Call for papers – Interculturalism: Cultures and Identities, Oxford, July 2016

This is the 9th Global Meeting of a Cultures, Traditions, Societies Project. The conference will be held from Monday 18th July – Wednesday 20th July 2016, Mansfield College, Oxford. There is an impressive and wide-ranging list of topics that are included in the conference theme.

Interculturalism stands at the interface between the individual, local
groups, societies and cultures. These compete, conflict, co-exist and
trigger reactions and responses on a number of levels including the
social, the economic, the political and the personal. These are
reinforced through language, the media, cultural events, social
institutions and migration policies. Amidst all these dynamic and
static forms of interaction, identities are built and consolidated.

The previous meeting of this project recognised that identity is not
something which is fixed and predetermined but rather is continuously
created and recreated from the day-to-day flow of living in
communities. With mobility not simply a commonplace factor in society
but continuing to rapidly expand, people are faced with challenges to
and changes in their own identity as a result of encounters with new
cultures, new ways of living and new ways of thinking. People find
themselves forging and reforming their identities through integration,
assimilation, disintegration, reintegration…and so the pattern
continues.

A key focus to be explored is the use of models emerging out of
intercultural models of thinking, working practices and daily life.
Previous meetings of this project clearly identified the need for
discussions about how to create working platforms within varied
professions such as medical professions, nurses, doctors etc. or
social workers, teachers, local administrative and so on. The 2016
conference will build on the work of previous meetings in this series
and examine the meaning and parameters of Interculturalism, how it is
studied and what it means. How can we talk meaningfully of
interculturalism? What role does hybridity play in understanding the
way cultures morph, adapt and become suited to their context?

A significant theme for debate will be assess the changing and
continually morphing relationship between cultures and identities,
looking particularly at theories of cultural sensibility and its
practical aspects. The conference encourages people working in
multicultural environments to describe, analyse and reflect on their
experiences in the field.

Themes:

  • Cultural sensibility? What is it in practice?
  • The various relationships between ‘interculturalism’ and‘multiculturalism’
  • How does understanding of cultural signifiers assist in studying interculturalism
  • Recent criticism has emphasized the problematics of identity andmeaning associated with globalization, diaspora and modernity; how so and why?
  • What are the implications of processes adopted to consider thecentre-periphery
  • How do the immersion, absorption and the intersection of cultures promote a better understanding of individual and group identities?
  • Is “Transculturalism” possible in disputes over resource use?
  • How can “Transculturalism” be taught more effectively to professional field workers, such as nurses, teachers, aid workers,psychologists etc?
  • What can one learn from and about significance of Cross Cultural Psychology and Interculturalism, as well as Autism and Interculturalism and cultural manifestations of identity, Citizenship and Diaspora?
  • Are patterns of cognition governed by acculturalisation?
  • Is intercultural experience therapeutic or problematic in respect of mental health?
  • Fear of the other. What society should do in order to overcome these feelings of fear.
  • Interculturalism in an educational context
  • Religious issues and interculturalism
  • Interculturalism in art, literature and film
  • The philosophy of interculturalism
  • Interculturalism and the politics of the academy i.e. interculturalism and interdisciplinarity
  • Interculturalism and language
  • Resistance to interculturalism through monoculturalism
  • Race, ethnicity and interculturalism
  • Racism, violence and interculturalism
  • Interculturalism and sexuality
  • Interculturalism and politics

Presentations will also be considered which deal with related themes and the deadline is Friday 29th January 2016.

Further details and information can be found at the conference
website:

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/cultures-traditions-societies/research-streams/interculturalism/call-for-papers/

6 comments

  • Nahielly Palacios

    Congratulations everyone!

  • Zhuomin Huang

    An abstract submitted by myself is also accepted:

    Huang, Z. (2016). Making Sense of ‘Who I am’: Intercultural Personhood through the Eye of Visual-Creative-Arts

    ABSTRACT

    In this paper, I discuss how ‘visual-creative-arts’ (VCA) can be used to explore the intercultural

    personhood of students in an interculturally-rich context – namely, the increasingly internationalised

    University of Manchester (UoM) as located in a multicultural urban setting (i.e. Manchester). By

    ‘intercultural personhood’, following Kim (2008, 2015), I mean an individual’s perspective on ‘who I

    am’ in such a context. The term ‘personhood’ emphasises the developing sense that a person has

    about ‘who I am’ (Glas, 2006), a process of continual forging and reforming as they encounter new

    ways of thinking and doing. The use of ‘intercultural’ (rather than the ‘cultural’) aspects of

    personhood emphasises the hybridity of this development process. Thus, all the students in question

    are viewed as culturally -unique and -complex individuals (Singer, 1988) navigating and making sense

    of the complexities of the small cultures (Holliday, 1999) in which they are participating in the

    internationalised, multicultural Manchester environment. My discussion in this paper is informed by

    my on-going doctoral study about the roles of mindfulness in the accounts (as stimulated and

    represented in VCA) from mature students about their Manchester-based intercultural experiences.

    In the paper, I explore how students take meaningful ownership of their intercultural experiences,

    and make sense of what living in an interculturally-rich context might mean for their personhood. I

    look into these questions through the eye of VCA-based methods such as ‘Blind-portrait’, ‘Digital-

    edited Photography’, and ‘Free-style Painting’. By doing so, I contribute to the understanding of

    intercultural personhood as well as offering insights regarding the use of visual-creative-arts in, for,

    and as research.

    KEYWORDS:

    internationalisation, higher education, intercultural communication, intercultural personhood,

    visuals, creative arts

  • Richard Fay

    Pleased to announce that an abstract submitted by Min, me and Ross White on Mindfulness has been accepted.

    Huang, Z., Fay, R. and White, R. (2016). Transcultural Knowledge Landscapes: The case of 念(niàn)/Mindfulness. Paper to be presented at the Interculturalism conference.

    ABSTRACT
    In our increasingly interconnected times, the movement of ideas (and people, goods, practices, etc.) is increasingly transnational and transcultural. As a result, the development – or (to extend a Media Studies term) ‘transcreation’ – of knowledge landscapes involves complex flows, migrations, appropriations and translations of ideas. In the process, there are fascinating – but often under-explored – conceptual and terminological transformations across time, space, disciplines and languages. This complexity has implications for practitioners as they reflect upon the professional knowledge of their fields and operationalise it in increasingly multicultural contexts.

    In this paper, we take the case of an idea with particular currency in our professional and disciplinary homes (intercultural communication, education, and psychotherapy). Thus, we map some of the migratory characteristics of what is termed 念(niàn) in Chinese and mindfulness in English. This mapping process is enabled by the transnational (Eastern/China and Western/UK) characteristics of our team and its linguistic resources (primarily Chinese and English).

    As we develop this map, we note the direction of, and power-play evident in, the flows involved (e.g. dominant-, counter- and common-flows) and consider what such power dynamics might mean more generally in the transcreation of knowledge landscapes. From this case, we develop the argument for more equitable, mutually-respectful, and mutually-enriching transcreational processes. Further, we advocate that professionals – especially but not solely those practising in culturally-complex contexts – engage with the knowledge landscapes of their fields and disciplines in ways which are better informed about, and more respectful of, the contributing flows involved in the transcreational processes. Our exploration of the case of 念(niàn) / mindfulness enables a better understanding of the transcultural complexity of knowledge development (and the flows involved in it) and thereby contributes to the development of an intercultural ideology for knowledge-work in our shared world.

    KEYWORDS:
    mindfulness, knowledge landscapes, transcreation, intercultural communication

  • Richard Fay

    Sounds like one for Min ….. and anyone else?