Scrutinizing Petraeus's Record

[Rex Brynen]

I do feel it is important to underscore that the attitudinal and behavioural characteristics of population groups are mediated by a lot of additional variables: rural/urban, age, education, travel or diaspora experience, subregion, etc. Thinking of educated, urban middle class Egyptians in "Arab-bedouin-tribal" terms won't get you very far, for example (especially since their culture was urban and rural-sedentary back when semi-migratory tribes were still wandering parts of Europe!)

The social psychology data on bargaining shows that these factors can sometimes be just as important as religion or ethnicity.

Role can also be as influential as culture (or, perhaps, it can be said instead that that occupational culture counts too). To a certain degree, diplomats tend to behave like diplomats, taxi drivers tend to behave like taxi drivers, etc. In predeployment training it is not unusual for NGO or UN workers to receive, for example, cross-cultural negotiations training for dealing with that strangest of tribes... the military (and in the field, US and Indian officers or US and Indian UNICEF staff often seem more alike to each other than they are with their national compatriots in different organizations).

Finally, there are important idiosyncratic differences in bargaining style (as everyone will undoubtedly know from the bosses and coworkers around them).

I'm sure this is realized, but I did want to highlight it. Understanding cultural context is essentially--I absolutely agree with that thrust of the discussion that it matters, and often matters a lot. At times, however, it can be as dangerous to assume that you "know" someone's negotiation style or preferences from ethnicity as it can be to go in with ethnocentric cultural blinders.

On top of this, negotiators will sometimes play upon the other side's stereotypical perception of their presumed character and negotiating style to advantage.

I once found, for example, that "confused, naive Western graduate student/tourist" can work surprisingly well with Syrian secret policemen... They finally gave up trying to shake me down from the belief that, as a foreigner, I truly didn't understand that I was supposed to pay them a bribe.