Extracted from – ‘Hidden secrets – how South Asian women living in the South West of England think and talk about conflict’ (Hen Wilkinson, May 06) – click here to view the whole study.

Trusting ‘outsiders’

Fifteen years ago, a study into why support services were not accessed by South Asian women living in Britain suggested that one reason was because of the inappropriateness of services on offer (Beliappa 1991). Similarly, the results of this study imply that in part, the community does not turn to outside agencies for assistance because of an anxiety about a lack of understanding about issues of importance for South Asians.

In this study, the terms ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ were used with ease by participants, who definitely saw themselves as belonging to a South Asian culture that was distinct from the surrounding majority white British culture. The term ‘insider’ was generally used to refer to people who could be identified as sharing an Asian microculture that encompasses norms of communication and behaviour, shared expectation and perceptions, and a similar approach to family and community roles (Kimmel 2000).

The fear of being talked about, represented by excessive community interest in activities, achievements and frailties, is summed up by the dominant discourse of ‘shame’, which in this account appears to operate as a holding mechanism, ensuring community members stay in line. This and related discourses around status and power can be seen to be related to the traditionally collectivist nature of South Asian communities, including the importance put on group allegiance (Le Baron, 2003). Participants clearly articulated a sense of pressure to avoid any damage to family reputation by maintaining an external image of happiness, contentment and wellbeing, findings supported other research studies (Seabrooke & Milne, 2004).

Implications for conflict work

For practitioners interested in the ongoing societal change associated with conflict transformation, I list three specific areas of interest and/or concern to emerge from the study that could usefully be explored further.

Understanding realities An awareness of key discourses for a given community – for example, the concept of ‘shame’ within the South Asian community – has to be integrated into support services on offer, with an understand of how this impacts on people’s choice to access services – or not (Suurmond 2005).

It is equally important that services and those working with them operate from an understanding of their own dominant discourses, and how these affect interaction with groups from backgrounds that differ to their own (see Fig 3). An attitude of ‘we’re happy to help anyone’ does not address this issue, as the level of cultural assumption integral to systems in place very often inadvertently excludes minority groups through a lack of sensitivity (Kumari & Nirwal, 2004; Seabrooke & Milne 2004).

In addition, practitioners need to be aware of the dangers of grouping disparate populations together, and assuming that they will share entirely similar issues and values. For example, analysis of the results of the 2001 UK Census clearly confirm that the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi components of Britain’s South Asian populations differ from one another in significant ways, and that they are likely to follow their own distinctive patterns of adaptation and acculturation. Their convergence into a single, homogeneous pan-Asian pattern of behaviour is most unlikely (Ballard 2002).

Conceptualisation One issue that was repeatedly cited as a barrier to assistance in the studies of South Asian mental health was that of terminology and conceptualisation. For example, in the study about care for Asian elderly with dementia the lack of understanding of the illness was linked to the fact that there was no equivalent word for dementia in Asian languages, and that the condition was not conceptualised as an organic disease or treatable illness (Seabrooke & Milne 2004).

My impression is that there are similar barriers in working with conflict in the South Asian community, both in terms of terminology and in concept. For example, in some South Asian languages, the words used to describe pain can signify both a physical pain or an expression of emotional pain or distress (heartache), a subtlety that is easily lost in translation (Riat & Burns, 1998). In addition, given the collectivist approach of the community, it is likely that the Eurocentric construct of conflict – and especially that of expecting individuals to be able and willing to address conflict from their perspective alone – makes little sense. Labelling some of our interactions as conflicts and then dissecting them into smaller components is a distinctly Western approach that may obscure other aspects of relationships (Le Baron 2003).

To illustrate this idea, Le Baron cites an interview with an elderly Chinese man living in Canada who indicated that he had experienced no conflict at all for the previous 40 years – possibly achieved through a cultural preference to see the world through lenses of harmony rather than conflict, as encouraged by his Confucian upbringing.

Working from within As already indicated, local support services are often found to be unsuitable and culturally inappropriate to the needs of Asian communities (Rai-Atkins et al 2006), who view the individual in a holistic way, as a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual being (Seabrooke & Milne 2004). However, some research has indicated that South Asian women would welcome initiatives that could reduce domestic stress and prevent family breakdown, but that a lack of awareness of existing local support means that many Asian women cope with their distress alone, through prayer, crying and hard work (Qureshi et al 2000; Beliappa 1991). Men, on the other hand, are more suspicious of the motives for intervention in family life, a finding that indicates a need to work with conflict in a way that does not undermine current gender relations in families.

As power balancing is a key element of standard mediation and conflict resolution practice, this is not as easy as it might seem and is precisely the type of dilemma that is difficult for practitioners raised with a Western and possibly feminist perspective. One way forward is to train and work with community members as they are ideally placed to work with internal conflict issues. This ‘insider partial’ role - someone known to the parties and familiar with the history of the situation and the web of relationships – has traditionally been rejected in mediation, for example, in preference to bringing in an ‘outsider neutral’ mediator who can clearly be seen as impartial. However, the importance put on relationship in high-context cultures suggests that such interpersonal trust is a key means of establishing communication when working with groups that view outsiders with suspicion (Le Baron 2003; Lederach 2005).

Summary For those working with any cultural group different to their own, it is essential to be fully aware of cultural implications of any interventions they embark on through a process of investigation and self awareness. A key aim should be to develop what Le Baron (2003) describes as ‘cultural fluency’ - a familiarity with the nature of cultures and how they intertwine with relationships in times of conflict and harmony.

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