Last night, the question
(paraphrased here) was asked “If we come from a different cultural background,
how can we ever know what motivates a person from another culture?” The
question was asked in the context of designing overarching studies and theories
in order to provide a generalized understanding or explanation of international
relations. But it led to me think about it in relation to my time in the Army
and our reliance on cultural studies and a general lack of cultural awareness
that existed in the 2-3 years following the 9/11 attacks.
I remember
and refer back to my own experiences, where it took about two years of
deployments and deployment preparation to get a general understanding of the
populations we were living near and working in. And even then, I know that my
understanding was limited to the relatively small chunk of earth that was Salah
ad Din province and parts of Kirkuk in Iraq. There were some generalities
amongst Iraqis and more broadly Arabs I picked up from reading and observing, but
I was specifically familiar with Iraqi Sunni Arabs and to a lesser extent,
Iraqi Sunni Kurds. But one critical shortfall was I didn’t speak either Arabic
or Kurdish. I don’t know how anyone can delude themselves into thinking that
they can design an empirical study to provide an overarching explanation of how
interact with each other and why humans act the way they do in international
relations. Through careful study and observation, I was able to get moderately
comfortable with a relatively small population. With years more dedication to
studying, time spent in the country and learning the language, I think I could
reach what is called expertise and explain how this one population acted and
thought as well as why.
I think one
thing that can’t be accounted for in international relations theories is the
way in which people communicate between each other when they don’t speak the
same language. That has to play a huge role in state-to-state interactions.
Some words and expressions just don’t translate. And then I’m reliant on an
intermediary to put those un-explainable phrases or words into a context that
I’ll understand. I’m reminded of a story my wife tells of when she was visiting
family in Italy during a foreign study break in college. She was with a cousin,
watching an American comedy show she had seen several times before, but now
translated and overdubbed into Italian. My wife knew from memory the joke in
English and laughed. Her cousin sort of stared at her. My wife then explained
the joke in English, since her cousin was fairly fluent and they both agreed
the joke was much funnier in English, because in Italian it didn’t make any
sense. That’s just a mundane cultural misunderstanding. How does the work of
the international realm get done when the parties can’t or don’t communicate in
the same language and you run the risk of important details being lost in
translation? And how then can you design a study to empirically explain
state-level, NGO, and IGO interactions when there is a multitude of languages
and cultures mixing with each other?
I don’t see
how you can do any more than either become or rely on experts in narrow fields
of specialty.
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