Identification And Negotiation Strategy In Multiculturalism

With the development of globalization,the space-time distance was compressed,the flow of individuals across ethnic groups,regions,and countries has become more frequent,which has increased chances for people to feel the shock,integration,and exchange of different cultures,on the other hand,also let more people face the challenge of choosing and managing cultural identity in the bicultural or multicultural hybrid situations.In the intermarriage family,the Hui and the Han are two different cultural groups.Their interaction brings constant adaptation to the cultural system and changes in the cultural system itself.Therefore,this study concerns about how the Hui-Han intermarriage family members deal with the sensitive issues of identity contact and integration,what psychological mechanisms are behind them,what strategies are used by both Hui and Han in the married life to solve cultural differences,and what is the psychological basis of decision-making behavior?In this paper,the participation observation method and in-depth interview method are adopted.This research selects 2 imams and 21 couples in J town of Henan Province as the respondents,and focuses on the current situation of local intermarriage between Hui and Han and the identity management of intermarriage family members.This article presents the culture game of intermarriage families in three aspects: food habits,customs,and household registration.The intermarriage family members travel through the Hui and Han cultures and use their own life experiences to become “experimental fields” for different cultural conflicts and exchanges.When the members are placed in a strange,different cultural background,the original cultural attributes and identities are challenged and subverted to varying degrees.There are four kinds of identity negotiation models,such as the “equally integrated type”,“Hui dominant type”,“Han dominant type” and “national consciousness desalination”.Through constant coordination and adaptation,the intermarriage family members eventually formed different levels of self-construal of “Polycultural Self”.In different cultural contexts,their identities also presented a dynamic construction model,tending to take a “tool-kit” strategy which shows a strong ability to adapt to multiple cultures.This study finds that the self-construal of “Polycultural Self” has a beneficial influence on the cultural integration of multi-ethnic societies.It provides new meanings for the “harmony but not sameness ” treatment of ethnic cultural differences and it also expands for ethnic interactions.At the same time,the problems and boundaries of intercultural integration were discovered.