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9 Harv. Negot. L. Rev. 391 (2004)
Culture as Context, Culture as Communication: Considerations for Humanitarian Negotiators

handle is hein.journals/haneg9 and id is 395 raw text is: Culture as Context, Culture as Communication: Considerations for Humanitarian Negotiators Kevin Avrucht INTRODUCTION In this essay I consider some of the special problems that human- itarian workers in the field encounter when engaging in negotiations with parties whose cultural backgrounds differ substantially from their own. After a brief description of the parameters of negotiation in general and humanitarian negotiation in particular, I conceptual- ize the notion of culture both in terms of its broad context setting properties and its more specific impact on communication. It is widely understood today that negotiation covers a large ter- ritory, both conceptually and behaviorally. At one extreme is the very broad sense of the term as conceived by Anselm Strauss,' whereby all of ongoing social life is negotiated by actors qua interloc- utors, and therefore the social order is fundamentally a negotiated order.2 At the other extreme, negotiation commonly describes highly specific behavioral arenas or interactions, such as hostage or crisis negotiations.3 This essay addresses certain problems arising in nego- tiations in the latter sense: the highly specialized dialogues carried on by humanitarian fieldworkers in conflict or post-conflict situa- tions. My immediate concern is with how culture impacts negotiation in these situations, and I consider the usefulness of some of the ex- tant work on intercultural negotiation in these unique and often t Professor, Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution and Senior Fellow, Peace Operations Policy Program, George Mason University. This essay is based on a paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Humanitarian Negotiators Network, convened by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue of Geneva, in Talloires, France in May, 2003. I thank Andrew Andrea and Deborah Mancini of the Centre, Josh Weiss of PON, and my research assistant Zheng Wang for facilitating my participation. 1. ANSELM STRAUSS, NEGOTIATIONS: VARIETIES, CONTEXTS, PROCESSES, AND SO- CIAL ORDER (1978). 2. See id. at 5-6. 3. See, e.g., Jack Cambria et al., Negotiation Under Extreme Pressure: The Mouth Marines and the Hostage Takers, 18 NEGOT. J. 331 (2002). 391

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