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Introduction: What’s Culture Got to Do with It? 39

ing us in a real world of diverse cultures and communities: see Argyle and
Shields (1996); Baym (1995); and Bromberg (1996).
27. As Vivian Sobchack observes, Haraway moves away from her
earlier optimism that women’s liberation would be best accomplished
through abandoning the body: Sobchack makes this point in her powerful
critique of the contempt for the body as “meat” characteristic of Barlow, the
postmodernist Baudrillard and others (1995).

28. The term “culture shock” derives from Oberg’s seminal article
(1960), included in a useful collection of chapters (some classic) on “Culture
and Communication” in Weaver (1998a). See as well Weaver’s own discus-
sion (1998b).
Bennett (1977) discusses culture shock as one form of what she de-
scribes as a more general “transition shock.” She does so primarily from the
perspective of communication theory and psychology: her account nicely
complements the very brief one I’ve given here in terms of worldview, a no-
tion shared among philosophy and the social sciences. Gudykunst and Kim
(1984) begin with Bennett’s account as they develop their own suggestions
for “Becoming Intercultural” (ch. 14).
It is by no means clear, however, that “intercultural communication
training,” in its current state, is fully prepared to offer us either theories or
practices that always succeed in helping us become intercultural: for a re-
view of literature and critique of prevailing models, along with their own
suggestion for a new model of intercultural communication training, see
Cargile and Giles (1996).
In any case, Chen and Starosta (1996) also offer what they claim to be
a synthesis of earlier models, one involving three elements, including a cog-
nitive “Intercultural Awareness” (364ff.). This element explicitly intersects
with a shared focus on worldview: as philosophy and the social sciences
make the various elements of worldview more explicit, they can directly con-
tribute to such intercultural awareness.
Finally, Yuan (1997) provides a model for intercultural communication
that is especially striking for its effort to synthesize an explicitly philosophical
theory (Donald Davidson’s philosophy of Externalism) with a rhetorical theory
(Thomas Kent’s theory of Paralogic hermeneutics) and the Eastern philo-
sophical/religious perspective of Taoism, with its stress on complementarity.
29. In the Western context, consider such stories as The Epic of Gil-
gamesh, Homer’s Odyssey, and the so-called “Adam and Eve” story (the sec-
ond Genesis creation story) in Genesis 2.4b–4.26 (see Ess 1995). For an
Eastern example, consider the account of the Buddha’s enlightenment (e.g.,
Strong 1995), and compare this with Plato’s account of enlightenment in the
allegory of the cave (Republic, Book VII, 514a–517b, in Bloom 1991, 193–97)
and his Seventh Letter (340–41), in Hamilton 1978, 134–36).

30. Boss provides a helpful introduction and selection of readings on
virtue ethics and their applications, making these similarities clear as well