Ciklum, a well-established Ukrainian outsourcing company of Danish origin that specializes in nearshore software development outsourcing became the 46 member of Ukrainian Hi-Tech Initiative.
(My Free PR ) The article “The Clash of Perceptions” introduces a paradigm for international relations that proposes cultural misconceptions as the cause of conflict rather than deeply rooted civilizational divides as proposed by Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations” “The Clash of Perceptions” is the product of Dr. Guidere and Dr. Howard of the Center for Advanced Defense Studies. The article is available on the Center’s publications website.
Drawn from the title of Samuel Huntington’s article and book, “The Clash of Civilizations” is a phrase that has entered the twenty-first century international relations discourse. However Huntington’s paradigm for global interaction is not without criticism or competition. Since the publication of Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations”, international relations scholars have proposed a variety of paradigms that challenge Huntington’s world construct. Dr. Mathieu Guidere and Dr. Newton Howard’s article “The Clash of Perceptions” offers an alternate paradigm. While Huntington’s clash envisions a world divided along civilizational lines drawn from religious beliefs, Guidere and Howard propose that misconceptions regarding national and cultural identity are the cause of much modern conflict. They draw their proposal for a ‘clash of perceptions’ from philosophical reasoning and cognitive analysis which creates a useful framework for individual and collective perception and action.
In “The Clash of Perceptions”, available on the Center for Advanced Defense Studies publications website, Guidere and Howard write about the formation of perceptions from information gathered by the senses, experience, deductive reasoning, and intuition. Deductive reasoning and intuition are both collective methods of generating perceptions, so that they are embedded in the social and cultural atmosphere of interpretation. Not only is perception collective, but it tends to be unfairly influenced when a receiver of information attributes their reaction to the creator of the message or action. By considering magnitude of the reaction rather than the intent behind the message, misconceptions can arise from interaction. Layers of meaning and understanding can be embedded within a statement and contribute to cultural misunderstandings rather than clashes that are rooted in fundamentally different cultures. The purpose behind Guidere and Howard’s article is the hope that by mapping out the layered meanings within cultures and taking into account the internal and external values associated with certain statements, discourse will become a measurable entity.
Both Dr. Guidere and Dr. Howard are Senior Fellows at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies where they are part of the interdisciplinary team of experts from government, military, academia and the private sector who collaborate under CADS.
Based in Washington DC, the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (CADS) is a non- profit national security group that applies the intent-centric paradigm to promote research, innovation and education in the fields of information sciences, cognitive studies and global security.
Center for Advanced Defense Studies
http://www.c4ads.org/
10 G Street, NE suite 610
Washington, DC 20002
Tel: 202 289 3332
Fax: 202 789 2786
For classes taught by the CADS fellows and professors visit the CADS education website:
http://www.c4ads.org/education
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