In intercultural communication studies, the positivist preoccupation with objectivist, essentialist, solid large cultures has been replaced by a postmodern recognition that the intercultural is liquid and ideologically constructed. However, a postpositivist resistance to this paradigm change, while recognizing the dangers of essentialism, continues to be objectivist and fails to address the intersubjective nature of the ideological construction of culture. This results in a soft essentialism. This methodological failure of postpositivism is driven by a neoliberal technicalized commodification of quantitative and qualitative methods that does not address the subjective implicatedness of researchers. It therefore prevents an understanding of the liquid nature of the intercultural and sustains the neo-racist implications of essentialism. An example of this is commodifying international students as culturally problematic to serve a quantifiable notion of intercultural competence. The methodological flaws of postpositivism can only be avoided by means of an approach to researching cultural groups in which large culture concepts such as nation are viewed as one of many possible, emergent, ideologically constructed variables rather than as the starting point for research.

中文翻译：

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跨文化研究：主体间性与后实证主义问题

在跨文化传播研究中，实证主义对客观主义、本质主义、坚实的大文化的关注已经被后现代主义所取代，即跨文化是流动的和意识形态建构的。然而，后实证主义对这种范式变革的抵制，虽然承认本质主义的危险，但仍然是客观主义的，未能解决文化意识形态建设的主体间性。这导致了软本质主义。后实证主义的这种方法论失败是由新自由主义的定量和定性方法的技术化商品化所驱动的，这种商品化没有解决研究人员的主观牵连。因此，它阻止了对跨文化流动性的理解，并维持了本质主义的新种族主义含义。这方面的一个例子是将国际学生商品化为文化问题，以服务于跨文化能力的可量化概念。后实证主义的方法论缺陷只能通过研究文化群体的方法来避免，在这种方法中，民族等大型文化概念被视为许多可能的、新兴的、意识形态构建的变量之一，而不是研究的起点。