ABSTRACT
Any politics of culture conflict operates within a specific communicative environment, and it is the task of a rigorous ethnomethodological analysis to appreciate the strategic moves of such a cultural politics just as they are embedded in the particulars of their interactional setting. Though the communica tive environment of any intercultural contact is specific in the sense that it provides material possibilities for a mutually confirmed understanding, in most instances this communicative environment has the additional feature of being indeterminate for all participants; that is to say, the communication which is emerging is problematic. Where multicultural contacts occur, the cultural politics which ensue finds itself embedded in pregnant half-formulations, indeterminate senses and miscommunications whose ambiguities are only partly appreciated by the participants themselves. Understanding this indeterminacy - and what it is that parties do with it - is basic to knowing what is occurring in intercultural social interaction.
