In the presentation we reflect on the importance of intercultural learning as a way to help create peace in the world. The conclusion presented in the text is based on a survey of the Czech Republic, Poland and Sweden. The study is about peace, the young people's new identity constructions, cosmopolitanism and cross-cultural learning processes in the global community. In the presentation, we also take up an example of intercultural learning from a hip-hop project in Stockholm. Our sense is that by contrasting two different examples we can illustrate different forms of intercultural learning.
Theory
Intercultural education should are a culture science and as a practice, which uses diversity as a starting point for human learning, socialization and development. We use the concept of culture in a broad and dynamic sense which includes not only national, religious and ethnic cultures but also different views and experiences based on gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, class etcetera (Goldstein-Kyaga, Borgström & Hübinette, 2012). Sometimes the concept intercultural is used as opposed to the concept of multiculturalism. This means a perspective and theories about how a multicultural society should be treated (see Lahdenperä, P. 2006). Rodrigo Alsina (2008) considers multicultural discourse as an expression for a tolerance based on a power position, which only accepts the culture of the Other from the perspective of the own culture. This will lead to an ethnocentric and differentiating perspective, which conserves and creates new differences. The intercultural discourse includes according to him a more mutual respect trying to overcome the tolerant differentiation and develop an own consciousness about diversity from the own principles of diversity
Bauman (2015) uses two concepts; mixophilia and mixophobia to describe the dilemma that can last for a multicultural society. With "mixophobia" he means the psychological effect, that is, fear to interfere and communicate with the foreign and the need to protect its territorial place. "Mixophilia" on the other hand, tends to be met with the foreign, face to face, bluntly, genuine and sincere. Bauman perceives mixophilia as a process in which different cultures and perspectives, with mutual respect, mix and create new cultural fusions (idem, 2015). Typical example of cultural fusion is to compose a piece of music (Bachrach, 2011).
Bauman's concept of "mixophilia" reminds us of the concept of intercultural learning that starts from a diversity perspective (see Bauman, 2015). We see intercultural learning as a creative process in which we are promoted both by the divergent thinking and convergent thinking (Vytgostsky, 1995). Simontovs Research (1999). He argues that societies with several contrasting cultural centers provide more creative activity.
We use the term intercultural in its dynamic, interaction-oriented and egalitarian view sense. Moreover, the focus is on intercultural learning processes in a broader sense, not only as an activity in the classroom initiated by teachers. Processes of socialization and learning also take place in several learning situations e.g. through the information technology and communication and in the interaction between the individual and their social contexts mediated through a variety of channels (Ziehe, 2009, Graviz, 2012).
Peace is more than just the absence of violence. With positive peace refers Galtung & Jacobsen (2000) to a genuinely peaceful situation characterized by peaceful values of the individual and social institutions that support equitable distribution of public resources and the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Such a situation is also characterized by the absence of "indirect" or "structural violence", i.e. a type of violence inherent in the society where more people might die in the long run due to unequal and discriminatory treatment than at the outbreak of open violence (Idem, 2000, Galtung, 1990).
