Communicating the Right Relationship— For Now

Abstract

This paper begins from the stance that the “meaning” of collaborations, alliances or any social relationships is not automatically shared by all partners in such relationship and, indeed may, in some instances, be incomprehensible to one or more parties. This lack of a common meaning derives from the specificity of cultural constructions overlying a commonality of evolved psychological mechanisms. By drawing extensively on anthropological theory, I construct a preliminary model to both explain this lack of common meaning, and show why certain specific safeguards identified by other researchers on alliances and collaborations are so important in collaborative relationships.