Intercultural Encounters

This volume gathers experienced scholars from Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa to address the challenges and tensions rising from mass migration flows, unbalanced north-south and east-west relations, and the increasing multicultural nature of society. The scope of the book's theme is global, addressing diversity and identity, intercultural encounters and conflict, and the interrogations of a new socio-political order or paradigm. It highlights some of the most poignant and challenging outcomes of cultural diversity faced by educators everywhere in today's societies.

What kind of cultural encounters enhance cultural awareness and intercultural competence in educational contexts? This volume highlights the potential of different types of (inter)cultural encounters for intercultural learning and developing critical (cultural) awareness in education. The book's articles explore the potential of critical reading of classical and other culturally relevant texts, as well as physical or virtual encounters with people from other cultures as part of course activities for the development of intercultural competence. (Series: Intercultural Education / Interkulturelle Padagogik - Vol. 13) [Subject: Education, Cultural Studies]

This book brings together fifteen essays investigating aspects of interculturality. Like its author, it operates at the borderline between social anthropology and intercultural philosophy. It seeks to make a contribution to intercultural philosophy, by formulating with great precision and painful honesty the lessons deriving from extensive intercultural experiences as an anthropologist. Its culminating section presents an intercultural philosophy revolving on the tenet 'cultures do not exist'. The kaleidoscopic nature of intercultural experiences is reflected in the diversity of these texts. Many belong to a field that could be described as "meta-anthropology", others are more clearly philosophical; occasionally they spill over into belles lettres, ancient history, and comparative cultural and religious studies. The ethnographic specifics supporting the arguments are diverse, deriving from various African situations in which the author has conducted participatory field research (Tunisia, Zambia, Botswana, and South Africa).

Intercultural encounters are part of our everyday lives with or without globalisation and internationalisation. In the contemporary world, encounters with people from other cultural backgrounds have become part of our everyday lives. These intercultural encounters may be used as an opportunity to learn about other cultures, to develop our capacities for effective and respectful communication, to think about our own cultural affiliations and to reflect on ways in which we might take action for the common good. The Autobiography of intercultural encounters (AIE) is an educational resource that can be used by learners to achieve all of these outcomes. It supports learners in thinking about and learning from intercultural encounters that they have experienced either face to face, through visual media (such as television, films, magazines), or through the internet. The present volume contains an updated and revised edition of the original AIE, which supports learners’ reflections on face-to-face intercultural encounters. There are two versions of the AIE: a standard version for those who can complete it and a younger learners’ version for use by children who need support from an adult in thinking about intercultural encounters. Both versions are accompanied by notes for facilitators which explain in detail how the AIE may be used. These new editions have been fully updated and aligned with the Council of Europe’s Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture and may be used by educators and learners in primary, secondary and higher education and in non-formal and informal education.

A guide to help you analyse a specific encounter you had with one or more people from another culture through an online interaction (for example, in a social network, forum or blog). In the contemporary world, encounters with people from other cultural backgrounds have become part of our everyday lives. These intercultural encounters may be used as an opportunity to learn about other cultures, to develop our capacities for effective and respectful communication, to think about our own cultural affiliations and to reflect on ways in which we might take action for the common good. The Autobiography of intercultural encounters (AIE) is an educational resource that can be used by learners to achieve all of these outcomes. It supports learners in thinking about and learning from intercultural encounters that they have experienced either face to face, through visual media (such as television, films, magazines), or through the internet. The present volume contains an updated and revised edition of the original Autobiography of intercultural encounters through the internet (AIETI), which supports learners’ reflections on intercultural encounters that take place through the internet. There are two versions of the AIETI: a standard version for those who can complete it on their own and a younger learners’ version for use by children who need support from an adult in thinking about intercultural encounters. Both versions are accompanied by notes for facilitators which explain in detail how the AIETI may be used. These new editions have been fully updated and aligned with the Council of Europe’s Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture and may be used by educators and learners in primary, secondary and higher education and in non-formal and informal education.

A guide to help analyse a specific image encountered in the media (e.g. on television, in a book, on the internet) that shows a person (or people) from another culture. In the contemporary world, encounters with people from other cultural backgrounds have become part of our everyday lives. These intercultural encounters may be used as an opportunity to learn about other cultures, to develop our capacities for effective and respectful communication, to think about our own cultural affiliations and to reflect on ways in which we might take action for the common good. The Autobiography of intercultural encounters (AIE) is an educational resource that can be used by learners to achieve all of these outcomes. It supports learners in thinking about and learning from intercultural encounters that they have experienced either face to face, through visual media (such as television, films, magazines), or through the internet. The present volume contains an updated and revised edition of the original Autobiography of intercultural encounters through visual media (AIEVM), which supports learners’ reflections on intercultural encounters that take place through visual media. There are two versions of the AIEVM: a standard version for those who can complete it on their own, and a younger learners’ version for use by children who need support from an adult in thinking about intercultural encounters. Both versions are accompanied by notes for facilitators which explain in detail how the AIEVM may be used. These new editions have been fully updated and aligned with the Council of Europe’s Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture and may be used by educators and learners in primary, secondary and higher education and in non-formal and informal education.

This is a detailed study of understanding in a second language, related to the actual lives of minority workers. The focus is on everyday interactions between these workers and the bureaucrats of the society in which they are now resident. It provides an important contribution to the debate about the function of language as a social practice, adding a new perspective to the psycholinguistic and experimental paradigms, currently existing in second language acquisition research.

How do people listen in a conversation, especially in an intercultural setting, and how do they shift from listener to speaker in the particular context? This book investigates listenership behaviours of a tutor and a student in the context of academic supervision sessions at a university in the UK, comparing British tutor - British student conversations with British tutor - Japanese student conversations in English. A new research methodology, a time-aligned multimodal corpus analysis, is introduced for analysing listenership and turn-taking structure, synthesising visual data with verbal data in timeline. The method also integrates discourse-pragmatic and conversation analytic approaches with the corpus-based analysis. This work reports strategies in use of response tokens for framework shifts and multi-functional nature of hand gestures observed in the conversations. Therefore, this book is highly relevant for researchers and postgraduate students, who study pragmatic and discursive practice in intercultural settings using multimodal corpora.