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Intercultural Interactions (intercultural + interaction)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	66%

Selected Abstracts

YUANMING YUAN/VERSAILLES: INTERCULTURAL INTERACTIONS BETWEEN CHINESE AND EUROPEAN PALACE CULTURES

ART HISTORY, Issue 1 2009
GREG M. THOMAS
This article examines intercultural interactions between Europe and China in the eighteenth century. It focuses on China's greatest imperial palace, Yuanming Yuan, detailing its pivotal importance in contact with Europe. The first section compares Yuanming Yuan with Versailles in order to demonstrate that beneath their mutually exotic appearances lay similarities in how systems of art, architecture and gardens were deployed to reinforce structurally similar court societies. The second section argues that it was this systemic compatibility that made it possible for French and British cultural agents to make sense of Chinese arts through the playful distortions of chinoiserie. Mirroring Europe, the Chinese court simultaneously appropriated European arts in a symmetrical phenomenon of ,Européenerie'. This case study shows that unlike many later Orientalist relationships, the unique compatibility between China and Europe in the eighteenth century made it possible for each society to make the other culturally meaningful. [source]

Negotiation for Action: English Language Learning in Game-Based Virtual Worlds

MODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL, Issue 4 2009
DONGPING ZHENG
This study analyzes the user chat logs and other artifacts of a virtual world,,Quest Atlantis,(QA), and proposes the concept of Negotiation for Action (NfA) to explain how interaction, specifically, avatar-embodied collaboration between native English speakers and nonnative English speakers, provided resources for English language acquisition. Iterative multilayered analyses revealed several affordances of QA for language acquisition at both utterance and discourse levels. Through intercultural collaboration on solving content-based problems, participants successfully reached quest goals during which emergent identity formation and meaning making take place. The study also demonstrates that it is in this intercultural interaction that pragmatics, syntax, semantics, and discourse practices arose and were enacted. The findings are consistent with our ecological psychology framework, in that meaning emerges when language is used to coordinate in-the-moment actions. [source]

CULTURAL DIVERSITY, DISCRIMINATION, AND ECONOMIC OUTCOMES: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS

ECONOMIC INQUIRY, Issue 2 2007
PAUL J. FERRARO
Does cultural diversity affect economic outcomes? We develop an experimental framework that complements ongoing research on this question. We vary the ethnic mix of bargaining sessions to study intercultural interactions among members of U.S. Hispanic and Navajo cultures. We control for demographic differences in our subject pools and elicit beliefs directly in order to differentiate between statistical discrimination and preference-based discrimination. Hispanic and Navajo subjects behave differently, and their behavior is affected by the ethnic composition of the experimental session. Our experimental framework can shed light on economic behavior and outcomes in societies of mixed ethnicity, race, and religion. (JEL C78, C90, Z10) [source]

The Hypothesis of Incommensurability and Multicultural Education

JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION, Issue 2 2009
TIM MCDONOUGH
This article describes the logical and rhetorical grounds for a multicultural pedagogy that teaches students the knowledge and skills needed to interact creatively in the public realm betwixt and between cultures. I begin by discussing the notion of incommensurability. I contend that this hypothesis was intended to perform a particular rhetorical task and that the assumption that it is descriptive of a condition to which intercultural interactions are necessarily subjected is an unwarranted extension of the hypothesis as originally conceived. After discussing the hypothetical nature of the notion of incommensurability and its critical role within the discourse of the human sciences, the article examines the usefulness of utopian narratives as examples of incommensurable systems that can be put to pedagogical work. I argue that the comparative study of utopian narratives can provide insight into possible means of creating passageways that lead not from one bounded system to another, but rather to mutually generated and generative pluralistic public cultures in which new norms can be articulated, shared and potentially legitimised. What is crucial to the point I am trying to make is that ,incommensurability' was initially posed as a hypothesis that, while impossible to prove, still served a critical discursive or rhetorical function. This function is one that it can still serve and in an important educational manner, outside the discourse of the human sciences, within a larger, increasingly multicultural and global society. [source]

The Arts Of Deception: Verbal Performances By The Ra¯ute Of Nepal

THE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 2 2002
Jana Fortier
A small population of Tibeto-Burman-speaking hunter-gatherers, the Ra¯ute avoid intercultural communication with surrounding Nepa¯li-speaking agriculturalists except during barter sessions. During these intercultural interactions, Ra¯ute often charm their trading partners with Nepa¯li verbal art, including recitation of rhymes, songs, and blessings. In this article I suggest that Ra¯ute perform verbal art in order to draw attention away from their radically different lifestyle and as a way of resisting the hegemonic process of Hinduization. The article details Ra¯ute oral performance as a strategy of verbal indirection, focusing on the context and framing of rhyming proverbs as a means of camouflaging Ra¯ute people's actual cultural practices. ba¯darko sa¯pet.o Ra¯uteko dha¯mi la¯i, kheti cha¯ina pa¯ti cha¯ina, ke kha¯nu ha¯mi la¯i? ,The monkey's thigh is the shaman's meat, Having no farmland, what shall we eat?' Gogane Ra¯ute [source]