To try a concept on an object is to ask of the object what we have to do with it, what it can do for us. To label an object with a concept is to tell in precise terms the kind of action or attitude the object is to suggest to us. All knowledge properly so-called is, therefore, turned in a certain direction or taken from a certain point of view. Henri Bergson (1934: 199)
This book is about interculturality in education. I use this word rather than the adjective-turned-into-a-noun the intercultural using the suffix -ality, which translates as a process and something in the making. This is the concept closest to the way intercultural encounters in education are discussed in this book. It will sound paradoxical to start a book on this notion by saying that, even though I have been writing about it in different languages for nearly 15 years now, I am not sure what interculturality means and refers to today, or whom it includes and excludes. I agree with the two thinkers above, who have been very influential in my work: interculturality is a point of view, not a given. What this means is that it is we who decide what is intercultural and what is not. This makes the notion very unstable, political, and ideological. On many occasions I have tried to get rid of the notion in my work, but I could find no better alternative. I have always had to come back to it. In a world of research where the marketing and branding of scholars are becoming more and more customary, interculturality has become part of my scientific identity, which ‘clings to me like a leech’. The word interculturality often gives the impression of brotherhood and convenience when meeting other researchers and practitioners of intercultural communication and education. Regrettably we often neither speak the same language nor share the same understanding of the notion. ‘My intercultural’ may not mean the same as ‘your intercultural’. ‘My intercultural’ might have different values and ideologies than ‘your intercultural’. This book represents an attempt to come to terms with interculturality and to share the meanings and methods that I have developed over the past decade in dialogue with many colleagues and students from around the world.No fact is intercultural at the outset, nor is the quality of intercultural an attribute of an object, it is only intercultural analysis that can give it this character. Martine Abdallah-Pretceille (2006: 480)
Let me start with a cliché that still needs repeating: Interculturality has been with us since the beginning of time. People have always interacted across borders, be they national, regional, linguistic, religious, and/or social (Pieterse 2004). Interculturality is thus far from being a new phenomenon, as we tend to believe today. What is different about interculturality in our era is its omnipresence and the speed at which it can take place. Yet ‘our’ interculturality is probably not better than that of the past. Even though we are said to communicate and interact across cultures at an exponential rate, it is clear that our accelerating world does not resemble McLuhan’s Global Village, where the movement of information, objects, and people is instantaneous and can lead to more encounters and interactions (Wolton 2013: 163). Education is probably one of the best places to learn about, practise, and reflect on interculturality—something we rarely have time to do outside this context. Interculturality is both part of school life (diverse students) and an essential component of teaching-learning (all school subjects contain references to intercultural encounters, explicitly and/or implicitly). In a world where racism, different kinds of discrimination, and injustice are on the rise, time spent at school should contribute effectively to prepare students to be real interculturalists who can question these phenomena and act critically, ethically, and responsively.The notion of interculturality has been popular in education, sometimes under the guise of multiculturalism, transculturality, social justice, or globalization, in the USA since the 1960s, in Europe since the 1970s, and more recently in other parts of the world.
Like many other important notions in education, interculturality tends to be polysemic, fictional, and empty at the same time, conveniently meaning either too much or too little. I remember one day pondering over this while watching a scene from the popular BBC television drama series, Waterloo Road (2006–2014), which is set in a comprehensive school of the same name. In that scene, the Head of Pastoral Care was preparing a brochure for a visit from the Local Education Authority (LEA). She co-constructed the following text with the principal of the school:
Both ‘jargon’ and ‘chuck(ed) in’ could easily be used to describe the state of research and practice relating to the interculturality in education.Head of Pastoral Care: (…) to show the community that it is as much a part of the school as Waterloo Road is a part of the community (…)(speaking to the principal) is that enough jargon for you?Principal: We wanna chuck in some of your multicultural expertise.Head of Pastoral Care: OK. What about this? Miss Campbell, Head of Pastoral, will be there to answer questions on the ethnic diversity within the school… and the steps that we take to ensure (…) that each child is treated equally and with respect regardless of race, religion or culture.
Interdisciplinary at heart, interculturality has also been built through borrowing ideas, concepts, and methods from other fields of research. Furthermore, practices and research agendas around interculturality in education have been highly influenced by (supra-)national policies and ideologies which have not always been in line with either interdisciplinary discussions or realities. As such, borrowing Machiavelli’s distinction, I often have the impression that the ‘thinking of the palace’ (scholars, decision makers, educators) beats that of the ‘public square’ (those who experience interculturality) (Maffesoli 1985: 184). In other words, too often the powerful speak for and over the powerless when it comes to interculturality. Finally, in research and practice, the notion is used in many different fields, such as applied linguistics, language education, communication studies, education, health, and so on. It thus circulates across fields, subfields, languages, and institutions, sometimes retaining meanings, sometimes modifying them, and indoctrinating and spreading an amalgam of stereotypes, prejudices, and biases.
The Approach in this Book
This book proposes an approach to interculturality in education which takes on a critical and reflexive stance towards the notion. Inspired by, amongst others, A. Holliday’s approach to intercultural communication (2010), I claim that interculturality is ideological in the classical Marxist sense as an evaluative rather than a neutral or descriptive notion. Interculturality thus refers to power whereby some people are ‘dominated, excluded, and prejudiced against’, while some others tend to pretend to treat them fairly and equally by making claims about ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Shi-xu 2001).
The following questions are asked:The approach to interculturality in education promoted in this book suggests that the prefix inter- translates best what the ‘intercultural’ could be about: Interaction, context, the recognition of power relations, simplexity (the inevitable combination of the simple and the complex), and intersectionality (how different identities beyond race, ethnicity, nationality, and language also contribute to interculturality). The second part of the notion, the ‘cultural’, is revised.
- What is the meaning of interculturality today?
- What are the ideologies hidden behind the notion?
- What concepts can be used to determine its characteristics?
- Why is it important to change the way we ‘do’ interculturality in education?
- Can one educate and train for a new kind of intercultural education?
- Are there examples of ‘good’ practices?
This book is constructed like a toolbox, whereby certain concepts, notions, and methods are proposed to both evaluate and reconstruct the notion in order to make it more useful in research and practice, and more adapted to our era of accelerated globalization. The book also represents a call for multipolar considerations of interculturality in education. The reader is introduced to recent interdisciplinary ideas that can contribute to making the most of the notion in education. Concrete examples from many and varied research projects and cultural productions illustrate the tools. Each chapter concludes with self-reflexive questions. A commented list of the ten most important references related to interculturality in education appears at the end of the book. The book is of interest to students, scholars (novice and confirmed researchers), and practitioners interested not only in intercultural education but also in language education, communication education, and teacher education. I promise they will be rewarded.
References
Abdallah-Pretceille, M. (2006). Interculturalism as a paradigm for thinking about diversity. Intercultural Education, 17(5), 475–483.CrossRef
Bergson, H. (1934). The creative mind: An introduction to metaphysics. New York: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Holliday, A. (2010). Intercultural communication and ideology. London: Sage.
Maffesoli, M. (1985). La connaissance ordinaire: Précis de sociologie comprehensive. Paris: Librairie des Méridiens.
Pieterse, J. N. (2004). Globalization and culture: Global mélange. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
Shi-xu. (2001). Critical pedagogy and intercultural communication: Creating discourses of diversity, equality, common goals and rational-moral motivation. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 22(3), 279–293.CrossRef
Wolton, D. (2013). Le monde n’est pas un village. L’Express. http://www.lexpress.fr.libproxy.helsinki.fi/informations/dominique-wolton-le-monde-n-est-pas-un-village_651315.html#TMPXQLFMABUCg8Cl.99