ABSTRACT
Karst (1993:6) defines nonmaterial culture as a community of meaning and morality, “the matrix of the sense of self.” Individuals, to the extent that they share a specific group identity, share conscious and unconscious patterns of values, meanings and taken-for-granted assumptions about proper behavior for self and others (Merry 1987; Just 1992). Culture affects people’s belief or cognitive representations of what negotiation is all about, defines appropriate and inappropriate behavior, and suggests appropriate goals or what is important in the negotiation (Adair 2004). But cultures do not simply define differences, as if equal complementaries or imaginary opposites, because difference becomes a basis for constructing relations between levels in hierarchies of power (Wilden 1987). Wilden points out how dichotomization, like individualist-collectivist, obscures the way these types of opposites are organized in dependent hierarchies such that cultural identities are shaped by hierarchical status. Latino and Anglo cultures are organized not just as ethnic difference, but as minority-majority groups.
