Respecting Differences by Idealised Language (original) (raw)
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1997
Scientific thought succumbed because it violated the first law of culture, which says that "the more man controls anything, the more uncontrollable both become." In the totalizing rhetoric of its mythology, science purported to be its own justification and sought to control and autonomize its discourse. Yet its only justification was proof, for which there could be no justification within its own discourse, and the more it controlled its discourse by subjecting it to the criterion of proof, the more uncontrollable its discourse became. Its own activity constantly fragmented the unity of knowledge it sought to project. The more it knew, the more there was to know." Stephen Tyler examples for illustrating theories, methodologies as well as the core of knowledge in I.C.. A foreigner entering a Japanese home without removing his or her shoes or a Northamerican keeping a certain distance while speaking with a person from the Middle East are some of those typical examples. A particular anecdote that I want to narrate happened recently while this author was attending a party with people from different cultural backgrounds. A young boy from an Indian family, first generation born in the United States, and about twelve or thirteen years old, came to me and asked, "Are you Hispanic?" My first reaction to the tone of his voice and his attitude was to feel if this young guy was seeing in front of him a "label", a "category"; I wondered whether he could see just another person. I responded, "Hispanics are people from Spain and I am not from Spain." My answer was such that today I believe it was a surprise for him as well as for me. Responding with an O.K. sign, the young boy moved away from me. This scene which could be labeled as an unfortunate, ineffective-and perhaps rudesituation between two persons from different cultural backgrounds trying to communicate is, however, more than that. It symbolizes, in essence, the meaning and the complexity present today in many similar situations around the world when people that are different-in this case culturallyare trying to communicate among themselves. A field like I.C., which is seen as a new and growing field, pertains to the field of communication, and defines its main purpose as related to these issues, specifically, trying to understand how people communicate among themselves and how their cultures frame this communication, its means as well as its results. Trying then to deal with some of these issues currently defined, conceptualized, and researched by this field, this paper will try to focus on some prevailing perspectives and discussions. To accomplish this goal, the paper will illustrate some trends in social sciences and communication that are being discussed contemporarily. Next, a detailed epistemological description of some of the current points of view used in social sciences, communication, and I.C. will be made, particularly emphasizing some of the modernist assumptions in contrast with some of the postmodernist assumptions. This, in order to offer an open background about some important points of view, are seen to be disregarded in some of these fields, but specifically in I.C.. Continuing, a critical review about some of their theories, methodologies, concepts as well as subfields will be attempted using, for that purpose, some of the modern and postmodern assumptions previously discussed. It is the central expectation of this paper to demonstrate how the influence of modernism in general, but positivism in particular, as a deep philosophical basealmost like a kind of "worldview"-is present through the theories, methodologies, and concepts discussed and proposed in this field. I. A BRIEF PANORAMA IN COMMUNICATION In the summer of 1993, for the second time in the last twenty years the Journal of Communication published a series of articles trying to see the " ferment of change" in communication. Despite all the different points of view, proposals and approaches of the authors
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This article aims to describe some basic questions and challenges of the project of an interculturally orientated philosophy. Firstly, the challenge of historiography of philosophy in a global perspective is discussed, which is not restricted to comparisons. Further there are questions of a theory of culture, particularly with regard to the dilemmatic situation of philosophy between cultural conditionality and intended universality. Concepts of different types of centrism and polylogic interaction are discussed in view of extra-philosophically conditioned inequalities of philosophical discourses on a global scale.
This is a DRAFT, stand-alone essay, ultimately intended to be included in a series of such essays exploring various aspects of ‘interculturalism’, ‘intercultural dialogue’, and ‘intercultural knowledge’. It follows on from two papers (A Year of Living Interculturally: The European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, 2008, and But What IS Interculturalism? - respectively Grillo 2016a, 2016b), now uploaded to Academia.edu and Researchgate.net. Other bits and pieces have previously existed in unpublished drafts, and this essay draws on some of these. A proposed future publication (entitled Case Studies in Intercultural Dialogue) will analyse a series of situations involving dialoguing about culture and cultural differences in various contexts. The aims of the present paper are two-fold. First, it addresses some of the issues touched on in the earlier essays concerning dialogue, specifically intercultural dialogue. Interculturalism has been advocated by academics, policy-makers and practitioners in Europe and Canada as an alternative strategy for coping with ethnic, cultural and religious diversity in the light of what are often believed to be the failures of multiculturalism. Intercultural dialogue is generally considered to be an integral component of that alternative strategy. Secondly, beyond that specific context, the essay attempts to engage more generally (and comparatively) with the theory and practice of intercultural dialogue, including whether such dialogue is possible (in multiple senses), and if so under what conditions. The essay arises out of a long-term concern, dating back originally to the early 1980s, which slowly became more focused in the late 1990s and early 2000s in a project I now call ‘Interculturalism and the Politics of Dialogue’ – my engagement with the debate about interculturalism in Europe and Canada represented something of a necessary detour within that project. As the project’s title suggest, my interest is primarily in dialogue as a social, and specifically a political phenomenon, rather than a cognitive or communicative or linguistic one. Nonetheless I recognise the fundamental importance of the linguistic, communicative and cognitive aspects and their implications for social and political action. The essay is in five parts. Part 1 summarises the numerous starting points for my personal interest in intercultural dialogue (I keep discovering more), and sets out the contemporary social and political background. Parts 2, 3 and 4 focus on the scope of intercultural dialogue, on how intercultural and dialogue are understood, on what is expected of such dialogue, for example on the part of commissioners of the European Union or academic advocates, and on the problems dialogue poses, theoretically and practically. Part 5 offers some concluding observations. The present essay repeats some of the material and arguments that appear in A Year of Living Interculturally and But What IS Interculturalism? Such overlap will be eliminated if or when the three (or eventually four) essays are ever brought together in a single publication. Meantime, I welcome thoughts, comments, corrections of fact, and, although the paper is already far too long (and long-winded), suggestions for further reading and additional references which ought to be consulted.
Epistemic sociality and interculturality Africentric
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African universities offer opportunities for interculturality due to diversity of ethnic, linguistic and cultural composition of their student population. This is engendered partly by the heterogeneous nature of the communities which these institutions serve, such as the Ugandan which has at least 65 indigenous communities (see 1995 constitution). Such a reality fosters the ability to engage in a dialectic whereby the wholeness of intellectual culture in a community emerges from mutual understanding and sharing of culturally competent healthcare knowledge in sync with the needs of communities. This is important in health training institutions on account of the fact that students are prepared to face a culturally diverse clientele, underscoring the importance of being culturally ‘formed and informed’. Simultaneously, increased epistemic processes make it easy for networking and information sharing through social software. Nuuyoma et al. (2024) show that Namibian students for example had mixed experiences on transcultural nursing which touch on aspects such as exposure to cultural aspects. Using Leininger’s theory of culture care diversity and universality (1991) as an interpretive framework to examine how social software and interculturality enable transfer of knowledge among African health science students, it is discernible that the global knowledge economy is open to African based growth in education frameworks. However depending on environment, appreciating the otherness of diverse cultures isn’t part of the curriculum, training in alternative medicine is limited and focus more on reactive rather than functional approaches in healthcare training besides concatenation of other factors limits critical discussion on the plausibility of Africentric health training. Institutions need to embellish their curricula with knowledge and perspectives from the African cultural setting to enhance culturally competent care as a reality to embrace not a distant ideal to aspire towards. With the universality of healthcare which calls for a continuum of knowledge, epistemic processes should be fostered which emphasize African identity and culture specificity. Epistemic trust in African based reactive and functional medicine and healthcare in general requires such critical approaches.
1 Paradigmatic Assumptions of Intercultural Communication
2015
Intercultural relations is an unusual academic specialty among the social sciences. This is in part because it specifies a relatively specific domain as its focus. So, unlike sociology, which claims all of social relations as its domain, or anthropology, which even more grandly claims all of human phenomena as its bailiwick, intercultural studies constrains itself to those human interactions that occur across cultural boundaries. But the more salient aspect of this field’s uniqueness is its assumption that people can be aware of their cultural experience, and further, that they can intentionally shift their experience into different cultural contexts. This focus on consciousness and intentionality differentiates intercultural relations even from cross-cultural psychology, which, while it studies comparative and some interactive phenomena across cultures, does not do so with the same assumption of self-reflexive consciousness. The purpose of this article is to show that the field of ...