“There’s no such thing as Asian”: A membership categorization analysis of cross-cultural adaptation in an Asian American business community

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the relationship between communication and cross-cultural adaptation through conducting a membership categorization analysis of interactions among members of an Asian American Chamber of Commerce (AACC). Analysis of audio-and-video-recorded data gathered during ethnographic fieldwork illustrates how immigrant AACC members adapt to US notions of race through adopting the “Asian” racial category yet define “Asian” in creative ways that meet institutional goals. AACC members also resist US essentialist racial ideology through identifying with ethnic categories that help members meet situated institutional goals. Overall, this paper highlights how members routinely switch among racial, ethnic, and professional identity categories when navigating structural constraints of racial ideology during cross-cultural adaptation in institutional contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Membership categorization analysis
• cross-cultural adaptation
• Asian American identity
• race
• institutional talk

Acknowledgments

My deepest gratitude to feedback from Drs. Benjamin Bailey, Gonen Dori-Hacohen, and Donal Carbaugh on previous versions of this chapter. I would also like to thank the reviewers and editor of this journal, Dr. Todd Sandel, for their insightful comments that helped improve the quality of this paper.

Notes on contributor

Natasha Shrikant is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She uses ethnography and discourse analysis to study the interactional accomplishment of racial, gender, and political identities in institutional contexts.