Building Bridges and Mending Fences: Cultural Conflict and Cultural Brokering between Academic and Immigrant Communities

Our objective is to illustrate how to create and maintain a healthy flow of carefully curated communication between a research team and a community of interest using the principles of cultural brokering. We begin with a brief critical review of the existing literature on cultural brokering between immigrant and academic communities. We follow this review with a case study of cultural brokering between a research team at Tulane University and the Vietnamese American immigrant community in New Orleans. We draw upon specific examples from an ongoing collaboration to illustrate types of cultural conflict that are common to academic and community collaborations, and we discuss how different types and features of cultural brokering have helped to resolve these conflicts and keep the project(s) moving forward. We summarize a set of traits, potential roles/contributions, and training and operating strategies for a cultural broker.