The Asian communication debate: culture-specificity, culture-generality, and beyond

Abstract

Critical discussion of Asian communication theory began in the 1980s, fermented in the 1990s, and in recent years was enriched by the criticism of Eurocentrism. Significant progress has been made in the pursuit of theory construction, especially in areas that closely deal with culture and communication issues, e.g., intercultural communication, postcolonial or cultural studies. While greater attention was paid to the cultural contexts of communication research in Asia, a number of crucial issues seem to have remained unsettled, among them the need and possibility of de-Westernization, and the pros and cons of culture-specific and culture-general approaches. In this article we make an attempt to tease through layers of arguments and sift proposals and possibilities, with the hope that a more viable future direction could emerge to reconcile the tension between culture-specificity and culture-generality. Our discussion focuses on the concept of cultural commensurability, which stresses similarity and equivalence, and not commonality and uniformity. Taking note of the inherent openness of culture, language and meaning, it is argued that the concept of cultural commensurability will open the indigenization issue to a broader horizon for future discourse.