TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE
AND HIS AIMS


The ultimate aim of organizations like UNESCO and the European Commission is to reduce international violence, war and terrorism. In addition, one of their major concerted efforts is to promote a dialogue between cultures with the sole aspiration of achieving intercultural understanding between different cultural and religious communities around the world.
Dialogue is considered as a rational conversation between two or more persons. The word is derived from the Greek dialogos, which in turn comes from dialegethai (to converse). Dialegethai comes from dia (through, across) and legein (to speak). Today the meaning of this concept is perceived, according to J. Tarnowski, as a method, process and social attitude. The method describes patterns of inter-human communication conducted for the sake of mutual understanding, rapprochement and finally – cooperation. In contrast with the art of negotiation and debate, a dialogue may request from its participants to see each other not as an abstract being, but as a particular individual and the process as one of accepting the other.

It is clear that intercultural dialogue does not exclusively deal with social and political issues. It also considers the importance of dialogue in the relationship between religion and science due to the diverse religious conflicts around the world caused by a lack of knowledge of the other’s culture. In other words, a lack of a worldview.

It is also relevant to consider the concept of culture in order to understand one of the two elements of the so-called byword, "intercultural". By definition, culture is always embodied in a specific community – in the way its members feel, think and act; that is, in the way they understand themselves and the world, realize their happiness, express their moral, aesthetic, religious and political values, and establish particular relations as individuals and groups in every sphere of practical living.
At the same gathering and in the context of the tense relations between globalization and solidarity, intercultural dialogue was also perceived as a path to conviviality and multiculturalism in which cultures influence each other without destroying themselves or entering into clashes or conflicts. One of the major challenges of the future is to devise dialogues between cultures able to balance unity and solidarity with tolerance and diversity. Between the universalistic (euphoric) rhetoric of the Western culture model and the post-modern discourse of cultural relativism, there is indeed a growing recognition that some forms of open dialogue between peoples and cultures can be appropriate worldwide. Intercultural dialogue becomes a necessity not only for overcoming conflicts but also for rethinking and responding to global challenges faced by humanity.

Aims of Intercultural Dialogue
Earlier assumptions considered dialogue between cultures similar to the dialogue between persons. Others believed that the real purpose of intercultural dialogue was to reduce international violence (war, terrorism), while there were others who thought that the ultimate goal of intercultural dialogue is fostering global economic development.
At this point we may also introduce the concept of the intercultural person, since he or she represents one who has achieved an advanced level in the process of becoming intercultural and whose cognitive, affective, and behavioral characteristics are not limited, but are open to growth beyond the psychological parameters of any one culture.
Other similar terms such as international person, universal person, multicultural person, and marginal person are used to project an essentially similar image, with varying degrees of descriptive and explanatory value. The term ‘intercultural person’ is preferred since it is more inclusive than the others in portraying the type of person whose psychological makeup transcends any type of group identity including national, racial, ethnic, gender, professional, or other sociological typifications of people.
The intercultural person also possesses an intellectual and emotional commitment to the fundamental unity of all human beings and, at the same time, accepts and appreciates the differences that lie between people of different cultures.
A highly intercultural person possesses the skills to competently perform the roles required by each cultural context, and is able to avoid conflicts that could result from inappropriate switching between cultures.
Due to the affective nature of the process, intercultural dialogue should be not only intellectual (cognitive knowledge) but also sympathetic understanding (affective knowledge/appreciation of the other). An essential element of this understanding is praxis: action. In addition, it is the creation of social attitudes conducive to the understanding, appreciation, and respect of other cultures.
The intercultural dialogue must reveal the transparency of the walls which make cultures self-enclosed or forbidden to others and should seek the bond which unifies them: humanity, seeking to encompass all the cultures of the world, that should be a universal project and cultivate a culture of dialogue.
Suggestions to ourselves
Every one of us as Iranian should bring this fact to our mind that intercultural dialogue is not a matter o organizations or politics. In fact every one of us could serve as agents with the mission of holding and keeping intercultural dialogue. For example at the personal level having a kind of empathy of other cultures and their members could turn useful. As mentioned above every one of us has the ability to become a highly intercultural person but we should not forget that it is not a matter of intellectualism.

The role of ICTs in the process of maintaining and creating diaspora

Wikipedia has defined "virtual mobility" as "The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to obtain the same benefits as one would have with physical mobility but without the need to travel". We should acknoledge tha the Internet revolution is transforming the world of communications and like any other revolution; it impacts different groups in different ways. The increasingly important role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the process of maintaining and creating diaspora is considerable. So accelerated movements of technologies, finances, and cultural migrants have generated an understanding of place and community that can no longer be considered in purely local terms.
Appadurai discusses how electronic media, in the context of mass migrations has created: …a new order of instability in the production of modern subjectivities…as Pakistani cabdrivers in Chicago listen to cassettes of sermons recorded in mosques in Pakistan or Iran, we see moving images meet deterritorialized viewers. (Appadurai, 1996, p.4) Appadurai also argues that nation can be formed in cyberspace, and often cyberspace serves as the sole means of providing a sense of aspiration and hope to placeless migrant populations. So it is clear that the complex association between diasporic groups and ICTs has led to a concept of e-diasporas that actively utilize ICTs to achieve community-specific goals.
Appadurai elaborates on the “imagined community” to explain that the production of locality is most directly affected by three factors – the nation-state, diasporic flows, and electronic and virtual communities – which are themselves articulated in variable and sometimes contradictory ways that depend on the cultural, class, historical, and setting within which they come together (Appadurai, 1996). Migrants therefore exist in a world of “in-betweenness,” negotiating cultural forms and identities at the crossroads of the nation-state and global diasporas.

Appadurai (1996) explains that along many lines, globalization is constructed via the deterritorialization and place-lessness of many forms of human exchange and communication. He terms these processes “-scapes”, arguing that there is a decentering of movements of humans, images, finances, technologies (Appadurai, 1996). Appadurai (1996) argues that in many social locations throughout the world, especially those characterised by media saturation and migrant populations, ‘moving images meet mobile audiences’, disturbing the stability of many sender-receiver models of mass communication. These situations facilitate “works of imagination,” in which imagined worlds and imagined selves can be created within diasporic communities, both in local contexts and across national boundaries (Appadurai, 1996). The traditional notion of immigrant communities in isolated, localized pockets in different parts of the world therefore simply does not hold true in an age of accelerated media, information production, and ICTs. Instead, the global and local interact at levels of increasing complexity and fluidity.

References:

Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
"Diasporic Information Environments: Re-Framing Immigrant-Focused Information Research" in: polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/srinivasan/Research/Proofs/SrinivasanPyatiJASIST7.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special

Crosscultural Communication and Olympic Games

Crosscultural Communication
and the Olympic Games
Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.
On the other hand it is said that for more than 100 years the Olympic Movement has conceived of itself as promoting culture, human development, international education, and peace through sport. Founded mainly by writers, educators, scientists, and scholars, the Olympic Movement's understanding of “culture” has shifted over the years among the fine-arts conception, the idea of general moral cultivation, and the anthropological understanding of total and distinctive ways of life. What hasn't changed is the commitment, in the words of the 1995 charter, to “symbolizing the universality and the diversity of human cultures” through the Olympic Games, thereby serving intercultural understanding and détente.
In the developing world the Olympic Movement has typically attracted attention for its historical, cultural, and political content long before the emergence of any national sports heroes at the Games. For example, nations in Southeast Asia, Oceania, and Central Africa have regarded appearance in the Olympic opening ceremonies parade as a critical ritual of recognition and incorporation in the global system of nation-states and as one of the very few opportunities to attract even a small measure of public and media attention from the rich countries. These are matters of human dignity and cultural presence in most cases, not illusions of economic development or North-South income transfer.
Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games and the IOC, wrote in 1934, “To ask the people of the world to love one another are merely a form of childishness. To ask them to respect one another is not in the least utopian; but in order to respect one another, it is first necessary to know one another.” In fact during the Olympic games intercultural information is generated and exchanged through the host city bid competition, intensive world press scrutiny of each Olympic host culture, the gigantic broadcast audiences for the opening ceremonies with their world and local cultural performances, the real or fanciful associations of certain cultures with certain sports in the athletic program, the face-to-face interactions among festival-goers, and the formal arts programs of the Cultural Olympiad that accompanies every Games.
So we can see that even by the use of our athlete competitions we have the chance of presenting our culture to the world. Especially when it comes to the world cup the number of audiences increases to the most. Consequently our athletes and footballers should always keep this image of chance in their minds to do their bests to enter these competitions from one hand and be good representors of our culture from the other hand.



Some parts extracted from: "Encyclopædia Britannica Online
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http://library.dawson.cc.mt.us:2055/eb/article-9026545

INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

The International Communication Gazette
COPYRIGHT © 2006 SAGE PUBLICATIONS
http://gaz.sagepub.com


NEW FORMS OF INTERCULTURAL
COMMUNICATION IN A GLOBALIZED
WORLD
Claudio Baraldi

In this article communication is considered to be the basic concept in explaining globalization.In the last decade of this century, a transcultural form of communication based on dialogue was proposed as a basis for cross-cultural adaptation, a creation of multicultural identities and a construction of a hybrid multicultural society. However, this transcultural form creates paradoxes and difficulties in intercultural communication, mixing the preservation of cultural difference with the search for synthesis. Consequently, a new form of intercultural dialogue, dealing with incommensurable differences and managing conflicts, is needed to create coordination among different cultural perspectives.
This article shows that globalization can be explained only through a communication theory that legitimizes its cultural interpretation. So globalization is considered as a process creating interdependence among societies and cultures that were previously separated.

The cultural perspective emphasizes the problematic connection between cultural innovation and the conservation of cultural traditions. Globalization means openness to cultural change and creates new opportunities for dialogue, but it also threatens the survival of cultural traditions. But glocalization is the relationship between global cultures and local cultures. So glocalization has an intercultural meaning and is created through communication. In other words, glocalization is a product of intercultural communication. Glocalization is the result of a systematic intercultural communication, involving participants socialized in differently structured societies. It is produced by a communicative confrontation between specific cultural forms of differently structured societies.
Then this article talks about ethnocentrism especially modernist one and its position in intercultural communication. I myself consider also ethnocentrism as a danger to world wide society based on communication becase "it is the tendency to refer exclusively to one's own cultural values, even if engaged with others who may not share those values."[1]
At present, in the functionally differentiated society, a particular sensitivity to cultural diversity seems to be spreading. It is emerging as this diversity seems to threaten pluralism, individualism and modernism. In particular, a new way of thinking known as cross-cultural adaptation is emerging which considers different cultures as open systems in reciprocal relationship.
Dialogue is the cultural form supposed to abolish ethnocentric boundaries and create cross-cultural adaptation. Dialogue defines the conditions of openness, exchange between cultural forms and meeting among cultures, permitting the joint creation of new cultural symbols. Dialogue is based on two communicative conditions: (1) equal distribution of opportunities for active participation in communication; and (2) empathy that is competence in assuming another’s perspective, integrating listening and understanding, interest in expression and sensitivity to the needs of others. Dialogue is supposed to produce a co-created cultural contract different cultures express themselves together in communication, appreciating each other.
To my view, what is called glocalization could be considered as plurality of globalizations that is against unification and absolute homogenization. So in this context intercultural communication finds its own importance. Glocalization has given us the chances of taking active roles in its context yet I still believe on the fair distribution of opportunities too. Yet the hardware characteristics of globalization besides its software have given every culture the chance to appear in globalized world according to its potentiality and its acceptance by others. Still what we need is communication to let other cultures take their active role.

My own suggestion is that our Iranian culture has got lots of potentiality on which we can rely to have intercultural communication with other cultures. To prove it let me give you the case of Iranian poet Jalaluddin Mowlan known as Rumi in all parts of U.S. The translation of his poems sold around 500/000 copies in the year of 2001 and it is a considerable case of our potentiality or better to say our power to show our powerful culture in global age. So we should have more investments on components of our culture especially on Iranian literature.
My next post will be on the potentiality of Iranian culture by going through the case of Rumi and criticizing some parts of the novel "Without My Daughter" by Betty Mahmoodi, which has given a dark image of Iranian culture.


[1] -Edgar A. (1999). Key Concepts in Cultural Theory, London, Sage Publications.