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Identification of Cultural Differences and Their Effects on International Relations: a Novel Approach The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Summer 8-2021 Identification of Cultural Differences and Their Effects on International Relations: A Novel Approach Stephen W. Jones Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the International Relations Commons Recommended Citation Jones, Stephen W., "Identification of Cultural Differences and Their Effects on International Relations: A Novel Approach" (2021). Dissertations. 1899. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/1899 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. IDENTIFICATION OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCES AND THEIR EFFECTS ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: A NOVEL APPROACH by Stephen W. Jones A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School, the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Social Science and Global Studies at The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved by: Robert Pauly, Ph.D, Committee Chair Joseph St. Marie, Ph.D. Thorsten Moritz, Ph.D Tom Lansford, Ph.D August 2021 COPYRIGHT BY Stephen W. Jones 2021 Published by the Graduate School ABSTRACT International Relations suffers from underspecified treatments of culture that risk reifying, essentializing, or ignoring the effects of cultural differences in the conduct of relationships between states. Following a review of the development of the culture concept, this interpretivist, epistemologically critical realist, dissertation introduces intercultural adaptive frameshifting from the intercultural communication literature. To assess whether culture has effect within an epistemic community, four frameworks are evaluated within a non-IR field (global Christian reasoning). Speech act theory is used to assess meaningful affect through illocutionary and/or perlocutionary divergence based on cultural difference. Following the findings that such cultural differences do in fact matter in the non- International Relations epistemic community, the culture concept is brought back into IR through three case studies employing most-similar and most-different case design. Counterfactual analysis is used to assess the potential for intercultural competence, exercised by one foreign policy executive in each dyadic case, to impact the conduct of international relations at a critical juncture brought about by cultural difference. Through process tracing, and particularly through practice tracing, culture is found to meaningfully affect the conduct of international relations, and intercultural adaptive frame-shifting (also called intercultural competence or intercultural development) is found to attenuate the effects. The findings of this dissertation are intentionally tentative, and primarily take the form of passing the hoop-test. This program of research points to the need for more ii robust consideration of the culture concept in International Relations. It does not supplant existing paradigms, but could easily come alongside and be used within Neoclassical Realism, Constructivism, and some strands of Liberalism and Neoliberal Institutionalism. The findings are meaningful for practice as well as theory, as intercultural competence is both assessable and trainable. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to begin with an acknowledgement that this dissertation was written on the traditional land of the Wahpekute, Anishinabewaki, and the Očeti Šakówiŋ (Sioux). I am grateful to the IDV faculty, past and present, who guided and instructed me in finding a way to explore the culture concept within the areas of international security and political science. I am grateful to Dr. Butler, my first advisor, for pushing me in my understanding of the constructivist literature, to Dr. St. Marie for pushing me toward greater degrees of clarity in specification, and to Dr. Pauly for providing a path forward for this eclectic project. I am also grateful to the faculty of the MAIR program formerly offered through the Intercultural Communication Institute and the University of the Pacific, especially Dr. Janet Bennett, Dr. Milton Bennett, Dr. Kent Warren, Dr. Muneo Yoshikawa, and Dr. Judith Martin for developing my understanding of culture from the viewpoint of radical constructivism and interculturally competent cross-cultural interaction, and dynamic in- betweenness. I am deeply grateful my colleague, Dr. Justin Winzenburg, who was a sounding board for much of what appears in the pages that follow – particularly as relates to Chapter Four. I am grateful as well to Dr. Thorsten Moritz, who joined as an external committee member. I am grateful to Elise Kallevig, whose eagle eye caught many of my mistakes and helped to bring mechanical cohesiveness to the dissertation. Finally, I am grateful to my students at Crown College who explored these ideas with me over the last several years. Thank you. iv DEDICATION Dedicated to Jennie and my children, whose lives were each impacted by my pursuit of the doctoral program, and who supported me throughout. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iv DEDICATION .................................................................................................................... v LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .......................................................................................... xvii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................ xviii CHAPTER I – INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................... 1 Background ..................................................................................................................... 1 Significance of the Study ................................................................................................ 2 Problem Statement .......................................................................................................... 3 Purpose of the Study ....................................................................................................... 4 Specification of Research Questions .............................................................................. 5 Hypotheses ...................................................................................................................... 7 Study Area ...................................................................................................................... 8 Study Limitations ............................................................................................................ 9 Organization of the Study ............................................................................................... 9 CHAPTER II – LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................................... 11 The Culture Concept ..................................................................................................... 12 A Brief History of the Study of Culture (1871–1963) .............................................. 12 vi A Synopsis of the History of the Study of Intercultural Communication (1972–2015) ................................................................................................................................... 25 Attempts to Give Meaning to the Culture Concept .................................................. 34 Cultural Values Constructs ....................................................................................... 38 Other Cultural Variations .......................................................................................... 43 Ontological and Epistemological Frameworks ..................................................... 44 Interactional Frameworks ..................................................................................... 46 History................................................................................................................... 47 Cultural Differences and Intercultural Communication ........................................... 48 Intercultural Competence .......................................................................................... 49 Intercultural Adaptive Frame-Shifting .......................................................................... 57 Constructivism .......................................................................................................... 57 Culture and Constructivism .................................................................................. 60 Radical Constructivism ......................................................................................... 62 Cybernetic Constructivism.................................................................................... 64 Transmitting and Adapting Constructs ................................................................. 65 Constructivism Summary...................................................................................... 68 Embodied Ethnocentrism .........................................................................................
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