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International Journal of Intercultural Relations 31 (2007) 625628 www.elsevier.com/locate/ijintrel

Book review
An Introduction to Intercultural Communication: Identities in a Global Community, Jandt Fred. fth ed. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA (2007). 444 pp., $59.95 Paperback, ISBN: 1-41291442-6 In its fth edition, this introductory textbook shows its usefulness over time; nevertheless, it remains grounded conceptually in past decades. The eld of intercultural communication, and the related elds of anthropology and cultural studies on which this book draws, has forged ahead, responding to changing paradigms and the globalization of knowledge, technology, and cultural production. This edition is updated with recent issues and content related to cultural groups, such as Muslim immigration to Europe, in which Jandt documents the increase in the Muslim immigrant population and the responses by several nation-states to this growing population. Despite updating content and issues related to intercultural communication, it continues to draw primarily on a structuralist paradigm of culture, rather than a constructivist paradigm in which culture, and, in turn, intercultural communication, is constructed and contested by individuals in relation in societies. This book provides an introduction to culture and communication for sophomore and junior year students. It is a user-friendly textbook, with questions that probe students thinking at the beginning of each section, objectives for each chapter, and a summary of terms that are dened in a glossary at the end. It includes pictures and tables of data, graphically appealing to readers. In addition, a reader (Jandt, 2004) supplements the text with seminal and current articles on the general topics covered. In this edition, Jandt has added a Focus on theory, which are text boxes that briey address a theory or key theoretical concepts. The theory sections are rarely integrated, however, with ideas in the text and leave the reader searching for more theoretical explanation. The topics covered in the book illustrate its broad reach and are organized in four parts, three of which cover similar topics and content as in the previous editions; the fourth part is reorganized differently around categories of acculturation. Part I, Culture as Context for Communication, situates the eld and the theoretical frameworks of intercultural communication as inuenced by ethnography, which Jandt denes as the analysis of cultural patterns to develop a grammar or theory of the rules for appropriate cultural behaviors and cultural studies, which is the attempt to develop an ideal personication of the culture that is used to explain the actions of individuals in the culture (p. 15). The inuences of these elds are seen throughout the book as Jandt introduces, for example, the SapirWhorf hypothesis. He brings a critical approach to cultural studies at times when discussing the identity and struggles of nondominant groups,
doi:10.1016/j.ijintrel.2007.07.001

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such as African-Americans (p. 328). Situating the content of this book within these denitions of ethnography and cultural studies brings an approach of multiple perspectives and an emic understanding of cultures, while also limiting the content and analysis to rules and ideal personications that lend themselves to broad generalizations, rather than constructions and problematizations. Part I places communication in the context of culture by rst dening the varying and contested denitions of culture and then moving on to communication as an element of culture. Jandt suggests that culture is a disputed concept, but he then denes culture in this text as (1) a community or population that is self-sustaining; (2) the totality of a groups thoughts, experiences, and patterns of behavior and its concepts, values, and assumptions that guide behavior; (3) the process of social transmission of these thoughts and behaviors; and (4) cultural identity, or members that identify themselves with a group (p. 7). Herein lies a challenge of this book: to summarize scholarship on nations, subgroups, and individuals as cultural groups and beings, as well as the variables of communication, and the processes of the interactions between people. Another challenge is to live up to its aims, which Jandt explicitly states as improving intercultural communication, through imparting knowledge of other peoples and cultures, and discovering more about oneself, to make you a more culturally competent communicator in multicultural settings (p. 13). The book clearly imparts knowledge about people belonging to national and sub-group cultures, but does less to develop the skills of the reader to become a culturally competent communicator. Part II is a thorough examination of Communication Variables, including chapters on barriers to intercultural communication, nonverbal behavior, and language. This section provides the beginning intercultural communication student with thorough knowledge of these variables and rich cultural-specic examples. For instance, in describing the complexity of kinesics in intercultural communication, Jandt provides various examples from Albania, France, Japan, Colombia, China, and so on. These cultural-specic descriptions are provided throughout the text and make for an interesting read for students who are not familiar with such cultural differences. One of the approaches taken in this section is to illustrate the problems in intercultural communication due to these variables. For example, Chapter 6, Language as a Barrier, discusses problems that emerge when there is no shared language. While this chapter illustrates nicely the differences in languages that may cause barriers, it does little to help students acquire language learning strategies to successfully engage others whose language or language use may differ from their own. Part III, Cultural Values, provides a thorough summary of value dimensions using Hofstedes research. Case studies of Japan and China are used to illustrate the dimensions. Even though Jandt acknowledges that cultural values may transform over the course of generations in relation to specic nation-state cultures, he does not address how individuals in a culture can embody both dialectical points of these value dimensions. The ability for individuals and cultural groups to integrate both values points, such as individuality and collectivism, is taken up by other scholars (Hampden-Turner & Trompenaars, 1998; Martin, Nakayama, & Flores, 1998) and reects a constructivist approach, based in research, that Jandt might consider in future editions of this book. Finally, Part IV, Cultures within Cultures, addresses various sub-cultures in relation to dominant US culture groups and in other societies. The chapters provide good illustrations

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of the processes of separation, marginalization, assimilation, or acculturation by some cultural groups, such as the Amish in the US, or Russians in Latvia. It also addresses important conceptual issues of dominant group privilege and power. A reection activity for students would be useful here to bring the lived experiences of marginalization or assimilation into the classroom for discussion and reection. The book concludes by identifying several subgroups and the prejudices they face in a dominant culture. The subtitle of the fth edition, Identities in a Global Community, suggests an extension of the concepts and application of intercultural communication to individuals acting in rapidly changing global contexts. According to Castells (1997), globalization challenges constructions and enactment of identity, calling for more attention to the meaning and symbolism of individual and social group identity as it transforms in relation and resistance to societal groups. Jandt has added much content to this edition to address changes in societies related to globalization. However, his conceptualization of globalization articulated in the rst chapter does not fully address the cultural forces (including immigration, as well as cultural production and reproduction) that affect intercultural communication and identities. He denes globalization as the worldwide spread of markets and democracy (p. 10), and while he acknowledges the growing strength of ethnic identity as one response to or outcome of globalization, he does not portray a broader construction of globalization. Likewise, in chapter 15, Identity and Subgroups, Jandt discusses characteristics that dene the identity of subgroups, such as language, values, and worldview, but he does not illustrate how these identities are negotiated among members. This shortcoming may be, in part, related to an approach Jandt takes throughout the book, a structuralist rather than a constructivist paradigm. While the book provides a breadth and depth of literature, facts, and concepts about culture, intercultural communication, values, and acculturation, they are often presented with denitions and examples that can reify the concepts rather than serve as dynamic and contested ideas. In rapidly changing societies in which students have access to information via the world wide web, it may be that much of the factual information about cultural groups is either quickly outdated or available in formats beyond textbooks. Factual knowledge about cultures, while important as a basis for intercultural communication, runs the risk of reifying culture as a concept and an objective reality if it is not balanced with frameworks that allow students to make sense of its uidity. This book has fascinating ethnographic examples of culture groups (nation-states and subcultures), and it serves to bring out important cultural studies concepts of dominance, power, and marginalization. My own research uses ethnography and intercultural frameworks to examine issues related to nondominant groups and citizenship identity in the context of globalization. It is from these perspectives that I review and critique this book. What I nd missing in this book is the inclusion of approaches and frameworks that are grounded in constructivist paradigms, such as those proposed by Martin et al. (1998), who emphasize the relational and contradictory nature of intercultural communication. Missing also is scholarship from social science perspectives that addresses the dynamic and hybrid identities in global communities, including the feminist and critical ethnographic approaches of Behar (1996) and Weis and Fine (2004), which help frame how we learn about and understand complex cultural identities in relation to our own identity as researchers and educators.

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References
Behar, R. (1996). The vulnerable observer: Anthropology that breaks your heart. Boston: Beacon Press Books. Castells, M. (1997). The power of identity. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Hampden-Turner, C., & Trompenaars, F. (1998). Riding the waves of culture: Understanding diversity in global business (2nd ed). New York: McGraw-Hill. Jandt, F. (2004). Intercultural communication: A global reader. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Martin, J., Nakayama, T., & Flores, L. (1998). A dialectic approach to intercultural communication. In J. Martin, T. Nakayama, & L. Flores (Eds.), Readings in cultural contexts. Mountain View, CA: Mayeld Publishing. Weis, L., & Fine, M. (2004). Working method: Research in social justice. New York: Routledge.

Joan G. DeJaeghere Educational Policy and Administration, University of Minnesota, 330 Wulling Hall, 86 Pleasant Street, SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA E-mail address: Deja0003@umn.edu