Intercultural relations including Central Eastern Europe:
An identity negotiation perspective
Wim Swaan, University Maastricht
This paper proposes an identity negotiation perspective towards intercultural encounters
with people from the various countries and regions of Central Eastern Europe. While identitybased approaches have not been uncommon when dealing with domestic diversity, they have
received much less attention in studies on intercultural communication across national
borders, which tend to focus on value differences.
In relation to Central and Eastern Europe, various forms of potential identity frictions
are discussed, in particular when people do not feel fully respected in their identity of
belonging to Europe. The sources of these frictions are put into historical perspective, in
particular related to the question how perceived boundaries between regions have been
shifting back and forth over time. Ultimately, the topic of the paper is paradoxical as it
actually strongly argues against viewing the region as uniform and distinct.
The paper rounds off with some suggestions of dealing with communicative friction on
the identity level in an international context. Special attention is given to the role of
Mindfulness, that is, the need to consider each communicative situation in its own context,
and to apply concepts and prior knowledge only when observation of the concrete situation
merits its relevance.