Dialogue for Intercultural Understanding: Transnational Perspectives

Author(s):

Nancy Nelson(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

WERA Focal Meeting

Format:

Paper

Session Information

WERA SES 03 D, Towards Socio-Political Transformation in Education World-Wide

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-08

17:15-18:45

Room:

307. [Main]

Chair:

Rocío García Carrión

Contribution

The international scene today is characterized by cultural pluralism across regions and nations resulting from increased migration, diasporas, and diminished boundaries. Vertovec (2007) has used the term super-diversity to describe today's societies, which are increasingly multiethnic, multilinguistic, and multireligious. Much attention from many quarters has gone to the question of how to foster social harmony in the context of increased diversity. In this regard, multiculturalism has, for several decades, dominated discussion of issues of cultural diversity, but attention has now moved to the notion of interculturalism—and to the promotion of educational approaches, including intercultural dialogue, that foster interculturality (cf. Barrett, 2013). This paper, proposed for the WERA 2015 Conference, examines transnational arguments for intercultural dialogue, particularly as they relate to education.

Theoretical Framework and Questions

Considered to be a concept fuller than the “fact” of multiculturalism, interculturalism includes such elements as intercultural awareness, intercultural sensitivity, and intercultural competence. It also includes intercultural dialogue, which is said to be “an open and respectful exchange of views between individuals, groups with different ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic backgrounds and heritage, on the basis of mutual understanding.” This definition, which comes from the Council of Europe’s (2008) White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue, is often cited by other transnational organizations, including UNESCO, and also by foundations and educational groups that promote intercultural dialogue as a solution to social conflict. The emphasis in interculturalism is on the inter—connections that can result from openness to, and awareness of, others’ perspectives.

The study reported here, which has an international scope, employed framing analysis to analyze a corpus of major transnational documents from the Council of Europe, the European Union, and UNESCO. All three organizations have issued declarations as to the potential of intercultural dialogue. In doing so, they have framed the problem that intercultural dialogue is intended to solve and have presented somewhat variable conceptions of intercultural dialogue as a solution—what it is and what it can accomplish. In doing so, multiculturalism is often presented as a failed approach.

Framing, according to Rein and Schön (1993), entails “selecting, organizing, interpreting, and making sense of a complex reality to provide guideposts for knowing, analyzing, persuading, and acting” (p. 146); and frames, according to Yanow (2000) “direct attention toward some elements while simultaneously diverting attention from other elements” (p. 11). In studies of framing, policy analysts often focus on problems and solutions, since, as Entman (2004) has pointed out, the two most important facets of substantive framing are problem definition, which influences the rest of the frame, and endorsement of remedies [or solutions].

Questions guiding the framing analyses within and across the selected documents were the following: (1) How is the problem of cultural conflict presented? and (2) What practices, including educational practices, are offered as solutions?

Method

Method The corpus of texts includes major declarations related to intercultural dialogue from three entities: UNESCO, which has 195 member states and 9 associate members; the Council of Europe, which has 47 member states; and the European Union, which has 28 member states. All have contributed significantly to promotion of the concept of intercultural dialogue. In addition to these formal declarations, the corpus also includes the Council of Europe’s 2008 White Paper, the most authoritative document thus far on this issue. Declarations from the Council of Europe include the Opatija Declaration, the Warsaw Declaration, the Faro Declaration, and the Volga Declaration as well as the White Paper. From the European Union documents include the Declaration of the Year of Intercultural Dialogue and the Rainbow Paper. And from UNESCO came the Vilnius Declaration, the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, the Varna Declaration, the Rabat Declaration, and the Declaration of the Year of Rapprochement. Attention in the textual analyses was on the claims made since 2001 by these transnational supporters of intercultural dialogue as a means of avoiding or solving cultural clashes. Analyses of the problem-solution frames were based on Burns and Carson’s (2005) approach. This meant attending to problem complexes, which identify and describe the problem, and solution complexes, which specify acceptable solutions, including strategies and tools. For documents like these, the motivating problem is typically provided in initial parts of the document, since it provides the rationale, and it is followed by solutions. For these documents, analyses of the solution focused on definitions of intercultural dialogue; its strategic features (e.g., micro/macro focus, within/outside scope); its actions and tools (e.g., historical study, creative projects). Attention was also on recurring discourses reflecting particular kinds of ideologies (cf. van Dijk, 2006).

Expected Outcomes

The central issue in this textual corpus is the relationship between cultural diversity and what is variously called cohesion, unity, or harmony. This is, of course, the crux of the problem that intercultural dialogue is supposed to help solve: how to have both diversity and unity (or, as sometimes stated, to avoid “clash”). The analyses show contrasts across organizations and also over time in representations of both the problem and the solution. Although the problem is most often posed as the conflict resulting from cultural diversity, documents vary in the extent to which conflict is presented as inevitable when there is diversity. Solutions vary across organizations and documents and even within documents. Particularly interesting is an evolving definition of intercultural dialogue as well a verb change in its purpose (from balancing cultural diversity to managing it). Included in the solution complexes are the heteroglossic discourses of liberalism, postmodernism, and postcolonialism, as well as the discourse of sustainability, which is mainly associated with UNESCO (e.g., 2002). The paper concludes with a discussion of the educational approaches suggested by the organizations to help achieve intercultural dialogue, many of which have been implemented and some of which seem familiar as approaches to multicultural education. By tracing development of these arguments, this paper provides a textual history with respect to the notion of intercultural dialogue that should lead to a better understanding of its development and also of its current representation and current critiques. Conceptual differences are noted across the organizations, especially between UNESCO and the European entities, but attention is also given to increasing similarities in terms of framing. These conceptions of intercultural dialogue are relevant to a broader discussion of intercultural education, which would include the Québécois perspective in Canada and also initiatives of interculturalidad in Latin America.

References

Barrett, M. (2013). Interculturalism and multiculturalism: Similarities and differences. Strasburg: Council of Europe Publishing. Besley, T., & Peters, M. A. (Eds.). (2012). Interculturalism, education and dialogue (Global Studies in Education). New York: Peter Lang. Burns, T. R., & Carson, M. (2005). Social order and disorder: Institutions, policy paradigms and discourses--an interdisciplinary approach. In P. Chilton & R. Wodak (Eds.), A new agenda in critical discourse analysis: Theory and interdisciplinarity (pp. 283-309). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Council of Europe. Ministers of Foreign Affairs. (2008, May 7). White paper on intercultural dialogue: “Living together as equals in dignity." 118th Ministerial Session, Strasbourg. http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/intercultural/Source/White%20Paper_final_revised_EN.pdf Entman, R. (2004). Projections of power: Framing news, public opinion, and U.S. foreign policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rein, M., & Schön, D. (1993), Reframing policy discourse. In F. Fischer & J. Forester (Eds.), The argumentative turn in policy analysis and planning (pp. 145-166). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. UNESCO. (2002). Dialogue among civilizations: The international conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, 23-26 April, 2001. Paris: UNESCO. Van Dijk, T. (2006). Ideology and discourse analysis. Journal of Political Ideologies, 11, 115-140. Vertovec, S. (2007). Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30, 1024-1054. Yanow, D. (2000). Conducting interpretive policy analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Author Information

Nancy Nelson (presenting / submitting)

University of North Texas

Teacher Education and Administration

Denton

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