University of Helsinki
Interculturality in education: a theoretical and methodological toolbox
Chengli Zuo & Liping Weng
Pages 1-3 | Published online: 20 Nov 2016
Language and Intercultural Communication
Students’ rapidly increasing intercultural contact in today’s globalized world calls for a careful re-examination of such contested concepts as interculturality in the context of education. Written from a critical perspective, Fred Dervin’s resource book Interculturality in education: A theoretical and methodological toolbox is a welcoming response to that pressing need. In this book, Dervin has made admirable attempts to clarify the related concepts of culture, identity, and collectivity and critically evaluate and reconstruct the notion of ‘interculturality’.
Situated in a postmodern context where meanings are questioned more than ever before, this book, consisting of seven chapters, sets out from the deconstruction of such concepts as culture, identity, collectivity, othering, and interculturality in order to reconstruct them. In Chapter 1, Dervin focuses on the conceptualization of ‘interculturality’ and argues that ‘interculturality is ideological in the classical Marxist sense as an evaluative rather than a neutral or descriptive notion’ (p. 4). He echoes Shi-xu (2001 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. doi: 10.1080/07256860120094000
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, p. 284) that interculturality refers to power whereby some people are ‘dominated, excluded, and prejudiced against’, while others pretend that such a context of ‘domination, exclusion and prejudice’ is not there.
In Chapter 2, Dervin examines three concepts – culture, identity, and collectivity – in an attempt to achieve the most precise, explicit, and unbiased understanding of them in dealing with interculturality in education. He calls for an approach to culture that looks beyond ‘solid’ and illusory conceptions of national culture and discusses the ontological aspects of the concept (p. 9). He argues that an overemphasis on the differences between ‘our’ and ‘their’ cultures will not lead to interculturality. Dervin also emphasizes the usefulness of identity for examining interculturality especially when it is approached from the processual and co-constructivist perspectives.
Chapter 3 focuses on the five imaginaries or myths about interculturality in educational contexts: globalization/glocalization, diversity, origins, the ‘same’, and the ‘local’. Dervin argues that these imaginaries should be re-interpreted and new meanings built into them when intercultural encounters in education are addressed.
Chapter 4 departs from the question ‘who is the other?’ and discusses what ‘othering’ refers to in psychology, sociology, and educational discourses. In psychology, othering is about comparing self to other; in sociology, othering refers to differentiating discourses leading to power relations between other and self. In educational discourses, othering is something that ‘needs to be discussed openly, banished, or fought against, as it can lead to such things as racism, sexism, or even bigotry’ (p. 46). To analyze discourses of othering, Dervin integrates two social constructivist perspectives and examines the impact of power differentials.
Chapter 5 emphasizes the role of human rights in education and suggests the ‘counterhegemonic ways’ of dealing with human rights when interculturality is involved. Dervin considers unbalanced power relations, differential treatment, and different kinds of -isms the most ‘hidden’ violations of human rights (p. 59).
In Chapter 6, Dervin re-constructs the notion of interculturality in education and provides a comprehensive and critical review of the dominant models pertaining to intercultural competences (IC). He argues that these models represent an era of research and practice of ‘interculturality’ which does not match the central education objectives of fighting against othering, hegemony, hierarchies, and power differentials (p. 78). Therefore, he proposes a meta-analysis of ways of constructing IC in research and teaching: ‘solid’, Janusian, ‘liquid’ idealistic, and ‘liquid’ realistic (p. 78). The ‘solid’ approach to IC is limited in that individuals are given static identities based on national cultures or languages. The (liquid) idealistic approach, guided by the idea of ‘diverse diversities’, emphasizes ‘the dangers of non-essentialistic, non-culturalist ideas, as they can hide discourses of discrimination, power, and superiority, and can easily serve as excuses and alibis’ (Dervin, 2015 Dervin, F. (2015). Towards post-intercultural teacher education: Analysing ‘extreme’ intercultural dialogue to reconstruct interculturality. European Journal of Teacher Education, 38(1), 71–86. doi: 10.1080/02619768.2014.902441
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, p. 84). Due to the fact that the objectives of non-essentialism and non-culturalism cannot be attained in the end, the (liquid) realistic approach can be a better choice.
The concluding chapter, Chapter 7, explains how the amateur interculturalists differ from the professional interculturalists in that the latter know how to tap into the ‘normal’ things and bring out the underlying ideologies and attitudes by drawing on Said’s (1993 Said, E. (1993). Representations of the intellectual. New York: Vintage Books.
) representations of the intellectual. The 10 commandments of interculturality in education that Dervin puts forward in this chapter echo the most essential ideas presented in all the previous chapters.
In this book, a critical stance toward such concepts as culture, identity, collectivity, and interculturality seeks to reject reductive and hegemonic interpretations of these notions and to move toward more interpretive and critical approaches to intercultural communication research. Unlike social science scholars, Dervin suggests a (liquid) realistic approach toward IC, where IC involves dealing with contradictions, instabilities, and discontinuities. Being aware of instabilities enables people to reconsider the relationship between self and other and revise their power relations. Dervin further argues that the current ‘industry of Imagineering of IC’ often wishes to protect individuals from experiencing discomfort by creating ‘interculturally correct’ situations and/or educational content, which deprives them of or distracts them from real discussions on structural inequality, oppression, and new forms of segregation (p. 83). Therefore, the (liquid) realistic perspective moves beyond the simple programmed stages of IC development and creates situations where authentic intercultural encounters occur.
Dervin also argues that intersectional analyses are very helpful for developing IC. Intersectionality can help examine the impact of power differentials from a more multifaceted perspective and ‘individualize’ analyses of intercultural encounters rather than generalize them based only on cultural/ethnic identity (p. 83). According to Dervin, the extant IC models tend to be overly individualistic. IC is co-constructed by individuals in specific contexts, which means that dialogues need to be central to any approach to IC and discarding individualistic perspectives can allow people to examine the interdependence between I and others when interculturality takes place (p. 84).
To address the complexities of interculturality in education, Dervin also provides interesting examples of identity, othering, IC, and so forth. These actual instances, examined in great detail, aptly connect readers to real-world situations and challenges. The thought-provoking questions attached to each chapter allow readers to capture the slippery concepts, delve deep into the phenomena under examination, and develop their own ideas for practice and research.
This book, replete with innovative ideas, is not only a treasure box from which useful ideas and practices can be drawn but a source of inspiration for students, instructors, researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers in need of new ideas about interculturality and education. Given the limitations of social science or functionalist approaches to IC, critical perspectives show good prospects in creating new possibilities for intercultural research and practice in the context of education.