Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality dervin 9783030663360, 9783030663377

Citation preview

Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality

Fred Dervin Andreas Jacobsson

Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality

Fred Dervin • Andreas Jacobsson

Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality

Fred Dervin Faculty of Educational Sciences University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland

Andreas Jacobsson Karlstad University Karlstad, Sweden

ISBN 978-3-030-66336-0    ISBN 978-3-030-66337-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover Pattern © Harvey Loake This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Part I Digging into Interculturality in Education   9 2 What Is Interculturality? 11 3 Intercultural Communication Education as a Field of Research and Practice 23 4 Does Interculturality Matter? 35 5 Teaching About Interculturality 41 6 What to Do with Our Intercultural Experiences? 51 7 Does Intercultural Communication Education Work? 57 8 Researching Intercultural Communication Education 67 9 Can We Be ‘Good’ at Interculturality? 75

v

vi 

Contents

10 Helping Students Examine Situations of Interculturality 83 11 The Most Important Concepts of Critical and Reflexive Interculturality 89 Part II Critical and Reflexive Interculturality in Practice  97 12 Reflecting on Interculturality Through Critical and Reflexive Languaging 99 13 Promoting Polycentric Knowledge117 14 Engaging Critically with Travel/Tourism and Interculturality133 15 Conclusion149 Bibliography157 Index165

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 12.1 Fig. 15.1

Critical and reflexive interculturality in practice The fold, the handshake and the magic mirror Critical and reflexive languaging in practice Five interrelated key components for analysing interculturality

8 43 115 152

vii

List of Tables

Table 5.1 Table 12.1

Questions to ask when examining intercultural ideologies What translation is about

46 108

ix

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract  In this chapter, the authors argue that the notion of interculturality should be a central concern for teacher education and training. They justify the choice of the notion over other terms such as intercultural communication and explain the need for making it meaningful and multifaceted. The book objectives are also presented. The two parts of this book are detailed as well as the working method for using it. Keywords  Criticality • Reflexivity • Ideology • Communication • Diversity • Indoctrination This book deals with the importance of interculturality in the specific context of teacher education and training. It proposes to approach the notion critically and reflexively. This requires being critical and reflexive of one’s own critiques. Unlike most books available on the topic we argue that people involved in teaching should be mindful of the notion, its different meanings and the impact it can have on students if treated loosely. The notion is often said to have been central in teacher education and training in Europe and other parts of the world over the past 30 years. It is mostly through the concept of intercultural competence that interculturality has been constructed and problematised for educators. However, different approaches and paradigms are available and differ and/or share similarities © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dervin, A. Jacobsson, Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7_1

1

2 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

in terms of ideology, method, practice, theoretical frameworks and ethical considerations. There is no global agreement on the meanings of interculturality in teacher education and training, although some principles might be common across national borders. There is thus a need for educators to consider these aspects of interculturality in education to be able to become better teachers in a complex and capricious world like ours. Recently, at the beginning of a course on interculturality in education we asked our students to write down the kinds of questions that came to mind when they heard the word ‘interculturality’ (in English). We reproduce some of the questions below (in random order): • What is the difference between inter- and multicultural education? • How can we learn more about how to ‘interact’ in the classroom in an intercultural perspective? • How to get rid of stereotypes? • How to teach children to think in a complex way about interculturality? • In kindergartens we celebrate United Nations Day, what would be a good topic for a speech at such an event? • How should I react as a teacher when parents argue that in ‘our culture this is what we do’ when their kid appears to be just like other kids? Although these questions might reveal issues specific to a given context, we believe that most of our readers might share the same concerns about interculturality in education. How could the notion help us find some answers to these questions?

Why Interculturality? In early September 2020, one of us did a Google Image search on ‘intercultural communication’ and ‘interculturality’.1 The search on the former retrieved mostly pictures and drawings of ‘diverse’ people (in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, combined with varied professions, ages, genders, etc.) standing next to each other, shaking hands and/or dancing around the earth. Many pictures contained speech 1  Search done from a computer in Turku, Finland, on 13 September 2020. English words used. The retrieved pictures would probably have differed slightly if searched from a different computer and location.

1 INTRODUCTION 

3

bubbles with the word ‘hello’ in different languages, indicating some kind of dialogue. Pictures of national flags were omnipresent. Some book covers of the most influential scholars from the field also appeared (only in English). The search on the word interculturality contained similar pictures: flags, people of different races wearing traditional costumes and dancing around the earth, hands of different colour holding each other, colourful speech bubbles, with the word hello in different languages. There were also book covers in English, French (interculturalité) and Spanish (La interculturalidad), slogans such as “we are in it together”, “interculturality enriches”, religious websites related to interculturality as well as pictures referencing (international) research and educational projects. On the same day, we checked in Google Search the amount of references to the two notions. ‘Intercultural communication’ had over 4 million results while ‘interculturality’ 465,000. This is not surprising as the word interculturality has been used much more recently than intercultural communication in research, education and (maybe) society around the world. In contexts such as some French-speaking countries and some parts of South America, the notion has a longer history in languages other than English. However, what the Google Image search seems to hint at are potential diverse meanings and uses of interculturality, compared to intercultural communication. This book is about interculturality, a notion that we have favoured over the years, for the value we believe it can add to the work of teachers. This book aims at explaining why we use the notion instead of other notions and concepts such as interculturalism, intercultural encounters or even intercultural citizenship and intercultural competence2—two terms that have been used recently by many scholars. Very few scholars have justified adopting the notion instead of others, especially in relation to teacher education and training, merely using it as a ‘stopgap’. What is more, beyond substantiating, there is a need to discuss, problematise, un- and re-think interculturality to make it both a stronger and more suitable notion. We often feel that scholars, educators and decision-makers use interculturality as a mere synonym or a ‘trendy’ substitute for the aforementioned terms. We believe that it is misleading to do so. Hence the need to be critical and reflexive about interculturality. 2  There is a plethora of other terms that we could make use of: global, multicultural, transcultural and so on.

4 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

Objectives As teacher educators and trainers ourselves, we have met hundreds of student teachers and/or teachers (even other teacher educators) who struggle with issues of interculturality. They are told (and ‘ordered’) to learn about it and to just ‘do’ it. However, many teachers do not get educated and/or trained for interculturality and need to ‘improvise’. For those who are lucky enough to receive some form of training/education, what they get is often reduced to ‘ideological indoctrination’ based on supranational and/or governmental ‘orders’, supported by a selected few (privileged) scholars. Some teachers and researchers even seem to recite learnt catchphrases when they discuss interculturality. This seems to be the case in the following assertion heard recently from a European teacher educator: “young generation needs intercultural competence to find solutions to complex challenges for a sustainable, diverse and inclusive world.” When asked to define and explain what all these words meant, this specific teacher educator smiled and responded: “these are very complicated issues, very difficult to define. They are global issues that everybody understands today.” This looks like a mere slogan to us containing too many polysemic, Western and economic-politically flavoured terms, which might look good but mean too much to be useful to prepare teachers of the future. There is thus a need for (student) teachers and teacher educators to problematise, un- and re-think the notion so that it can become more profound and be treated in a more pluralistic and challenging way. It is important to note that learning to deal with interculturality in education is not new as such. For centuries people have had to adapt to ‘different’ and ‘similar’ Others in educational contexts while preparing to meet the Other outside the ‘classroom’. Take the Chinese philosopher and teacher Confucius (孔夫子, 551–479 BCE)3 for example. During his lifetime he wandered from state to state teaching his students about breaking 3  For each author mentioned in the book, we have decided to mention their date of birth and death (if deceased), their nationality and occupation. We hesitated for a while to include information about their nationality in the book. For instance: can one be sure of an author’s (double/multiple) nationality/identity? An author might be referred to as British-Indian or French West Indian. Would we impose an identity on authors by, for example, keeping just one indication of who they are? Considering our main message about interculturality, we do not feel fully comfortable with this practice. However, we argue that it is important for us and our readers to become aware of the geopolitics of our book. One of our critiques of intercultural scholarship is that it tends to be overly Euro- and Western-centric. Thus, by indicating where we found our inspiration from, we review our own biases and potentially

1 INTRODUCTION 

5

away from their habitual ways of being by disrupting usual patterns and reconfiguring their dispositions in order to live with the Other. In those days, no one spoke about diversity, inclusion, interculturality, culture or identity. Confucius himself spoke of rén (仁), a virtue translated in English as benevolence or humaneness (Dervin, 2020). Different eras used different terms to refer to something that related to encounters between different kinds of people. Views of the world, groups and people have differed throughout history. Before the eighteenth century for instance, Christianity versus paganism represented a widespread way of categorising people in ‘our’ part of the world. This book contributes to help the reader deepen their awareness of this aspect of interculturality. What this book also proposes is to reject a view of interculturality as utilitarian calculus. Let’s be upfront about it: no recipe will ever help anyone deal with interculturality or be perfect at it (?). People are neither stable nor clear-cut. This is why our book is not a ‘recipe book’ presenting ‘good’ practices. What the reader will learn is that interculturality is not a “registered designation of origin” (from the French Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée), which means that it should not be treated as a static notion. This is why we insist on the need to adopt a tabula rasa attitude while reading the book and to develop—with us—a reflexive and critical position: try to abandon your built-in mental content about intercultural communication and encounters; try to allow yourself to think otherwise and to become aware of how you have been ‘indoctrinated’ by certain (preferred) global ways of thinking about and ‘doing’ interculturality. To support the tabula rasa attitude, our book is truly interdisciplinary and also makes reference to major constituents of the arts such as visual, literary and performing arts.

How the Book Is Organised The book is divided into two main parts: Part I—Digging into interculturality in education and Part II—Critical and reflexive interculturality in practice. The first section is composed of ten chapters, where we discuss basic questions about the notion of interculturality. This works as a dialogue between us since we believe that this should be the basis of intercultural limited geopolitical knowledge production. If we have misidentified any author, we promise to make some changes in the next editions of the book.

6 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

work in both research and education. Although we have known each other and cooperated for a certain number of years, we always feel the need to discuss our views, experiences and problems with the notion of interculturality. The way this part works is as follows. First, we came up with a list of ten important basic questions (one chapter = one question) that we had in our mind when we started writing this book aimed at teacher educators and teachers who have an interest in intercultural issues. Like them, we ask ourselves a lot of questions and often feel uncomfortable answering them because we don’t have a real answer or (actually) we have several answers. This is the list of questions: 1. How do we understand the notion of interculturality? What does it mean to us today? What has it meant to us before? 2. What is intercultural education as a field of research and practice? What are its objectives? 3. Why should interculturality be relevant for educators? 4. How can we teach about interculturality? 5. Should educators’ life experiences be inspirational for intercultural education? 6. Do we think that intercultural education has been successful? Why (not)? 7. What are the problems that the field of intercultural education face today? 8. Are we good at interculturality? Why? Is there a ‘good’ model of intercultural competence that can be used in education? 9. How can we teach students to examine situations of interculturality? 10. What are the most important concepts of critical and reflexive interculturality? Second, each of us wrote down our answers to the questions separately and discussed them against the criteria of difference and similarity in, for example, the concepts that we used, the supporting arguments, the scholars and thinkers we referred to in order to back our arguments. Each chapter contains our separate answers ((F.D.) for Fred Dervin and (A.J.) for Andreas Jacobsson) as well as a summary of our similarities and differences and of the negotiation of joint understandings and lines of argumentation (in sections called [Pause] at the end of each chapter). Clashes of ideologies, dis/agreements took place—as should! We also share these at

1 INTRODUCTION 

7

the end of each chapter and ask further questions to the reader so that they can reflect further and build upon their criticality. Single or multiple authors very rarely share what is happening behind the scene when they write about complex notions such as interculturality. Although we have written and taught extensively about it, we repeat again that we constantly ask ourselves questions about it such as what is interculturality? How do we do it and how can it be taught? This is a unique opportunity for our readers to witness this process of reflexivity and criticality and the negotiation of meanings, positions and argumentations that go with it. We suggest that the readers also attempt answering the same questions when they start reading the book, while and after reading it. There are no right or wrong answers, as the readers will see. These questions are essential to become aware of how each of us sees interculturality at specific moments. At the end of the first part we reproduce a certain number of quotes from our ‘dialogues’ to help reflect further on what was discussed in the first ten chapters. The second part of this book contains three chapters that are meant to support the readers in exploring critical interculturality in practice (see Fig. 1.1). We have chosen three perspectives that we feel have not been discussed extensively in relation to interculturality in teacher education and training: Reflecting on interculturality through critical and reflexive languaging (Chap. 12), Promoting polycentric knowledge (Chap. 13) and Engaging critically with travel and interculturality (Chap. 14). Each of these chapters presents basic concepts and notions to be used to un-re-­ think interculturality as well as examples of activities to explore the power of language, polycentric knowledge (knowledge from outside the powerful and/or ‘important’ centres of knowledge production) and travel. We hope that the readers will find the different chapters to be stimulating and informative and that they will urge them to un- and re-think interculturality. There is a lot to chew and digest. Therefore, we do not expect your whole life to be changed but if, together, we can strengthen the idea of interculturality and make it worthwhile in teacher education and training, some of the ‘evils’ that we describe in this book could be—even partially—remedied.

8 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

Critical and reflexive languaging

Critical and reflexive interculturality in practice Critical engagement with travel

Polycentric knowledge

Fig. 1.1  Critical and reflexive interculturality in practice

Reference Dervin, F. (2020). Creating and combining models of Intercultural Competence for teacher education/training. On the need to re-think Intercultural Competence frequently. In F. Dervin, R. Moloney, & A. Simpson (Eds.), Intercultural competence in the work of teachers: Confronting ideologies and practices (pp. 57–72). London: Routledge.

PART I

Digging into Interculturality in Education

CHAPTER 2

What Is Interculturality?

Abstract  In this chapter, the authors problematise, un- and re-think the notion of interculturality. They recommend moving away from traditional intercultural communication education based on national cultures, which simplify and fixate individuals. As alternatives the authors propose to reconsider the position of culture in interculturality in education and to implement polycentrism in the way the notion is conceptualised. Keywords  National cultures • Interculturality • Fictions • Eurocentrism • Polycentrism

(F.D.) Let us start by reflecting on the object that we are discussing in this book. I believe that it can be summarised by four questions: (1) What does it mean to be a social being, someone who interacts with different kinds of people in different places and different times? (2) How do we meet and interact with other people? (3) How do we integrate/are we integrated as the ‘guest’, the one who is not part of a given group/community? (4) And how do we get prepared for the three previous questions? In my work, I use two different terms to refer to the phenomenon that we are examining: ‘the intercultural’ and ‘interculturality’. In the past I

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dervin, A. Jacobsson, Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7_2

11

12 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

used these terms interchangeably but today, interculturality is the focus of my work. I will refrain from using ‘the intercultural’ in this book. However, if it appears from time to time, it should be considered as a mere synonym for interculturality. My title at the University of Helsinki is that of professor of ‘multicultural education’. In different parts of the world, an uncountable number of similar or different terms are used to refer to “encounters between different people in different contexts and different times”: transcultural, polycultural, diversity, Minzu1 in China, and also global. All these terms can each refer to similar, specific and/or different perspectives. One element that we should bear in mind is that they are also used in various (intermingling) contexts: politics, research, education, marketing, amongst others. This means that the way they are used (and misused), understood (misunderstood), discussed (ignored) and sometimes imposed will always be influenced by these different aspects, especially politics and the economy. In The Words, Sartre (1964, p. 251) writes: “I confused things with their names: that is belief.” The way we (wish to) understand the term interculturality relates to our beliefs about, for example, what is a social being?, what is a good way to meet others?, what matters to be able to meet others? and so on. The ‘thing’ we label as interculturality is often confused with the meaning we give to the notion. I now propose to focus on the very central notion of interculturality for a while. I have myself contributed to promote the notion in the English language, inspired by the use of the word in the French language, interculturalité (see, e.g. Abdallah-Pretceille, 2004). Two decades ago, interculturality for me would have meant a meeting (maybe even a clash) of cultures: people from two different (especially national) cultures meet and face, amongst other, culture shocks and (maybe) manifold forms of discrimination, and thus need to make sure that they can live, work, study together. I think that most people around the world might have the same starting point when they reflect on intercultural issues—but I might be wrong. This is in fact a starting point that is based on an ideology of difference (cultural difference) and of single identities (“Finns are this and they thus do that”). We could refer to these ideas as mere theoretical fictions. 1  Minzu (民族) is the Chinese word used to describe ethnic groups in China. Officially China has 56 Minzus, the majority Han group included. I maintain that the English word ethnic minority does not describe well the reality of some Minzus in China (see Sude, Yuan and Dervin, 2020).

2  WHAT IS INTERCULTURALITY? 

13

Twenty years later my idea of interculturality has changed entirely. Let’s start by decomposing the notion: inter- cultur -ality. These three elements matter, although, we often tend to emphasise the one in the centre (culture) to highlight, for example, different ways of living and/or thinking. For me the root inter- and the suffix -ality are much more important—yet often neglected—in the way I understand what the notion refers to. Interculturality is a phenomenon that is occurring between (inter-) ‘things’ (culture and/or maybe people?), in a processual manner (-ality). Inter- means that this phenomenon requires the presence of at least two people who together do something again and again (differently), and it cannot occur without the presence of the two. What the French artist Georges Braque (1882–1963) has to say about his work can help us understand this inter-, the between and behind of intercultural encounters. Miller (2001, p. 19) quotes Braque’s complaint about many painters: “[they] totally ignore that what is between the apple and plate can be painted too … This in between space [entre deux] seems to me just as important as the objects themselves.” I believe increasingly that the painter’s ‘in between space’ is what we are dealing with when we educate, train and do research on interculturality. The thing that these people process together (-ality) in interculturality relates to what I consider to be a contested concept: culture. I call it contested because many scholars have been very critical of its use (see, e.g. Baumann, 1996), especially when it is given too much importance, too much agency over people or when it is limited to national culture (see Brubaker, 2004). Some scholars have also been critical of understandings of the concept that are solid, somewhat crystallising people’s habits, ways of thinking and attitudes. The crystallisation of people in intercultural scholarship goes against the long tradition of individuals being discussed in terms of movement. In this sense the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941) was very influential for me. In his work, he argues that the intellect tends to immobilise the flux of life—and thus the Human (e.g. Bergson, 2007). In his book The Creative Mind (1946), Bergson explains that we tend to falsify the perception of reality by substituting stability for mobility and discontinuity for continuity—removing important aspects of the complexity of who we are. For Bergson (ibid.), we often mistreat people (the ‘living’) as if they were immobile and discontinuous and limit them to the ‘mechanical’. The Austrian philosophical writer, Robert Musil2 (1979, p.  136), shares Bergson’s argument when he describes our “drive to keep developing”: 2

 (1880–1942).

14 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

[it] prevents him [sic = the Human] from believing that anything is final and complete, yet everything he [sic] encounters behaves as though it were final and complete. He [sic] suspects that the given order of things is not as solid as it pretends to be; no thing, no self, no form, no principle, is safe, everything is undergoing an invisible but ceaseless transformation, the unsettled holds more of the future than the settled, and the present is nothing but a hypothesis that has not yet been surmounted.

As a process involving complex individuals, interculturality must be approached from mobile and continuous perspectives. In the broad field of intercultural communication education, the work of, for example, Geert Hofstede (1928–2020), a Dutch social psychologist who was also an entrepreneur and worked for the American multinational technology company International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation, has been highly criticised for his use of the concept of culture. His famous model seems to impose stability and discontinuity, by reducing people to static categories such as individualism (favouring freedom of action for individuals over collective control) versus collectivism (group priority over individuals composing it) (e.g. McSweeney, 2002). Another problem about the concept of culture is that it tends to cover a broad range of elements, which makes it difficult to work with. It often seems that culture is ‘everything’ (Piller, 2017, see Shohat & Stam, 2014). But then how do we deal with it? In my work I have often claimed that I teach and research interculturality without culture (Dervin, 2016). This oxymoron, whereby contradictory terms appear in conjunction, means that, for me, interculturality is about interactions, encounters between people who might perceive each other as different and who thus need to negotiate their (co-)being, their identity and their interaction in order to be able to (maybe) make each other feel comfortable or to have meaningful encounters. I write (maybe) because this is an assumption as I am not always sure what the objective of interculturality really is. I also use very controversial terms here: comfortable and meaningful. These terms I consider to be polemic for two reasons: (1) Who decides what is comfortable and meaningful? (2) If interculturality is about a somewhat reciprocal phenomenon, then all those who interact should experience together these phenomena. Since, like any other social phenomena, interculturality is a never-ending story (we always have to negotiate these elements with every single individual we meet, even those we believe we know well enough not to have to ‘perform’), there is no end to interculturality. Doing

2  WHAT IS INTERCULTURALITY? 

15

interculturality is being like a dancer on a tightrope. As a consequence, I argue that interculturality should be a lifelong endeavour, which can never be satisfied. Some of our readers might then be wondering about the potential difference between intercultural encounters and other types of human interactions. Increasingly I believe that these two are one and the same. Interculturality is basically about meeting other people. What might differ, and maybe this is important up to a point, could include: the use of another language/dialect, the location (at ‘home’/somewhere out of ‘our’ borders), our familiarity with a context and its characteristics (a big metropole, different kinds of foods), our representations of ourselves and of other people as individuals who, for example, belong or not to the place where we are meeting (e.g. a nation-state, a broader entity such as the European Union). These elements might also refer to people coming from another part of the same country and even from the same metropole. I have heard on several occasions people claim that moving from one city to another in the same country triggered some form of ‘culture shock’ in them. One last important point, which is rarely discussed in education: when does interculturality start and stop? When do two people stop meeting interculturally and shift to something else? I am unable to name that ‘something else’ since I don’t know what that could be. Some scholars might refer to it as ‘intracultural’, which is very strongly connected to the idea of interculturality as something national and/or ethnic, but I have a problem with this idea: what are the borders between ‘intra’ and ‘inter’? And again: who decides? When we try to answer these questions, we realise that interculturality is a viewpoint, a perspective about human interactions. Depending on who is talking, the answers might differ. If we observe two people from different countries, for example, observers who don’t know them might assume that they are ‘doing’ interculturality since they might, for example, speak in foreign accents, behave differently and/or talk about their ‘own’ cultures. Other observers who know them personally might be aware that these two people have known each other for twenty years, that they are best friends and that, for example, their children are married with each other. Are they still involved in interculturality then? I think that the answer to this question is always subjective and based on our beliefs/ beliefs imposed onto us—which I shall call ideologies later. Yet no one can maintain that their claim about what these people do together (interculturality or not) is ‘right’ and/or the only ‘truth’.

16 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

So, if I sum up, I think I know what interculturality is about: it is definitely about processes of encounters between minimum two people who come together or between an individual and, for example, artefacts, ideas, and cultural productions. I thus have a starting point, but I don’t know when and if their interculturality finishes, that is, if the label of interculturality versus something else ever stops being used by the people who meet ‘interculturally’ or by those who observe them. Finally, it is important to note that, while we scholars and educators might refer to their relations as being intercultural, they might themselves use other words to do so: international, cross-cultural or even between foreigners. Or they might not even wish to label their relation anything special. To conclude, we should never assume that the notion of interculturality is understandable by all people or that it means the same to the people we meet. We should bear in mind that people might use other terms to refer to this phenomenon—or simply not label it in any special way.

(A.J.) My current understanding of interculturality is to a high degree in line with other critically inclined researchers (see, e.g. Dervin, 2015, 2016; Ferri 2018; Piller, 2017), stating that the notion captures processes of social interaction. Interculturality can be regarded, from this perspective, as moving beyond stable cultural categorisations as explanations for social behaviour, to analyse and clarify how diversity and difference in the form of, for example, ‘cultural’ and linguistic background is brought into contexts and made meaningful by those involved in the encounters. Ingrid Piller’s statement that to understand interculturality one has to clarify, “Who makes culture relevant to whom in which context for which purposes?” (2017, p. 1), makes a lot of sense in relation to this way of understanding the notion. Thinking about the notion in this way is a form of meta-thinking, where we analytically take a step back and look at interculturality from a bird’s-eye view. Interculturality becomes a critical framework that is used to analyse how discourses of culture are activated by different people in different contexts and for different purposes. My academic background is in film and media studies. Looking back at the development of my understanding of interculturality an important inspirational source for my research and teaching was the seminal book Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (1994/2014), by Ella Shohat, professor in cultural studies (New York University), and

2  WHAT IS INTERCULTURALITY? 

17

Robert Stam, professor in film studies (New York University). Their substantiated proposal to unthink Europe as the predominant centre of intellectual attention and historical driving force was as solid as refreshing at the time, and it has not lost its relevance. Shohat and Stam questioned the epistemological and ideological framework for film and media studies and contributed with innovative perspectives to postcolonial studies by highlighting the importance of moving images for understanding colonial and de-colonial power structures. Their line of thinking cleared the path for film and media scholars to understand history as taking place in different parts of the world. At the same time, it enabled them to decentralise the focus on the ‘West’ as the main producer of (universal) knowledge. Polycentric multiculturalism was one of the core concepts used by Shohat and Stam that proved helpful for me when I started teaching and researching film and media from a global perspective: “Within a polycentric vision, the world has many dynamic cultural locations, many possible vantage points. The emphasis in ‘polycentrism,’ for us, is not on spatial or primary points of origin but on fields of power, energy, and struggle” (Shohat & Stam, 2014, p. 48). With polycentrism they emphasised a geographical plurality that destabilises a one-sided Eurocentric perspective. Yet the two scholars also stressed that polycentrism is not about listing “centers of power but rather introduc[ing] a systematic principle of differentiation, relationality, and linkage” (Shohat & Stam, 2014, p.  48). Polycentrism instead captures a radical equality where no community or culture should have epistemological precedence (Shohat & Stam, 2014, p. 48). Multiculturalism, despite its wide usage as specifying societies or communities where individuals and groups with different cultural backgrounds coexist, is for Shohat and Stam without essence. Instead the concept points towards a critical discourse regarding power relations and their ambition behind activating multiculturalism is to “turning it into a rallying cry for more substantive and reciprocal intercommunalism” (Shohat & Stam, 2014, p. 47). In their definition polycentric multiculturalism captures cultural mobility and fluidity, and it opens for an analytical framework that does not lose track of social and cultural complexity (Hannerz, 1992). To specify the concept and provide a theoretical framework for analysis they list central aspects of polycentric multiculturalism: it connects history with social power; sides with underrepresented individuals and communities; avoids essentialism (the categorisation of people according to a fixed set of attributes); favours dialog and regards interaction as mutually affecting the

18 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

interlocutors (Shohat & Stam, 2014, pp. 48–49). The fluidity that characterises this line of thinking—both regarding geographical and epistemological (knowledge-based) perspectives and the identity and belonging of individuals—clarifies that intercultural encounters affect all the involved parties and that encounters are processes developing over time. Polycentric multiculturalism as defined by Shohat and Stam has a strong potential for critically discussing central queries that, for a long time, have created challenges for researchers in intercultural communication education: How to define a theoretical framework for the concept of culture in interculturality? What are the consequences of applying an open-ended fluid definition of the concept? How to specify the unit of analysis in an intercultural study framed with a fluid definition of culture? But as several researchers also have remarked both polycentrism and multiculturalism are concepts that come with a price: they are complex and problematic concepts that in several discourses are more likely to fixate identities, groups and communities and activate ‘cultural differentialism’, than focus on fluidity and openness (see, e.g. Nederveen Pieterse, 2015, pp. 72, 80). Despite the pitfalls of essentialisation (reducing someone to a limited view of who they are) that constantly lurk in the shadows while one is activating notions like polycentric and interculturality I still think that the term interculturality is valid and makes sense to use despite the variety of other similar terms available and the critique that has been voiced by several scholars (myself included). The prefix inter- connects a contemporary re-thinking of cultural encounters with a historical tradition of cutting-­ edge academic culture studies à la Shohat and Stam and opens for different perspectives in different languages. There are clearly multiple interpretations of interculturality in different languages and in different parts of the world (interculturalidad; interculturalité; interkulturalität; interkulturalitet), something that often goes unnoticed by intercultural researchers even when their aim is to deconstruct the notion (see, e.g. Guilherme, 2019). But there are also a few examples of researchers who have focused on how the interpretation of the terminology shifts in different contexts and languages, and how important this is for analysing the implementation of (colonial) power structures and hierarchies (Aman, 2015, 2018). To sum up, interculturality for me focuses on processes of social interaction and is ideally approached from an analytical metalevel. But to talk about interculturality in this way requires the translation of concepts and a critical distinction between different approaches, particularly regarding

2  WHAT IS INTERCULTURALITY? 

19

research that presupposes that culture is a force of determinism and essentialism that makes people behave according to the (often fixed national) categories imposed by researchers.

[Pause] These are the commonalities that we have identified in the way we conceptualised interculturality in this chapter: • Culture is a contested concept (without essence, made meaningful in context). • Interculturality as we understand the concept today is about processes of social interaction that affect people over time. Our understanding has shifted from more traditional ideas about interculturality to a critical re-thinking and re-evaluation of the concept. • We both state that there are multiple interpretations of interculturality in different languages and contexts. Differences: • Fred highlights that there might be no clear-cut line between interculturality and social encounters: “Increasingly I believe that these two are one and the same. Interculturality is basically about meeting other people.” • Andreas emphasises ‘polycentrism’ to clarify that interculturality can be used as a way to deconstruct Eurocentrism and open for different perspectives depending on the observer’s vantage point. • Fred calls for a discussion of when interculturality starts and ends. A seemingly banal but ultimately very complex question that very few scholars have dealt with in a convincing way. This first chapter shows that we both have a lot in common in our thinking regarding the notion of interculturality. This has to do with our interest in re-thinking the field and shifting the direction away from traditional intercultural communication education based on national cultures, that we find very problematic for a number of reasons: they simplify and fixate individuals in categories that are expected to determinate behaviour: crystallisation; culturalism; essentialism; Eurocentrism. To move forward Fred proposes the thought-provoking idea that it is possible to teach and

20 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

research ‘interculturality without culture’, and thereby removing the problem. Andreas turns to his background in film and media studies for theoretical inspiration in the concept polycentrism—a concept that presupposes ‘cultural mobility and fluidity’. There is seemingly a disagreement between us regarding the use of culture in intercultural communication education. Is this difference actual or just rhetorical? Question for the Reader If established definitions of the concept of culture are a major problem for intercultural communication education as the authors propose, what should be done about it? Think about the pros and cons of either removing culture from interculturality or re-thinking culture in relation to interculturality?

References Abdallah-Pretceille, M. (2004). Vers une pedagogie interculturelle. Anthropos. Aman, R. (2015). Why interculturalidad is not interculturality: Colonial remains and paradoxes in translation between indigenous movements and supranational bodies. Cultural Studies, 29(2), 205–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950238 6.2014.899379 Aman, R. (2018). Decolonising intercultural education: Colonial differences, the geopolitics of knowledge, and inter-epistemic dialogue. Routledge. Baumann, G. (1996). Contesting culture: Discourses of identity in multi-ethnic London. Cambridge University Press. Bergson, H. (1946). The creative mind. Kessinger Pub. Bergson, H. (2007). Creative evolution. Palgrave Macmillan. Brubaker, R. (2004). Ethnicity without groups. Harvard University Press. Dervin, F. (2015). Towards post-intercultural teacher education: Analyzing ‘extreme’ intercultural dialogue to reconstruct interculturality. European Journal of Teacher Education, 38(1), 71–86. https://doi.org/10.108 0/02619768.2014.902441 Dervin, F. (2016). Interculturality in education: A theoretical and methodological toolbox. Palgrave Macmillan. Ferri, G. (2018). Intercultural communication: Critical approaches and future challenges. Palgrave Macmillan. Guilherme, M. (2019). The critical and decolonial quest for intercultural epistemologies and discourses. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 14(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2019.1617294

2  WHAT IS INTERCULTURALITY? 

21

Hannerz, U. (1992). Cultural complexity: Studies in the social organization of meaning. Columbia University Press. Mcsweeney, B. (2002). The essentials of scholarship: A reply to Geert Hofstede. Human Relations, 55(11), 1363–1372. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018 7267025511005 Miller, A.  I. (2001). Einstein, Picasso: Space, time and the beauty that causes havoc. Basic. Musil, R. (1979). The man without qualities: The like of it now happens (volume II). Picador Classics. Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2015). Globalization and culture: Global mélange (3rd ed.). Rowman and Littlefield. Piller, I. (2017). Intercultural communication: A critical introduction (2nd ed.). Edinburgh University Press. Sartre, J.-P. (1964). The words. George Braziller. Shohat, E., & Stam, R. (2014). Unthinking eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the media. Routledge. Sude, Yuan, M., & Dervin, F. (2020). Introduction to ethnic minority education in China: Policies and practices. Springer-Verlag Berlin An.

CHAPTER 3

Intercultural Communication Education as a Field of Research and Practice

Abstract  In this chapter the authors add to their critique of how traditional intercultural communication education has been carried out, pinpointing areas where change is necessary. Although the field is complex, multifaceted and understood differently in different parts of the world, it appears to be dominated by pushes to find and teach (quick) solutions to problems that occur as a result of (perceived) cultural differences. The lack of concern for translation in relation to knowledge about interculturality is discussed too. Keywords  Multifaceted • (Perceived) cultural differences • Ideology • Translation • Anti-essentialism

(F.D.) It is important to re-affirm that there are different labels available in research and practice to educate and train people to meet other people ‘across cultures’: multicultural, transcultural, polycultural and even interethnic, global and so on. Each label represents a smörgåsbord (a range) of perspectives and approaches around the world. For example, multicultural education in Malaysia does not necessarily mean the same and is not ‘done’ the same way as in Finland or the USA. Scholars and educators in these different contexts might have been influenced by ‘big names’ such as © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dervin, A. Jacobsson, Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7_3

23

24 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

James Banks and Christine Sleeter from the US field of multicultural education, however, they may not use their ideas the way they were meant to be applied in the American context.1 In Finland, for example, the concept of ‘race’ is avoided. Thus, doing multicultural education à la Banks in this context would necessitate removing this central concept. Although such prominent scholars, who often work for their own governments and supranational institutions like the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that try to influence the way these kinds of education take place in different parts of the world, are often quoted and referred to, their approaches may be ‘applied’ in different ways. So, again, there is not one single approach to intercultural communication education that is to be found around the world, but a range of perspectives and approaches (see, e.g. Global Perspectives on Intercultural Communication edited by S. Croucher (2017) where a selection of these approaches is presented). Rejecting the plurality of definitions of interculturality—and claiming that there is only one proper way to understand it, as I have heard from many experts—is dangerous and counter-productive. When you hear someone (yourself included) make a sentence starting with “interculturality is…”, beware! When I try to define intercultural communication education, I use my own beliefs and ideologies about human encounters ‘across cultures’ (since the concept of culture is not part of my discourse on interculturality I put it between inverted comas here) to delineate what I believe it could be about. A brief definition of the concept of ideology is needed here before we move on. For Marxists like Louis Althusser (2001), people systematically misrepresent and imagine the reality of their socioeconomic relationships. Through a regime of discourses, images and ideas in which people grow up, live, think, interact, create, ideologies become the ‘obvious’ and are taken for granted—although they represent illusions on reality (Althusser, 2008). Ideologies are created, processed and spread by various institutions such as families, courts, schools, advertising companies, (social) media and supranational organisations.

1  At a conference about minority education in Hong Kong in 2018, where Banks and I were invited as keynote speakers, it was easy to see the tensions in the use of ‘Americanized’ ideologies in this particular context, where minorities seemed to refer to non-Chinese individuals. Crossing over to the Mainland, just a few kilometers away, the meaning of the very word minorities takes on a different meaning and connotation.

3  INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION EDUCATION AS A FIELD… 

25

Beliefs and ideologies usually relate to both macro- (e.g. between nations) and micro-politics (e.g. between persons), but also to one’s own life experiences and, for example, sense of justice. About the former, it is important to say that macro- and micro-politics do not always overlap. A given country might have certain views, attitudes and behaviours towards other countries (for historico-economic-political reasons) which their peoples might (or not) share. Take the case of the USA and China in 2020. While a new ‘cold war’ was intensifying between the countries, friendship between Chinese and US citizens was still going strong (or not). As a scholar, my beliefs and ideologies about interculturality can also be influenced by the language(s) that I use for research purposes (and in which I can read and write), which have allowed me to take part in specific academic contexts and ‘tribes’—and to follow certain ‘gurus’. The end result, that is, how I see intercultural communication education and its objectives, is often a mix of societal, political, scholarly, linguistic and personal beliefs and ideologies. Defining ‘good’ education is always a subjective but also political endeavour that also relates to all these elements. Of course, worldwide, there appears to be a certain number of ideologies that prevail in discussions of intercultural communication education: tolerance, respect, but also justice, democracy (amongst others). Often these words are tainted by Westernised ideologies, deriving from the Enlightenment and eighteenth-century modernity (e.g. birth of the nation-state, ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’), and presented as having emerged from the ‘West’. However, when we start digging into the history of these notions (e.g. Goody, 2006) and their meanings in different languages, we note that they are polysemic and thus problematic to use (Yuan et al., 2020). Let’s take two examples to illustrate this major problem when we try to explain what intercultural communication education is about: respect and harmony. Imagine that I am dealing with intercultural communication education in China and that I want to make students aware of their importance (if I believe that they are central in interculturality). I then face a challenge: that of translation. In Chinese, the idea of respect is polysemic and is expressed in at least two different ways: 尊重 (zunzhong) and 尊敬 (zunjing). While the first term refers to a polite meeting between individuals, who are marked by hierarchical differences such as an employer and an employee (= respect as a state to save face), 尊敬 (zunjing) would seem to represent a deeper phenomenon, which builds up as one meets each other

26 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

(= respect as a process) and which would allow to go beyond a performance of 尊重 (zunzhong). Another term used in relation to respect is that of harmony. While in some ‘Western’ languages, the idea of relational harmony might seem ‘solid’, ‘superficial’ and/or ‘performative’, in Chinese, the word 和谐 (hexie) can describe a process of cooperation (和, re: together; 协, xie: cooperate), thus a never-ending process, which seems to go well with the idea of 尊敬 (zunjing). These two terms are what Cassin (2016) calls ‘untranslatables’, that is, words that have multilingual lives and complexities and that need to be translated again and again. So how do I define what I expect from intercultural communication education under such conditions? As I just showed, collaborative critical and reflexive translation should be the first step to enable dialogue with others and to ensure that we know what we are talking about. This important step is systematically ignored in research and training for intercultural communication education, which often leads to scholars, teachers and students using the same words while expressing differing realities/imaginaries/ ideologies. Let’s now focus on the field of intercultural communication education. Without any surprise, the field of intercultural communication education is a very complex one. Since people use the word intercultural either in different ways (influenced by local-international politics and, e.g. their own acquaintance with/preferences for a specific approach) or as a fashionable empty signifier, intercultural communication education can mean many different things. It is also important to remember that political stances in relation to the questions I was asking at the beginning of Chap. 2 (What does it mean to be a social being? How do we interact and meet with other people? How do we integrate the ‘guest’, the one who is not part of our group and community? And how do we get prepared for the two previous questions?) will have an influence on the objectives that are set for research on intercultural communication education. That is why it is important to bear in mind that any curriculum, any textbook, any educational/classroom discourse related to intercultural communication education cannot but be ideological, that is, they relate to the way we are made to think about the social world, about others and about how we welcome and interact with those from the ‘outside’. As I have said earlier, I have my own understanding of what intercultural communication education is about, which I believe relates to my own life experiences as a stranger/ foreigner and potential outsider in different countries (China, Finland, France, Great Britain, amongst others), to my own political beliefs,

3  INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION EDUCATION AS A FIELD… 

27

especially in relation to immigration and sociality, to my views of the neoliberal world as it appears to be today, especially post-COVID 19, and so on and so forth. I will provide more details about my own take on intercultural communication education in Chap. 5. However, I can already reveal that, for me, intercultural communication education is not so much about educating and/or training people to meet individuals who are different from them ‘culturally’, ‘linguistically’, ‘racially’, by providing them with techniques or ‘tricks’ to, for example, avoid shocks or to communicate ‘effectively’ (who determines what is effective anyway?). Instead, I believe that intercultural communication education should prepare people to be aware of, examine and take positions towards the many and varied politics of interculturality that are ‘sold’ to us around the world, in our own societies, in political discourses, in education, that is, how meeting, working with, dealing with others are positioned, determined, explained and discussed in, for example, specific curricula and research projects.

(A.J.) Intercultural communication education research and practice is primarily focused on (1) cultural difference, (2) communication breakdown and (3) teaching methodology. A common denominator regarding both intercultural communication education research and practice is a functionalist approach where interculturality is by definition a variety of problems that require proper knowledge of different cultures and an intercultural competence, to be overcome (for a critical discussion of the understanding of culture and interculturality as communicative problems see Aman, 2018; Hastrup, 2010). Very often this view on interculturality is based on an ‘us and them’-dualism and the knowledge and competence are unidirectional—practically always directed towards uncovering the ‘mysteries’ of the Other. Culture is then regarded as a set of more or less national and more or less fixed differences affecting communication between people in different situations and contexts. According to this dominating strand, the potential impact of intercultural education research will be to make sure that intercultural encounters run smoothly and that communicative misunderstandings are averted. In education, the recipe for handling a demographic change and perceived interculturality in schools and classrooms has been to apply interculturally informed dialogues. Intercultural dialogue has worked as a

28 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

catchphrase for supranational organisations with influence over educational structures in different countries.2 Teachers and pupils/students have been instructed to liberate themselves from preconceived notions, stereotypes, exoticism (idealisation of difference), ‘Othering’ (the categorisation of people as the Other and thereby different from a perceived normality) and linguistic misunderstandings and to move towards unbiased open-ended dialogues (in class). This advice could be described to a certain extent as encouragement to strive towards an ideal form of communication where every message comes through loud, clear and untainted (as if that would ever be the case). John Durham Peter (1999) applied a critical lens on media and communication studies for the field’s idealisation of the concept of communication as a form of ‘angelic conversation’. In intercultural communication education the idealisation of communication as a solution to many kinds of problems has permeated research and practice and is still informing the predominant concept of intercultural competence. If everyone learns how to communicate over cultural borders without preconceived notions and stereotypes everything will work out fine—it is simply a matter of acquiring a required skill set. The focus on problems and problem-solving captures the intersection between language studies, organisational psychology, educational sciences, consultants and supranational organisations. The following keywords are the first that come to mind when I start thinking about the characteristics and objectives of intercultural communication education: • content of course material, • cultural encounters in class and in schools (targeting difference, otherness and tolerance in general and pupils/students that are classified as the Other), • culture shock, • intercultural learning as a specific form of learning process, • language, culture and identity, • multilingualism in classrooms, • schooling in certain (multicultural) areas of societies, the so-called diverse areas, 2  Jullien (2017) argues that the idea of intercultural dialogue emerged in the West only when it started losing its privileged position in the world. In other words, the West ‘requested’ dialogues with the rest of the world when the world wanted to be heard.

3  INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION EDUCATION AS A FIELD… 

29

• stereotypes, otherisation and globalisation, • study abroad. With its strong focus on negative aspects and problems associated with diversity, intercultural communication education is a contradictory and problematic scholarly field clearly in need of terminological clarification— something that has been an issue for a very long time. As I see it the main problems with the field are universalisation of the notion of interculturality and conflation between multicultural education and intercultural education. The effect of this conflation is—according to me—that intercultural education has come to be defined and restrained by old-fashioned culture studies, educational psychology and old school anthropology—academic fields tainted by the history of colonialism (Dabashi, 2015), propagating the idea of culture as inherent to ethnic groups and possible to categorise and compare in an unproblematic fashion. It is a field that often fails to address issues and questions that teachers and students are asking and because of this is out of tune with many of its intended readers. The combination of a focus on problems and the old-fashioned theoretical framework/s results in a reproduction of an intercultural educational ‘machinery’ that is out touch with educational settings from a global perspective. There are clearly ethical considerations at stake in intercultural education research that would benefit from further exploration. Even though there seems to be good intentions (Gorski, 2008) behind many of the studies and intercultural education in general, these intentions are quite often slightly misguided since they depart from an unequal position pinpointing specific individuals and groups of people as a source for problems halting the wheel of an otherwise well-oiled educational system. Intercultural education is an interdisciplinary field of research in the false sense of the word, to a very high degree the research is inspired by different fields of research of mixed methods and theories, but rarely do we see aspirations to develop any theoretical synthesis as is expected of actual interdisciplinary research. It might be helpful to talk about the field as cross-disciplinary, but these notions are quite often used to mean pretty much the same thing and therefore it might be more relevant to speak of the field as immature, impure and as searching for an identity. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since it opens for creative thinking. Recently the field has been critically discussed as a field permeated by ‘unspoken’ ideological clashes (by us, e.g. in Dervin et al., 2020). Instead of being regarded

30 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

as something to be avoided, impurity and ideological controversies might open for a way forward for an intercultural education scholarship that embraces complexity and conflict as central aspects of interculturality. Intercultural communication education is capturing an oft-present tension between different perspectives on social and interpersonal interaction. These perspectives are the result of an oscillating movement back and forth between essentialism and anti-essentialism—that is between regarding culture as more or less fixed or as fluid—that has taken place since the concept of ‘culture’ started to be critically examined in anthropology, sociology and cultural studies during the 1960s and 1970s (see, e.g. Hannerz, 1992; Hylland Eriksen, 1994; Fabian, 2014). These perspectives are seemingly incompatible, but paradoxically they turn up side by side and are sometimes intermingled in discussions on interculturality (for a critical discussion see Abdallah-Pretceille, 2006; Dervin, 2015; Piller, 2017). People can be essentialists regarding certain aspects of culture and anti-­ essentialists regarding other aspects, and quite often it is possible to notice how these different takes on interculturality can shift in one person during a conversation. For example, it is fairly common that students of intercultural communication education that have started to develop a critical awareness express that “it is not possible to say that Swedes behave in a certain way just because they are from Sweden”, but in the next sentence, stating that in Sweden “we are very particular with gender equality”. This tension is noticeable amongst researchers, teachers, teacher students and of course in media discourse. Rather than regarding this paradoxical tension between fixed and fluid notions of culture as solely a problem to be sorted out and solved, this pinpoints the contradictory complexity of people and what they bring with them into social encounters. To create a deeper understanding of interculturality we need to be aware of this tension and analyse how it is set in motion in different encounters and create an understanding of the reasons why people think and express themselves in certain ways in certain situations. To sum up, I regard research of intercultural communication education as mostly flawed and anachronistic as a field of research and practice. Too much emphasis has been (and still is) devoted to rectify and justify the research by the founders of the field such as Edward T. Hall (1959, 1969) and later the Hofstedian line of thinking about culture as ‘mental programming’ and Byramesque intercultural competence. It is slightly tedious that to be critical in our field includes to repeatedly have to be fighting off these old Eurocentric and nationalist ghosts, regardless of where in the

3  INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION EDUCATION AS A FIELD… 

31

world we are located. So, at the same time as we have to direct the field in completely different directions we have to map and make up with the ideological history of the field.

[Pause] Commonalities between us: • The field of intercultural communication education is complex, multifaceted and understood differently in various parts of the world. • The authors agree that intercultural communication education can be characterised as a field that in general strives to find and teach (quick) solutions to problems that occur as a result of (perceived) cultural differences. But this is also highly problematic and based on flawed and antiquated assumptions of culture and of how culture determines behaviour, communication and thinking. • Both Fred and Andreas point to the fact that ideology is (or more precisely should be) a core concept in intercultural communication education and this is something that has to be discussed and analysed further. Fred also clarifies that no one escapes ideology. Ideological interests are relevant to uncover both at an individual level (researchers and teachers) and at a structural level (supranational and national institutions). Differences: • Fred discusses the importance of translation and not only in the obvious way that there are different languages at play in interculturality, but also the fact that many concepts regarding interculturality fall into the category of not being translatable—so-called untranslatables. Even if there might be an equivalent term in another language it is not certain that the concept is interpreted in the same way and this means that we often think that we are talking about the same thing when, in reality, we are not. • A common denominator amongst the researchers who are critical towards mainstream intercultural communication education (including us) is that they promote anti-essentialism. From an analytical perspective Andreas has noticed that in many situations scholars as well as students are aware of the problem of essentialism and that this

32 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

awareness makes them oscillate between essentialism and anti-­ essentialism, mostly without noticing that this is what they are doing (Rozbicki, 2015, p. 15). Fred had problematised this issue by using the figure of the two-faced God called Janus (see Janusian approaches to interculturality, Dervin, 2016). In this chapter the authors continue developing their critique of how traditional intercultural communication education has been carried out, identifying areas where change is necessary. An important point to take into consideration is how to deal with interculturality as a global field of study. There is often an aura of ‘globality’ surrounding intercultural communication education, but in reality, the concepts and ideas that are implemented in teaching and research represent predominantly ‘Western’ and Eurocentric ideas and history. Question for the Reader Think about two to three different terms and concepts in your language that you think might fall into the category of being ‘untranslatable’. Define the meaning of the terms and try to clarify (1) why you think they might be untranslatable, (2) how you would describe them in English.

References Abdallah-Pretceille, M. (2006). Interculturalism as a paradigm for thinking about diversity. Intercultural Education, 17(5), 475–483. https://doi. org/10.1080/14675980601065764 Althusser, L. (2001). Lenin and philosophy, and other essays. Monthly Review Press. Althusser, L. (2008). On ideology. Verso. Aman, R. (2018). Decolonising intercultural education: Colonial differences, the geopolitics of knowledge, and inter-epistemic dialogue. Routledge. Cassin, B. (2016). Translation as paradigm for human sciences. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 30(3), 242–266. https://doi.org/10.5325/ jspecphil.30.3.0242 Croucher, S. (Ed.). (2017). Global perspectives on intercultural communication. Routledge. Dabashi, H. (2015). Can non-Europeans think? Zed Books. Dervin, F. (2015). Towards post-intercultural teacher education: Analyzing ‘extreme’ intercultural dialogue to reconstruct interculturality. European

3  INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION EDUCATION AS A FIELD… 

33

Journal of Teacher Education, 38(1), 71–86. https://doi.org/10.108 0/02619768.2014.902441 Dervin, F. (2016). Interculturality in education: A theoretical and methodological toolbox. Palgrave Macmillan. Dervin, F., Chen, N., Yuan, M., Sude, N. A., & Jacobsson, A. (2020). Covid-19 and interculturality: First lessons for teacher educators. Education and Society, 38(1), 89–106. https://doi.org/10.7459/es/38.1.06 Durham Peter, J. (1999). Speaking into the air: A history of the idea of communication. Chicago University Press. Fabian, J. (2014). Time and the other: How anthropology makes its object. Columbia University Press. Goody, J. (2006). The theft of history. Cambridge University Press. Gorski, P. (2008). Good intentions are not enough: A decolonizing intercultural education. Intercultural Education, 19(6), 515–525. https://doi. org/10.1080/14675980802568319 Hall, E. T. (1959). The silent language. Fawcett Publications. Hall, E. T. (1969). The hidden dimension. Anchor books. Hannerz, U. (1992). Cultural complexity: Studies in the social organization of meaning. Columbia University Press. Hastrup, K. (2010). Kultur: Den flexibla gemenskapen. Studentlitteratur. Hylland Eriksen, T. (1994). Kulturelle veikryss: Essays om kreolisering. Universitetsforlaget. Jullien, F. (2017). Il n’y a pas d’identité culturelle. Editions de l’Herne. Piller, I. (2017). Intercultural communication: A critical introduction (2nd ed.). Edinburgh University Press. Rozbicki, M.  J. (2015). Introduction–intercultural studies: The methodological contours of an emerging discipline. In M.  J. Rozbicki (Ed.), Perspectives on interculturality: The construction of meaning in relationships of difference (pp. 1–23). Palgrave Macmillan. Yuan, M. S., Wang, T., Zhang, W., Chen, N., Simpson, A., & Dervin, F. (2020). Chinese Minzu education in higher education: An inspiration for ‘western’ diversity education? British Journal of Educational Studies, 68(4), 461–486. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2020.1712323

CHAPTER 4

Does Interculturality Matter?

Abstract  This chapter justifies the need for educators to take the notion of interculturality seriously. After reminding the reader that interculturality has a long history as a phenomenon, the authors suggest looking at and using the history of interculturality to examine today’s interculturality. The topics of taking into account the role of structures in the way people treat each other interculturally and the concept of inequality are then introduced to show the relevance of a form of reflexive and critical interculturality in education. Delinking is proposed as a methodological tool. Keywords  Globalisation • Historical consciousness • Nation-states • Categorisation • Inequality • Delinking

(F.D.) In order to stress the relevance of interculturality I could start by recycling the argument that “interculturality has never been as important as it is today” but I refuse to (many articles on intercultural communication education start with this cliché). This is in fact a historical inaccuracy. Interculturality has been central in our world since the first time two human beings met. Actually, I believe that there is a lot we can learn from intercultural encounters from the past, since encounters were not based on the same ideologies as they are today. But, for some reason, we still try to deal © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dervin, A. Jacobsson, Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7_4

35

36 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

with interculturality as if it were an exclusive twenty-first century phenomenon. As a reminder, before the eighteenth century, people did not meet as representatives of different nation-states but as Christians versus pagans, representatives of different changing kingdoms (amongst others). So, they did experience interculturality but through different lenses. Our obsession with (national) ‘culture’ in encounters across ‘borders’ today dates back to the eighteenth century, when the concept was given the exaggerated importance that it (still) has today (Maffesoli, 2000). Interculturality is thus first and foremost crucial because it is embedded in the very complex history of who we are as social/human beings. It can help us see history, not as a linear and simply divided phenomenon, but from a real global perspective, looking for common patterns that emerged across time (see, e.g. Goody, 2006; Conrad, 2016). I do believe that we can find solutions to our current questions about interculturality by looking back at interculturality in the past—or at least by realising that some of today’s issues have striking resemblance with those of the past. Another reason why interculturality matters for educators today is because we need to change the way we see ‘us’ versus ‘them’, not in the sense that we should find some ‘truth’ about who we are (that is i­ mpossible based on my understanding of truth1) but to question the way we are made to imagine what the world is about and who its inhabitants are. Identifying why we talk about ‘us’ and ‘them’ in certain ways is also important. So, for instance, who ‘forces’ us to think about the Chinese this or that way when we have personally never met a Chinese person or been to China? For me, this is the main reason why we need to implement some form of intercultural communication education. Of course, the fact that this can create more ‘justice’ in the world is also an important objective: to limit the fact that people get differential treatment based on their skin colour, accents, nationalities intersected with social class, age and gender (amongst others). The only solution to this is to (1) allow people to reflect on why they think in certain ways about themselves and others and behave accordingly; (2) give them tools to make structural changes in the future to reduce different kinds of discrimination and injustice that derive from our misjudging ourselves and the Other—under the influence of ideological indoctrination.

1  I agree with Robert Musil (2015, p. 891): “‘True’ and ‘false’ are the evasions of people who never want to arrive at a decision. Truth is something without end.”

4  DOES INTERCULTURALITY MATTER? 

37

(A.J.) Interculturality is capturing the idea that the tangible experiences of mobility and movement taking place in our globalised world infallibly lead to interactions where people who speak different languages and coming from different places are intermingled in social processes. A rapidly changing demography, and a (perceived) multicultural development in different geographical contexts as an effect of this mobility, is for many teachers the most important reason for approaching interculturality in their teaching. Teachers experience that students and pupils from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds are becoming more and more present in their schools and classes and this will have an effect on their teaching, as well as changing the structure for learning in class. If we are indeed living in a ‘time of motion’ as philosopher Thomas Nail has proposed (2015, 2019), we are also living in a ‘time of interculturality’, and then interculturality must be a central concept of intercultural communication education. Is this true? Interculturality is as we already have established not new, but since it still is affecting our thinking about diversity and difference it is a field that requires our attention. If teachers experience interculturality as important in their everyday reality that is a valid reason for taking intercultural communication education seriously. By seriously I here mean to deconstruct the Eurocentric and oftentimes racist history of our field and to find new paths forward. My current thinking about intercultural communication education in relation to the ongoing re-thinking of interculturality is that we need to highlight the connection between interculturality and inequality. French philosopher Jacques Rancière has for a long time proposed that postmodern and poststructuralist criticality run the risk of reproducing the same old structures that they criticise. The main reason for this is that we are still using the same concepts and leaning on the same scholars as always to create so-called new knowledge. In Rancière’s provocative book about education, The Ignorant Schoolmaster (1991), he discusses the problem of intellectual inequality with the support of the notion of ‘stultification’, which means that teachers who lecture their knowledge to pupils/students to help the less knowledgeable cross the divide between those who know and those who do not are creating and reproducing intellectual inequality. If one regards learners as empty vessels waiting to be filled with new information, it is unavoidable that teachers position students as unequal. It is according to Rancière not fruitful to talk about education as emancipation when stultification is part of the teaching methodology. This

38 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

idea could potentially have great ramifications for intercultural communication education to clarify the need to avoid thinking about people as problems and instead direct the attention towards the educational settings, the societal contexts and ideological political structures. Here lies a truly emancipatory potential that has been buried deeply in traditional intercultural communication education. But as Rancière also pinpoints we are here dealing with a plethora of perspectives and complexities—we have to consider how we define equality in relation to ideas about individualism, capitalism, democracy, emancipation, critical thinking and freedom: “At the heart of this approach is the attempt to uncouple the link between the emancipatory logic of capacity and the critical logic of collective enveiglement” (2009, p. 48). This thinking is closely related to Walter Mignolo’s concept of delinking (2007, 2011; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018). A politically radical concept that may help us look outside of the conventional critical framework and escaping from the ‘Western’ toolbox. Delinking clarifies a process that to a certain extent is already taking place—de-colonisation, critique of Eurocentric ideas and structures—but primarily it is a process to strive for: to delink from an established ‘Western’ modernity and hierarchical universalisation in the form of social, cultural, economic and not the least epistemic structures. Delinking is not aiming for a modified and more just but still West-­ dominated liberal polycentrism, but with a complete break from the tradition of modernity that is regarded as the flip-side of coloniality. To sum up, as I see it the main problem with intercultural communication education today is that it confirms, reinforces and reproduces inequality rather than the opposite. French economist Thomas Piketty (2020) discusses the connection between inequality and ideology and highlights this as ‘regimes of inequality’. The potential with intercultural communication education is to battle against these regimes and for the teacher to pave the way for the inclusion of new perspectives and concepts that could pave the way for a radical equality from a global perspective (see also Therborn, 2013).

[Pause] Commonalities: • Interculturality has a long history despite being treated as a fairly new phenomenon that has developed in relation to globalisation (another complex concept that has been treated in a similar ahistorical fashion).

4  DOES INTERCULTURALITY MATTER? 

39

• To work with and analyse interculturality we need to apply a ‘historical consciousness’ and closely look at and use the history of interculturality to think about the situation today. • Nation-states are fairly recent as ideological constructions capturing and preserving colonial and imperialist power structures. Too often individuals are categorised as representatives of nation-states rather than as just individuals. Differences: • Fred pushes for the necessity to re-think how we see the categorisation of us versus them. This can be an efficient way to problematise the common conflation of individuals with structures (e.g. nation-states). • Andreas argues for a different concept as a primary focus in the field of interculturality: inequality. The theoretical concept of inequality can take different forms, for example, as hierarchies of power in education as discussed by Rancière or as ‘regimes of inequality’—that is, structures of inequality that are regarded as unchangeable and almost natural. • Delinking is a concept that Andreas brings to the table, capturing the idea of breaking loose from established power structures on a macro-­ level. Spelled out this way it is clearly relevant for both authors in activating historical perspectives and looking at the world from different angles. Here it becomes evident that there already are multiple movements going on all the time in competing circuits around the world, outside of what is known as Westernised globalisation. The relevance of intercultural communication education for educators reveals that to ask why interculturality should be relevant is hard to separate from the question how. The authors are somewhat struggling with motivating why intercultural communication education, as it normally is taught, should matter for educators. The simple answer is that there is very little to find of value. Nevertheless, both authors think that these are highly important issues in contemporary societies and by re-thinking the field there will actually be many answers to this specific question. We have also argued that we can learn about interculturality and its theoretical concepts by connecting the now to historical events.

40 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

Question for the Reader Revisit your own views of history, what kind of knowledge have you been taught about it? What kinds of intercultural encounters come to mind? Think further if there is anything in these historical events that can teach you something about interculturality today.

References Conrad, S. (2016). What is global history? Princeton University Press. Goody, J. (2006). The theft of history. Cambridge University Press. Maffesoli, M. (2000). The time of the tribes: The decline of individualism in mass society. Sage. Mignolo, W.  D., & Walsh, C.  E. (2018). On decoloniality: Concepts, analytics, praxis. Duke University Press. Mignolo, W. D. (2007). Delinking: The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of decoloniality. Cultural Studies, 21(2)–3, 449–514. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162647 Mignolo, W. D. (2011). The darker side of Western modernity: Global futures, decolonial options. Duke University Press. Musil, R. (2015). The man without qualities. Pan Macmillan. Nail, T. (2015). The figure of the migrant. Stanford University Press. Nail, T. (2019). Being and motion. Oxford University Press. Piketty, T. (2020). Capital and ideology. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Rancière, J. (1991). The ignorant schoolmaster: Five lessons in intellectual emancipation. Stanford University Press. Rancière, J. (2009). The emancipated spectator. Verso. Therborn, G. (2013). The killing fields of inequality. Polity Press.

CHAPTER 5

Teaching About Interculturality

Abstract  This chapter makes recommendations for teaching about interculturality. The authors suggest introducing and problematising different ways of thinking about the notion and letting students evaluate theoretical and methodical stances. Both authors give examples of how they introduce this polysemy in their teaching. They also warn against using models of intercultural competence since they might give a false sense of­ ‘invincibility’ and preparedness for interculturality, which, the authors argue, cannot be achieved. Keywords  Theoretical stances • Dialogicality • Models • Minzu • Ideologies • Independent thinking

(F.D.) Going back to what I was writing earlier, I have stopped believing that teaching ‘tricks’ to help students communicate with ‘people from other cultures’ is useful. I even believe that so-called critical approaches—in my own previous work too—may not be so useful. As much as the way we define interculturality and the concepts that go with it cannot but be political and ideological, determining how we teach interculturality might lead to similar problems and have too big of an impact on our students.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dervin, A. Jacobsson, Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7_5

41

42 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

A few days ago, I was interviewing Chinese students who had taken a course on intercultural communication, about what they had learnt and how they felt about the course. I realised that they had experienced exactly the same as what Finnish students do when they study intercultural communication: depending on the teacher, they had been ‘brainwashed’ to believe in certain narratives about ‘good’ intercultural communication. For example, many seemed to recite Geert Hofstede’s work or—those who had a more ‘critical’ teacher—would refer to the British scholar Adrian Holliday’s ideologies, presenting them as the only ‘truth’ in terms of what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. These students did not seem to be aware of alternative ideologies—note I say ‘seem’. However, it is important to bear in mind that students are not mere ‘parrots’. During the same interviews, when they referred to specific individual intercultural encounters, the elements the students had been spoon-fed with did not materialise in their discourses. Actually, alternative critical ideologies such as intercultural similarities were identified. One of my former doctoral students (Tournebise, 2014) who had done a similar study in Finland identified the same problem amongst teachers of intercultural communication: either they stuck to one ideological perspective (e.g. Byram’s model) or they used a mix of ideologies which, when combined, were very contradictory (e.g. Hofstede and Holliday). The teachers did not seem to be aware of the economic-political ideologies behind the ‘big names’ they followed (e.g. Hofstede did his research for a multinational company and was an entrepreneur; Byram works for the Council of Europe). What we teach and how we teach it in intercultural communication education is thus based on (subjective but also uninformed) preferences, which limit the range of ideologies and perspectives that can enrich the students’ awareness of the real complexity of intercultural interventions and encounters. Today, when I teach about interculturality, this is what I want the students to do: explore as many ideological positions about interculturality from around the world as possible so that they can identify differences and similarities, agendas, political backgrounds, key figures and silenced voices. In a similar vein I insist on students focusing on the continuum of difference-similarity to approach the Other. There is a tendency in intercultural communication to focus solely on difference, while ignoring potential similarities and differences. The French Sinologist Romain Graziani (2019) gives as examples of ‘universal’ similarities: the fear of being unable to sleep or of performing badly when, for example, giving an oral presentation.

5  TEACHING ABOUT INTERCULTURALITY 

43

Let me discuss my current research with my colleagues at Minzu University of China (e.g. Yuan et al., 2020), where we have put together a critical and reflexive literacy of intercultural approaches, which can serve as an example of what and how to teach interculturality. Through discussions with my colleagues, we decided to orient our teaching towards a more metacognitive perspective of interculturality. It is not a question of choosing and favouring a specific approach (Minzu, intercultural or global, among others) which would ‘format’ the students, but to offer the possibility of exploring these different ideologies, and of learning how to analyse them, and to decide about their compatibility, value and usefulness. Figure 5.1 shows the three closely related elements with which we have worked. We use three metaphors to describe this model: the fold, the handshake and the magic mirror. I review briefly these three aspects in what follows: 1. The fold is a direct reference to French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s comment about the way his book on the fold was welcomed by his readers (Deleuze, 1988). In his Abécédaire, Deleuze (1996) shares his surprise at the letters that he received after the book was published. Letters from a club of origamists, surfers (among others), gave him the impression that all these readers had read his book on a particular phenomenon (the fold) from their own interests and experiences and that they all claimed in their own way that “the fold

The fold The handshake The magic mirror

• Identify positions, ideologies and agendas • Problematise, accept, combine and/or reject • Depaysement • Translation beyond assimilation • Problematise ‘untranslatables’

• Similarity-difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’ • Power relations between ideologies

Fig. 5.1  The fold, the handshake and the magic mirror

44 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

is me!” (Deleuze, 1996). Similar to the complexity represented by the fold, as I said before, the ideologies of interculturality are multiple, sometimes similar or different, sometimes largely influenced by powerful international voices. This is why we first had to train the students to identify the different orientations, ideologies and agendas behind any discourse and any perspective on interculturality. During a 12-week course, we therefore reviewed certain approaches drawn from educational and communication sciences, and analysed together the words and concepts used in each of them, in order to identify the underlying ideologies. This work was accompanied by discussions between the students and our team on what seemed to be acceptable, combinable and/or what should be rejected. Through these discussions and the awareness of the diversity of perspectives, processes of folding, unfolding and folding again were carried out. Elements of dialogical discourse analysis, which go beyond the surface of discourse and which allow ideologies to emerge, were very useful in making this work possible (see Dervin, 2016). 2. The magic mirror is a Chinese invention dating back to the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–24 CE). Made of bronze, the mirror has two sides: one side with bronze designs and another, convex and polished, which serves as a mirror. When one holds the mirror in the sun, its reflective surface projects the bronze designs onto a surface (e.g. a white wall). One can look in the mirror and see what was printed on the other side. We use this metaphor to suggest the importance of observing both the differences and similarities between approaches to interculturality from diverse contexts. At the same time, by looking at these elements in the mirror, we wanted the students to look at the ideological power relations between these approaches and the possible reasons for the ‘stifling’ of certain ideological voices. The perspective adopted by the French philosopher and sinologist F. Jullien (in Neuer, 2018, n.p.) is interesting in this sense: “by organizing a vis-à-vis between Chinese and European thoughts, I make them reflect on each other, one by the other. That is to say, to probe into the other its own theoretical biases, the buried choices from which it thought, in short, to go back into its unthought. Each thus ‘un-builds’ through the other. I call ‘unthought’, that from which we think and that, by the same token, we do not think” (our translation). Reflecting on each other, probing into the other (and self), unthinking and ‘un-building’ through

5  TEACHING ABOUT INTERCULTURALITY 

45

the other and oneself, as I see it, are core working methods in interculturality. 3. The handshake is a metaphor that we borrowed from the New York-­ based writer and translator of German literature Ross Benjamin (2013) to designate the critical and reflexive work of translation when we work on such a complex object as interculturality. Benjamin (2013, n.p.) writes about what happens between an author and a translator this way: “With the handshake you are reaching out to them and you are also asking for their trust.” Our objective with this third point is to encourage students to question the meanings of the words used to speak of interculturality. For instance, words such as respect, tolerance, civilisation, which are often used to speak of the intercultural, do not necessarily have the same meanings and/or connotations in different languages. This is problematic because, when our students talk about interculturality in English, the meaning they give to concepts and notions is not always contained in the words they use in English. Billetier (n.d.) gives an interesting example from the Chinese word tao, which is often translated as process or The Way: In a dialogue imagined by the philosopher Tchouang-tseu, Confucius sees a swimmer frolicking at ease in tumultuous waters and then literally asks him, “Do you have a swimming tao?” The sinologist could translate by “Do you have a way of swimming?”, but also, more simply, by “Is there a technique to swim?” The handshake is thus here about questioning, problematising and creating connections between Chinese and English. To sum up, the model of critical and reflexive literacy of intercultural approaches that we proposed in Beijing leads students to not be satisfied with a single ideology that would be imposed on them, but to observe and study the diversity of ideologies of intercultural approaches, notably through translation and discourse analyses. Based on their findings, they can question their own beliefs and ideologies to determine, if possible, what seems personally acceptable, combinable or to be rejected in the approaches presented to them. The method leads to asking questions, without necessarily finding answers. It could nevertheless allow students to develop a critical sense in dealing with intercultural approaches. Table 5.1 presents the types of questions which can be asked when familiarising ourselves with a specific intercultural approach:

46 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

Table 5.1  Questions to ask when examining intercultural ideologies Where does the approach come from? How was it created and by whom? What information about the authors can you identify? What political and economic influences? What broad ideological positions? What concepts are used in the approach? What definitions? Do you know how to translate these concepts into other languages? What words are difficult to translate? What are the problems with this approach in your context? Are the ideologies compatible with the ideologies of your country, of your institution? How do people see these perspectives in other contexts? What criticisms have been made of this intercultural model?

(A.J.) This is a key question and a very hard one to answer. Probably the hardest question when it comes to intercultural communication education. I move back and forth between saying that it is impossible to answer to stating a few (for me) obvious things. But to start somewhere and to be perfectly honest it is about a more or less utopian strive for understanding, and to be able to analyse a global/universal smörgåsbord of ‘knowledge’, without instigating a biased process of universalisation of knowledge—that is to say to fall into the trap of reproducing a Eurocentric modernity about which Mignolo alerts us with the concept of ‘delinking’. This is of course at the same time an ideal as it is idealistic nonsense—but still, I can’t let go of this idealistic tendency at this moment. To be more concrete teaching about intercultural communication education is not to help students to develop intercultural competence by acquiring a functionalist skill set that will assist to identify how cultural values are integrated in the societal structure and how this is connected to how one is expected to behave in certain situations and contexts. It is from my perspective to create an understanding of theoretical concepts from different perspectives, while developing a global historical consciousness, a contextual sensibility and an overview of different political ideologies that are at play simultaneously in different parts of the world. This could, for example, be done by: • Including diverse course materials that open for different perspectives in class, • Problematising notions, ideas, philosophies and ideologies,

5  TEACHING ABOUT INTERCULTURALITY 

47

• Working with preconceived ideas and destabilising ideological tensions, • Analysing stories and depictions of interculturality (by using films, literature and art to connect to the emotional aspects of interculturality), • Addressing the fluidity of culture while delinking from Eurocentric structures, • Handing over the development of knowledge to the students in class (to take Rancière seriously and destabilising intellectual power hierarchies). When I start a course, one of the first things I talk about is the importance of thinking, looking at and analysing interculturality from different perspectives. One of the most important aspects of intercultural communication education is to be open to shifting perspectives. But this is not an easy task. To say that it is required to look at things from different angles is clearly not the same as actually doing this. The main problem here is that it takes time, extensive reading, discussions and dialogues to open for perspectives and analyse ‘polycentrically’—in line with Shohat and Stam to look from different centres at the same time through specific, but interlinked, analytical perspectives (see, e.g. Andreotti, 2014). But time is scarce, not the least in higher education. A true challenge for the students is to break through the Eurocentric educational framework that they have been steeped in all through their educational journey. Here I use some required readings that will at least trigger reactions from the students, for example, the provocative collection of articles, Can Non-Europeans Think? (2015), by Hamid Dasbashi and the seminal article ‘Delinking’ (2007) by Walter Mignolo. Both these texts propose a radical break with Eurocentric universalist intellectual ambitions.

[Pause] Commonalities: • Teaching interculturality is to open for and problematise different ways of thinking and letting students independently evaluate a smörgåsbord of theoretical stances.

48 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

• Teaching interculturality is dialogical in the sense that it is based on constantly ongoing interactions between teachers, students, materials, ideas and perspectives. • Teaching interculturality is not to present models or skills sets. Differences: • Fred presents his experience of teaching interculturality in class together with colleagues at Minzu University of China and describes how to teach students to scrutinise different theoretical frameworks and ideologies in the field, encouraging them both to evaluate knowledge and become independent thinkers. • Andreas tries to achieve a similar result by providing students with reading materials that hopefully will provoke reactions about theoretical diversity and different ideologies. In this chapter the authors briefly present how to work with an updated and to a certain extent rethought and problematised intercultural communication education. But these are only a few examples of how this could be done. Much is still to be said on how to teach interculturality and more will be said about this topic in the next chapter. But one should not as a reader expect an exhaustive description of teaching methodology. This is neither possible nor desirable. If we expect our students to develop independent thinking about interculturality we teachers are expected to do the same. We have to educate ourselves about critical theory, economics, global feminism, philosophy, politics, postcolonial thinking, world history and so on and so forth. Interculturality is a demanding as well as rewarding field of study. Questions for the Reader Do you have any experience of trying different theoretical perspectives on interculturality? What kind of teaching methodology would you like to try out experimentally in class to introduce different perspectives on interculturality? How would you help students to visualise different ideologies about interculturality in the field?

5  TEACHING ABOUT INTERCULTURALITY 

49

References Andreotti, V. (2014). The educational challenges of imagining the world differently. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue Canadienne d’études du développement, 37(1), 101–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/0225518 9.2016.1134456 Benjamin, R. (2013). The translator relay. Words without Borders. https://www. wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/the-­t ranslator-­r elay-­r oss­benjamin Billetier, J.-F. (n.d.). Interpreting China for the West—Jean François Billeter. Retrieved September 18, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=cthAXVJuu_Y Dabashi, H. (2015). Can non-Europeans think? Zed Books. Deleuze, G. (1988). The fold: Leibniz and the baroque. Continuum. Deleuze, G. (1996). Gilles Deleuze from A to Z (DVD). The MIT Press. Dervin, F. (2016). Interculturality in education: A theoretical and methodological toolbox. Palgrave Macmillan. Graziani, R. (2019). L’usage du Vide. Essai sur l’intelligence de l’action de l’Europe à la Chine. Gallimard, Bibliothèque des Idées, Paris. Mignolo, W. D. (2007). Delinking: The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of decoloniality. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 449–514. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162647 Neuer, J.-J. (2018). Débat: Quand la Chine nous aide à penser l’identité européenne. https://theconversation.com/debat-­quand-­la-­chine-­nous-­aide-­a-­penser­lidentite-­europeenne-­102231 Tournebise, C. (2014). Enseigner l’interculturel dans le supérieur: quels discours et approches d’un concept ambigu à l’heure de l’internationalisation? Le cas de la Finlande. Humanoria. Yuan, M. S., Wang, T., Zhang, W., Chen, N., Simpson, A., & Dervin, F. (2020). Chinese Minzu education in higher education: An inspiration for ‘western’ diversity education? British Journal of Educational Studies, 68(4), 461–486. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2020.1712323

CHAPTER 6

What to Do with Our Intercultural Experiences?

Abstract  This chapter calls for educators’ own experience to be taken into account when they teach about interculturality. However, educators should remember not to focus on successful examples of intercultural encounters but to introduce ‘failed’ examples, while questioning idealistic cosmopolitan views on interculturality. Analysing these moments ‘realistically’ for and with students represents a good way of making interculturality concrete while reminding the students that no one is ‘better’ at doing interculturality. While we require students to be critical and reflexive, we as educators need to show the way. Keywords  Hierarchy • Personal experience • Cosmopolitanism • Inequality • De-mystify

(F.D.) Let me start with a quote from Romanian writer Cioran (1911–1995) who says about a book: “Woe to the book you can read without constantly wondering about the author!” (1985, p. 37). I would argue the same for teachers (and researchers for that matter!). Sometimes, there seems to be a commonsensical idea that the educator’s life experience should not enter the classroom. Yet educators’ experiences of the intercultural at home, abroad and/or online are relevant for teaching and learning about it. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dervin, A. Jacobsson, Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7_6

51

52 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

Often, teachers will present theories about specific intercultural phenomena to help the students analyse what they have already experienced or will experience in the future. They might use, for example, (short) videos or excerpts from novels to illustrate the points made and help the students apply the theories that they are learning to these documents. These are, of course, very useful. I believe, however, that educators should refer to, share and reflect openly (and critically!) about their own intercultural experiences with their students. They should unpack them, co-analyse them and perform them in different ways with the students. For Black (2015, p. 92): “It is time to stop communicating the message that being professional requires distancing ourselves from our inner lives. It is time to ‘let our life speak’.” Interculturality is often dealt with as being a problem. When teachers include their own experiences, they could balance ‘success’ and ‘failure’. It is thus important that teachers show students that their own intercultural experiences were sometimes successful and explain why in a ‘modest way’, presenting their explanations of the success as being based on their own subjective positions. On other occasions, they should also discuss intercultural experiences that appeared not to be successful and why, as people involved in intercultural encounters, they triggered, contributed, co-­ constructed and experienced unpleasant ‘performances’ around solid identities (stereotypes and representations), acts of non-­understanding and misunderstanding, injustice and discrimination, racism. This is important as students need to realise that no one is immune to such phenomena and that no one can claim not to have triggered them—teachers included! In many research papers about the contested concept of intercultural competence, students’ performances are put to the test by researchers, who also regularly act as educators in their own research. Students often get judged and evaluated by means of problematic ideologies that are not always transparent to the students (the best arguments against the assessment of intercultural competence are found in Zarate & Gohard-­ Radenkovic, 2004; see also Dervin, 2007). This indirectly could make students believe that their teachers are ‘superheroes’ of interculturality. I believe that, by introducing reflexively and critically their own intercultural experiences, teachers can ‘step down from their pedestal’ and present interculturality from a humble, reflexive and critical position to students.

6  WHAT TO DO WITH OUR INTERCULTURAL EXPERIENCES? 

53

In other words, when it comes to interculturality, although one might be more advanced in terms of knowledge about, for example, how interculturality functions, no one can ‘do’ it perfectly, no one is invincible. For students this could help them feel more relaxed about intercultural encounters.

(A.J.) Every time I talk to other people (e.g. university teachers, researchers, university administrative personnel, Deans and/or the general public) the idea seems to be shared that intercultural competence/knowledge is something that comes naturally if you have travelled, lived abroad, migrated or if you represent an ‘ethnic minority’. It is other people who have to take courses to learn about ‘doing’ interculturality. This is obviously a flawed and disturbingly essentialist idea. But more importantly it reveals a general ignorance regarding the field of intercultural communication education. Interculturality is a term that has caught the attention of many people but it is as used and abused as the notion of culture (Dervin, 2015)—and many times for the same reason—to explain why ethnic groups behave and think in a certain way. Despite this reservation, life experience is clearly something that can and also should inspire intercultural communication education. It can inspire in the simplest form by providing examples. It should inspire in the sense that life experience is part of being a teacher. Does this mean that you have to travel and study abroad? No, that is not required and this has to do with how we understand life experience. It is clearly an advantage if your life experience has made you aware of different perspectives, diversity and ideological underpinnings of globalised structures and instigated an idea of what equality and inequality might mean. But how you have gathered this experience is not necessarily relevant. Travelling and upholding a cosmopolitan persona of being a world citizen may help you pass as a genuine interculturalist in certain circles. But this is an idea that is connected to the old-fashioned thinking about interculturality and reproduces essentialist structures. This issue actually points us in the direction of discussing the distinction between the entitled position of cosmopolitanism and what we are trying to achieve when we activate the concept of interculturality.

54 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

[Pause] Commonalities: • When teaching educators’ own experience could be very beneficial for different reasons: to de-mystify the role of the teacher as the infallible expert and thereby decrease the power hierarchy between teachers and students (see Rancière and ‘intellectual inequality’ in Chap. 3). • Using personal experience does not mean that interculturality requires, for example, that the teacher has done this or that from an intercultural perspective or that interculturality comes naturally with experience. Differences: • Andreas introduces the term cosmopolitan to contrast a ‘Western’ idealisation of the ‘modern traveller’ or ‘world citizen’ that blends in and feels at home no matter where they live. The cosmopolitan is basically an affluent and privileged position that emanates from a Eurocentric understanding of globalisation (Castells, 2009, p. 118). This position implies inequality. What we are trying to implement here is a critical perspective on inequality and interculturality by breaking down cosmopolitanism and similar positions of power. In general life experience is often regarded as a qualification for interculturality by outsiders to the field, not the least when it comes to university administration, media discourse and unexperienced students. This fact could itself discourage teachers and researchers from using their own life as empirical material. Even though we are well aware of this conundrum we still believe that we should activate our own experience while being cautious not to reproduce naïve cosmopolitanism. Questions for the Reader What is your experience of using your own life experience in your teaching? Does it feel comfortable/uncomfortable to include it?

6  WHAT TO DO WITH OUR INTERCULTURAL EXPERIENCES? 

55

References Black, A.  L. (2015). Authoring a life: Writing ourselves in/out of our work in education. In M.  Baguley, Y.  Findlay, & M.  C. Kirby (Eds.), Meanings and motivation in education research (pp. 72–94). Routledge. Castells, M. (2009). Communication power. Oxford University Press. Cioran, É. (1985). Drawn and quartered. Seaver Books. Dervin, F. (2007). Evaluer l’interculturel: problématiques et pistes de travail. In F.  Dervin & E.  Suomela-Salmi (Eds.), Évaluer les compétences langagières et interculturelles dans l’enseignement supérieur (pp.  95–122). Turku University Press. Dervin, F. (2015). Towards post-intercultural teacher education: Analyzing ‘extreme’ intercultural dialogue to reconstruct interculturality. European Journal of Teacher Education, 38(1), 71–86. https://doi.org/10.108 0/02619768.2014.902441 Zarate, G., & Gohard-Radenkovic, A. (Eds.). (2004). La reconnaissance des compétences interculturelles: de la grille à la carte. Didier FLE.

CHAPTER 7

Does Intercultural Communication Education Work?

Abstract  Since there is no such thing as a unitary and unified way of thinking about and doing intercultural communication education it is difficult to determine a general sense of success in the field. Different ideologies lead to different definitions of success and failure. The question of success of and in intercultural communication education should not be reduced to spelling out sub-competences that students need to tick for proving they can solve intercultural issues. The authors thus argue that educators should include work on more macro-perspectives in intercultural communication education that reviews systematically the importance of economic-politico-ideological elements and a critical analysis of issues of inequality and injustice in intercultural encounters. Keywords  Intercultural communication education • The individual • Tolerance • Intercultural competence • Macro-perspectives • The economy • Ideologies • Imaginaries

(F.D.) As we were writing this book during summer 2020, in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis, my first ‘natural’ reaction would be to answer in the negative: intercultural communication education has failed around the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dervin, A. Jacobsson, Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7_7

57

58 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

world. Spring and summer 2020 have witnessed many dreadful ‘intercultural shocks’: unfair culturalist comparisons about hygiene, individualism/ collectivism and so on; multifaceted forms of racism, discrimination and social injustice against people of colour; obvious Sinophobia and fear of the ‘yellow peril’; acerbated stereotyping against countries such as Italy, Sweden and the USA but also cities and regions (Wuhan, Grenoble) (Dervin et al., 2020). We could easily blame the virus for these evils but what the COVID-19 crisis seemed to have done was to unveil the way we manipulate discourses of culture and difference to hide economic-­politico-­ ideological ‘battles’ between ‘us’ and ‘them’. However, let’s not forget that acts of solidarity and anti-racism have also emerged during the crisis. But it does not feel right to draw the conclusion that intercultural communication education has failed in recent times since there is actually no such thing as a unitary and unified way of thinking about and doing intercultural communication education. As I said earlier there is a wide range of perspectives and approaches in the world that deal with issues of diversity in education, but they tend to diverge in terms of ideologies, objectives, methods and so on. It is then difficult to say that intercultural communication education as a whole has failed. What is more, interculturality is dealt with in many different ways and places in education, implicitly and/or explicitly. For instance, some teachers get trained to work with it and think about it (others don’t); students can be introduced to it at different levels of the curriculum, either directly (e.g. in language education) or indirectly (history lessons). From my own perspective, if I think about teacher education, on the one hand, and the teaching of interculturality in the broad field of intercultural communication education in one of my contexts, Finland, I would argue that the wide range of (often) uncritical perspectives that give too much space to the ideology of (national) culture as an explanatory and comparative force have definitely failed to change Finnish society. It is hard to say when forms of intercultural communication education started and where exactly in Finland, but in 2020, the country is still experiencing a lot of racism, xenophobia, discrimination against certain minorities (certain migrants, and e.g. Saami people in the North of the country). In general, there appears to be a considerable sense of ethnocentrism, whereby people are made to believe that ‘their’ country, culture, people and even language are better, more serious, more democratic, happier and so on than other countries/‘cultures’. This often leads to structural racism, mistrust towards the Other and segregation of non-Finns.

7  DOES INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION EDUCATION WORK? 

59

Last week I was analysing some data with one of my PhD students, interviews of Finnish lecturers who work with international students in Finnish universities. It was quite puzzling to read the transcripts of the interviews. All the lecturers divided the students into clear-cut categories such as ‘hard-working versus lazy’, ‘critical versus uncritical’, ‘mature versus childish’, ‘respectful of rules versus disobedient’, systematically placing Finnish students in the ‘positive’ categories. ‘Asian’ students were always in the ‘negative’ ones. This is a bit worrying, especially as these teachers had worked with international students for a long time. I think that what shocked me most was their inability to think otherwise, to think about the students’ attitudes, mentalities and behaviours from a different perspective. Interestingly none of these university lecturers had taken any training in intercultural issues, “because we don’t need it”, as one of them explained. On the other hand, depending on the ideology of the training they might have received, had one been available, their categorisations of the students might have been confirmed and even reinforced. Finland, like other countries, is also experiencing daily banal racism and xenophobia. For example, in a supermarket yesterday, I realised that the labels of some food products still contained stereotypically racist representations of, for example, the ‘Chinaman’ (noodles1) or of an ‘old Turkish man’ (yoghurt) while so-called American gherkins were illustrated by means of the American flag and French bread by a French flag. These show that daily ‘commercial’ interculturality can still be very much limited to inferior, exotic and colonial views of certain people, which tend to boost the identity of the majority as more advanced, more civilised in a sense. In order to answer the question of the potential success of intercultural communication education more precisely, we would need to look at local educational contexts (teacher education and training, interactions in a specific classroom, textbooks, curricula, etc.) and then relate them to broader economic-politico-societal observations (e.g. potential acts of racism/ discrimination, omnipresence of ethnocentric discourses in tourism). That’s the only way we could observe the kind of intercultural communication education taking place, how coherent it is, what problems it is 1  When I shared a picture of the illustration representing an old Chinese farmer found on a pack of noodles with a Chinese colleague from Beijing, she did not see any ‘racism’ in this representation. She argued that if she saw this item in store, she would probably buy it, feeling attracted by the ‘bucolic’ image.

60 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

trying to solve, how it educates/trains people and how potentially successful it is. Yet the following problem remains: who can decide what is good/right in terms of what intercultural communication education should achieve and how successful it is? (see Dervin, 2016). These issues can vary according to the observer and to their own ideologies. Let me give an example. I do not believe that the idea of tolerance is a good goal for intercultural communication education. The idea of tolerance is too passive, I think: we look at each other from afar, maybe without entering into a dialogue that could help us go beyond the façade of tolerance (e.g. King, 1971). Dialogue is needed to create a sense of potential equality. By tolerating the other, we potentially create hierarchies between the one who is tolerated and the one who is empowered to tolerate. Tolerance is rarely untainted by equal access to it. I believe that interculturality (I think I am repeating myself here) should consist in co-constructing a relationship through making space for dialogue to emerge. Dialogue doesn’t mean that we should agree with each other and/or not argue, what it means here is to be as transparent as one can about what we want, what we agree and disagree with and are ready to accept. This is a very long and difficult task, which may never be fulfilled. I think that mere tolerance does not allow this since it forces people to ‘let go’ and/or, often, pretend to accept the other, and patronise them. Many educators and scholars would disagree with my ideology and thus have a different understanding of what success would be if relating interculturality to tolerance. Evaluating the success of intercultural communication education is impossible. What I might find successful might be considered as a failure by another educator.

(A.J.) If we take a closer look at the implementation of intercultural communication education at universities around the world the answer is definitely yes, intercultural communication education has been very successful. I would say it could be regarded as a sign of the contemporary times where diversity in all its forms has been uplifted to the forefront of educational discourse. Ideas about the importance of intercultural communication education (and multicultural education) have been spread all around the world during the last thirty years. There are, for example, a substantial amount of international conferences and a number of international

7  DOES INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION EDUCATION WORK? 

61

scholarly journals devoted to intercultural communication education (e.g. Intercultural Education, Language and Intercultural Communication, Multicultural Discourses, etc.). Intercultural communication and intercultural communication education have caught the attention of and been used by supranational institutions (UNESCO, Council of Europe), and interculturality has been implemented in teacher education programs and subsequently in curricula in many parts of the world. There are also numerous ‘experts’ and consultants selling their versions of intercultural competence services to educational institutions. So, in general, a widespread awareness of the term intercultural in educational settings and of interculturality as a functionalist intercultural competence is prevalent in education from a global perspective today. Intercultural communication education and interculturality have, from this perspective, been regarded as an answer to an array of problems connected with diversity in schools and with society at large. A dominating strand of intercultural communication education is in fact problem-oriented and practical and aimed at solving these (often loosely described) problems (e.g. Liu et  al., 2018). As we have already touched upon, the recipes provided by this strand are to get to know the Other and learn how to communicate with them, reduce stereotyping and study to develop new knowledge about the Other and travel to encounter them. To ‘sell’ the Other as a problem has been highly efficient for spreading the success of intercultural communication education (see all the spin-­ off research and practice that have been inspired by Hofstede and other business-oriented consultants like Fons Trompenaars, or the widespread ‘cultural mapping’ being presented by the World Values Survey, http:// www.worldvaluessurvey.org). To a high degree the approach to interculturality of connecting language and culture has been implemented by language teachers as an expansion of the subject to raise the popularity for language studies. This has gone hand in hand with the implementation of (the higher education politics of) internationalisation. Study abroad to be able to learn language, culture and tolerance has evolved into a veritable industry in higher education. The annexation of interculturality by language studies could be described as another form of success of intercultural communication education. But, as we already have discussed, interculturality can be many things and success can be measured differently depending on the onlooker’s perspective. With a slightly rephrased adjustment of the question, “has

62 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

intercultural communication education been helpful for teachers and students?”, a different and more complex pattern will appear. If the aim of intercultural communication education has been to raise awareness of diversity in education the answer still is yes, it has been successful. But if the aim has been to develop a more just and equal form of education the answer unfortunately and most probably has to be no. If the aim has been to help students to develop critical thinking in relation to interculturality the answer also clearly has to be no. This is in my mind the most problematic aspect of this question; highly complex issues have been reduced to an idea of competence—a skill set that you can learn and apply without questioning what you are doing. From the perspective of this book it is then a big problem that interculturality has been so successful, since it could be for the wrong reasons. The focus on functionalist competence goes hand in hand with an essentialist understanding of culture, that in many cases have directed intercultural communication education towards ‘culturalisation’ and racialisation rather than emancipation, imagining culture as determinism for the behaviour of individuals. An inherent systemic racism in most educational settings and the ‘racism of low expectations’ connected to migrants and pupils with migrant family backgrounds is a tough nut to crack. Intercultural communication education has to my knowledge not provided relevant tools to achieve a solution to this problem. The strong emphasis on identifying and reducing stereotypes in intercultural communication education is leading nowhere. Quite often research on stereotypes is in itself stereotypical, reducing the analysis of stereotypes to identifying good or bad or right or wrong images/imaginaries. As Mireille Rosello argues stereotypes “are always at the service of some ideological system, but they cannot be reduced to the system” (1998, p. 16). To make a radical difference is not possible without also altering societal and financial (capitalistic) structures. From this perspective criticising stereotypes is just a façade covering up that intercultural communication education is predominantly Eurocentric and deterministic. To conclude my reasoning, the success of intercultural communication education is both harmless and dangerous at the same time. Since intercultural communication education has been predominantly oriented towards language studies, political, economic and ideological superstructures have been left unaffected by the implementation of interculturality in teacher education. It has been depicted as a nice and well-meaning strand of teaching, helping us and the Other to get along in our globalised societies by

7  DOES INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION EDUCATION WORK? 

63

focusing on cultural differences, but far too seldom has interculturality posed a threat to the institutionalised structures of education in different contexts, or how, for example, the implementation of New Public Management in Higher Education has redirected the focus from academic knowledge towards an administrative overload and commodification of education, to the regimes of inequality and precarity, or the ideology of global neoliberal capitalism (see, e.g. Beach, 2013).

[Pause] In this section we both agree on the following central points about the success of intercultural communication education: • There is no such thing as a unitary and unified way of thinking about and doing intercultural communication education so it is difficult to determine a general sense of success for/in the field. Different ideologies lead to different definitions of success and failure—or maybe something else. • The current practise of focusing solely on the individual whereby educators assess students’ success around knowledge about cultural difference, signs of tolerance and intercultural competence is unsatisfactory. • There is a need to include work on more macro-perspectives in intercultural communication education that reviews systematically the importance of economic-politico-ideological elements and a critical analysis of issues of inequality and injustice in intercultural encounters. In terms of differences: • Andreas started from a somewhat provocative argument: because interculturality is everywhere in education around the world, it has been somewhat of a success. Yet he shifted to a negative answer when he reiterated that intercultural communication education is ­multifaceted and thus impossible to generalise. Fred’s entire answer was based on this very argument. • At the beginning of his answer, Andreas notes the wide range of educational actions that have somewhat boosted interculturality, while Fred refers to some of the many and varied ideologies around interculturality.

64 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

• Andreas criticises the obsession with the idea of intercultural competence in education, which tends to reduce very complex ideas to mere performances and ‘tricks’ to deal with interculturality. To sum up, the question of success of and in intercultural communication education should not be reduced to spelling out sub-competences that students need to tick for proving they can solve intercultural issues (culture shock, stereotyping cultural difference, etc.). Imaginaries of the influence of (national) culture and stereotype avoidance cannot be the only means of training students for interculturality. These must be related to broader forces that influence intercultural processes. So, it should not be about, for example, comparing stereotypes to the ‘reality’ or getting rid of stereotypes about ‘us’ and ‘them’, but to examine them in order to see what they tell us about ideologies at broader levels (so-called structures). Teachers then need to be trained to prepare students to analyse and (potentially) act upon the central position of societal and financial (capitalistic) structures. This is why what is happening inside the classroom must be systematically linked to the outside world, especially in relation to economic-­political ideologies and relations. Questions for the Reader While the field of intercultural communication education tends to repeat that one must be successful in intercultural encounters, and avoid, for example, miscommunication, problems of non-understanding, stereotyping and so on, the issue of failure is often avoided. Why do you think it is so? Shouldn’t failure be discussed, analysed and faced? What could we gain from including this important and common experience of interculturality?

References Beach, D. (2013). Changing higher education: Converging policy-packages and experiences of changing academic work in Sweden. Journal of Education Policy, 28(4), 517–533. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2013.782426 Dervin, F. (2016). Interculturality in education: A theoretical and methodological toolbox. Palgrave Macmillan.

7  DOES INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION EDUCATION WORK? 

65

Dervin, F., Chen, N., Yuan, M., Sude, & Jacobsson, A. (2020). COVID-19 and interculturality: First lessons for teacher educators. Education and Society, 38(1), 89–106. https://doi.org/10.7459/es/38.1.06 King, P. (1971). The problem of tolerance. Government and Opposition, 6, 172–207. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-­7053.1971.tb01215.x Liu, S., Volčič, Z., & Gallois, C. (2018). Introducing intercultural communication: Global cultures and contexts. Sage. Rosello, M. (1998). Declining the stereotype: Ethnicity and representation in French cultures. University Press of New England.

CHAPTER 8

Researching Intercultural Communication Education

Abstract  This chapter delineates problems identified in research on interculturality. Since research has a major influence on teachers and teacher educators, it is essential to be aware of these problems. The authors note that there is a lack of awareness of the wide range of ideologies of interculturality available around the world and some particular ideologies dominate in research. They also argue that there is a need to be transparent about economic-political positions ‘hiding’ behind all ideologies about interculturality in research. Finally, the authors call for meaningful dialogues between scholars and educators. Keywords  Dominating ideologies • ‘Western’ democracy • Economic-­ political positions • Cooperation • Silenced voices • Language • Decolonising

(F.D.) The broad field of intercultural communication education is often said to have emerged after the Second World War, with people like the American anthropologist E.T. Hall (1914–2009). Seventy years later, where do we stand? I think that I have already discussed these issues earlier but this can serve as a summary:

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dervin, A. Jacobsson, Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7_8

67

68 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

• People might not always be aware of their ideologies about interculturality and believe that they are the ‘right’ and ‘only’ acceptable ones. There is a need to recognise economic-political positions ‘hiding’ behind them. We scholars might also lack knowledge about other ways of thinking about and problematising interculturality (e.g. outside the ‘West’ and in languages other than their own and English). • It seems to me that the field is too divided at the moment between culturalism (culture as the only explanation for everything, see the Hofstedian legacy, Holliday, 2010) that seems to be very resistant, regardless of the critiques that have been addressed to it, and critical perspectives that want to do away with culturalism but are bound to fail to propose anything that can be realistically transformative as they tend to fall into the trap of relativism, that is, nothing is absolute (that has been my case for a long time), or into political projects that are not recognised as such by their authors and do not always allow dialogue (e.g. certain forms of anti-racist education, postcolonial education, etc.). All these ideologies, and the ‘intercultural-­ speak’ that goes with them, float past each other and do not seem to enter into meaningful dialogues. • One issue I am concerned about is the lack of concrete cooperation between people of different subfields of interculturality (e.g. interculturalidad and Finnish multicultural education, if there is such a thing). In my work with Minzu scholars in China, we have tried to circumvent this issue seriously. Unlike the cooperation I have had with other scholars in China, their intellectual sphere is different from mine. What I mean is that the Chinese scholars I have worked with have all been trained to think through the literature in English, so we speak somewhat the same language and believe that we understand each other.1 With my Minzu colleagues, because their field is interculturality but from a different perspective, their ways of thinking about diversity in education are somewhat different from mine. So, we have to negotiate words and epistemologies all the time. I believe that it is only through this hard work that we can try to think

1  The journal 跨文化研究论丛 (半年刊) (Intercultural Studies Forum), published by BFSU Press in China, represents a good attempt to try to add ‘Chinese’ knowledge to the field: https://www.bfsujournals.com/c/2019-07-18/486528.shtml

8  RESEARCHING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION EDUCATION 

69

about interculturality differently—or in fairer ways for the ones we observe, educate and train. • Another problem is a lack of systematic and coherent training. For example, at the University of Helsinki, student teachers do not have to take any course about intercultural issues during their training, it is all optional. So only the motivated and somewhat ‘converted’ ones take intercultural courses. This could have a negative influence on research. • The last issue I see is that of language. As I mentioned earlier, we need to systematically interrogate the words that we use when we talk about interculturality (see Piller’s (2017) communicative relativism). In our own languages and in languages we use as lingua francas such as English or French, with our colleagues and students, when we say X, do we mean the same X? If not, how do we renegotiate meanings that lead to ‘real’ dialogues, especially in research?

(A.J.) The main problems of the field can be captured in the following five points: 1. How to deal with the dominating Eurocentric perspective on interculturality, often masked as universal common sense and still dominating the field in many different parts of the world. The concepts that are used in the field were pretty much all developed from a Eurocentric perspective in a time (1950s–1970s) when the conceptualisation of the world still was based on the ‘three-world model (according to which the world in the light of the Cold War consisted of three distinct categories: the first world was the ‘Western’ capitalist bloc; the second world was the Eastern socialist bloc; and the third world was the non-aligned so-called developing countries). The political context has completely changed but the concepts have remained the same. The critique of anthropology that Johannes Fabian (2014) captured with the term ‘allochronic’ (to fixate in time by writing) is useful to highlight this specific problem of intercultural communication education. Fabian criticised the fact that the production of knowledge about different people and cultures was frozen in time when it was published in anthropological reports and books as the ‘truth’ of culture. The world changed and people changed, but the anthropological Other was preserved in the books and reports and in the thinking of anthropologists. With this lug-

70 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

gage of concepts there is an almost insurmountable obstacle facing anyone that seriously challenge the Eurocentrism of intercultural communication education: how to delink from the established framework without losing touch with the community of teachers we are aiming to reach out to? 2. How to implement an idea of process as primary and as contextually situated. It is not enough to state that we are thinking about interculturality as a process without re-thinking and actually updating the theoretical concepts. It is also not enough to conflate contexts by comparing them without properly thinking through the parameters and without fully understanding the differences in time and geography (Stam & Shohat, 2009). 3. To widen the scope from a focus on otherness and difference on an individual basis, to implement a thinking on how structures establish difference on a variety of societal levels, that is, covering a wider field of knowledge including economics, politics and history (see, e.g. Esteva & Prakash, 2014; Shiva, 1993). 4. As a reply to the ambition in point 3, to realise that decolonialisation of intercultural communication education requires a decolonised way of thinking for everyone. To include new course material that provides updated facts and to be open for different perspectives is all well and fine, but it is not possible to cover all angles in a subject— what really matters is how we think and analyse interculturally. 5. Finally, going full circle and end where I started and try to find a way to communicate the complexity of non-Eurocentric interculturality to teachers and teacher educators efficiently without simplifying the ideas too much. To summarise the main points I made here: • How to implement interculturality as a process? • How to take into account structures? • How to decolonise knowledge about interculturality? • How to deal with the dominating Eurocentric perspective on interculturality? • How to communicate the complexity of non-Eurocentric interculturality? All these problems are connected to the identity of the field of intercultural communication education and interculturality. In most academic

8  RESEARCHING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION EDUCATION 

71

contexts interculturality is regarded as an add-on to, or an aspect of, other subjects and this is a complicating factor for clarifying what the field should and/or could potentially be. Debating these issues could be described as a conflicting endeavour focusing on the one hand on how a contemporary understanding of interculturality can be formed when so many different interests and non-specialists are involved in the production of what is understood as intercultural knowledge, and on the other hand to find out to what degree intercultural communication education is integrated in other subjects of higher education in different parts of the world. It is obviously frustrating to be entangled in a field in need of liberation from stifling Eurocentric frameworks dressed up as good intentions and in acute need of a theoretical re-thinking emanating in the development of practically a new discipline. But this is actually not a unique situation; it is something our field has in common with most other subjects in the Humanities and Social sciences. The blindfolds of Eurocentric frameworks may be more firmly attached and less conspicuous in other subjects, but they will have to fall eventually.

[Pause] Similarities in the way we answered the problems faced by the field include: • There is a lack of awareness of the wide range of ideologies of interculturality available around the world and some particular (often ‘Western’ and European) ideologies dominate. The dominating ideologies are often believed to be the ‘right’ ones that hold some ‘truth’ (e.g. ‘Western’ democracy and human rights). We both agree with Mignolo (in Dabashi, 2015, p. 6) that “it is an aberration to project a regional definition of a regional way of thinking as a universal standard by which to judge and classify”. • There is thus a need to be transparent about economic-political positions ‘hiding’ behind all ideologies about interculturality in research and education. Students have the right to know where these ideologies come from, what they entail and, especially, what they force them to believe. • Different intercultural ideologies tend to float past each other in research and education and do not seem to enter into meaningful dialogues. Scholars and educators must ensure dialogue and coop-

72 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

eration between people who share these different ideologies. Listening to silenced voices in intercultural research and education is essential. As far as differences are concerned: • Fred noted the central issue of language and translation when reflecting on and examining interculturality. How we talk about interculturality in different contexts must be problematised systematically and coherently. • For Andreas, the need to decolonise knowledge about interculturality is urgent to create other ways of thinking about the notion. Decolonising means becoming aware of the dominating Eurocentric perspectives on interculturality (from culturalism to postmodern ideologies) and acting upon them. • Andreas also noted the important issue of allowing teachers of interculturality to keep up with different critical perspectives so that they don’t feel too much out of touch and demoralised. Our answers, which were complementary, confirm once again the need to renegotiate the meanings and forms of knowledge about interculturality to make sure that they represent diverse perspectives that can inspire students to examine interculturality in plural ways. What is needed urgently in the field is to empower both teachers and students to self-educate constantly about interculturality, looking for alternative ways of thinking about and ‘doing’ it. The knowledge that is provided in intercultural communication education should be understood to be provisional and never considered as definite. Note that when we present our ways of thinking about interculturality during spring and summer 2020, we use phrases such as ‘today’, ‘my current way of thinking’. These indicate that we endeavour to change them, to improve them by putting aside certain ideologies that our engagement with interdisciplinarity but also life experiences can allow us to question. A teacher of interculturality should go through transformation constantly and, in a sense, never be fully satisfied with the ideologies s/he puts forward in a classroom. Questions for the Reader How can we constantly self-educate about interculturality? What strategies can you think of to make it possible?

8  RESEARCHING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION EDUCATION 

73

References Dabashi, H. (2015). Can non-Europeans think? Zed Books. Esteva, G., & Prakash, M. S. (2014). Grassroots post-modernism: Remaking the soil of cultures. Zed Books. Fabian, J. (2014). Time and the Other: How anthropology makes its object. Columbia University Press. Holliday, A. (2010). Intercultural communication and ideology. SAGE. Piller, I. (2017). Intercultural communication: A critical introduction. Edinburgh University Press. Shiva, V. (1993). Monocultures of the mind: Perspectives on biodiversity and biotechnology. Zedbooks. Stam, R., & Shohat, E. (2009). Transnationalizing comparison: The uses and abuses of cross-cultural analogy. New Literary History, 40(3), 473–499. https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.0.0104

CHAPTER 9

Can We Be ‘Good’ at Interculturality?

Abstract  This chapter argues that being ‘good’ at interculturality does not mean that we have some knowledge about a given culture. It is also critical of the idea of intercultural competence, which often gives the illusion that we can assess students and decide if they are ‘good’ or not at interculturality. Such models of competence focus on the individual and ignore the construction of interculturality between interlocutors. Intersectionality is also introduced and critiqued as an alternative way of thinking about interculturality. Keywords  Culturalism • Dialogue • Intercultural competence • Process • Racism

(F.D.) My answer is negative. In a sense we are all good and bad at interculturality. Again, it depends on what we mean by the notion and how we see it as successful or not. Our main problem as social beings (but is it a problem?) is that we need to perform sociality with and for others. So, in a sense we can never know if we are ‘good’ at interculturality. Often, we have to pretend to understand, appreciate, like and respect the other, to save face (see the work of Goffman (1990) on face-work and avoidance strategies). Interculturality never stops, there is no end to it. No one can © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dervin, A. Jacobsson, Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7_9

75

76 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

say: “now I am ready, I am good at interculturality.” Whenever we meet a new person, in a sense, we need to start again to renegotiate who we are, a relationship, trust, meanings. And often, we pretend to understand, agree, respect. The thing that matters the most in sociality is power. Whenever we meet someone, our power status will have an influence on how we talk, how we treat others, what we allow ourselves to say (amongst others). And the same goes with our interlocutor. Just like any form of interaction with others, I would argue that we are never ready or good at interculturality. This may sound like a discouraging thought but I think that it should be a motivation for lifelong learning. This is where we come to the question of models of Intercultural Competence (IC), which are meant to support people or be used as evidence that people know how to deal ‘properly’ with interculturality. In a review of the concept that I published in 2007 (Dervin, 2007), I already argued that such models were useless and dangerous. I still agree with the arguments I had used back then: (1) Intercultural competence (if there is such a thing, IC hereafter) works between people and it is only BETWEEN them that it can be developed and practiced. This thus excludes the whole idea of individual assessment to see if someone is interculturally competent. (2) Most models of IC are political tools developed for supranational institutions that have their own parlance and political agendas. Such models thus represent propaganda rather than research-based models (although they often claim to be). (3) IC is unstable since it is put into practice when people interact. As I claimed earlier, we are social performers, thus we never know what the other is really thinking (as much as they cannot know for us), if they are being honest and/or modest. (4) The last problem in the current models is that they make people believe that they can ‘improve’ (and move up some sort of ladder of levels) as if interculturality was an entirely rational process that can be fully controlled. That does not make sense since the element of performativity is always present in social interactions. Furthermore, as asserted before, power differentials between people make them behave or avoid behaving in certain ways. IC tends to make us believe that we can do away with these important elements and ‘communicate’ straightforwardly by means of knowledge about people’s culture. This mere nudge, that tries to persuade us to do interculturality in a gentle way, is an illusion, I believe.

9  CAN WE BE ‘GOOD’ AT INTERCULTURALITY? 

77

(A.J.) This question has been on my mind since Fred organised an international conference entitled “The ‘good’ interculturalist” in 2018. The most memorable aspect of this conference was that nearly no presenter dared to approach the topic head-on—but rather tip-toed around and mentioned ‘good’ interculturalist as a tongue in cheek-idea, as if the question wasn’t really serious. I think that this says something important about the field of intercultural communication education. It is a field that has an aura of goodness that for most researchers and educators would be problematic and, to a certain extent, painful to scrutinise. It seems for many it is an easy way out not to regard this as a serious question than it is to actually deal with it. To open the lid would also risk exposing the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ of the intercultural competence industry. In the same fashion as H. C. Andersen’s fairy tale of the emperor that was deceived by swindlers and ended up standing naked before his subjects, the intercultural competence industry is using empty phrases and platitudes of very little value (Dahlén, 1997). This reluctance to address the sometimes embarrassing and problematic identity of the field is also the reason why most attempts to ‘decolonise’ interculturality achieve nothing more than to varnish the surface of our thinking. To be good at interculturality (a ‘good’ interculturalist) from my perspective is to approach the field professionally as a teacher and as a researcher. I regard interculturality as a required aspect of becoming and being a teacher in higher education, as well as in all levels of education. To be professional is to be able to extend one’s thinking outside of established frameworks and to analyse intercultural situations by following a continuing process of interaction without a given end. The dialogue that often is referenced in our field has to be extended to include the theoretical concepts and the researcher/student/teacher as part of the process. It could be argued that my answer above is a description of the competences necessary for approaching interculturality, and I can only regretfully concur. But it is a far cry from how intercultural competence traditionally has been understood. In my thinking intercultural competence has been described as a compressing of interculturality to a skill set in the form of a model that provides a sense of coherence and finality. This understanding of intercultural competence goes totally against the grain of the idea of interculturality as constituted by processes of interactions.

78 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

To clarify what I have tried to develop in the previous paragraph, I will turn to the more and more common use of the term intersectionality in intercultural communication education. In a similar manner as intercultural competence, intersectionality tends to re-essentialise a wider complexity of individuals rather than the opposite in intercultural communication education. Thinking about people as complex combinations of different traits (I am not only a man, I’m also middle class, white, heterosexual, academic, etc.) is a step forward from thinking about them as only representatives of national cultures, but it is still a reproduction of fixed identities (in the form of culturalisation and racialisation)—a more nuanced essentialism is still essentialism, only prettier. Talking about oneself as an example of intersectionality as is commonplace in contemporary (inter-)cultural studies by stating that I am more than meets the eye ironically only provides more parameters to fixate and attach to individuals. To move past the dressing up of intercultural communication education pretending to be critical, intersectionality has to be situated in contexts (where and when they are taking place—in a school, at home, at a work place, etc.) and be regarded as an interplay between different actors, involved in processes and power structures changing over time and shifting from context to context. This makes the concepts analytically thought-provoking in the sense that it helps us to think differently and open our eyes for complexity, but also impossible to document and write about. It is, as I see it, impossible to produce an intersectional analysis without ‘allochronically’ fixating identities. All models of interculturality regardless of how nuanced, updated or critical imply a simplified understanding of what is at stake. That is the nature of a model. What I’m proposing here is that to think of interculturality as processes instead of models requires re-thinking, constant updating and renewal. We have to break free from being allochronic and regard knowledge as a fresh product. A model is not suited for this type of fluidity. To adapt to a thinking that uses the idea of process to describe intercultural encounters requires not only an openness to different perspectives but a re-thinking of the relation between different perspectives—and knowledge and epistemologies for that matter. Thinking in processes could also help us moving away from directing the attention to specific groups of individuals. Regardless of contemporary politics interculturality is not the study of immigrants. Migration is a core part of interculturality but it is not the only important thing and it is most certainly not about directing one’s attention towards people that look in a

9  CAN WE BE ‘GOOD’ AT INTERCULTURALITY? 

79

certain way or live in a certain place. Too many times have I encountered the statement from practicing teachers that they don’t have any intercultural or multilingual students in their classes and therefore do not need any knowledge about interculturality. This form of categorisation also goes hand in hand with a very problematic politicising and commodification of so-called national values (nation branding) found in almost all established models of intercultural competence. By focusing on processes, I imagine that it would be possible to detect, criticise and historicise the very problematic phenomenon of selling ‘national culture’ as a commodity (Breidenbach & Nyíri, 2009).

[Pause] Similarities in the way we reflect on the question of competence are evident in this chapter: • Being ‘good’ at interculturality does not mean that we have some knowledge about a given culture. This approach, often labelled as culturalism, limits dialogue to the general, hyper-subjective, micro-­ levelled and a-political. • The idea of intercultural competence, which often gives the illusion that we can assess students and decide if they are ‘good’ or not at interculturality, is a complete disregard for the processual characteristic of interculturality. • Most models of intercultural competence focus on the individual and ignore the construction of interculturality between interlocutors. Finally, the focus tends to be about ‘removing bad aspects’ of interaction such as ‘inter-personal’ stereotyping, racism or discrimination, while doing away with more important structural forms of these ‘evils’. There were some minor differences in our answers to the question of competence: • Andreas was critical of the ideology of intersectionality, especially when it seems to be used as a way of adding up varied identities. • In a sense Fred provided an answer to this critique by insisting on the importance of considering interculturality as a social performance that reflects multifaceted power relations (in terms of language, prestige, social class, etc.), that can be analysed in parallel.

80 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

• Andreas made an interesting point when he insisted on the fact that interculturality must be part of any teacher’s and researcher’s educational endeavour, without exceptions. Actually, as we have seen until now, the issues covered by the topic of interculturality deal with most central aspects of education (relations, diversity, awareness of ideologies, etc.). This chapter led us to insist on the fact that interculturality is a never-­ ending process for which no one could ever be ready—as much as no one can claim to be able to face all human interactions. The joint performances that interculturality entails mean that we can never grasp fully what is happening between us. As much as we perform who we are to please, contradict, seduce the Other, that very Other, also has to perform to please, contradict, seduce us. The influence of structural ideologies on us is central when we perform with and through the Other: why do we behave in such way with this or that person? Why are we treated this way by this person? What is it about me ideologically speaking that leads this person to behave this way? Why do we have this opinion (to which we might disagree in other contexts) when we talk to this person? As educators, we need to help students to reflect on these questions, not so much for them to find definite answers (maybe there are no real answers), but to help them relate what is happening to them and broader contexts of encounters (history, economic and political structures, etc.). Question for the Reader At this stage, we would like to ask you the following question: there seem to be so many similarities between so-called intercultural encounters and other kinds of encounters (intracultural?: We disagree with this term), how would you answer the general question of what is a ‘good’ communicator? What problems do you face when you try to answer this question?

References Breidenbach, J., & Nyíri, P. (2009). Seeing culture everywhere: From genocide to consumer habits. University of Washington Press. Dahlén, T. (1997). Among the interculturalists: An emergent profession and its packaging of knowledge. Stockholms universitet, Socialantropologiska institutionen.

9  CAN WE BE ‘GOOD’ AT INTERCULTURALITY? 

81

Dervin, F. (2007). Evaluer l’interculturel: problématiques et pistes de travail. In F.  Dervin & E.  Suomela-Salmi (Eds.), Évaluer les compétences langagières et interculturelles dans l’enseignement supérieur (pp.  95–122). Turku University Press. Goffman, E. (1990). The presentation of self in everyday life. Penguin.

CHAPTER 10

Helping Students Examine Situations of Interculturality

Abstract  Helping students to treat interculturality as a never-ending process is put forward as a major objective in this chapter. So are the goals of moving beyond Eurocentrism and observing ideological and political stances. Finally, centring approaches around multiple dialogues within educational contexts (teachers-students, students-students, inward looking) is necessary to boost students’ criticality and reflexivity and help them examine situations of interculturality. Keywords  Process • Dialogues • Students • Reflexivity • Political stances • Ethics • Power

(F.D.) It is important first and foremost that students are introduced to the smörgåsbord of perspectives on interculturality: from the ‘Western’ world and beyond. This is a long-term project that deserves to be done patiently and through discussions of the pros and cons of these different ideologies. It is not about ‘indoctrinating’ them with one perspective but to show them how, beyond culturalism and so-called postmodern perspectives, there are also other ways of thinking, problematising and analysing

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dervin, A. Jacobsson, Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7_10

83

84 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

interculturality. Teachers themselves need to be aware of a wide range of intercultural ideologies to support students. As said earlier I have, of course, my own ideology about interculturality, which I have called ‘realistic’ liquid interculturality (Dervin, 2017), especially around the notion of simplexity. Simplexity, a portmanteau word from the simple and the complex, reminds us that, as human beings, we have no choice but to encounter the Other through limiting, reducing ‘us’ and ‘them’ (in relation to culture, gender, age, but also hair colour, height, etc.) while opening up our eyes and capturing moments of complexity in the way we perceive ‘us’ and ‘them’. It is within this simplex continuum that we should work, a ‘realistic’ approach, rather than imagining that we can deal with interculturality in idealistic ‘liquid’ ‘floating’ perspectives, that ignore power relations and give the illusion of ‘hyper-agency’—people can act and identify the way they wish to. I would start by teaching students to observe how we position ourselves when we communicate with each other (often beyond what is seen and/or heard). For example, questions in intercultural encounters often have a hidden agenda or ideological outlook, from the simple question “where are you from?” to the questions “what is your mother tongue?” and “in what language do you think/dream?” Questions (mine and those of my interlocutor) are always very interesting to examine in interculturality because they reveal so much about ideologies and economic-political stances. Then I would also introduce the students to theories of power in communication and how every single assertion is in fact political (with a small and big P) and reminds us and others of our power to ask, answer, utter things at moment X or Y. Some forms of discourse analysis toolbox can help students gain insights into this aspect. In the important book Talking Power: The Politics of Language, Robin Lakoff (1992) examines how power relationships are revealed and maintained through talk and claims that language is always political. In connection with the points I made earlier, I would like students to be able to listen to discourses and ideologies of interculturality when they interact with others and to consider the following questions: Do you understand how interlocutors describe and label different aspects of interculturality? Are their views compatible with yours? Do they understand how you try to deal with interculturality? How could you negotiate a common understanding of interculturality to move forward together? The last step would consist in dealing with the difficult issue of ethics in interculturality: How should we treat the other? How much should I accept

10  HELPING STUDENTS EXAMINE SITUATIONS OF INTERCULTURALITY 

85

being treated and/or spoken to in certain ways (e.g. being forced to limit ourselves to terrible misrepresentations)? What are the limits and how generous should I be? How do I build some form of trust? What in the (micro- and macro-)context(s) of interaction is influencing the way we talk to each other and what we are talking about? This is the most difficult part of teaching, because there is no magic trick whenever we meet others. When it comes to interculturality we are always between Scylla and Charybdis, that is, we need to choose the lesser of different evils in a sense. Doing interculturality is being a juggling wizard, always walking on eggshells. I believe that, for example, some forms of what I call ‘critical Confucianism’ (in reference to the Chinese philosopher and politician Confucius 孔夫子—551 BC–479 BC), in combination with other philosophies of ethics (e.g. the Russian philosopher Bakhtin, see Simpson & Dervin, 2018), could help students reflect on these questions (Dervin, 2020; Tan, 2014). Yao (2008, p. 246) reminds us that there is not one kind of Confucianism but many, while Cheng (2014) explains that Confucianism has witnessed several waves of globalisation throughout the centuries. For me, critical Confucianism is based on multilingual and reflective engagement with Confucian texts (e.g. Confucius’s Analects), that move beyond ideological approaches such as essentialist and ahistorical interpretations of the Chinese through Confucianism. Chang (1997) notes for example that the keywords of collectivism, social orientation and harmony have been misinterpreted and misused in intercultural scholarship to describe today’s China and her relation to Confucianism. Confucius never encouraged conformity and submissiveness towards authority; he believed that everyone is complex and changes constantly (no single unified being), that the world is unstable and that every encounter and experience offers a chance to actively create a new and better world. His ethics recommended that people do more and speak less, aim for the long-term benefits of others, transcend personal concerns and prejudice and, more importantly, resist intellectually and break away from their habitual ways of being in the world (Dervin, 2020).

(A.J.) In my teaching I try to implement the idea of processes by focusing on highlighting the decolonisation of thinking as a radical break with Eurocentric academic traditions, rather than presenting factual knowledge about interculturality or any specific teaching methodology (see, e.g. Stam

86 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

& Shohat, 2012). To learn new ways of thinking is an introspective endeavour. To push students to scrutinise their own thinking requires different forms of dialogues—between teachers and students, between students, with yourself. To provide students with examples and documents to think with (in the Deleuzian manner of using art for creating new ideas) I use fiction films, novels and certain metaphors. The idea of thinking with art and aesthetics (Deleuze, 1986, 1989) is an important distinction from the idea of representation. The task that the students are given is not to identify what the documents represent in reality, but to help them develop their thinking to form ideas about reality. It is important not to get stuck in observing negative (and/or positive) ethno-cultural stereotypes as an end-goal for the students. All the answers I have come up with until now have been critical of the field of intercultural communication education and to a high degree proposed a more experimental take on interculturality. When it comes to teaching in class I always encounter preconceived notions of what intercultural communication education is or what the term interculturality connotes. Facing this reality is a humbling experience and to a certain degree I have to start all courses with presenting the history of intercultural communication education and the concept of interculturality to deconstruct the Eurocentric colonial realpolitik of our field, to finally propose this slightly utopian criticality of processual thinking.

[Pause] Our answers to the question of how to prepare students to analyse interculturality tend to recap many of the points that we made earlier, while expanding on them. These are the similarities we identified: • We should prepare students to be aware of and analyse a wide range of intercultural ideologies while questioning the politics of interculturality that they contain. • Helping students to focus on, examine and practise interculturality as a never-ending process—without a fixed end, middle and/or end, rather than a static phenomenon, is a major objective.

10  HELPING STUDENTS EXAMINE SITUATIONS OF INTERCULTURALITY 

87

• Having recourse to multiple dialogues within educational contexts (teachers-students, students-students, inward looking) to boost students’ criticality and reflexivity is a necessity. In terms of differences between us, the points made have been discussed in previous chapters: • Andreas: Help students to identify and move beyond Eurocentrism. • Fred: Train students to observe ideologies and political stances, with a focus on ethics and power. It has become clear that, through our dialogues, we have managed to renegotiate together ways of unthinking and re-thinking interculturality. We note that we often use different terms to explain our arguments but that we share similar objectives about interculturality. Question for the Reader What issues do you expect your students to face if you started teaching the analysis of interculturality the way we suggest in this section? What do you think students would make of words like ideologies, Eurocentrism or politics? How could you make these words easier to ‘digest’ for them?

References Chang, H. C. (1997). Language and words: Communication in the Analects of Confucius. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16(2), 107–131. Cheng, A. (2014). Histoire de la pensée chinoise. Éd. Points. Deluze, G. (1986). Cinema 1: The movement-image. Athlone. Deleuze, G (1989). Cinema 2: The time-image. Athlone. Dervin, F. (2017). Critical turns in language and intercultural communication pedagogy: The simple-complex continuum (simplexity) as a new perspective. In M. Dasli & A. R. Diaz (Eds.), The critical turn in language and intercultural communication pedagogy: Theory, research and practice (Routledge Studies in Language and Intercultural Communication, No. 5) (pp. 58–72). Routledge. Dervin, F. (2020). Creating and combining models of intercultural competence for teacher education/training. On the need to re-think intercultural competence frequently. In F. Dervin, R. Moloney, & A. Simpson (Eds.), Intercultural

88 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

competence in the work of teachers: Confronting ideologies and practices (pp. 57–72). Routledge. Lakoff, R. (1992). Talking power: The politics of language. Basic Books. Simpson, A., & Dervin, F. (2018). Forms of dialogism in the Council of Europe reference framework on competences for democratic culture. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 41(4), 305–319. https://doi. org/10.1080/01434632.2019.1618317 Stam, R., & Shohat, E. (2012). Race in translation: Culture wars around the postcolonial Atlantic. New York University Press. Tan, C. (2014). Confucius. Bloomsbury Academic. Yao, X. (2008). An introduction to Confucianism. Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 11

The Most Important Concepts of Critical and Reflexive Interculturality

Abstract  In this chapter the authors focus on what they consider to be the most important concepts of interculturality. In total about thirty concepts are introduced. A short list of concepts that the authors would not introduce as central concepts but just to offer a critical review of these problematic terms is presented. The need to include multilingual discussions around certain terms is also shared. Keywords  Concepts • Multilingualism • Inequality • Justice • Untranslatables

(F.D.) In the previous chapters, we have used—and rejected—many and varied concepts and notions. I see three kinds of concepts and notions that can help us re-think interculturality. Each category corresponds to the important objectives of intercultural communication education that I have highlighted in previous chapters: 1. To deal with interculturality according to the (postmodern) ideology that I have promoted over the years: identity, intersectionality (different aspects of who I am: age, social status, gender, profession, etc.) and simplexity; the person (from the Latin persona, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dervin, A. Jacobsson, Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7_11

89

90 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

which refers to a mask, a performance of identities), context (supranational contexts and/vs. national ones), othering (stereotype, representation, imaginary), power, discourse, dialogue and intertextuality (see my 2016 book). These can help us meet the Other from a more fluid perspective: substituting stability for mobility, as well as discontinuity for continuity. 2. To analyse and deal with the smörgåsbord of intercultural ideologies and link them up: ideology, (counter-)hegemony (dominance over others), colonialism, Eurocentrism-Western-centrism, discourse, politics, enunciation (how one positions oneself subjectively in one’s utterances), state apparatuses (institutions used to transmit certain ideologies, e.g. schools, the UNESCO), untranslatables, Minzu, Interculturalidad. 3. To make one’s own decisions about what interculturality is about for ourselves: ethics, criticality, reflexivity, ideology, agency (the power to making decisions and enacting them), politics, Confucianism, justice, Dialogue, stranger/outsider, inclusion/ exclusion. The following concepts and notions I would not include as explanatory elements for the above three objectives but discuss critically and reflexively with the students. I believe that these do not facilitate the objectives of intercultural communication education: Culture (shock), community, collectivism-­individualism, adaptation, diversity, complexity, intercultural competence, respect, tolerance.

(A.J.) There are numerous concepts to address here and many of them have already been mentioned. The concepts fall into two different categories, theory and practice: 1. The concept of interculturality 2. The field of intercultural communication education Many of the concepts are activated in the cross-section between these two different categories but it is important to also discuss them separately. The first two concepts that have to be clarified are interculturality and culture. What does these terms mean in English? To what degree is for example interculturality possible to translate into other languages? What is

11  THE MOST IMPORTANT CONCEPTS OF CRITICAL AND REFLEXIVE… 

91

the difference between interculturality; interculturalidad (Spanish); interkulturalitet (Swedish); interkulturalität (German); interculturalité (French)? How have the meaning of these terms changed over time? The concept of interculturality has also recently been discussed in relation to epistemology, that is to say how we produce knowledge in different parts of the world (Aman, 2018; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018; Santos, 2014, 2018). Even if the concept of ‘culture’ has caused the field of interculturality many problems (Dervin, 2015)—and Fred has proposed that we should abandon culture since it is a flawed concept—we still have to address the term and explain why it is giving us such headaches. Finally, I will only mention one additional concept that for me and my thinking on interculturality is becoming more and more important. Whenever I twist and turn my ideas about intercultural communication education I keep returning to inequality. If I introspectively turn to myself to find an explanation for what drives me to keep on teaching and researching interculturality it has to do with how our societies are ingrained with different structures of inequality. Deep down I still think that education can provide a way to fight existing regimes of inequality.

[Pause] We both had structured our answers to the question of basic concepts and notions in different ways. While Andreas decided to focus on three concepts (and some companion terms in other languages than English), Fred subdivided his answer into three categories and included about 20 concepts and notions as well as a short list of concepts he would not introduce as central concepts but just to offer a critical review of these problematic terms. The following concepts were common: culture and epistemology. The need to include multilingual discussions around certain terms was also shared (Andreas: interculturality in other languages; Fred: ‘untranslatables’). Andreas included inequality as a central concept while Fred had justice and inclusion-exclusion, which could be equivalent. Question for Our Readers Are there other concepts and notions related to interculturality that you would (not) want to include in your teaching? Explain why.

92 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

[Part I: Pause] In this [Pause], we have collected quotes from the first part of the book, where we answered ten questions about intercultural communication education. We have placed these quotes according to six important themes: Misconceptions about Intercultural Communication Education; What interculturality could be about; Diversity of perspectives; Ideologies; Eurocentrism and colonialism; Need for renewed dialogue and collaborative translation. We suggest that you read through the quotes (alone or with someone else) and reflect on what the quote means. You can also use these quotes to help students think further about interculturality. The following questions can guide you: • Do you agree with the points made in each quote? • Can you identify specific ideologies in the arguments contained in the quotes? • What counter-argument(s) would you offer? • If you could reformulate the quote to fit your counter-argument, how would you do it? • Can you think of examples from your own experiences of interculturality, teaching intercultural communication education or your reading of a book or an article, that confirm or contradict the quote? 1. Misconceptions about intercultural communication education (a) “To ‘sell’ the Other as a problem has been highly efficient for spreading the success of intercultural communication education.” (b) “The strong emphasis on identifying and reducing stereotypes in intercultural communication education is leading nowhere. Quite often research on stereotypes is in itself stereotypical, reducing the analysis of stereotypes to identifying good or bad or right or wrong images/imaginaries.” (c) Interculturality is not about “uncovering the ‘mysteries’ of the Other”. (d) “We manipulate discourses of culture and difference to hide economic-­politico-ideological ‘battles’ between us and them.” (e) “If everyone learns how to communicate over cultural borders without preconceived notions and stereotypes everything will

11  THE MOST IMPORTANT CONCEPTS OF CRITICAL AND REFLEXIVE… 

93

work out fine—it is simply a matter of acquiring a required skill set.” (f) “The potential impact of intercultural education research will be to make sure that intercultural encounters run smoothly and that communicative misunderstandings are averted.” (g) “Too many times have I encountered the statement from practicing teachers that they don’t have any intercultural or multilingual students in their classes and therefore do not need any knowledge about interculturality.” 2. What interculturality could be about (a) “Interculturality is a phenomenon that is occurring between (inter-) ‘things’ (culture or maybe people?), in a processual manner (-ality).” (b) “Interculturality can be regarded as moving beyond stable cultural categorisations as explanations for social behaviour, to analyse and clarify how diversity and difference is brought into contexts and made meaningful by those involved in the encounters.” (c) “We are social performers, thus we never know what the Other is really thinking (as much as they cannot know for us), if they are being honest, modest, etc.” (d) “When it comes to interculturality we are always between Scylla and Charybdis, i.e. we need to choose the lesser of different evils in a sense. Doing interculturality is being a juggling wizard, always walking on eggshells.” (e) “We are never neither ready nor good at interculturality. This may sound like a discouraging thought but I think that it should be a motivation for lifelong learning.” (f) “In a sense we are all good and bad at interculturality. Again, it depends on what we mean by the notion and how we see it as successful or not.” (g) “Interculturality never stops, there is no end to it. No one can say: ‘now I am ready, I am good at interculturality’.” 3. Diversity of perspectives (a) “Teachers themselves need to be aware of a wide range of intercultural ideologies to support students.”

94 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

(b) “There is not one single approach to intercultural communication education that is to be found around the world, but a range of perspectives and approaches.” (c) “We should never assume that the notion of interculturality is understandable by all people or that it means the same to the people we meet. We should bear in mind that people might use other terms to refer to this phenomenon.” (d) “Who can decide what is good/right in terms of what intercultural communication education should achieve and how successful it is? These issues can vary according to the observer and to their own ideologies.” (e) “Evaluating the success of intercultural communication education is impossible. What I might find successful might be considered as a failure by another educator.” 4. Ideologies (a) “People are not always aware of their ideologies about interculturality and believe they are the ‘right’ and ‘only’ acceptable ones.” (b) “All these ideologies, and the intercultural-speak that goes with them, float past each other and do not seem to enter into meaningful dialogues.” (c) “It is important to bear in mind that any curriculum, any textbook, any educational/classroom discourse related to intercultural communication education cannot but be ideological, i.e. they relate to the way we are made to think about the social world, about others and about how we welcome and interact with those from the outside.” 5. Eurocentrism and colonialism (a) “To a certain degree I have to start all courses with presenting the history of intercultural communication education and the concept of interculturality to deconstruct the Eurocentric colonial realpolitik of our field.” (b) (Interculturality is often based on) “stifling Eurocentric frameworks dressed up as good intentions.” (c) “Daily interculturality can still be very much limited to inferior, exotic and colonial views of certain people, which boost the identity of the majority as more advanced, more civilized in a sense.”

11  THE MOST IMPORTANT CONCEPTS OF CRITICAL AND REFLEXIVE… 

95

6. Need for renewed dialogue and collaborative translation (a) “Dialogue doesn’t mean that we should agree with each other and/or not argue, what it means here is to be transparent about what we want, what we agree and disagree with and are ready to accept. This is a very long and difficult task, which may never be fulfilled.” (b) “Collaborative critical and reflexive translation should be the first step to enable dialogue with others and to ensure that we know what we are talking about.”

References Aman, R. (2018). Decolonising intercultural education: Colonial Differences, the geopolitics of knowledge, and inter-epistemic dialogue. Routledge. Dervin, F. (2015). Towards post-intercultural teacher education: Analyzing ‘extreme’ intercultural dialogue to reconstruct interculturality. European Journal of Teacher Education, 38(1), 71–86. https://doi.org/10.108 0/02619768.2014.902441 Mignolo, W.  D., & Walsh, C.  E. (2018). On decoloniality: Concepts, analytics, praxis. Duke University Press. Santos, B. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice against epistemicide. Paradigm Publishers. Santos, B. (2018). The end of the cognitive empire: The coming of age of epistemologies of the South. Duke University Press.

PART II

Critical and Reflexive Interculturality in Practice

CHAPTER 12

Reflecting on Interculturality Through Critical and Reflexive Languaging

Abstract  This chapter puts forward critical and reflexive languaging as a central tool for interculturality. It aims to support the reader to stimulate students’ needs and wishes to reflect on the words that are used and presented to them when they speak about interculturality. By doing so, the authors argue that students might make their engagement with discourses of interculturality fairer, more complex and transparent but also convincing. Their engagement with interculturality as a notion might then be more independent, and their sense of criticality and reflexivity might improve. Keywords  Languaging • Multilingualism • Linguistic and discursive tools • Translation • Chinese • Untranslatability • Polysemy • Etymology We decided to start this second section on critical and reflexive interculturality with a chapter on an important aspect: languaging, that is, the way we talk about and construct interculturality as a notion in one or several languages. Often, the issues that we discuss here are ignored in both scholarship and education for interculturality. We propose to focus on critical languaging, which consists of etymological work (the archaeology of

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dervin, A. Jacobsson, Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7_12

99

100 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

words, i.e. their origins, shifts in meaning), translation (communicating the meanings of a text between different languages1) and the way many and varied ideologies are embedded in these processes. Often, discussions of language in relation to interculturality belong to language learning and teaching, with the idea that if we can speak the language of the Other or use a third language such as English as a lingua franca, we can then ‘talk to each other’. However, being able to use another language (or one’s own for that matter) never guarantees understanding and/or ‘being interculturally competent’. The Japanese writer Hiromi Kawakami (2014, n.p.) makes this clear when she asserts that “All conversation is misunderstanding. I think about the discrepancies that will always exist in the gaps between languages whenever I go anywhere outside Japan, anywhere where Japanese, my native language, isn’t spoken. But even when I use my native language, the same thing does apply. All language is misunderstanding. In degrees.” Being able to use different languages may represent an advantage for interculturality. However, we are aware of many examples of so-called multilinguals (people who can use multiple languages orally and/or in writing), whose intercultural ideologies were somewhat restricted (e.g. culturalism, ethnocentrism or exaggerated constructivism as in “I am a citizen of the world: I have multiple identities, between which I can freely navigate”), and who were unable to give space to other discourses of interculturality in their encounters with others. This often makes interlocutors uncomfortable and does not allow for re-negotiations of e.g. dominating meanings and ideologies. For example, depending on their social status and involvement in capitalist activities, they might solidify the Other by means of representations of their ‘national culture’ (“you Filipinos are…”), not allowing them to question potentially such limited approaches to interculturality and showing awareness of their own privilege. Critical languaging is thus not so much about language correctness and/or language proficiency but about allowing language to reflect a certain fluidity of discourses about interculturality, which can lead to renewed power relations in the way it is constructed as an object of discourse. The kinds of engagement we propose to focus on here revolve around un-re-thinking, problematising and re-negotiating the meaning(s) of what 1  The etymology of the verb to translate comes from Latin translatus ‘carried over’; ‘bearing across’ (Rushdie, 1991, p. 16). In the early fourteenth century the English word meant “to remove from one place to another”.

12  REFLECTING ON INTERCULTURALITY THROUGH CRITICAL… 

101

we say about interculturality when we speak to others, in our own language(s) or in other languages.

On the Importance of Critical and Reflexive Languaging During the COVID-19 crisis Fred started doing hand embroidery and, after a few weeks, noticed that the ‘messy’ backside also looked artful in its own way. The threads and the colours were the same, however, the patterns and human figures that Fred had designed on the ‘clean’ side were also visible on the ‘sloppy-looking’ backside but they looked somewhat different because of, for example, thread bunching and the appearance of loops. We believe that this is a good way to start discussing the importance of taking into consideration the influence of language in the way interculturality is negotiated as an object of discourse: although we might start from the same material, the end result on both sides of the hand embroidery (e.g. in two different languages) might be different. As such the connotation of words and phrases (what a word invokes for a person), the economic-political flavour and the prêt-à-penser hiding behind these linguistic forms might not be the same for everybody. The problem we then face and propose to solve partly with critical and reflexive languaging is this: How can we make sure that we all see ‘beauty’ on both sides of the embroidery? How do we come to an agreement that both sides are ‘beautiful’ and that the resulting beauty is considered to be equally valuable? Another question could be: can we combine ‘beautiful aspects’ from both sides to create the ‘inter-’ of interculturality? In his 2016 book, talking to his readers, the writer Ken Liu (2016, p. 3) asks the following question: “Who can say if the thoughts you have in your mind as you read these words are the same thoughts I had in my mind as I typed them?” We can never be sure that we mean the same or understand the same when we communicate about interculturality. That’s why we need to reflect on languaging. Dealing with this problem is essential to make sure that those involved in languaging about interculturality 1. acquire linguistic and discursive tools that empower them to voice their dis-/agreement and ideas about it (and thus work towards more equality); 2. get to renegotiate the way(s) interculturality is problematised and understood so that silent/silenced voices can be heard (rather than, e.g. a mere ‘Eurocentric’ way of

102 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

understanding interculturality) to, for example, define one of the key terms that is used to determine interculturality. Let’s consider translation as an example, which is often treated as a mere ‘footnote’ in intercultural communication education—mentioned in passing. For instance, in a lot of research on interculturality published in English, for which data are often collected in other languages, one rarely sees problematisation of translation into English, as if the translated words from, for example, an interview that is analysed in a research paper, are ‘neutral’ and/or ‘mere equivalents’. Yet, first, many of the terms that we use to talk about interculturality in our respective languages or in English (as a lingua franca) are polysemic. Second, when they get translated, this complexity is magnified. Words thus need to be transparently explained and problematised. Disregarding discussions of translation in intercultural communication education means 1. negating the other, closing the door to them in discussions of interculturality (= interculturality without the inter-); 2. allowing those who have the power to determine what words mean in English in the field to increase their ideological influence—and to play the gatekeepers of interculturality; 3. having a potentially negative impact on those we might be trying to help, by misleading them to listen to ‘orders’ that have specific meanings, which may be different from the way they experience interculturality. Languaging about interculturality, by choosing specific words or phrases in one or several languages that are presented as the only ‘reality’, is based on power relations. Someone is entitled to choose which word is accepted and what it can mean. That is why, by working from a critical and reflexive languaging perspective, whereby people discuss and dig into the complexity of languages, they can realise, support and accept the fact that ‘their’ language cannot be considered to be the norm that dictates some kind of universal. At this stage, let us make this more concrete with some examples. We start with two broad examples related to how we (mis-)language by ‘naming’ and ‘labelling’ things.

The first two examples relate to Chinese individuals. On one occasion, Fred assisted a Chinese student to open a bank account in Finland. In order to verify his identity (after having been asked many questions about his political affiliations and the source of the money he was going to put on his account), the bank clerk asked for the student’s date of birth. The

12  REFLECTING ON INTERCULTURALITY THROUGH CRITICAL… 

103

student provided him with a date, which did not correspond to the one the clerk had in his files. He became suspicious and said: “I am sorry, you are obviously not the right person, so I cannot help you.” Fred happened to know the date of birth on the student’s passport so he intervened to explain to the clerk that, in China, some people follow the traditional Chinese calendar, which reckons years, months and days according to astronomical phenomena. This means that dates of birth in this calendar, unlike the Gregorian calendar, change every year. Upon hearing this, the clerk became even more suspicious and started asking Fred more questions about the student. He claimed that he had never heard that people can have different birthdays and that it was ‘normal’ to have just one date of birth. The problem here is in fact a problem of languaging. The student did not make a mistake as such, although he could have provided the two dates. As far as the clerk was concerned, through his lack of knowledge about other ways of thinking about dates, he was unable to ‘un-re-­ translate’ information into his own world reality, even adopting the ethnocentric view that “it is normal to have just one date of birth”. To him, a date of birth only meant the one available on official documents, while for Fred’s student it referred to two different realities (official documents + Chinese calendar). The second example relates to the use of foreign first names by many Chinese. When they are abroad, or meet a foreigner, many young Chinese will introduce themselves in English by using a ‘Western’ sounding name that might have been given to them by their first English teacher or that they chose for themselves. First names are never neutral: Lapierre (1995) shows how, depending on the context, they can reveal a lot about social class, our own personal history, capitals and lead to some form of discrimination.2 By presenting a ‘Western’ sounding name in English, and not mentioning their own in Chinese, in a sense, some Chinese people send a problematic message, which is that of negating their own right for a ‘real’ identity. In terms of language, the chosen name might send information about its user, which may not correspond to who this person is (or who they would want to be). For example, some first names indicate a given 2  Lapierre (1995) explains that thousands of French Jews changed their names after the Second World War to free themselves from the stigma of the Holocaust. In Finland, we have met some Russian parents who gave a Finnish sounding name to their children in order to protect them against bullying. In some European countries, anonymous CVs are increasingly used to remove personally definable information such as names.

104 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

social class, hint at a generational use, a gender, ethnicity and so on. When one meets a Chinese named, for example, Milk or Adam, many associations and representations about these names might lead others to meet them in a way that is guided by misrepresentations. For example, we might find a name in English ‘ridiculous’, ‘distinguished’, ‘from American soap operas’, ‘bourgeois’ and so on. This extra layer of meaning relates to ‘mislanguaging’ meanings and can have an influence on encounters and lead to people floating past each other, that is, meeting each other based on wrong assumptions. There is a lot we can learn from the work of professional translators (or people who problematise translation) to think about languaging from a more theoretical perspective (as in: how to translate the words we use to discuss interculturality as a notion). Translation can take place through different methods.

The Swiss sinologist Jean François Billeter (2014) makes a first important point about translation when he suggests that we should not start from the idea that translating from one language to another is just about transmitting a difference into another difference. He explains (2014, p. 26): “I take into account different elements of my experience like sensations, perceptions and memories and I get them and make a kind of synthesis” (our translation). This approach can help us move away from the tenacious and somewhat problematic idea that things are too different in another language and thus cannot be expressed in another. The British writer Salman Rushdie (1991, p. 16) adds to this argument by claiming: “It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately to the notion that something can also be gained.” Instead of making a translation incomprehensible and/or strange for others by e.g. keeping a foreign word in the translation, using an awkward sentence or translating in ways that do not ‘speak’ to us, referring back to our own experience can help us choose a better term and thus render the translation of a term more adapted to another context. In her volume on the untranslatables of philosophy, French philosopher Barbara Cassin (2016) also questions the claim that things cannot always be translated because they are too much engrained in a specific language. This type of what she calls ‘ontological nationalism’ is problematic for the philosopher and she mentions how this contested argument was put forward by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger

12  REFLECTING ON INTERCULTURALITY THROUGH CRITICAL… 

105

(1889–1976) who claimed that one can only philosophise in Greek or German because other languages do not allow it. For Cassin (2016), untranslatables are not what we cannot translate but what we must translate unceasingly to ensure dialogues amongst people who speak different languages. In philosophy, for instance, Cassin wonders if one understands the same thing if one says mind, Geist or esprit, or if pravda is the same as justice or truth (2016). In the method that she proposes, both diachrony and synchrony prevail (2016). Diachrony entails a history of concepts, digging into intersections, transfers and separations between languages (etymology) but also, for example, from one field of knowledge to another (e.g. linguistics to sociology). A synchronic approach is meant to survey the present conditions of words within national, regional and international landscapes: equivalents, intruders, empty categories, false friends and so on. In that sense, all the words that we use to talk about interculturality are unstranslatables since the etymology of these words, the transfers they have experienced from one language to another, one field of knowledge to another, one context to another, will necessarily vary. In order to find the meaning of a word in a given context, we need to treat all concepts and notions as untranslatables that deserve unpacking. Identifying the networks to which the word belongs in one language and other languages, its place in global fields of research, as well as its ideological background, for example through etymology, is necessary.

Now let’s focus on a method from literary translation which will help us develop further the points made hitherto about languaging. Reflections from the Franco-Russian translator André Markowicz, famous for having translated all of the Russian writer F. Dostoyevsky3’s works into French, on translation are considered. In an interview with C. Bouanchaud (2018), Markowicz maintains about translation (2018): 1. the processes of (mis-) translating happen all the time without us realising, 2. “The more I translate the more I want to show the limits of translation” (our translation, n.p.). This means that translation is a never-ending endeavour and that there cannot be just one ‘good’ translation. His translations of Dostoyevsky are unique and have attracted a lot of admiration and criticism. For the translator, reading Dostoyevsky in 3

 (1821–1881).

106 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

French is not the same as reading, for example, Shakespeare, and the reader should hear in French what is heard in Russian, even if they don’t speak the language. Through translation, French becomes une terre d’accueil (a new land) for Russian (Bouanchaud, 2018). Thus, translating Dostoyevsky into French consists in making the reader understand that s/ he is between two worlds, and in creating a sense of dépaysement (the feeling of not being at home) to try to experience Dostoyevsky. This requires, for example, to include language errors in the French version since, in Dostoyevsky’s Russian, it is not so much the purity of the language that matters, but how feelings are expressed. We can briefly compare how one excerpt from Dostoyevsky’s the Idiot was translated differently by Markowicz (Dostoyevsky, 2001) and two other translators: Albert Mousset (Dostoyevsky, 2001); Pierre Pascal (Dostoyevsky, 1953): Avec les pendants d’oreilles je cours chez Zaliojev: Ceci et cela, mon cher, allons vite chez Anastasie. Nous voilà partis. (Pascal’s translation, 1953) Avec ce bijou en poche, je me rendis chez Zaliojev. ‘Allons, mon ami, lui dis-je, accompagne-moi chez Nastassia Philippovna’. Nous y allâmes. (Mousset’s translation, 2001) Avec mes pendants d’oreilles, je cours chez Zaliojev; voilà, mon vieux, c’est ça et ça, on va chez Nastassia Filippovna. On y va donc. (Markowicz’s translation, 2011)

Our readers may not understand French but they can observe differences between the three translations: punctuation, word choice and the spelling of names (Nastassia, Anastasie). Markowicz’s translation is the most daring here because he wants the reader to hear Russian in the French language, instead of making the reader believe that the Idiot was written in the French language. For example: 1. he refrains from using a tense that is specific to French (simple past) because the tense does not exist in Russian—which may sound awkward to a French reader; 2. his word choice is closer to Dostoyevsky’s use of informal language (he uses my pal ‘mon vieux’ rather than my friend ‘mon ami’/my dear ‘mon cher’); 3. the way he constructs the sentences is slightly ‘broken’ to reflect the rhythm of Russian sentences. The choice of translation must thus always be motivated and transparent. For example, thinking of discourses of interculturality, should we use the word com-

12  REFLECTING ON INTERCULTURALITY THROUGH CRITICAL… 

107

munity in a given context or group in another? What makes these words more adapted to e.g. specific economic-political conditions?

Languaging in a certain way, and refusing to language in another, is always a choice. This choice can be well- or badly informed and have an influence on the impressions, discussions and negotiations we want to have with others about interculturality as a notion. Finally, failing to ‘language critically and reflexively’ (e.g. by refusing to consider alternative translations) represents a missed opportunity for making interculturality really intercultural.

Working with Students on Critical Languaging We believe that issues of languaging (digging into the way things are put in language), etymology, translation and how they relate to ideologies represent interesting ways to trigger some interest amongst students in the (deep) meanings of things, and to help them think about interculturality in a meaningful way—beyond somewhat empty discourses about it. In what follows we present three learning objectives relating to critical and reflexive languaging that can be used with students. Helping Students Reflect Critically on the Process of Translating Although students may not have thought about translation before joining a course on interculturality, it is important to make them realise that they won’t be expected to be specialists of translation studies to reflect on it. Demystifying translation is an important step in making the students accept its importance. They should also be made aware of the fact that different forms of translation are part of their everyday life—without even realising. We may want to start by asking them how they define the process of translating, what engagements with ‘formal’ translation they might have had (e.g. reading books, travel/work abroad) and what translation processes have crossed their minds during their studies. In Table  12.1, statements about translation from four different individuals are reproduced. Ask the students to answer these questions in pairs or groups:

108 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

Table 12.1  What translation is about “Every act of communication is a miracle of translation.” From Liu, K. (2016). The Paper Menagerie. Ken Liu is an American author of speculative fiction. His collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, has been published in more than a dozen languages. He also wrote the Star Wars novel, The Legends of Luke Skywalker. “In antiquity, for instance, one of the dominant images of the translators was that of a builder: his (usually it was him, not her) task was to carefully demolish a building, a structure (the source text), carry the bricks somewhere else (into the target culture), and construct a new building—with the same bricks.” From Chesterman, A. & Wagner, E. (2002). Can Theory Help Translators: A Dialogue Between The Ivory Tower And The Wordface. Andrew Chesterman is best known for his work in Translation Studies and was Professor of Multilingual Communication at the University of Helsinki from 2002 to 2010. Emma Wagner was a translator at the European Commission in Luxembourg when the book was published. “Translation means that a translator has picked one word above all the others: one winner, with all the finalists gone from the page forever. Translation always calls upon the translator to make a judgement call, and what the reader hears, then, is a judgement.” From Kushner, A. (2015). The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible. Aviya Kushner has worked as a travel columnist for The International Jerusalem Post, and her poems and essays have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review, Partisan Review and The Wilson Quarterly. She teaches at Columbia College, Chicago, and is a contributing editor of A Public Space and a mentor for the National Yiddish Book Center. “Why? Because true translation is not a binary affair between two languages but a triangular affair. The third point of the triangle being what lay behind the words of the original text before it was written. True translation demands a return to the pre-verbal.” From Berger, J. (2016). Confabulations. John Peter Berger (1926–2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet.

• How do you understand what each of these individuals say about translation? What does it tell us about how they translate concretely? • Do they seem to agree and/or disagree on aspects of translation? • What about you? How do you feel about what they are saying? Can you relate? • How would their arguments help you next time you need to translate something? • Would you revise your own definition of what translation is about after reading these four quotes?

12  REFLECTING ON INTERCULTURALITY THROUGH CRITICAL… 

109

Making Students Aware of the Polysemy of Words Used to Talk About Interculturality in Different Languages Start by explaining what an untranslatable is. Ask students to make a list of words in their own language(s) that are often said not to be translatable (as in “there is no equivalent in other languages”). Can they translate them into other languages? Make them reflect on the strategies that they use to try to find a translation that they themselves and others find ‘proper’. When they are finished, ask them to reconsider the untranslatability of these words and the reasons why people say they don’t have equivalents in other languages. We may want to ask the students, as a follow-up, to look at a Finnish word: sisu. This word is said to not to have a literal equivalent in other languages. It is generally held to express the Finnish national character. In English it can be translated as stoic determination, grit, bravery (amongst others). In other languages there appear to be some words that refer to similar feelings (although they are also labelled as ‘untranslatables’): Sumud (Arab), Seny (Catalan), Chutzpah (Hebrew), Ganbaru (Japanese), Cojones (Spanish). Ask the students to check the meanings of these words, and most importantly what ‘stories’ lie behind them: when and where were they ‘coined’? When did they become significant in a specific context? In Finland, for example, it is hard to find the origin of the word sisu (different unconvincing theories). However, it became relevant in the 1930s when Finland fought against the Soviet Union. Today, it is used as a way of noting the exceptionalism of Finns—often as a way of creating a boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them’. When Finland was designing its country branding in the 2010s, the idea of sisu was central in ‘selling’ a positivising image of Finland and Finns abroad. Now we come to two words that are used when discussing interculturality: culture and civilisation. As asserted earlier, looking into the history and etymology of words can inform us of the changes experienced by the words, for example, through the influence of others (e.g. other countries, kingdoms). We will refer to the Chinese context to engage with the importance of critical languaging when we talk about such concepts. In his book Modern Notions of Culture and Civilisation in China, Fang (2019) provides a very interesting account of how these two words have come to mean what they mean in China today. The scholar shows that the two concepts of 文化 wenhua (culture) and 文明 wenming (Civilisation) are not stable in China today (Fang, 2019, p. 113), although their current meanings are borrowed from the West:

110 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

In the Chinese language (…) the difference between 文明 and 文化 (…) is only a case of having two names for one thing, or of having two terms, one of them specialized and the other vernacular, for the same thing. It won’t do to force a difference on them. The most we can say is that culture is a dynamic process, whereas civilization is a largely static result. But even then, this is also just two ways of looking at the same thing.

However, what Fang shows in his book is that when we start digging into the historical use of the two words, we realise that the words文化 wenhua (culture) and 文明 wenming (Civilisation) have foreign origins in their meanings, although they have been identified in classic Chinese but with different meanings from today. The semantic changes occurred in the second half of the nineteenth century, influenced by the ‘West’, but imported via Japan (Fang, 2019, p. 62). 文 (wen) in classic Chinese used to refer to component elements being mixed together (Fang, 2019, p. 10). 化 (hua) originally meant change, formation or making. 文 + 化 used to refer to a situation wherein a change takes place for one side or both sides concerned, as a result of their contact with each other (Fang, 2019, p. 9)— which is a potentially good definition for interculturality! Before it took on its ‘Western’ meaning, 文明 (wenming) used to refer to a progressive state of being, thriving development of culture and education (Fang, 2019, p. 2). When Fred works with Chinese students, he makes them aware of these important changes and of the fact that the former meanings of these terms in Chinese were closer to the way ‘critical interculturalists’ discuss them today. Since the two words are somewhat ambiguous in Chinese today, we should never assume, when we speak to our Chinese colleagues and students that we refer to the same realities when we say culture and civilisation. Ask students to look at the two words of culture and civilisation in their own contexts. Can they find concrete definitions for them in ‘good’ dictionaries? Make them compare different definitions. Also ask them to look at the etymology of these words and the different meanings that they might have had over the centuries. Can they identify some foreign influences in the way they were understood in different time periods? The idea is not to try to identify the only valid definition of these terms but to make them aware of their polysemy and ideological uses. You may choose any other term that is used in your context to discuss interculturality, for the students to explore in a similar vein.

12  REFLECTING ON INTERCULTURALITY THROUGH CRITICAL… 

111

Supporting Students to Identify (Hidden) Meanings and Ideologies Behind Words Relating to Interculturality Words, concepts and/or notions, used to discuss and problematise interculturality globally, represent ideologies, of which we may not be aware. It is thus essential to identify these ideologies by, for example, looking into the way the words are defined and used by different social actors (e.g. politicians, the ‘majority’, scholars), as well as their histories. In his book The Theft of History (2006), British anthropologist Jack Goody (1919–2015) discusses the tendency to imagine that certain words and ideas have originated from Europe such as the city, democracy, humanism, romantic love, the rule of law and the university and that they are ‘universally’ understood by the world. However, most of these words are to be found in the history of other parts of the world, with differing meanings (see culture and civilisation in Chinese in the previous section). This ‘theft’ from other parts of the world goes hand in hand with a Eurocentric or Occidentalist bias— ‘our’ democracy is better, only ‘us’ can express love, etc. If one is not aware of this issue, this is extremely problematic when one deals with intercultural communication education. With students, go back to Chap. 11 where we provided a list of the most commonly used concepts and notions related to interculturality to examine their ‘daily’ definitions and etymologies—and the ideologies that go with them. In what follows, we provide two examples: the popular concepts of identity and negotiation (with a comparison to the Chinese language for the latter). Identity has been central in intercultural communication education for at least two decades. Today, in the field, it is used mostly in its postmodern form to refer to aspects of who people are and of those they interact with as being changeable, malleable and co-constructed. However, a typical dictionary definition will rarely present a similar understanding of identity. For example, the Cambridge dictionary (https://dictionary.cambridge. org/dictionary/english/identity) defines identity as: “who a person is, or the qualities of a person or group that make them different from others”— a definition that ascribes identity to people or groups rather than hints at its malleability. A look at the etymology of the word in English shows that the ‘liquid’ and co-constructed aspect of identity is also absent: identity comes from Medieval Latin identitatem which means ‘sameness’ and from Latin idem, ‘the same’. The concept of identity crisis was first recorded in English in 1954 and identity politics by 1987 (­ https://www.etymonline.

112 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

com/word/identity). Interestingly, the way the concept is used in the field (as in many other fields) does not seem to fit with either the way it is ‘normatively’ defined in dictionaries (thus maybe also partly in society?) and etymologically—identity in the making versus identity as a given. Students should be made to reflect on the consequences of these on their future engagement in discussions around interculturality: Should they make sure that they grasp the way their interlocutors define the concept of identity? Beyond the meaning that their interlocutors give to the word, what does identity connote ideologically for them (e.g. economic liberalism and free market capitalism)? If the word means something different to them, what should they do to ensure dialogue, that is, to make their own voice heard or to empower others to voice their ideas? What alternative concepts or notions could the students use to express what they believe the concept means (e.g. in English: identification, selfhood, otherness, etc.)? If you happen to have students from other countries in your lectures, you might want to pair them with your ‘local’ students and make them confront their understandings and connotations of words like identity. The concept of negotiation is another central concept in intercultural communication education. According to Merriam Webster (https:// www.merriam-­webster.com/dictionary/negotiate), the verb to negotiate can mean: (as an intransitive verb) “to confer with another so as to arrive at the settlement of some matter”; (as a transitive verb) “to deal with (some matter or affair that requires ability for its successful handling)” (= to manage), “to arrange for or bring about through conference, discussion, and compromise”. A look at the etymology of the English word shows strong links with business. As such, it comes directly from Latin negotiationem (‘business, traffic’) but also from negotiari (‘carry on business, do business, act as a banker’) and from negotium (‘a business, employment, occupation, affair (public or private)’). As a reminder, the field of intercultural communication education was first established by scholars involved in research on diplomacy and business. The choice of this word with a commercial etymology as a central concept since the creation of the field seems understandable (albeit problematic). When one tries to translate the idea of negotiation in Chinese, at least two verbs come to mind, which have very little to do with business: 谈判 (tanpan) and 交涉 (jiaoshe). If we separate these words into smaller

12  REFLECTING ON INTERCULTURALITY THROUGH CRITICAL… 

113

components, we find that 谈判 is composed of 谈 (tan: to talk, to talk about) and 判 (pan: to decide, to judge, to condemn) and 交涉 of 交 (jiao: to hand in/over; to make friends with, to associate with) and 涉 (she: to intersect, to join, to cross, e.g. arms). In English they both translate as to negotiate, however by decomposing these words, one notices their different nuances. While 谈判 (tanpan) is somewhat more official and might relate to, for example, the law (not business!), 交涉 (jiaoshe) seems to fit in perfectly with the notion of interculturality: people ‘join’, cross over, to associate and make friends. While neither the English definitions nor the etymology of negotiation hinted at people-to-people ‘making friends’ (interculturality?), the Chinese language seems to have a verb that might fit this purpose better than the verb to negotiate in English. What the students can learn from critical and reflexive languaging (etymology, translation and ideologies) is that a given term, concept or notion related to interculturality is . not ‘universally’ accepted and not invented by the ‘West’, 1 2. never a neutral choice, 3. potentially polysemic in one language and across languages, 4. related to ideologies and specific (sometimes global) economic-­ political ideologies, 5. based on a specific view of history.

Way Forward: Towards Systematic Critical and Reflexive Languaging Approaching discourses of interculturality through the topic of languaging might feel demotivating amongst students at first. They might feel that it is not useful and that, as non-specialists of language and translation, they are not competent to deal with this aspect. It is thus essential that teachers explain why spending some time pondering over languaging matters: for example, translation is always a political choice, which can lead to misunderstanding (we think we mean the same but we may not), non-­understanding (we are talking to each other but we don’t understand each other) and the mistreatment of those whose voice is not heard in scientific and educational discussions. For Cassin (2016), “translation is for languages what politics is for people.” Students should understand that the more they get

114 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

to un-re-think languaging of discourses of interculturality, the more they can grasp the limits of linguistic phenomena and the need for dialogue to be able to engage with others. Instead of meeting others through the orders of ‘Where are you from?’, national cultures and imaginaries about ‘us’ and ‘them’, discussions around languaging represent alternative ways of meeting each other. Some readers might think that there is no end to critical and reflexive languaging and that it is too frustrating a view to motivate students. When translator André Markowicz (Bouanchaud, 2018, n. p.) was asked the very question of the frustration he experiences of never being able to translate ‘properly’, he explained that we should not think of it as something ‘tragic’ but as something ‘natural’. He says (Bouanchaud, 2018, n. p.): “just as when it rains, it is neither good nor bad, that’s just the way it is. One always experiences frustration and abandonment” (our translation). One of the messages of our book is that one can never claim to be ready to tackle interculturality since it is too complex a lifelong endeavour: we change the way we deal with it, and the way we think about it throughout our lives, without ever being ready for it. The problems posed by languaging are central in never putting an end to our engagement with discourses, multiple realities and ideologies of interculturality. To summarise this chapter, where we focused on critical and reflexive languaging: • We need to stimulate students’ needs and wishes to reflect on the words that are used and presented to them when they speak about interculturality. • By doing so students might make their engagement with discourses of interculturality fairer, more complex and transparent but also convincing. • Their engagement with interculturality as a notion might be more independent. • Their sense of criticality and reflexivity might improve. • They might also find new and interesting ways of meeting other people beyond the modernist questions of origins, nationality and language, by, for example, engaging in discussions around etymology, translation and ideologies.

12  REFLECTING ON INTERCULTURALITY THROUGH CRITICAL… 

115

How might I define this term? Can I negotiate its meaning with others?

What meanings in my language(s) and other language(s)? In everyday life, politics and research? How does it translate?

What ideologies are (contained) (hiding) behind the term?

Whose meanings are presented to me? Who are the people who defined the words?

What etymology? Can I find out how the word came to mean what it means today?

Fig. 12.1  Critical and reflexive languaging in practice

Figure 12.1 summarises the main points made in this chapter and can be used by students to reflect on critical and reflexive languaging, when, for example, they come across a concept/notion/term used to talk about interculturality.

References Berger, J. (2016). Confabulations. Penguin. Billeter, J.-F. (2014). Trois essais sur la traduction. Bouanchaud, C. (2018, March 16). André Markowicz: ‘Traduire, c’est rendre compte de la matérialité de la langue’. Le Monde. https://www.lemonde.fr/ culture/article/2018/03/16/andre-­m arkowicz-­t raduire-­c -­e st-­r endre-­ compte-­de-­la-­materialite-­de-­la-­langue_5271878_3246.html

116 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

Cassin, B. (2016). Translation as paradigm for human sciences. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 30(3), 242–266. https://doi.org/10.5325/ jspecphil.30.3.0242 Chesterman, A., & Wagner, E. (2002). Can theory help translators: A dialogue between the ivory tower and the wordface. Routledge. Dostoyevsky, F. (1953). L’idiot (translation: Pascal). Gallimard. Dostoyevsky, F. (2001). L’idiot (translation: Mousset). Gallimard. Dostoyevsky, F. (2011). L’idiot (translation: Markowicz). Actes Sud. Fang, W. (2019). Modern notions of civilization and culture in China. Palgrave Macmillan. Goody, J. (2006). The theft of history. Cambridge University Press. Kawakami, H. (2014). Blue Moon. Granta 127. https://granta.com/blue-­moon/ Kushner, A. (2015). The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible. Spiegel & Grau. Lapierre, N. (1995). Changer de nom. Stock. Liu, K. (2016). The paper menagerie and other stories. Gallery/Saga Press. Rushdie, S. (1991). Imaginary Homelands. Vintage Books.

CHAPTER 13

Promoting Polycentric Knowledge

Abstract  Polycentrism is proposed here as a way of updating and expanding teachers’ knowledge of interculturality as a complex notion. Beyond reading academic texts, the authors suggest different sources of knowledge such as the international news in different languages and films. Following some philosophers who have argued that audio-visuality is a form of thinking, this chapter shows how one can approach these sources through reflexive and critical reading and thinking. Issues of aesthetics are also discussed to urge the reader to develop alternative ways of exploring the knowledge found in such artefacts. Recommendations as to how to promote polycentrism through work on audio-visuality with students are made. Keywords  Polycentrism • Competence • Racism • Intercultural processes • Power structures • Ethnocentrism • Sources of knowledge • Global media • World cinema

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dervin, A. Jacobsson, Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7_13

117

118 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

Teaching Interculturality Has an Expiration Date Intercultural communication education, as we have critically discussed our field in the previous chapters, is in constant need of updating and un-re-­ thinking. This is of utmost importance for researchers but we also suggest that it is equally significant for teachers. The main issue at stake here is that intercultural communication education primarily is imbued with thinking in models for understanding other people’s behaviour in their presumed capacity as being representatives of (national) cultures. Regardless of their names (‘intercultural competence’; ‘intercultural sensitivity’; ‘intercultural intelligence’ or something similar) these models tend to fixate people in established (ideological) frameworks. A strategic advantage that many teachers have experienced when they have applied intercultural communication education models in class is that they facilitate comparisons and generalisations about groups of Others. This comes in handy since the knowledge produced by these models is often taught to avoid or overcome cultural misunderstandings and establish dialogues over cultural borders. But this we argue is a deceptive advantage. Our understanding of these models—and most of the textbooks in intercultural communication education—is that they rarely are truly helpful. Instead of assisting students to make sense of interculturality they fixate people in time; singling out certain aspects of social interaction as determining behaviour of individuals (culturalism); reducing the complexity of intercultural encounters to a matter of communication skills; departing from a ‘Western’ (mono-centric) understanding of the world establishing a “‘West’ and the rest-dualism”—that is only sometimes and then only rhetorically challenged; despite often being implemented as part of language education the models disregard and/or misrepresent linguistic differences (Piller, 2017). To a certain extent it could even be possible to describe these models as (in)voluntarily racist. What we propose as an alternative to this problematic way of teaching and producing textbooks is to work with students on interculturality as ongoing processes of interaction. To avoid that this turns into another truism in our field two things are required: (1) a thorough clarification of what the concept of intercultural processes is all about and how it necessitates an ongoing shifting of perspectives; (2) to constantly keep oneself updated to make sense of a variety of different aspects of our field from multiple perspectives—including language and communication, politics, ideology, history, economy, media, social media, art, literature. Reading

13  PROMOTING POLYCENTRIC KNOWLEDGE 

119

this list of topics to have updated knowledge about could potentially be a daunting experience, seemingly a black hole to fall into never to be able to surface again to perform actual teaching. But a processual understanding of interculturality goes hand in hand with regular updating. This could also lead to a win-win situation where thinking in processes forces us to update our knowledge and the knowledge we gain helps us to dig deeper into the processes of interculturality. This is of course a demanding and time-consuming task for teachers and students as well as researchers, but if performed on a regular basis it can be utmost rewarding. No teacher is expected to immediately become fully updated, it is rather a matter of starting to update and self-educate strategically and systematically than not at all—and gradually develop a deeper understanding of interculturality.

Key Concepts for Interculturality as a Process Starting our path towards updating strategically and systematically the idea of process has to be discussed and clarified with students. This concept has recently started to be used frequently in relation to the implementation of the idea of interculturality as an alternative to the intercultural (see Fred’s discussion in Chap. 2). Often the term process is used to describe what is ‘new’ with interculturality in contrast to ‘the intercultural’, but for us this is as factually wrong as saying that interculturality or globalisation is recent phenomenon. Interculturality has always been about processes even if it only recently has started to be discussed by means of this terminology. Approaching interculturality as processes signals that we are dealing with ongoing social interactions that develop over time and in space. The processes start sometime and somewhere and end sometime and somewhere, but it is the continuity that is the primary quality distinguishing processes as specifically intercultural. Here it is less important to pinpoint when something starts and/or ends, if it is even possible, than to accentuate the constant motion of interculturality. Since the processes are continual they cannot be frozen in time and captured in models. To understand interculturality we have to continuously follow a ‘liquid’ flow (Dervin, 2011; R’boul, 2020) of different converging aspects of interaction while asking ourselves the following three questions: Who, why and what is being brought into the different processes of interculturality? What kind of (cultural) meaning are the different people interacting producing

120 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

together over time? What kind of power structures are positioning the different actors in a given interaction? Looking at interculturality from this perspective we shift focus from striving for boxing people into prefabricated categories to what people are doing together and what is taking place during interaction—thereby making use of the inter- (in between) of interculturality at the same time as we take ideologies and power structures into consideration. This shift does not disregard differences, generalisations or comparisons in intercultural communication education, but we would like to emphasise that this can never be an end goal for a deeper understanding of interculturality. By definition to think in processes has to depart from fixed categorisations and include an understanding of processes as multiple, open-ended and open for intersections. People’s lives move in different directions at the same time, people are complex beings and how we interact transcends contexts. When we compare and generalise difference, which we still do, the aim should always be to add knowledge to the ongoing processes of interculturality. Before we look closer at specific sources for updating and self-educating about interculturality as processes we will briefly discuss three additional concepts that will help us with our approach of interculturality as processes: Ethnocentrism; Eurocentrism and Polycentrism. These three concepts all have to do with how we understand knowledge in our field. To be ethnocentric is to regard your own position (your upbringing, your schooling, local politics and media) as common sense and normality. Making sense of the world from an ethnocentric position structures your vision and limits what is possible to know fitting into your frame of normality. Eurocentrism is a term that extends the perception of normality to include a European and/or ‘Western’ conceptualisation of the world— regarding Europe as the driving force of history, building on presumed universal ideas about everything from how to produce scientific knowledge to ideals of democracy and human rights. Eurocentrism in practice is a hierarchisation where ‘Western’ ideals are considered as more true, more right, more just and more valuable. From a Eurocentric perspective other parts of the world are always overshadowed (Amin, 2009). To counter ethnocentrism and Eurocentrism that limits the knowledge in our field to a few perspectives, polycentrism pinpoints how it is necessary to move between different centres and open for a variety of epistemologies (i.e. theories of knowledge) to fully understand what is brought into the processes of interculturality. Polycentrism clarifies that knowledge can be

13  PROMOTING POLYCENTRIC KNOWLEDGE 

121

different depending on where it is produced (Bowers, 2005). To update and self-educate in intercultural communication education requires that we look at things from different perspectives. This includes using different sources for obtaining information from different parts of the world (Mignolo, 2009).

Pitfalls in the Production of Knowledge The concepts that we have discussed here are of course open for critique and un-re-thinking. An important example of this is the scorching critique of Eurocentrism and of the understanding of Europe/the ‘West’ as “the centre of the world” that has been voiced by a number of prominent scholars with different disciplinary backgrounds. Robert Aman (2015) has, for example, activated ideas emanating from the coloniality/modernity research group (including amongst others Enrique Dussel, Walter Mignolo, Anibal Quijano, Catherine Walsh) to criticise the dominance of ‘Western’ academic concepts in intercultural communication education. Aman (2018) proposes that it would be beneficial to talk about interculturality as ‘inter-epistemic encounters’, where different traditions of knowledge produce meaning in an unequal hierarchical global structure. The critique that Aman raises is devoted to illuminate that suppressing different epistemologies is tainting our field with an imbalance of knowledge that could be named knowledge inequality. ‘Western’ knowledge is normally regarded as universal, commonsensical, rational, just and universal—while all other forms of knowledge are deemed to be local, specific, irrational and therefore less valuable. For Hamid Dabashi (2019), who for a long time has been one of the staunchest critical academic voices of ‘Western’ knowledge production and politics, even the concept of Eurocentrism has lost its critical potential and turned into a truism. Dabashi (2019, p. 43) writes: “There is nothing in ‘Western’ science and technology, culture and literature without a long and nasty colonial shadow.” Dabashi (2019) presents the well-founded, provocative and illuminating line of argumentation that Europe has played out its role as a global power because of its ignorance of the fact that its historical and contemporary powers are based on racist and colonial structures and that it has lost its hold on many parts of the world. It is for Dabashi no longer a matter of correcting what has been wrong and unjust throughout history to patch up and move forward, but instead to finally make up with Europe’s “metaphoric moment that has exhausted its

122 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

epistemic possibilities and has now positively imploded onto itself” (2019, p. 9). Dabashi’s deconstruction of European dominance and Eurocentric global structures makes sense to read in relation to delinking (see Andreas’s discussion in Chap. 4): in order to develop equality as a core concept in the field of intercultural communication education we have to acknowledge and study how parts of the world are in the process of breaking free—or broke free earlier—(that is to say ‘delinking’) to fully understand what type of meaning is produced in processes of interculturality (Mignolo, 2009; Andreotti, 2011). These critical perspectives from both outside and inside ‘Western’ academia should at least provoke reactions from teachers and researchers and force them to revisit the concepts and frameworks they apply in their practice, and question the validity of the intellectual tools that is used for teaching about interculturality (Kerr & Andreotti, 2019). To question the foundation of our knowledge production is a first and very important step towards updating and self-educating about interculturality. To be able to update about interculturality we have to stop being naïve and relying too heavily on what we think that we already know. We are here not talking about unreflective relativism, but, in order to challenge this foundation we have to destabilise our ethnocentric/Eurocentric common sense positions and show ourselves vulnerable for what may potentially be a humbling as well as illuminating experience.

Special Sources of Knowledge About Interculturality It might be expected that we should include a list of books and articles that we consider required reading for self-educating about interculturality. But the scholarly sources we are using are already present in the references. And it goes without saying that it is mandatory to read to be able to stay updated. One thing that is worth mentioning, and the reader may already have noticed this, our references represent a cross-disciplinary selection of research and a majority of references are written by scholars that are found outside of the field of intercultural communication education. There are also certain limitations regarding access when it comes to the bookish knowledge available in the academic literature about interculturality. We have discussed critical and reflexive languaging as an essential task

13  PROMOTING POLYCENTRIC KNOWLEDGE 

123

for reflecting on interculturality. Many readers are able to read in English, but more importantly they are forced to read in English since the international market for academic literature is dominated by the English language and is often moulded in a format adapted to the requirements of a Eurocentric perspective on scholarly knowledge (Santos, 2014, 2018). Many perspectives that are relevant for making sense of interculturality are therefore lacking in the specialist academic literature (Connell, 2007). To truly challenge the truisms in our field and open for different perspectives we also have to re-think what a source of knowledge about interculturality could be. Global Media Global media in the form of TV channels, newspapers and other news outlets are excellent sources for updating about interculturality. Not necessarily for the content but for the fact that since a wide variety of these sources are available online they are providing easy access to information from many different parts of the world and therefore potentially providing different (and yet often similar) perspectives, ideas and ideologies. To describe contemporary societies as global and saturated with accessible sources of news media is common sense today. We find similar statements in textbooks in intercultural communication education, media studies, sociology, anthropology and a number of other fields of study as well as in general media discourses. But the statements in themselves, and the sheer existence of media outlets, do not imply that people in the world have widened their scope of input sources of information. Instead, the tendency is that people are aware of the plurality of information and perspectives but still use the same media outlets as they always have, the only difference is that they now are using digital devices and screens (Miller & Kraidy, 2016). When we ask the question in our classes with international students, to what degree they read or follow media from different cultural contexts, or if they have changed their media habits in relation to globalisation and digitalisation their answer is, regardless of where in the world the students come from, that they are set in their habits of taking part of local media outlets and have changed very little. There are of course a few students who have a keen interest in covering a wider scope of information in several languages and from different perspectives, but they seem to represent a clear minority. Many students refer to linguistic restrictions and a lack of time as the main reasons for not expanding their media horizon.

124 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

We argue that there is much to gain by devoting valuable time to self-­ educate for teachers’ own sake as well as for developing tools and strategies for teaching students about interculturality. The field of interculturality is too complex not to be time-consuming. The first step is to explore the field and expand our media consumption. We can obtain an idea of what is considered important in different parts of the world regardless of how many languages we are proficient in. By checking the headlines and watching images we can get an impression and an idea of what is considered important in a specific context. We can also connect the dots to uncover the connections between different parts of the world that is hard for us to visualise if we are restricting our scope. A fairly simple way of problematising the idea of globalisation as solely Americanisation is to ask the question why Sub Saharan media is writing so much about China and vice versa? And the answer to this question is that there is a common financial interest between these regions that rarely are included in media in other parts of the world simply because it is not considered as relevant information. That different economic and political circuits are connecting and developing all over the world simultaneously and are driving forces of globalisation is something that becomes clear from a widened scope of media consumption. This can also open up for a critical understanding of global power structures. There is an alternative to taking part of media in many different languages that may look like a short cut. There exist a number of major media outlets that offer English versions of their products. For example, major European newspapers such as Le Monde in France, El Pais in Spain, Frankfurter Allgemeine in Germany, Yle News in Finland, the Arab TV channel Al Jazira or the China Global Television Network (CGTN) to mention only a few examples. It is important to note, however, that these English versions are not necessarily the best way to access different perspectives. In many ways these newspapers and television channels are adapted to an international market competing with each other. Often, but not always, what we find here is condensed and streamlined information, purchased from international news providers such as REUTERS.  These alternatives are definitely interesting to use and include, but we cannot regard them as proper equivalents to local media. Secondly, when we have started to explore global media we can follow up by analysing the forms of expression in different contexts. For our purpose the task is not to take the information at face value, or to evaluate the level of ‘truth’ that is communicated. We are doing this to obtain an

13  PROMOTING POLYCENTRIC KNOWLEDGE 

125

understanding of what is regarded important in different contexts and to uncover connections between different parts of the world. To be able to do this, an ability to reflect on perspectives is required. This is a matter of experience but also of applying some critical analytical tools. While consuming global media we should ask if it is possible for us to identify ‘the voice’ behind the messages: who is saying what, where and why? What is potentially silenced? It is not always possible to fully answer these questions but they are important to address. When it comes to televised news scrutinising the relation between images and voices can provide interesting findings. Think about this question: are you obtaining more or less information via words or images? Ask yourself if you rely more on voices than images and if that is the case, why is it so? Finally, we have to research the owner structures and financial interests of global media to clarify who owns what and how this affects the production of information, the form and style of representation and what perspectives are made (im)possible (Kraidy, 2009; Miller & Kraidy, 2016; Thussu, 2009). To regard global media as a potential source for self-educating about interculturality is easily transferred to assignments in class. What is required is that we take the task seriously and carefully explore many and varied sources in different parts of the world; do this regardless of our linguistic competence (looking for things without knowing the language is possible), devote time and attention to compare and analyse a few aspects such as voice vs. image, where the focus of attention is placed, which perspective on the world. To learn how to be critical regarding interculturality we have to be familiar with different contexts and the kind of information that circulates locally and globally. Audio-Visual Fiction—World Cinema and Interculturality As noted by a number of scholars, audio-visuality in the form of television and film represents potentially valuable alternatives as sources of knowledge in different and less formal ways than academic texts and news media. Not the least audio-visual fiction has been highlighted as important to take into consideration in our field (e.g. Santos, 2014; Jacobsson, 2017; Dabashi, 2019). Audio-visual fiction has been discussed and used as special sources of knowledge (rather than only as representations and entertainment) by philosophers and media scholars since the 1980s (see, e.g. Cavell, 1971; Deleuze, 1986, 1989; Herzogenrath, 2017; Rodowick,

126 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

2001, 2015). An important philosophical idea that is relevant for our field and how we can update our knowledge is that fictive sources can be treated as documents to think with and to develop ideas with, and not strictly as representations of cultures as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, or ‘true’ or ‘false’ in relation to reality. What we can learn from watching films and reading literature are ways of thinking in different perspectives and thereby deepen our understanding of different parts of the world. The way that different art forms are depicted provides a sense of approaches to social encounters and relations, ways of communicating, politics, ideology, ethics and morality. Audio-visual depictions have the potential to offer experiences that activate the connection between cognition and emotion in a more direct way than academic texts or literary fiction. For example, watching films from different parts of the world will not only provide an experience of a content and a story but also different forms of communication through the style and form of the film. To clarify what we are getting at, we can compare the use of ‘world films’ as sources of knowledge to the ‘critical languaging’ that we discussed in the previous chapter: in both cases it is about applying critical perspectives that open for a certain fluidity. While watching a world film we are involved in an encounter whereby we potentially move between different viewer positions that motivate a discussion of fiction as a source of knowledge about interculturality as actual social encounters. We oscillate between different intercultural viewer positions (Jacobsson, 2017), by following the story, the audio-visual depictions and different characters. But there is a potential pitfall that we have to be aware of and that is to watch films as culturalist expressions from a viewer’s position that can be described as ‘ethnographic’ (Tobing-­ Rony, 1996). The ethnographic viewer position reproduces differences and fixates allochronically, asynchronously ‘cultures’ in time (Fabian, 2014). If our focus is solely on highlighting cultural differences (different ways of living, different religions, world views and thought patterns) we run the risk of turning into armchair anthropologists from the past in front of a screen preoccupied with differences. To support the analysis of changing perspectives and viewer positions what we are aiming for with proposing films as sources of knowledge is to achieve polycentric interculturality. A concept that adds an ethical dimension. Watching films activates power structures between individuals and communities depending on knowledge and ideological viewpoints. And this is why an intercultural perspective can critically make use of, for

13  PROMOTING POLYCENTRIC KNOWLEDGE 

127

example, the concept of culture, in analysing how alternate viewer positions are based on epistemological preconceptions of cultural differences without falling back on an ethnographic culturalist point of view. To support these ideas with examples of audio-visual documents on which we can apply these analytical concepts and test their validity, we turn to the development of a local Sub-Saharan African cinema in the aftermath of decolonisation in the 1950s. This part of the world represents a special case in the history of audio-visual communication. Deprived of the possibility to depict local experiences and any form of self-representation until the 1960s, sub-Saharan African film production started half a century after the invention of the cinema. This created a severely unequal structure for producing, distributing and screening images relevant for local audiences (Barlet, 2000). This situation has had an immense impact on African cinema and, for us, the structural inequality of film production provides an entry into using African film documents as sources of knowledge about inter-epistemological inequality, as well as a clear illustration that the flipside of ‘Western’ modernity still is saturated by coloniality (Mignolo, 2011; Dabashi, 2015, 2019). One of the most well-known and inventive filmmakers of this era was the Senegalese film director and writer Ousmane Sembene (1923–2007), who regarded himself as an audio-visual Griot (a traditional storyteller remembering and telling the stories of the community and the people). Starting his career as an author writing in French, telling stories about his experiences as an immigrant dock worker in the south of France in the 1950s and 1960s, he gradually became dissatisfied with being restricted to the French language. His first films were in French but he would later make films in Wolof (a language spoken in Senegal, Gambia and Mauritania) and reach a wider local audience. Sembene regarded cinema as an evening school, where it was possible to communicate with an audience that was either illiterate, unable to understand French or resisting the colonial language of dominance. In several of his films Sembene problematises the use of language in contexts afflicted by power structures and coloniality, opening for the spectator to experience different emotionally charged perspectives on inequality. In the sardonic The Curse (Xala, 1974), a greedy businessman and bigamist is cursed with impotence as punishment for mistreating and cheating a group of poverty-stricken outcasts in Dakar. Neo-colonial and capitalist structures are depicted as the driving force of inequality. But, in the final sequence when the outcasts arrive at the businessman’s house the

128 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

security guard speaks French with him to symbolically distance their conversation from the outcasts who speak Wolof. The colonial language is connected to global finance and power. To rid himself of the curse the businessman has to endure a humiliating ritual where the outcasts spit on his naked torso: in the end the Wolof-speaking paupers have the final word. In Guelwaar (1992) the satirical analysis of inequality in the former French colony is continued. In a particularly striking sequence Sembene makes use of the French West Indian psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon’s concept of ‘black skin, white masks’ (1952),1 to clarify the conflicting identities that have developed in the aftermath of colonialism. A wealthy man approaches a police officer to complain in French about having to wait for his turn to speak to the police. The officer asks him to be patient, he should know as a Senegalese knows that some services take time. The man replies condescendingly that he is not Senegalese, he is French and European, waving his French passport in the face of the police officer to show that he is an important and powerful man. The police officer brushes him off and replies that he should ask his ambassador for help. A farmer who has listened to the conversation asks the police officer why he as an authority figure is speaking French when people from the countryside are present. The police officer explains in Wolof that he was actually talking to a white man. The farmer appears puzzled by the fact that he has met a ‘black white man’ who doesn’t understand their language. In his analysis Fanon (1952) describes the difficulty of getting the grip of the fluidity of power structures, and how conflicting identities are important aspects of the colonial logic still existing in decolonised nations, feeding racism and power hierarchies and shifting in different contexts. A ‘black white’ man in Senegal turns into a ‘white black man’ in France. In Camp Thiaroye (Le Camp de Thiaroye 1993), co-directed with Thierny Faty Sow language plays an important role in a story of Senegalese soldiers that have fought with their colonial masters in the allied forces during the Second World War (so-called tirailleurs sénégalais). But in the film the most important aspect for thinking about interculturality is the imagery of African soldiers in Nazi concentration camps—images that are rarely seen in the photographs, documentaries and other material depicting this part of history, not the least in the West. By including images that juxtapose black bodies with the concentration camp this film opens for a re-imagining of the Second World War as an actual world war and not 1

 1925–1961.

13  PROMOTING POLYCENTRIC KNOWLEDGE 

129

solely a ‘Western’ disaster. ‘Western’ film critics have attacked the historical accuracy of Camp Thiaroye, but they are missing the point, it is the overall lack of images from different perspectives from different parts of the world that restrict our vision of history that represents the real inaccuracy (Barlet, 2016, p. 243). By watching and analysing these films we are given the opportunity to think deeply about how history, politics, power and culture intersect and move between different contexts, which is a key for understanding interculturality. The levels of meaning depicted are supported by the aesthetics which activates both cognition and emotion (Grodal, 2009). To familiarise ourselves with audio-visual documents that we rarely see is vital as part of learning about interculturality as processes. In this chapter we have argued that film and media can be regarded as equally important sources of knowledge as academic texts. This argument is based on an openness for inter-epistemic (knowledge) learning and a conviction that knowledge about interculturality not only can take on many forms but has to espouse multiple forms.

Way Forward The traditional way of updating knowledge is to read academic texts. To move in different paths and uncovering alternative sources of knowledge that we are encouraging here can of course run into some resistance. To make use of these sources of knowledge is in no way a deviation from critical reading or thinking. We should question the validity of these sources in a similar manner as we treat academic texts, but we have to accept that this criticality requires a slightly different approach. We have for example discussed briefly how to analyse the aesthetics of media and film to fully understand these documents, otherwise our criticality will most likely be missing the point. To be able to do that we must familiarise ourselves with different film and media documents to establish a frame of reference to have something to compare with. We also need to be open for the option that knowledge can mean different things. This is precisely what the philosophers that are using fiction film mean when they maintain that audio-­ visuality is a form of thinking. It is not necessarily about searching for factual knowledge but to develop an understanding of the world by thinking deeper with films and various media expressions. What could be done in class:

130 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

• Watch media and film documents regularly with students from different parts of the world and from different historical eras. • Strive for treating these sources seriously to learn from them and to think with them. • Regard aesthetics as an effective way to activating both emotion and cognition in class. • Discuss what different viewer positions students think are possible to move between. Questions that could be asked are: what happens if we think about what is happening in, for example, the film from a specific character’s perspective? Why is the camera focusing more on this character than others? How do you feel when you watch the film, included or excluded/indifferent? What kind of additional information do you think that you need to fully understand what is going on in the story of the film?

References Aman, R. (2015). Why interculturalidad is not interculturality: Colonial remains and paradoxes in translation between indigenous movements and supranational bodies. Cultural Studies, 29(2), 205–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950238 6.2014.899379 Amin, S. (2009). Eurocentrism: Modernity, Religion, and democracy: A critique of eurocentrism and culturalism (2nd ed.) Monthly Review Press. Aman, R. (2018). Decolonising intercultural education: Colonial differences, the geopolitics of knowledge, and inter-epistemic dialogue. Routledge. Andreotti, V. (2011). (Towards) decoloniality and diversality in global citizenship education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 9(3–4), 381–397. https:// doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2011.605323 Barlet, O. (2000). African cinemas: Decolonizing the gaze. Zed Books. Barlet, O. (2016). Contemporary African cinema. Michigan State University Press. Bowers, C.  A. (2005). The false promises of constructivist theories of learning: A global and ecological critique. Peter Lang. Cavell, S. (1971). The world viewed: Reflections on the ontology of film. The Viking Press. Connell, R. (2007). Southern theory: The global dynamics of knowledge in social science. Polity Press. Dabashi, H. (2015). Can non-Europeans think? Zed Books. Dabashi, H. (2019). Europe and its shadows: Coloniality after empire. Pluto Press. Deleuze, G. (1986). Cinema 1: The movement image. Athlone. Deleuze, G. (1989). Cinema 2: The time-image. Athlone.

13  PROMOTING POLYCENTRIC KNOWLEDGE 

131

Dervin, F. (2011). A plea for change in research on intercultural discourses: A ‘liquid’ approach to the study of the acculturation of Chinese students. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 6(1), 37–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/1744714 3.2010.532218 Fabian, J. (2014). Time and the other: How anthropology makes its object. Columbia University Press. Fanon, F. (1952). Peau noir, masques blancs. Éditions du Seuil. Grodal, T. (2009). Embodied visions: Evolution, emotion, culture, film. Oxford University Press. Herzogenrath, B. (Ed.). (2017). Film as philosophy. University of Minnesota Press. Jacobsson, A. (2017). Intercultural film: Fiction film as audiovisual documents of interculturality. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 38(1), 1–15. https://doi. org/10.1080/07256868.2017.1269061 Kerr, J., & Andreotti, V. (2019). Crossing borders in initial teacher education: Mapping dispositions to diversity and inequity. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 22(5), 647–665. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2017.1395326 Kraidy, M. (2009). Reality television and Arab politics: Contention in public life. Cambridge University Press. Mignolo, W.  D. (2009). Epistemic disobedience, independent thought and de-­ colonial freedom. Theory, Culture, Society, 26(7–8), 1–23. https://doi. org/10.1177/0263276409349275 Mignolo, W. D. (2011). The darker side of Western modernity: Global futures, decolonial options. Duke University Press. Miller, T., & Kraidy, M. (2016). Global media studies. Polity Press. Piller, I. (2017). Intercultural communication: A critical introduction. Edinburgh University Press. R’boul, H. (2020). Researching the intercultural: Solid/liquid interculturality in Moroccan-themed scholarship. The Journal of North African Studies. https:// doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2020.1814750 Rodowick, D. N. (2001). Reading the figural, or philosophy after the new media. Duke University Press. Rodowick, D. N. (2015). Philosophy’s artful conversation. Harvard University Press. Santos, B. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice against epistemicide. Paradigm Publishers. Santos, B. (2018). The end of the cognitive empire: The coming of age of epistemologies of the South. Duke University Press. Thussu, D. K. (2009). Internationalizing media studies. Routledge. Tobing-Rony, F. (1996). The third eye: Race, cinema and the ethnographic spectacle. Duke University Press.

CHAPTER 14

Engaging Critically with Travel/Tourism and Interculturality

Abstract  This chapter deals with the issues of travel/tourism, which are often considered as canonical contexts of intercultural encounters. The authors make a plea to think about these notions from multilingual, multi-­ contextual and multi-perspectival dimensions. As such the words travel and tourism can have different connotations and represent different realities for different people, and thus contain alternative ideologies. A list of activities helps the reader reflect on how to support students to un-re-­ think travel/tourism and their links to interculturality. Keywords  Geography • Tourism • Travel • Mobility • Exotic • Well-travelled • Alternative forms In what follows, we will try to problematise, unthink and re-think the idea of travel in relation to interculturality. To do so we shall share ideas and arguments from fields of knowledge for which travel has been the focus: human geography, tourism studies but also anthropology and ethnology, amongst others. Fiction will also support some of the points made in this chapter. In the activities proposed for working with students, we’ll provide ideas for looking into travel/tourism from historical, languaging-based and ethical perspectives.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dervin, A. Jacobsson, Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7_14

133

134 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

At the time of writing, the world was experiencing the COVID-19 crisis of 2020. It almost felt like movement and mobility between countries and continents had stopped. But it had not entirely. Through so-called travel corridors tourists and travellers could still go to a range of (limited) destinations—if they could afford it and/or followed certain (unstable) rules and regulations. The travel industry was in disarray: the number of flights, trains and cruise ships had collapsed; many people did not dare to venture outside their national borders (which might have represented a boon for local tourism/travel); some countries did not reopen their borders. It is important to note, however, that travel/tourism in their multifaceted forms were still not as widespread as one might imagine previous to the COVID-19 crisis. Take flying for example. It is impossible to keep track of the number of discrete individual air travellers each year, however, some specialists argue that only 5% to 10% of the world population has been on a plane. Boeing CEO claimed in 2017 that over 80% of the world population had never taken a flight (Gurdus, 2017). Therefore, when we talk about travel/tourism, we might be talking about a limited amount of (privileged) people. What is more, beyond these canonical (and privileged) forms of travel, we need to bear in mind, for example, forced migration and displacement, which represent other forms of movement. During the COVID-19 crisis, some asylum seekers and resettled refugees were still able to reach states that had agreed to accept them—but in limited numbers. We are no fortune-tellers and thus cannot predict what travel/tourism will mean post-COVID-19. So, dedicating this chapter to travel and interculturality is a bit of a paradoxical task. However, travel, movement, mobility, tourism, sightseeing, peregrination, globe-trotting, migration (some of these in their virtual versions) but also (forced) displacement/migration cannot but be associated with interculturality—even in a post-­ COVID-­19 world. Take advertising for study abroad for instance—a global educational industry, which will be affected financially by the crisis but will most likely survive. The links to interculturality seem to be made systematically. A brochure for a European university promises that “you are making a big decision (…) for the rest of your life” if you decide to study abroad. Direct references to intercultural encounters abound in such advertising: “it’s a unique opportunity to meet, mix and mingle with different kinds of people”; “Study abroad is the single most effective way of modifying the way

14  ENGAGING CRITICALLY WITH TRAVEL/TOURISM… 

135

we view the world”; “adventure is the best way to learn”; “you will discover who you really are.” Quotes from many and varied people such as the writers Jack Kerouac and Scott Fitzgerald but also the Obamas (?) often accompany such advertising too. In one brochure that we consulted, a quote from the theologist and philosopher St Augustine (354–430 CE) served as a slogan: “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page.” ‘Travel’ within study abroad appears to be a ‘natural’ component of interculturality. And so is the case for many other industries.

What Is the Issue at Hand? In what follows, we will try to problematise, unthink and re-think the idea of travel in relation to interculturality. To do so we shall share ideas and arguments from fields of knowledge for which travel has been the focus: human geography, tourism studies but also anthropology and ethnology, amongst others. Fiction will also support some of the points made in this chapter. In the activities proposed for working with students at the end of this chapter, we’ll provide ideas for looking into travel/tourism from historical, languaging-based and ethical perspectives. Movement and mobility across space and borders have always been the main catalysts for intercultural encounters—bearing in mind that ‘intercultural’ could have had a different meaning in the past (see Chap. 2). Sending letters and the use of the internet today have also contributed to such encounters. Intercultural encounters take place through ‘goods’ and ‘services’ that are omnipresent and do not necessitate traveling today: clothing, food, music, books, leisure and so on (Michel, 2004, p. 137). But what kind of interculturality is occurring in these different forms of travel? Is it interculturality in its reflexive and critical sense—as a reminder: a process rather than something static, a questioning of Eurocentric ideologies about us and them, a phenomenon that helps us re-think the political, economic and structural inequalities of today, interculturality as an object of discourse that needs critiquing—or something else? Until now we have used terms referring to privileged forms of movement that some readers might consider to be controversial in the English language—or in other languages for that matter: touris-m-t and travell-­ ing-­er. In some parts of the world these terms are often opposed. If we look at their etymologies we notice that travel comes from the French for to toil, labour (travailler) while tourist is from tour—the eighteenth-­ century idea of the Grand Tour in Europe whereby wealthy individuals

136 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

would travel to specific European places as part of an educational tour. While in some languages the two words have different connotations (travel is considered as a somewhat ‘noble’ act; tourism may connote negatively), in languages such as Chinese there is only one word for these terms. Both a traveller and a tourist translate as 游客 (tour  +  customer) in Chinese, highlighting somewhat the business side of travel/tourism. Although in English the two terms differ, in what follows we use tourism and travel together since there is no objective clear-cut difference between the two. In general, one can identify commonsensical ideas about travel/tourism which might have had a strong ideological influence on the way some of us have been made to think about their benefits, especially from an intercultural perspective. For example, depending on our context, we are told that “travel broadens the mind” and that we can “find our real self through travel”. The very word ‘well-travelled’ in English refers to someone who has been to many different places, and often goes hand-in-hand with words such as capable, open-minded, tolerant, responsible and so on. Travel is thus often viewed (exclusively) as something positive. We believe that these ideologies need to be questioned. To continue our exploration of travel/tourism, we refer to a provocative thought from the French sociologists Baudrillard and Guillaume (1994, p. 11): travel has ceased since “the earth has become a ball” (our translation). They argue that generalised tourism has thus started “because one can only tour [go around] a known place” (our translation, 1994, p. 12). While travel is about working to do something new, to discover something (see the etymology of the word, travailler), tourism is just about movement, merely looking at things. Already in the Victorian era, the English art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) (Ruskin, 1901, p. 300) shared a similar argument when he wrote that traveling was “merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel”. Ponder over these questions: when we move around the world today, is there anything new to discover in a world where every single corner has been ‘conquered’ and ‘experienced’ by us all—in/directly? What is the point of moving around and to visit other places then? What are the consequences of the end of travel for interculturality? Now let us discuss some views about the figure of the tourist as shared by anthropologists and scholars of tourism studies. While reading and working with these ideas, we need to bear in mind that the tourist is a somewhat gross exaggeration of a unified figure and that the way they are talked about cannot but be ideological. Whenever possible we have

14  ENGAGING CRITICALLY WITH TRAVEL/TOURISM… 

137

included counter-arguments in the following statements to counterbalance the claims made about this figure. And we encourage the reader to keep a critical and reflexive attitude when they use these arguments with their students. The very connotations of the word the tourist vary in different contexts and languages. In many ‘Western’ countries, the tourist is often used to refer to other people—the one no one really wishes to claim to be or to be referred to as (Urbain, 1993). We might have heard people say (or ourselves): “I am a traveller, not a tourist.” For the British social psychologist Alex Gillespie (2006) the figure of the tourist in some contexts is an identity that many people wish to resist. This is why there tend to be negative representations of the tourist in some parts of the world—and a preference for the traveller! The literature on tourism provides us with interpretations as to why today’s homo touristicus is somewhat sneered at. Review each of these arguments with your students: do they dis/agree? Can they find counter-­ arguments to prove them wrong? We believe that it is important that these are discussed openly while being questioned. • For the French anthropologist Marc Augé, tourism takes place between two series of images: pictures seen before leaving and the images produced by tourists on the spot, which they share with others and look at back at home (1997, p. 132). As such Augé argues that tourists do not look at what they see in front of their eyes, but they are made to look at landscapes, monuments, people in specific ways (1997, p. 140). And today the tourist is made to look at these elements through a camera on their mobile phone screens, after having seen pictures of what to expect before traveling (online, in books, films, etc.). Interculturally these often translate as essentialist and culturalist constructions. Yet, in the era of generalised creative content, one can see that tourists also produce content that goes beyond the stereotypical images of a given destination by means of selfies, memes that create quick fads, image editing software such as Meitu XiuXiu in China and so on. • Tourists are said to relate to themselves and others as commodities (Michel, 2004). Thus, tourism represents a way of building up symbolic, cultural and economic capitals: “we have been there, we believe that we know and understand the place, the people, the culture, their habits….” In The Innocents Abroad, American writer Mark Twain

138 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

(1879, p. 233) asserts: “(…) we can ‘show off’ and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can’t shake off.” Interculturally the more one travels (‘plays the tourist’) the more one might be given/giving the impression that one is more open-­ minded, knowledgeable about others. Economically these represent potential assets in the eyes of others (desired social groups, future employers, etc.). • Imaginaries about some tourist destinations are strong (think: Paris, New York, Lapland). These imaginaries are mostly based on difference, which can be exaggerated to attract the tourist—and the tourist can also exaggerate them. Advertising for tourism systematically emphasises colourful, exotic, sometimes mysterious aspects of a destination to attract potential customers. An advertisement that would show pictures of buildings and landscapes that are too similar to the ones the tourist is accustomed to may not be attractive enough. For the French anthropologist Salazar (2011, p. 877), through tourism, “Especially in developing countries, imaginaries shape frameworks for cultural interaction and influence against a broader background of cultural dissimilarity and the imaginative possibilities this creates.” It is important to note however that some strand of research labelled as ‘post-tourism’ argues that tourism is experiencing major changes in the way it is organised, depending less on an industry, but on individual choices and wishes for different experiences, and in the ways it produces and plays around imaginaries. As such, Condevaux et  al. (2016) explain that “Tourist destinations are becoming ordinary places whilst ordinary places are becoming tourist destinations.” For example, some suburbs in big cities around the world start to attract tourists for alternative experiences. In Italian cities such as Rome and Milan, a project provided tourists with the opportunity to do urban walks in so-called multicultural districts. Although differentialist tendencies and ‘adventure’ might still be at the centre of such initiatives, interculturally they might open up more doors than the usual touristy imaginaries. • Finally, we are told that tourists tend to wish for difference, not similarity. For Urbain (1993, p. 91): “the more the tourist sees themselves in the mirror of the other, the more he [sic] hates traveling” (our translation). That is why the tourist tends to produce the other as different and is often provided with a constructed other who

14  ENGAGING CRITICALLY WITH TRAVEL/TOURISM… 

139

­erforms (cultural) difference for them. Gillespie (2006) shows, p however, that the tourist is not naïve. In his research on tourism in Northern India, the scholar demonstrates that tourists are eager to witness cultural difference while at the same time being aware of their potential fabrication.

Further Unthinking… What Is a Good Traveller? What does it take to be a good traveller? In what follows we review a certain number of answers to this question that could be discussed with students. In this quote, the writer Shahnaz Habib (2020, n.p.) summarises well what is usually described as what is required of a ‘good traveller’: “Certainly it is possible to identify some traits that would make a good traveller: curiosity, openness to the world, sympathy for the people they meet on their travels, willingness to question their own biases and stereotypes.” She uses many assumptions that have been identified in the way, for example, intercultural competence has also been defined (openness, willingness, curiosity, etc.). Although most of us might agree with these aspects, we need to question their potential polysemy in different contexts and languages. What do they mean to different people? • To illustrate the willingness to question one’s own biases and stereotypes, maybe what the English writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) has to say about travel can help us: “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries” (1926, p. 241). • To be curious and open might have to do with French writer Flaubert’s assumption (1821–1880) found in his diaries of travel to Egypt: “Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you reside in in the world” (2006, p. 45). • Finally, in his Empire of Signs (1970) about Japan, French philosopher and critic Roland Barthes (1915–1980) claims that the only lexicon that one needs abroad is that of the rendez-vous through which one can develop sympathy for and with people met abroad. These quotes all come from three male European writers from the last century, therefore their answers might not fit into today’s multifaceted experiences of travelling. However, we believe personally that they still make sense: modesty, being willing to meet Others, seeing differently and questioning.

140 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

Some contemporary anthropologists have also speculated as to what makes a person a ‘good traveller’. This is the case of the French anthropologist Franck Michel who has asserted that: • A good traveller leaves their certainty behind (2004, p. 226). • They have learnt to doubt, think and contest again (2004, p. 21). • They are able to ‘implode from within’, the more communication, contacts and branchements (connections) they experience with others—that is, they become aware of and work upon their own diversity (2004, p. 19). • They do not allow the world to be seen as banal, obvious and dull (2004, p. 13). Our own views on traveling urge us to argue that a ‘good traveller’ wishes to break the ruts and patterns of how they have been ‘brainwashed’ to conceptualise the role of travel in building up interculturality. They are also aware of the power of their narratives on their travelling experiences when they return home. The ‘good traveller’ therefore reflects actively on and adapts the way they talk about what they have seen—and even remains quiet when asked questions such as how were the Chinese? since there cannot be any satisfactory answer to such questions.

Working with Students on the Idea of Travel/ Tourism and Interculturality In what follows we propose five simple activities for students to continue unthinking and re-thinking travel/tourism and interculturality. To summarise what has been discussed in the previous sections, we suggest to start with the following questions: • How do you define travel versus tourism? What are their characteristics? Do you see yourself as a tourist and/or a traveller, explain why? Are these words opposed in your language(s) and context(s)? • What meaning(s) would you give to the word ‘well-travelled’? Do you know equivalents in other languages? Are they connoted the same way? • Do you personally know someone who has never travelled outside their country? Do you think it makes them different from ‘well-­ travelled’ people?

14  ENGAGING CRITICALLY WITH TRAVEL/TOURISM… 

141

• (What) can we learn during travels? For example, does travel make us more open-minded? Can we find our (real) self abroad? How do you understand this assertion? Who decides what is the ‘correct’ thing to learn? • In some contexts, there seem to be pre-decided beliefs (‘orders’!) about who we should spend time with when we are in another country (‘local’ people and maybe other foreigners—co-nationals should be avoided). Why is that? Is it really a problem to spend time with people from one’s own country? Should these beliefs be rethought? What do they tell us about the way interculturality is thought of and about the division between ‘us’ and ‘them’? • What are the characteristics of a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ traveller, especially in relation to issues of interculturality? Thinking about your own experiences, which of the two have you been? • Think about your own views on what travel/tourism is about in relation to the way you understand/problematise interculturality. How do they mis/match? Intercultural Encounters and Travel from the Past Students might have read about past (often painful) intercultural encounters related to movement around the globe (e.g. colonisation). The Valladolid Debate which took place in Spain in 1550–1551 represents an example to discuss in class. This was a moral debate about the conquest of the Americas and the rights and treatment of indigenous people. The 1992 novel by Jean-Claude Carrière and the filmed version entitled La Controverse de Valladolid (Dispute in Valladolid) record the arguments of two different camps: those who believed that the Amerindians were free men regardless of their different customs versus those who claimed that they should be suppressed since they were considered as non-humans. Although the Debate did not really lead to a clear decision as to how to treat indigenous people, it already showed a concern for justice and morality in relation to encounters triggered by movement between the continents in the sixteenth century. With students, watch the filmed version of the novel and discuss with them what this tells us about the links between movement, intercultural encounters, ‘us’ and ‘them’. How do the different characters from the film talk about each other? Ask students to recreate the Debate and to try to play the roles of characters from the two camps.

142 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

Access to Travel/Tourism Not everybody can travel the world at will. The 2020 COVID-19 crisis had put a temporary end to travel/tourism. As asserted earlier some people were still able to travel and to visit some countries. Many factors determined why they were entitled to do so. One of them was the passport(s) they held. Currently there are at least two different global rankings regarding the value of passports: The Passport Index (https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php) and the Henley Passport Index (https://www.henleypassportindex.com/passport). The former describes its objectives as follows: “Showcase, educate and inform the public on the power passports transcend on the holder’s identity, opportunity, mobility and overall quality of life.” It also aims to help people discuss issues such as citizenship, mobility, foreign policy, country branding. In a similar vein, the Henley Passport Index measures global access, travel freedom and how passports compare to each other. Ask students to visit both organisations online and to observe the rankings: Which countries seem to fare well (and not so well) in terms of access to a ‘borderless’ world? What do these rankings tell us about the world today? What might be the consequences on interculturality? The two indexes mention the phenomena of Residence- and Citizenship-by Investment, through which one can gain access to residence and citizenship rights by investing substantially in a given country. The Henley Passport Index tells us that “There are now residence- and citizenship-­by-investment programs in nearly 100 countries around the world, including more than 70% of EU member states” (https://www. henleypassportindex.com). Ask your students to do some research on these phenomena: Which countries in the world allow applying for residence and/or citizenship by investment (e.g. Austria, Cyprus, Malta and Turkey)? What might be the benefits of obtaining these passports or residence? Are there any potential drawbacks interculturally speaking? What do these systems of investment tell us about nations today? Students might also be made aware of the Digital Nomad Visa programme in Estonia, a country on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe and a member of the European Union. The programme allows remote workers to live and work in Estonia for a company registered abroad. The following questions might be asked: Why would a worker apply for this kind of Visa and move to Estonia? Who do you think might apply for such visas? Would you consider living and working from a different country where your company is located? How would this specific programme contribute to your intercultural encounters and experiences?

14  ENGAGING CRITICALLY WITH TRAVEL/TOURISM… 

143

Discussing Alternative Forms of Travel for Interculturality In this activity, we want students to think about examples of alternative travel—travel that represents an attempt at moving beyond the problems faced by the figure of the tourist, as identified earlier. To begin with, students might want to discuss these examples: • The idea that travel does not require physical movement to bring the good in the traveller has been discussed intensively. Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) declared (1891, p. 47): “If you desire to see a Japanese effect, you will not behave like a tourist and go to Tokyo. On the contrary, you will stay at home and steep yourself in the work of certain Japanese artists, and then, when you have absorbed the spirit of their style, and caught their imaginative manner of vision, you will go some afternoon and sit in the Park or stroll down Piccadilly, and if you cannot see an absolutely Japanese effect there, you will not see it anywhere.” In a similar vein, the American author Jhumpa Lahiri (2003, p. 16) tells us that the grandfather of one of her characters claims that books are meant to help us “travel without moving an inch”. • Traveling often goes hand in hand with sightseeing—using only one of the five basic human senses: sight. Before the eighteenth century, before sightseeing (visiting places of interest to see something new), other senses were involved in the act of traveling: hearing, smell, touch and taste. Although these are somewhat part of the tourist experience, they are not as much emphasised as seeing. • In a book called Class Trip (which is a pun upon social class and school form) Jounin (2014) describes an experiment with his French students from lower social classes, living in a poor suburb of Paris. He took them to the most expensive and exclusive districts of Paris and asked them to do an ethnography of their experiences. • Dark tourism refers to visits to places where terrible events of human history have unfolded (war, genocide, accidental disasters, etc.). Although there seem to be a lot of myths about this kind of alternative tourism, many endorse respectful engagement with history in an educational manner. Dark tourism might include: visits to Hiroshima, Japan, the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, Ground Zero in New York. Could these alternative forms of travel and the ones identified by the students contribute to different forms of interculturality? Which ones?

144 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

Sayings on Travel: Meanings and Ideologies For this activity students are asked to make a list of sayings about travel that they might be aware of. In most languages, one can identify many such sayings. What sayings do they know in their language(s) and other languages? What do they tell us about the meanings, goals of travel? What ideologies? Below one can find a list of sayings and proverbs from different parts of the world. With the students, try to understand what they mean, what they tell us about interculturality and if there are equivalents in other languages and contexts. Angola • To be sure that your friend is a friend, you must go with him on a journey, travel with him day and night, go with him near and far. China • He who returns from a journey is not the same as he who left. • Walking 10,000 miles of world is better than reading 10,000 scrolls of books. • The wise man and the tortoise travel but never leave their home. Italy • Travel broadens the mind. • Traveling is a return to the essentials. Romania • A travelled child knows better than the old man who sits at home. Zambia • People get to know one another when traveling. Case Scenarios: What Would Students Do? The last activity consists of case scenarios to discuss. For each scenario, students should position themselves in relation to the meaning(s) and objective(s) of travel and interculturality: • Your Italian friend is coming to your country for the first time and has asked you to plan something typical of your culture. What do you do?

14  ENGAGING CRITICALLY WITH TRAVEL/TOURISM… 

145

• You are part of the board of an association for international students at your university. You notice that most of the activities organised for the students are only ‘touristy’. What do you do? • You have travelled all the way to a remote place abroad and are taken to what is described as a ‘typical’ village. You realise that the village is a performance and that the people are actors. What is your reaction? • Choose randomly a picture of a landscape. Examine the landscape thinking about what you could see, hear, smell, feel, if you were there. Compare your impressions with others, what similarities and differences? • Think about a trip you made. What were people’s reactions when you returned home? Did you show them pictures? Did you tell them anything about the ‘local’ people? Did they ask you questions about your trip? Do you remember your answers? Would you respond differently now? • Finally, in the Korean novelist Yun Ko-Eun’s The Disaster Tourist (2020), a travel agency sells trips to disaster zones around the world (volcano eruptions, earthquakes, war, drought, typhoons and tsunamis). If you won one of these trips, would you go? Why? What do you think you would gain from such a trip interculturally speaking?

Way Forward: Towards Unthinking and Re-thinking Travel/Tourism and Interculturality This chapter on interculturality and the issue of travel/tourism reinforces the need to think about these notions from multilingual, multi-contextual and multi-perspectival dimensions. The words travel and tourism can have different connotations and represent different realities for different people, and thus contain alternative ideologies. They may also not be accessible to some. In fact, it does not matter so much if one (is) consider(s) (ed) (themselves) as a tourist or a traveller. What matters is the meaning given to these words by those who ‘do’ travelling and/or tourism (‘guests’ and ‘hosts’). We should bear in mind that the way these words relate to interculturality can also differ across languages. We should thus not assume that we share universal experiences and critiques of travel and/or tourism with our interlocutors. As far as the objectives of travel/tourism and the ‘good traveller’ are concerned, here again, it is important that students understand that no

146 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

one can impose and/or ‘order’ others to travel the way we believe they should do. The same applies to the kind of interactions one should have when one travels (‘locals’, people from our own country, etc.). These should be personal changeable choices. We have made the claim repeatedly in this book that views on interculturality are always ideological and thus they represent specific projections of economic-political orders. This is why deciding upon what travel/tourism should be about or who they should encourage to meet is ethically problematic. For example, if I reject the ideology of asking the question “where are you from?” or of the idea of cultural difference (which is often a form of “culture as an excuse”) my way of experiencing travel/tourism might be very different from someone who accepts these elements. No one can claim that either of these attitudes will lead to the ‘right’ form of travel/tourism. In our opinion, there are, however, some principles related to interculturality and tourism/travel that should be rejected. These all relate to today’s economic and political aspects of interculturality: overtly Eurocentric and somewhat neo-racist ideologies (whereby the other, either a guest or a host is looked down upon ex-/implicitly), the branding and marketisation of self and the other (neoliberal approaches to interculturality), as well as the alienation and exploitation of individuals (capitalism). We should also reject and/or question ‘ready-made-and-to-think’ ideas about travel/tourism which are counter-productive and counterintuitive and guided by Eurocentric and neoliberal ideologies. For example: meet local people, avoid people from your own country—an ideology that places artificial boundaries between different kinds of individuals; one finds one’s real self the more one travels—is there such a thing as a (real!) self without an other?; the more one travels, the more open-minded one becomes— a fallacy that has been highlighted in the literature on, for example, study abroad; when one travels abroad one should speak different languages— again: speaking a foreign language does not necessarily make someone more open-minded, more willing to interact with, for example, local people and/or interculturally competent. All these elements require reflecting systematically on the ideologies of travel/tourism and interculturality that have been forced unto us since our childhood; taking into account economic-political aspects; accepting that one’s view on travel/tourism and interculturality is only one of the different views—and not the ‘right’ and only one. We feel that it is fair to say that these critiques probably relate to our own ideologies about travel/tourism and interculturality.

14  ENGAGING CRITICALLY WITH TRAVEL/TOURISM… 

147

To finish this chapter on unthinking and re-thinking travel and interculturality, one aspect that has not been discussed much in the literature is the position of the one(s) we meet abroad when we travel. We may also need to re-think our relations to them: what do they get from meeting us? What do they think we get from meeting them? How do they see my presence and our relations? What is it that they (don’t) like about the way we impose certain ways of meeting each other? What is it that they don’t dare to tell us about themselves, their place, the way they see us? What would they really want us to see of their place? Do they experience travel and tourism the same way we do? Engaging in dialogues around these questions could represent an interesting form of interculturality.

References Augé, M. (1997). L’impossible voyage: le tourisme et ses images. Payot. Barthes, R. (1970). Empire of signs. Hill & Wang and The Noonday Press. Baudrillard, J., & Guillaume, M. (1994). Figures de l’altérité. Descartes. Carrière, J.-C. (1992). La controverse de Valladolid. Actes Sud. Condevaux, A., Djament-Tran, G., & Gravari-Barbas, M. (2016). Before and after tourism(s). The trajectories of tourist destinations and the role of actors involved in “off-the-beaten-track” tourism: A literature review. Via, 9 [online]. https://doi.org/10.4000/viatourism.413 Flaubert, G. (2006). Voyages en Orient. Gallimard. Gillespie, A. (2006). Becoming other: From social interaction to self-reflection. IAP-­ Information Age Publishing. Gurdus, L. (2017). Boeing CEO: Over 80% of the world has never taken a flight. We’re leveraging that for growth. CNBC. https://www.cnbc. com/2017/12/07/boeing-­ceo-­80-­percent-­of-­people-­never-­flown-­for-­us-­ that-­means-­growth.html Habib, S. (2020). On the “Good” in “Good Traveler”. Words Without Borders. h t t p s : / / w w w. w o r d s w i t h o u t b o r d e r s . o r g / a r t i c l e / j a n u a r y -­2 0 2 0 -­ international-­literature-­and-­travel-­shahnaz-­habib Huxley, A. (1926). Jesling Pilate: An intellectual holiday. George H. Doran Company. Jounin, N. (2014). Voyage de classes. Des étudiants de Seine-Saint-Denis enquêtent dans les beaux quartiers. La Découverte. Ko-Eun, Y. (2020). The disaster tourist. Serpent Tail. Lahiri, J. (2003). The Namesake. First Marine Books. Michel, F. (2004). Désirs d’ailleurs: essai d’anthropologie des voyages. Armand Colin. Ruskin, J. (1901). Modern painters: Of many things. Smith, Elder and Co.

148 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

Salazar, N.  B. (2011). Tourism imaginaries: A conceptual approach. Annals of Tourism Research, 39(2), 863–882. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals. 2011.10.004 Twain, M. (1879). The innocents abroad. American Publishing Company. Urbain, J.-D. (1993). L’idiot du voyage: histoires de touristes. Payot. Wilde, O. (1891/2001). Intentions. The Floating Press.

CHAPTER 15

Conclusion

Abstract  This chapter serves as a way of summarising the main points made in this book. A framework for analysing interculturality, critically and reflexively, is proposed. It includes five key interrelated concepts: inter-context, inter-discursivity, inter-ideology, inter-sectionality and inter-­ epistemology. The authors make suggestions as to how to work through this model. At the end of the conclusion, they also call for further work on interculturality in order to unearth even more facets of the notion. Keywords  Multifacetedness • Ideologies • Centrisms • Languaging • Active process • Flow of knowledge We started this book by rejecting a view of interculturality as utilitarian calculus. We hope that through our dialogues, critiques, warnings and examples we made it clear that this book is not a ‘recipe book’ for ‘doing’ interculturality in teacher education and training. This book is divided into two parts. In the first ten chapters, we entered into a dialogue around the meanings, problems and practices of interculturality. We believe strongly that making students aware of the following points and educating/training them to take them into consideration in their analysis of interculturality are essential:

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dervin, A. Jacobsson, Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7_15

149

150 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

• There is a need to look at the multifacetedness of the history of interculturality to un-re-think today’s interculturality. What we experience in the here and now is both different and similar to what people experienced in the past. Confronting historical meanings, practices and ideologies can prompt us to look at otherwise taken-for-granted views on interculturality differently. • Today’s interculturality (as a notion and object of discourse in education) can also be interpreted, discoursed and practised in both similar and different ways around the world. Hence the urge to treat it in a polycentric way and to move beyond Euro- and Western-centrisms. • This is why it is important to place the concept of ideology of interculturality at the centre of our concerns. No one escapes structural and ‘inter-individual’ ideologies—and that includes us the authors of this book! This goes hand in hand with including discussions of the influence of economic-political elements and a critical analysis of issues of inequality and injustice in intercultural encounters. • The centrality of critical languaging (translation, genealogies) was emphasised throughout the book. • The inter- and -ality of interculturality are the keys to make the notion meaningful. They both point at potentially capricious processes that affect all of us. Models of, for example, intercultural/ global competence cannot equip students to deal with this essential aspect of interculturality, especially if based on the usual individualistic (‘self-centred’) and a-political (or falsely political as in models promoting ‘democracy’) components. For student teachers, teachers and teacher educators it means that dialogues, as well as engagement with other actors such as scholars-experts and decision-makers, must be at the core of interculturality in education. Spaces for such difficult, critical and reflexive dialogues must be created in educational institutions. We also believe that keeping up with interdisciplinary views on interculturality in English and other languages, but also with the arts, is every educator’s duty.

15 CONCLUSION 

151

Critical and Reflexive Interculturality as a Means of Analysing Encounters To conclude this book, we wish to leave the reader with some final thoughts about how to analyse interculturality in educational settings, in accordance with the ambition to avoid placing people in fixed categories— whether the term used for describing the category is national culture, ethnicity or cultural groups. Instead, we propose a method that examines interculturality as active processes. This requires adjusting our analytical lenses, tools and concepts to capture the fact that processes are in fact open-ended. For us analysing interculturality is primarily about activating analytical concepts and engaging in a dialogue with data (e.g. an interview, a film, an excerpt from a novel). We argue that, by describing, clarifying and following up on connections, relations and power structures in a polycentric manner, the intermingling of different perspectives and knowledges can occur. The analysis of interculturality here is always directed towards engaging in a dialogue with interested parties, for example: researchers, teachers and/or students. To analyse interculturality ideally includes presenting ideas about data, either in the forms of texts or presentations in class to be discussed and commented on by readers and/or listeners. This dialogic understanding of performing analysis is particularly important for supporting the position of interculturality as open-ended processes. Without dialogue the process comes to a halt, becomes fixated or vanishes into thin air. Too much teaching and research in the field of intercultural communication education has been presented in the form of ‘allochronic’ monologues showcasing explanations of the Other. To expand on the idea of analysing interculturality cinema and media studies expert D. N. Rodowick’s discussion of the cross-section of continental philosophy and the Humanities in which he pinpoints ‘Ethics, interpretation and evaluation’ (2015, p. 108) as core aspects of the production of knowledge is a good additional point. This is a highly relevant statement for our approach: we perform interpretations in our analyses; we are evaluated via dialogue with readers and listeners; and we are constantly engaged in ethical considerations when we deal with issues of interculturality.

152 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

Key Concepts for Analysing Interculturality In our book we have presented ways of re-thinking a number of core concepts in the field of intercultural communication education. But we have also added concepts contributing new perspectives that we think are necessary for the renewal of interculturality. The primary method of this form of analysis is an interpretative exploration whereby concepts are set in motion in relation to specific data. We then ‘follow’ their paths, how they interrelate and contemplate their future directions. This goes hand in hand with the constant motion of interculturality, captured by the understanding of processes as open-ended and multiplying. What we have proposed in our book is summarised through five key interrelated concepts for analysing interculturality: inter-context, inter-­ discursivity, inter-ideology, inter-sectionality and inter-epistemology (see Fig. 15.1). The first analytical component of interculturality is inter-context. This component is meant to help us pinpoint the unit of analysis of encounters and interactions in specific contexts. A description of the context is thus a prerequisite for any analysis of interculturality. We start by describing why, where, when and how the encounter is taking place, adding information that can help us get a sense of the environment and other conditions needed for interculturality to happen (e.g. what in the context blocks and/or facilitates interculturality?). The next component that is activated is inter-discursivity. A pivotal aspect of our argumentation in this book was that we need to expand Fig. 15.1  Five interrelated key components for analysing interculturality

inter-context

interepistemology

intersectionality

interdiscursivity

interideology

15 CONCLUSION 

153

further on how we treat language as a variable of interculturality. An inter-­ discursive approach focuses on ‘critical languaging’ (see Chap. 11), highlighting the communicative relativism (Piller, 2017) present in all intercultural communication. Critical languaging departs from treating language as a neutral means of communication based on ‘linguistic dos or don’ts’, to an understanding of language as the key to uncovering different ideologies and power structures in the way interculturality is constructed and sometimes imposed as self-evident. Analysing language as an aspect of interculturality also means translating so-called untranslatables by deconstructing preconceived notions regarding interculturality. Beyond the linguistic aspects of interculturality there is a need to include inter-ideology as one of the five core components. An element of interculturality that clearly has been missing systematically in many previous studies of intercultural communication education is ideology and the ideological framing of intercultural encounters. When this is been done (see, e.g. Holliday, 2010) ideology has been treated as a free-standing component of a grand ‘cultural’ structure. What we are proposing here is that all social encounters are permeated by ideology and that political and ideological motivation is a driving force for all forms of interculturality, including those ‘practised’ and ‘done’ by scholars, educators and identified in, for example, epistemological assumptions. As asserted in this book on several occasions, we have to develop our understanding of different forms of ideology in various contexts and historical eras to be able to problematise, understand and complexify interculturality. This way of thinking is connected to the fairly recent theoretical concept of inter-sectionality that we borrow from gender studies. Intersectionality directs our attention towards single individuals as complex entities, consisting of different layers of identity that are (co-)constructed, re-constructed and sometimes silenced, in contexts and with the people interacting with them. Intersectionality also pinpoints that different aspects of our identity are made meaningful depending on where and when we are situated and with whom we are interacting. The co-­ construction that takes place in relation to other people is never neutral. Societal power structures and overarching ideologies are always present ‘hailing’ the interlocutors (Althusser, 2008). The main benefit from integrating intersectionality in interculturality is a critical awareness of the influence of, for example, politics and the economy. At the same time, it forces us to re-think the links between contextual situatedness and power structures.

154 

F. DERVIN AND A. JACOBSSON

The final component of interculturality has only recently started to be addressed as a consequence of an intensified awareness of the necessity to de-Eurocentrise or more precisely de-colonise intercultural communication education (see R’boul, 2020a). Inter-epistemology captures that what is primarily at stake when we de-colonise interculturality: we are required to radically relativise any form of cultural precedence to clarify the inequality of access to voice and perspective in (global) dialogical structures (Aman, 2018). Summing up the list of five components, they all support the need to follow flows of interaction and meaning-making in analysing interculturality. Adapting our thinking to open-ended processes is our answer to the recent turn to criticality and reflexivity in intercultural communication education. The two concepts of criticality and reflexivity are practically omnipresent in contemporary discussions of interculturality, like ‘mantras’. They are said to be important to take into consideration but rarely brought into practices of analysis. People are ‘ordered’ to be critical and reflexive, without any clear indication of what they entail (Chen & Dervin, 2020). The five concepts presented here complement each other and always depend, to different degrees, on the preferred unit of analysis. Activating the concepts together also clarifies the inter-disciplinarity of our field as a combination of (amongst others) cultural studies, applied linguistics, philosophy, gender studies and post-colonial studies. The interaction between the analytical concepts could generate new synthesises of polycentric knowledge about interculturality.

Pitfalls with Analysis Implementing this analytical thinking in our field would potentially create a renewed interest in a field that, for a long time, has been firmly connected to its Eurocentric, anthropological and colonial history, and that has reproduced essentialism rather than yielded liberating and dialogical knowledge about social interaction in a globalised world. The recycling of outdated theoretical perspectives that seem to hold a firm grip on our field has been very efficient when it comes to dragging research and teaching in the field back to its old sources. Looking at many discussions of intersectionality, one often sees scholars adding up more identity markers of an individual fixed in time (e.g. gender + social class + culture), rather than observing the shifting situatedness of social relations and the power structures that regulate them. Instead of fighting inequality one ends up

15 CONCLUSION 

155

refurbishing inequality. We have to be very careful not to let our concepts and frameworks be used as structures of essentialism by losing track of the processuality and flow of knowledge that cannot be fixed in time. In the introduction, we warmed the reader that there is a lot to chew and digest if one wishes to un-re-think interculturality. Our work does not stop here, of course. We must endeavour to continue dialoguing around the notion so as to explore more of its facets. In Finland the cliché of “teachers are the candles of the nation” is often used to ‘sell’ Finnish education to the world. Yet the image seems to be well-suited to describe the role of educators in making the complex idea of interculturality resonate with students. Although the phrase ‘to hold a candle to’ is used pejoratively today to indicate that two things don’t compare, in its original meaning the phrase referred to someone holding a candle for light while someone was working. To hold the candle of interculturality to and with others—and sometimes getting our fingers burnt by it—represents a good metaphor for the important work that remains to be done in our field.

References Althusser, L. (2008). On ideology. Verso. Aman, R. (2018). Decolonising intercultural education: Colonial differences, the geopolitics of knowledge, and inter-epistemic dialogue. Routledge. Chen, N., & Dervin, F. (2020). Afterword: Beyond the naïve mantra of criticality in education (research)? In A.  Simpson & F.  Dervin (Eds.), The meaning of criticality in educational research (pp. 167–172). Palgrave Macmillan. Holliday, A. (2010). Intercultural communication and ideology. Sage. Piller, I. (2017). Intercultural communication: A critical introduction (2nd ed.). Edinburgh University Press. R’boul, H. (2020a). Postcolonial interventions in intercultural communication knowledge: Meta-intercultural ontologies, decolonial knowledges and epistemological polylogue. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2020.1829676. Rodowick, D. N. (2015). Philosophy’s artful conversation. Harvard University Press.

Bibliography

Abdallah-Pretceille, M. (2004). Vers une pedagogie interculturelle. Anthropos. Abdallah-Pretceille, M. (2006). Interculturalism as a paradigm for thinking about diversity. Intercultural Education, 17(5), 475–483. https://doi. org/10.1080/14675980601065764 Althusser, L. (2001). Lenin and philosophy, and other essays. Monthly Review Press. Althusser, L. (2008). On ideology. Verso. Aman, R. (2015). Why interculturalidad is not interculturality: Colonial remains and paradoxes in translation between indigenous movements and supranational bodies. Cultural Studies, 29(2), 205–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950238 6.2014.899379 Aman, R. (2018). Decolonising intercultural education: Colonial differences, the geopolitics of knowledge, and inter-epistemic dialogue. Routledge. Amin, S. (2009). Eurocentrism: Modernity, Religion, and democracy: A critique of eurocentrism and culturalism (2nd ed.) Monthly Review Press. Andreotti, V. (2011). (Towards) decoloniality and diversality in global citizenship education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 9(3–4), 381–397. https:// doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2011.605323 Andreotti, V. (2014). The educational challenges of imagining the world differently. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue Canadienne d’études du développement, 37(1), 101–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/0225518 9.2016.1134456 Augé, M. (1997). L’impossible voyage: le tourisme et ses images. Payot. Barlet, O. (2000). African cinemas: Decolonizing the gaze. Zedbooks. Barlet, O. (2016). Contemporary African cinema. Michigan State University Press. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dervin, A. Jacobsson, Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7

157

158 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barthes, R. (1970). Empire of signs. Hill and Wang, The Noonday Press. Baudrillard, J., & Guillaume, M. (1994). Figures de l’altérité. Descartes. Baumann, G. (1996). Contesting culture: Discourses of identity in multi-ethnic London. Cambridge University Press. Beach, D. (2013). Changing higher education: Converging policy-packages and experiences of changing academic work in Sweden. Journal of Education Policy, 28(4), 517–533. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2013.782426 Benjamin, R. (2013). The translator relay. Words without Borders. https://www. wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/ar ticle/the-­t ranslator-­r elay­ross-­benjamin Berger, J. (2016). Confabulations. Penguin. Bergson, H. (1946). The creative mind. Kessinger Pub. Bergson, H. (2007). Creative evolution. Palgrave Macmillan. Billeter, J.-F. (2014). Trois essais sur la traduction. allia. Billetier, J.-F. (n.d.). Interpreting China for the West—Jean François Billeter. Retrieved September 18, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=cthAXVJuu_Y Black, A.  L. (2015). Authoring a life: Writing ourselves in/out of our work in education. In M.  Baguley, Y.  Findlay, & M.  C. Kirby (Eds.), Meanings and motivation in education research (pp. 72–94). Routledge. Bouanchaud, C. (2018). André Markowicz: « Traduire, c’est rendre compte de la matérialité de la langue ». Le Monde, 16 March 2018. https://www.lemonde. fr/culture/article/2018/03/16/andre-­markowicz-­traduire-­c-­est-­r endre-­ compte-­de-­la-­materialite-­de-­la-­langue_5271878_3246.html Bowers, C.  A. (2005). The false promises of constructivist theories of learning: A global and ecological critique. Peter Lang. Breidenbach, J., & Nyíri, P. (2009). Seeing culture everywhere: From genocide to consumer habits. University of Washington Press. Brubaker, R. (2004). Ethnicity without groups. Harvard University Press. Carrière, J.-C. (1992). La controverse de Valladolid. Actes Sud. Cassin, B. (2016). Translation as paradigm for human sciences. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 30(3), 242–266. https://doi.org/10.5325/ jspecphil.30.3.0242 Castells, M. (2009). Communication power. Oxford University Press. Cavell, S. (1971). The world viewed: Reflections on the ontology of film. The Viking Press. Chang, H.  C. (1997). Language and words: Communication in the analects of Confucius. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16(2), 107–131. Chen, N., & Dervin, F. (2020). Afterword: Beyond the Naïve mantra of criticality in education (research)? In A.  Simpson & F.  Dervin (Eds.), The meaning of criticality in educational research (pp. 167–172). Palgrave Macmillan. Cheng, A. (2014). Histoire de la pensée chinoise. Éd. Points. Chesterman, A., & Wagner, E. (2002). Can theory help translators: A dialogue between the ivory tower and the wordface. Routledge.

 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

159

Cioran, É. (1985). Drawn and quartered. Seaver Books. Condevaux, A., Djament-Tran, G., & Gravari-Barbas, M. (2016). Before and after tourism(s). The trajectories of tourist destinations and the role of actors involved in ‘off-the-beaten-track’ tourism: A literature review. Via, 9 [online]. https://doi.org/10.4000/viatourism.413 Connell, R. (2007). Southern theory: The global dynamics of knowledge in social science. Polity Press. Conrad, S. (2016). What is global history? Princeton University Press. Croucher, S. (Ed.). (2017). Global perspectives on intercultural communication. Routledge. Dabashi, H. (2015). Can non-Europeans think? Zed Books. Dabashi, H. (2019). Europe and its shadows: Coloniality after empire. Pluto Press. Dahlén, T. (1997). Among the interculturalists: An emergent profession and its packaging of knowledge. Stockholms universitet, Socialantropologiska institutionen. Deleuze, G. (1986). Cinema 1: The movement image. Athlone. Deleuze, G. (1988). The fold: Leibniz and the baroque. Continuum. Deleuze, G. (1989). Cinema 2: The time-image. Athlone. Deleuze, G. (1996). Gilles Deleuze from A to Z (DVD). The MIT Press. Dervin, F. (2007). Evaluer l’interculturel: problématiques et pistes de travail. In F.  Dervin & E.  Suomela-Salmi (Eds.), Évaluer les compétences langagières et interculturelles dans l’enseignement supérieur (pp.  95–122). Turku University Press. Dervin, F. (2011). A plea for change in research on intercultural discourses: A ‘liquid’ approach to the study of the acculturation of Chinese students. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 6(1), 37–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/1744714 3.2010.532218 Dervin, F. (2015). Towards post-intercultural teacher education: Analyzing ‘extreme’ intercultural dialogue to reconstruct interculturality. European Journal of Teacher Education, 38(1), 71–86. https://doi.org/10.108 0/02619768.2014.902441 Dervin, F. (2016). Interculturality in education: A theoretical and methodological toolbox. Palgrave Macmillan. Dervin, F. (2017). Critical turns in language and intercultural communication pedagogy: The simple-complex continuum (simplexity) as a new perspective. In M. Dasli & A. R. Diaz (Eds.), The critical turn in language and intercultural communication pedagogy: Theory, research and practice (pp.  58–72). (Routledge studies in language and intercultural communication; no. 5). Routledge. Dervin, F. (2020). Creating and combining models of intercultural competence for teacher education/training. On the need to re-think intercultural competence frequently. In F. Dervin, R. Moloney, & A. Simpson (Eds.), Intercultural competence in the work of teachers: Confronting ideologies and practices (pp. 57–72). Routledge.

160 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dervin, F., Chen, N., Yuan, M., & Sude, & Jacobsson, A. (2020). COVID-19 and Interculturality: First lessons for teacher educators. Education and Society, 38(1), 89–106. https://doi.org/10.7459/es/38.1.06 Dostoyevsky, F. (1953). L’idiot (Pascal, Trans.). Gallimard. Dostoyevsky, F. (2001). L’idiot (Mousset, Trans.). Gallimard. Dostoyevsky, F. (2011). L’idiot (Markowicz, Trans.). Actes Sud. Durham Peter, J. (1999). Speaking into the air: A history of the idea of communication. Chicago University Press. Esteva, G., & Prakash, M. S. (2014). Grassroots post-modernism: Remaking the soil of cultures. Zedbooks. Fabian, J. (2014). Time and the other: How anthropology makes its object. Columbia University Press. Fang, W. (2019). Modern notions of civilization and culture in China. Palgrave Macmillan. Fanon, F. (1952). Peau noir, masques blancs. Éditions du Seuil. Ferri, G. (2018). Intercultural communication: Critical approaches and future challenges. Palgrave Macmillan. Flaubert, G. (2006). Voyages en Orient. Gallimard. Gillespie, A. (2006). Becoming other: From social interaction to self-reflection. IAP-­ Information Age Pub. Goffman, E. (1990). The presentation of self in everyday life. Penguin. Goody, J. (2006). The theft of history. Cambridge University Press. Gorski, P. (2008). Good intentions are not enough: A decolonizing intercultural education. Intercultural Education, 19(6), 515–525. https://doi. org/10.1080/14675980802568319 Graziani, R. (2019). L’usage du Vide. Essai sur l’intelligence de l’action de l’Europe à la Chine. Gallimard, Bibliothèque des Idées, Paris. Grodal, T. (2009). Embodied visions: Evolution, emotion, culture, film. Oxford University Press. Guilherme, M. (2019). The critical and decolonial quest for intercultural epistemologies and discourses. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 14(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2019.1617294 Gurdus, L. (2017). Boeing CEO: Over 80% of the world has never taken a flight. We’re leveraging that for growth. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/07/ boeing-­ceo-­80-­percent-­of-­people-­never-­flown-­for-­us-­that-­means-­growth.html Habib, S. (2020). On the ‘good’ in ‘good traveler’. Words without Borders. https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/january-­2020-­international­literature-­and-­travel-­shahnaz-­habib Hall, E. T. (1959). The silent language. Fawcett Publications. Hall, E. T. (1969). The hidden dimension. Anchor Books. Hannerz, U. (1992). Cultural complexity: Studies in the social organization of meaning. Columbia University Press.

 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

161

Hastrup, K. (2010). Kultur: Den flexibla gemenskapen. Studentlitteratur. Herzogenrath, B. (Ed.). (2017). Film as philosophy. University of Minnesota Press. Holliday, A. (2010). Intercultural communication and ideology. Sage. Huxley, A. (1926). Jesling Pilate: An intellectual holiday. George H. Doran Company. Hylland Eriksen, T. (1994). Kulturelle veikryss: Essays om kreolisering. Universitetsforlaget. Jacobsson, A. (2017). Intercultural film: Fiction film as audiovisual documents of interculturality. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 38(1), 1–15. https://doi. org/10.1080/07256868.2017.1269061 Jounin, N. (2014). Voyage de classes. Des étudiants de Seine-Saint-Denis enquêtent dans les beaux quartiers. La Découverte. Jullien, F. (2017). Il n’y a pas d’identité culturelle. Editions de l’Herne. Kawakami, H. (2014). Blue moon. Granta 127. https://granta.com/blue-­moon/ Kerr, J. & Andreotti, V. (2019). Crossing borders in initial teacher education: Mapping dispositions to diversity and inequity. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 22(5), 647–665. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2017.1395326 King, P. (1971). The problem of tolerance. Government and Opposition, 6, 172–207. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-­7053.1971.tb01215.x Ko-Eun, Y. (2020). The disaster tourist. Serpent Tail. Kraidy, M. (2009). Reality television and Arab politics: Contention in public life. Cambridge University Press. Kushner, A. (2015). The grammar of God: A journey into the words and worlds of the bible. Spiegel & Grau. Lahiri, J. (2003). The namesake. First Mariner Books. Lakoff, R. (1992). Talking power: The politics of language. Basic Books. Lapierre, N. (1995). Changer de nom. Stock. Liu, K. (2016). The paper menagerie and other stories. Gallery/Saga Press. Liu, S., Volčič, Z., & Gallois, C. (2018). Introducing intercultural communication: Global cultures and contexts. Sage. Maffesoli, M. (2000). The time of the tribes: The decline of individualism in mass society. Sage. Mcsweeney, B. (2002). The essentials of scholarship: A reply to Geert Hofstede. Human Relations, 55(11), 1363–1372. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 00187267025511005 Mignolo, W. D. (2007). Delinking: The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of decoloniality. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 449–514. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162647 Mignolo, W.  D. (2009). Epistemic disobedience, independent thought and de-­ colonial freedom. Theory, Culture, Society, 26(7–8), 1–23. https://doi. org/10.1177/0263276409349275 Mignolo, W. D. (2011). The darker side of Western modernity: Global futures, decolonial options. Duke University Press.

162 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mignolo, W.  D., & Walsh, C.  E. (2018). On decoloniality: Concepts, analytics, praxis. Duke University Press. Miller, A.  I. (2001). Einstein, Picasso: Space, time and the beauty that causes havoc. Basic. Miller, T., & Kraidy, M. (2016). Global media studies. Polity Press. Musil, R. (1979). The man without qualities: The like of it now happens (volume II). Picador Classics. Musil, R. (2015). The man without qualities. Pan Macmillan. Nail, T. (2015). The figure of the migrant. Stanford University Press. Nail, T. (2019). Being and motion. Oxford University Press. Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2015). Globalization and culture: Global mélange (3rd ed.). Rowman and Littlefield. Neuer, J.-J. (2018). Débat: Quand la Chine nous aide à penser l’identité européenne. https://theconversation.com/debat-­quand-­la-­chine-­nous-­aide-­a-­penser­lidentite-­europeenne-­102231 Piketty, T. (2020). Capital and ideology. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Piller, I. (2017). Intercultural communication: A critical introduction. Edinburgh University Press. R’boul, H. (2020a). Postcolonial interventions in intercultural communication knowledge: Meta-intercultural ontologies, Decolonial knowledges and epistemological polylogue. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2020.1829676 R’boul, H. (2020b). Researching the intercultural: Solid/liquid interculturality in Moroccan-themed scholarship. The Journal of North African Studies. https:// doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2020.1814750 Rancière, J. (1991). The ignorant schoolmaster: Five lessons in intellectual emancipation. Stanford University Press. Rancière, J. (2009). The emancipated spectator. Verso. Rodowick, D. N. (2001). Reading the figural, or philosophy after the new media. Duke University Press. Rodowick, D. N. (2015). Philosophy’s artful conversation. Harvard University Press. Rosello, M. (1998). Declining the stereotype: Ethnicity and representation in French cultures. University Press of New England. Rozbicki, M.  J. (2015). Introduction–intercultural studies: The methodological contours of an emerging discipline. In M.  J. Rozbicki (Ed.), Perspectives on interculturality: The construction of meaning in relationships of difference (pp. 1–23). Palgrave Macmillan. Rushdie, S. (1991). Imaginary homelands. Vintage Books. Ruskin, J. (1901). Modern painters: Of many things. Smith, Elder and. Salazar, N. B. (2011). Tourism imaginaries: A conceptual approach. Annals of Tourism Research, 39(2), 863–882. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2011.10.004

 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

163

Santos, B. (2014). Epistemologies of the south: Justice against epistemicide. Paradigm Publishers. Santos, B. (2018). The end of the cognitive empire: The coming of age of epistemologies of the south. Duke University Press. Sartre, J.-P. (1964). The words. George Braziller. Shiva, V. (1993). Monocultures of the mind: Perspectives on biodiversity and biotechnology. Zed Books. Shohat, E., & Stam, R. (2014). Unthinking eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the media. Routledge. Simpson, A., & Dervin, F. (2018). Forms of dialogism in the Council of Europe Reference Framework on competences for democratic culture. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 41(4), 305–319. https://doi. org/10.1080/01434632.2019.1618317 Stam, R. & Shohat, E. (2009). Transnationalizing comparison: The uses and abuses of cross-cultural analogy. New Literary History, 40(3), 473–499. https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.0.0104 Stam, R., & Shohat, E. (2012). Race in translation: Culture wars around the postcolonial Atlantic. New York University Press. Sude, Yuan., & M., & Dervin, F. (2020). Introduction to ethnic minority education in China: Policies and practices. Springer-Verlag Berlin An. Tan, C. (2014). Confucius. Bloomsbury Academic. Therborn, G. (2013). The killing fields of inequality. Polity Press. Thussu, D. K. (2009). Internationalizing media studies. Routledge. Tobing-Rony, F. (1996). The third eye: Race, cinema and the ethnographic spectacle. Duke University Press. Tournebise, C. (2014). Enseigner l’interculturel dans le supérieur: quels discours et approches d’un concept ambigu à l’heure de l’internationalisation? Le cas de la Finlande. Humanoria. Twain, M. (1879). The innocents abroad. American Publishing Company. Urbain, J.-D. (1993). L’idiot du voyage: histoires de touristes. Payot. Wilde, O. (1891/2001). Intentions. The Floating Press. Yao, X. (2008). An introduction to Confucianism. Cambridge University Press. Yuan, M. S., Wang, T., Zhang, W., Chen, N., Simpson, A., & Dervin, F. (2020). Chinese Minzu education in higher education: An inspiration for ‘western’ diversity education? British Journal of Educational Studies, 68(4), 461–486. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2020.1712323 Zarate, G., & Gohard-Radenkovic, A. (Eds.). (2004). La reconnaissance des compétences interculturelles: de la grille à la carte. Didier FLE.

Index1

A Agency, 13, 90, 145 Anti-essentialism, 30–32 Assessment, 52, 76 B Borders, 2, 15, 28, 36, 92, 118, 134, 135 C China, 12, 12n1, 25, 26, 36, 68, 68n1, 85, 103, 109, 137, 144 Chinese, 4, 12n1, 25, 26, 36, 42, 44, 45, 59n1, 68, 68n1, 85, 102–104, 109–113, 136, 140 Cinema, 125–129, 151 Colonialism, 29, 90, 92, 94, 128 Confucianism, 85, 90

Council of Europe, 42, 61 COVID-19, 57, 58, 101, 134, 142 Critical and reflexive languaging, 7, 99–114, 122 Criticality, 7, 37, 86, 87, 90, 114, 129, 154 Culturalism, 19, 68, 72, 79, 83, 100, 118 Culture, 5, 12–20, 24, 27–31, 36, 41, 47, 53, 58, 61, 62, 64, 68, 69, 76, 78, 79, 84, 90–93, 108–111, 114, 118, 121, 126, 127, 129, 137, 144, 146, 151, 154 D Delinking, 38, 39, 46, 47, 122 Democracy, 25, 38, 71, 111, 120, 150 Determinism, 19, 62

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Dervin, A. Jacobsson, Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7

165

166 

INDEX

Dialogue, 3, 5, 7, 26–28, 28n2, 45, 47, 60, 68, 69, 71, 77, 79, 86, 87, 90, 92, 94, 95, 105, 112, 114, 118, 147, 149–151 Discourses, 16–18, 24, 26, 27, 30, 42, 44, 45, 54, 58–60, 84, 90, 92, 94, 100, 101, 106, 107, 113, 114, 123, 135, 150 Diversity, 5, 12, 16, 29, 37, 44, 45, 48, 53, 58, 60–62, 68, 80, 90, 92–94, 140 E English, 2, 2n1, 3, 5, 12, 12n1, 32, 45, 68, 69, 90, 91, 100, 100n1, 102–104, 109, 111–113, 123, 124, 135, 136, 139, 150 Enunciation, 90 Essentialism, 17, 19, 30–32, 78, 154, 155 Ethics, 84, 85, 87, 90, 126, 151 Ethnicity, 2, 104, 151 Ethnocentrism, 58, 100, 120 Etymology, 100n1, 105, 107, 109–114, 136 Eurocentrism, 19, 70, 87, 90, 92, 94, 120, 121 Exotic, 59, 94, 138 Exoticism, 28 F Failure, 52, 60, 63, 64, 94 Films, 16, 17, 20, 47, 86, 125–130, 137, 141, 151 Finland, 2n1, 23, 24, 26, 42, 58, 59, 102, 103n2, 109, 124, 155 The fold, 43, 44 French, 3, 5, 12, 13, 37, 38, 43, 44, 59, 69, 91, 104–106, 127, 128, 135–140, 143 Functionalist, 27, 46, 61, 62

G Gender, 2, 30, 36, 84, 89, 104, 153, 154 H The handshake, 43, 45 Harmony, 25, 26, 85 History, 3, 5, 17, 25, 29, 31, 32, 36–40, 48, 58, 70, 80, 86, 94, 103, 105, 109, 111, 113, 118, 120, 121, 127–129, 143, 150, 154 Hofstedian legacy, 68 Human rights, 25, 71 I Identity, 4n3, 5, 14, 18, 28, 29, 59, 70, 77, 89, 94, 102, 103, 111, 112, 137, 142, 153, 154 Ideology/ideologies, 2, 6, 12, 15, 24–26, 24n1, 31, 35, 38, 42–46, 48, 52, 58–60, 63, 64, 68, 71, 72, 79, 80, 83, 84, 86, 87, 89, 90, 92–94, 100, 107, 111–114, 118, 120, 123, 126, 135, 136, 144–146, 150, 153 Imaginaries, 26, 62, 64, 90, 92, 114, 138 Inclusion-exclusion, 91 Inequality, 37–39, 53, 54, 63, 91, 127, 128, 135, 150, 154, 155 Interaction, 14–19, 30, 37, 48, 59, 76, 77, 79, 80, 85, 118–120, 138, 146, 152, 154 Intercultural communication education, 14, 18–20, 23–32, 35–39, 42, 46–48, 53, 57–64, 67, 69–72, 77, 78, 86, 89–94, 102, 111, 112, 118, 120–123, 151–154

 INDEX 

Intercultural competence (IC), 1, 3, 4, 6, 27, 28, 30, 46, 52, 53, 61, 63, 64, 76–79, 90, 118, 139 Interculturalidad, 18, 68, 90, 91 Interculturalité, 3, 12, 18, 91 Intercultural-speak, 68, 94 Interdisciplinary, 5, 29, 150 Interkulturalität, 18, 91 Interkulturalitet, 18, 91 Intersectionality, 78, 79, 89, 153, 154 Intertextuality, 90 Intracultural, 15, 80 J Justice, 25, 36, 90, 91, 105, 141 L Liquid, 84, 111, 119 M The magic mirror, 43, 44 Media, 16, 17, 20, 24, 28, 30, 54, 118, 120, 123–125, 129, 130, 151 Minzu, 12, 12n1, 68, 90 Misunderstanding, 27, 28, 52, 93, 100, 113, 118 Modernity, 25, 38, 46, 121, 127 Multicultural education, 2, 12, 23, 24, 29, 60, 68 N Nation-states, 15, 25, 36, 39 Negotiation, 6, 7, 107, 111–113 O Orders, 2, 4–6, 14, 35, 44, 59, 64, 102, 103n2, 105, 114, 122, 141, 146 Othering, 28, 90

167

P Passport, 103, 128, 142 Polycentrism, 17–20, 38, 120 Postcolonial, 48, 68, 154 Postmodern, 37, 72, 83, 89, 111 Power, 7, 17, 18, 39, 44, 47, 54, 76, 78, 79, 84, 87, 90, 100, 102, 120, 121, 124, 126–129, 140, 142, 151, 153, 154 Process, 7, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 26, 28, 37, 38, 44–46, 64, 70, 76–80, 85, 86, 100, 105, 107–108, 110, 118–122, 129, 135, 150–152, 154 R Racialization, 78 Racism, 52, 58, 59, 59n1, 62, 79, 128 Reflexivity, 7, 87, 90, 114, 154 Regimes of inequality, 38, 39, 63, 91 S Senegal, 127, 128 Similarities, 1, 6, 42, 44, 71, 79, 80, 86, 138, 145 Simplexity, 84, 89 Social class, 36, 79, 103, 104, 143, 154 Stereotypes, 2, 28, 29, 52, 62, 64, 86, 90, 92, 139 Stranger, 26, 90 Structures, 17, 18, 28, 37–39, 46, 47, 53, 62–64, 70, 78, 80, 91, 108, 120–122, 124–128, 151, 153–155 Study abroad, 29, 53, 61, 134, 135, 146 Success, 52, 59–64, 92, 94

168 

INDEX

T Teacher educators, 4, 6, 70, 150 Tolerance, 25, 28, 45, 60, 61, 63, 90 Tourism, 59, 133–147 Transcultural, 12, 23 Translation, 18, 25, 26, 31, 44, 45, 72, 92, 95, 100, 102, 104–109, 113, 114, 136, 138, 150 Travel, 7, 53, 61, 107, 108, 133–147

U United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 24, 61, 90 Universalisation, 29, 38, 46 Untranslatables, 26, 31, 32, 90, 91, 104, 105, 109, 153 W World cinema, 125–129