Knowing Otherwise: Affective Actions In Intercultural Communication And Professional Practice
Issued Date
2025-01-01
Resource Type
eISSN
14041634
Scopus ID
2-s2.0-105024103707
Journal Title
Journal of Intercultural Communication
Volume
25
Issue
4
Start Page
101
End Page
109
Rights Holder(s)
SCOPUS
Bibliographic Citation
Journal of Intercultural Communication Vol.25 No.4 (2025) , 101-109
Suggested Citation
Doungphummes N., Vicars M., Tipayamongkholgul M. Knowing Otherwise: Affective Actions In Intercultural Communication And Professional Practice. Journal of Intercultural Communication Vol.25 No.4 (2025) , 101-109. 109. doi:10.36923/jicc.v25i4.1255 Retrieved from: https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/123456789/113552
Title
Knowing Otherwise: Affective Actions In Intercultural Communication And Professional Practice
Author(s)
Corresponding Author(s)
Other Contributor(s)
Abstract
Reflexivity, the critical self-examination of one’s role in the research process, has become increasingly central as researchers navigate positionality, power, and methodological bias when working across diverse sociocultural and linguistic contexts. Yet, intercultural research often overlooks the affective, relational, and embodied dimensions of collaboration that shape how knowledge is produced. This paper examines how transnational, multilingual researchers negotiated ontological and epistemological differences during an intercultural research project in Thailand, and how lived, embodied forms of knowing can challenge culturally situated power structures and inform more relationally attuned research practice. Drawing on reflexive autoethnography and narrative inquiry, we reconstruct our experiences from a 2025 interdisciplinary project on trauma-sensitive education in Thailand. Using storytelling and restorying, we analyse two unexpected fieldwork incidents to explore how emic and etic positionalities, affective responses, and intra-team relational dynamics informed our collaborative praxis. The narratives reveal that intercultural research is deeply entangled with affective labour, ethical decision-making, and shifting positionalities. Disruptive incidents, ranging from injury to culturally mediated non-participation, exposed divergent understandings of trust, care, power, and voice. These encounters illustrate how intercultural sensitivity arises through relational reflexivity rather than procedural competence, and how hierarchical cultural scripts shape participation, silence, and agency. The study demonstrates that effective intercultural collaboration requires epistemic flexibility: the capacity to navigate between cultural logics, negotiate multiple ways of knowing, and create “third spaces” where epistemological differences are acknowledged without privileging any single framework. This highlights the need for affective awareness, relational responsibility, and reflexive openness in theorizing and practising intercultural research.