multicultural? Rethinking cultural convergence, theoretical globalism, and comparative Eurocentrism

ABSTRACT

This commentary article argues that, if we wish to make multicultural dialogue truly multicultural, we must rethink three pervasive and prevailing ideologies that are explicitly and implicitly shaping the current trends of communication theory, namely, cultural convergence, theoretical globalism, and comparative Eurocentrism. Cultural convergence should not be presumed only in light of popular culture and digital communication. A theory with its universal application should not be deemed as the highest form of theory. (U.S.) Eurocentric traditions should not be constantly honored as global standards. It is the author’s contention that, as long as these flawed ideological foundations remain unexamined, multicultural dialogue will be hegemonic monologue among Western and Westernized elites in the world. The constitutive metamodel will be useful and helpful for mutual referencing and learning when we metatheorize similarities and differences among cultural traditions of communication theory outside the limits of these problematic ideologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Communication theory
• constitutive metamodel
• de-Westernization
• Eurocentrism
• globalization
• multiculturalism

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Notes on contributors

Yoshitaka Miike

Yoshitaka Miike (Ph.D., University of New Mexico, USA) is Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo and Senior Fellow at the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies. He is best known as the founding theorist of Asiacentricity in the communication discipline. His original essays have been translated into Chinese and Korean. He co-edited The Handbook of Global Interventions in Communication Theory (Routledge, 2022) and The Global Intercultural Communication Reader (Routledge, 2014). He served as Review Article Editor of the Journal of Multicultural Discourses (JMD) for 2011–2016 and guest-edited a JMD special issue on ‘New Frontiers in Asian Communication Theory’ (Vol. 4, No. 1, March 2009, pp. 1-88).