"Real Men" and Diplomats: Intercultural Diplomatic Negotiation and Masculinities in Chinese, Russian and Anglo-American Contexts.

Taking a gender sensitive approach to Social Identity Theory in Anglo-American, Chinese and Russian negotiating contexts suggests that gendered social identities significantly correspond to "ideal type" diplomatic negotiators across cultural contexts. In the US, the identities of the "ideal man" and the "ideal negotiator" converge as an individualistic, self controlled, rational, male actor who seeks to "expand the pie" through problem-solving negotiation in order to maximize the benefits available. In China, the "junzi" (ideal man) and "ideal negotiator" are male actors who are tightly in control of their relationships, and consequently able to use the relationship games of guanxi and paradigms of wen / "joint quest" or wu / "mobile warfare" to promote the achievement of their "principled" goals. In Russia, both masculine ideal types and typical negotiators are strong members of fraternal communities, who utilize position-appropriate tactics to achieve group goals at the expense of subordinated and feminized opponents. In all three, gendered structures on individual, state and global levels reinforce each other in perpetuating diplomatic demographics, goals, and institutions which privilege dichotomous, and primarily masculine- over feminine-typical social identity roles. This critical interrogation of the intercultural diplomatic negotiation literature suggests that investigating other key social identities may also provide models which can be selectively drawn on in order to both understand the sources of potential conflict or cooperation, and provide a tool to improve negotiation processes and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]