Changing Stereotypes in India's Garment Sector through Dialogue

• Date: 01 December 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21085
• Author: Yu Maemura
• Published date: 01 December 2013

Changing Stereotypes in India’s Garment Sector

through Dialogue

Yu M aemura

 is article examines the work of facilitators within the garment sector

of India to draw insights as to how third parties can help a group build

trust and work toward the creation of opportunities for productive dia-

logue and collaboration in a troubled industry. By analyzing concrete

examples from an authentic confl ict of perceptual and stereotype change

among dialogue participants, this article contributes to the literature on

how confl icting stakeholders within a group form, maintain, and trans-

form perceptions and stereotypes of one another. In an attempt to reveal

how facilitated dialogue can be used as a tool to produce such stereotype

change, it provides a methodological framework for the systematic

observation of perceptual change within dialogue processes that can eas-

ily be replicated in other dialogue projects.

This article analyzes the progression of confl ict within a multistake-

holder dialogue between stakeholders in the garment sector of India.

As a country of 1.2 billion people and growing, India is riddled with con-

fl icts that are inherent in its massive scale of diversity.  e largest democ-

racy in the world has found itself in a struggle to manage the tensions

between the encouragement and control of rapid economic growth and

development.  is research examines the work of facilitators within the

garment sector of India in order to draw insights as to how third parties can

C R Q, vol. 31, no. 2, Winter 2013 159

© Wiley Periodicals, Inc. and the Association for Confl ict Resolution

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/crq.21085

I thank the University of Tokyo’s Global Health Leadership Program for organizing and fund-

ing this research initiative.  is article has signifi cantly improved thanks to the insightful

comments and criticisms of anonymous reviewers. I am forever indebted to Mariko Gakiya,

Kenji Shibuya, Ashok, Beth, and the whole team at Meta-Culture for making this all possible.

160 MAEMURA

C R Q • DOI: 10.1002/crq

help a group build trust and work toward the creation of opportunities for

productive dialogue and collaboration in a troubled industry.

Whereas Amartya Sen (2005) may have argued for the importance of pub-

lic debate in Indian society, confl ict resolution professionals will claim that dia-

logue is much more important for nurturing common understanding within a

confl icted group. Debate places the entire onus of persuasion and quality of

argument on the speaker and strictly assumes that the counterparts are indeed

willing to listen. Practitioners work on the premise that principled communica-

tion of a dialectic nature (Bohm and Nichol 1996; Habermas 1987) that com-

bines eff ective speaking and active listening skills is necessary to help people

reach sincere mutual understandings that can lead to productive collaboration.

Facilitators thus face the challenge of helping confl icting parties break away

from their unproductive communicative patterns, so that the parties may gain

the capacity to generate common understandings among themselves.

Objectives

 is article has three main objectives: (1) to contribute to the literature on

how confl icting stakeholders within a group form, maintain, and trans-

form perceptions and stereotypes of one another; (2) to provide evidence

from an authentic confl ict revealing how facilitated dialogue can be used as

a tool to produce perceptual shifts; and (3) to demonstrate the use of a

methodological framework for the systematic observation of perceptual

change within dialogue processes. For these purposes, the study reviews

and applies the literature on individual and intergroup perceptions, stereo-

types, and perceptual shifts to the case of a dialogue project within the

garment sector in India. Objective 3 represents the consequent implica-

tions of my eff ort to address objective 2 and interpret the wealth of data

generated from the facilitators in this case study. I systematically describe

the confl ict and process of perceptual change that took place among par-

ticipants of a multistakeholder dialogue, and discuss the implications

for the monitoring, and evaluation of the dialogue processes.

 is study also analyzes a dialogue process in a professional-industrial

context, whereas previous work focused on ethnic confl ict and political

dialogue (Corry 2012; Lensen, Chesler, and Brown 2012; Ohanyan 2012;

Ungerleider 2012).  is article can also serve as a source for understanding

the cross-cultural implications and generalizability of confl ict resolution

methodologies that are developed primarily in the West to the (English-

speaking) Indian context.