A Global Imbroglio: The Question is this . . .

In a state of stunned disbelief, I sat immobilized watching the Paris massacres unfold.  Then, on the heels of Paris . . . the San Bernardino shootings emerged.  Media have since covered little else.  Journalists were herded in droves to Paris and California to recount the tragic events in hopes of capturing glimpses of new developments—pundits wasted no time spouting their reactions and predictions.  Graphic images and audio clips of explosions and gunfire conveyed what is described as our new normal.  Perpetrators’ final shots hadn’t yet ceased when these dramas turned political—accusations, excuses, posturing and finger-pointing. 

Despite a myriad of questions swirling in my brain, “Leadership in a Cross-Cultural World: A Crowd-Sourced Blog” has been silent since the events in Paris.

After wrestling with a few ideas—post my personal reactions? ask students to share their thoughts? remain silent?—I decided to invite you, my LinkedIn and blog followers, to share your thoughts, suggestions, reactions from the perspective of global leadership and cultural competence, as it relates to ISIS.

I point to the work of Judith Martin and Thomas Nakayama in their 2013 edition of Intercultural Communication in Contexts.  They emphasize the importance of a “dialectical” perspective in resolving complex, cultural situations, and speak to this approach as “a lens through which to view the complexities of a topic . . . looking at issues and ideas from various angles: culture, communication, context, and power.” 

A modification of Martin and Nakayama’s work, another dialectical model referred to as “Levels of Interaction Analysis”—Identity, Understanding, and Power and Politics—is a simple construct used to  move students to dialectical thinking for expanded framing and analysis. It’s structured like this:

• Identity (self and other)
Examining personal/internal identity

• Understanding (cultural, racial, religious, differences)
Understanding across any difference divide

• Power and Politics (history, politics, social movements)
Creating greater effectiveness when the first two levels (Identity and Understanding) are examined and understood.

The question is this:

Is it possible to comprehend the actions of ISIS and fundamentalist terrorism using the frameworks we have come to rely on to assess global leadership and intercultural competence?

A few questions I’ve asked myself:

• Is cultural analysis so different on a global scale? 

• Is it only through the lens of power and politics that we should now view the world? 

 

• Is cultural self-assessment, with the hope of better understanding self and other, a useless effort? 

If the answer is “No” to these questions, then, why are we mired in a “global imbroglio?” Don’t we have the tools—and the will—to begin addressing this problem factoring dialectics into the solution?

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Posted on LinkedIn 12/16/15