Adam B. Seligman – CEDAR and Boston University
Towards a New Set of Practices in Intercultural Communication
This paper argues that one of the major challenges in establishing mutually responsible and respectful, not to mention effective forms of intercultural mediation rests on recognizing the very different cognitive frames of those involved in such ventures. Fostering more balanced forms of communication between let us say “cultural interpreters” or “mediators” and those being “interpreted” or “mediated” rests on a recognition of the divergent cognitive frames brought to the interaction. Explicitly or implicitly, consciously or unconsciously the former usually bring universal and general frames of knowledge to the table, that are, moreover conceived of as being superior to the particular and concrete forms of experience which often enough characterize their interlocutors.
The challenge of establishing some modicum of trust between these different actors is discussed in terms of a pedagogy of shared experience and the development of new forms of embodied knowledge among the different participants to the interaction.
Robin Kurilla – University of Duisburg-Essen
Broken Understanding: Corrupted Participation in Emerging Public Spaces
This contribution develops a concept of reflexive intercultural mediation in orientation on obstacles to understanding in emerging public spaces as criteria to assess processes of social inclusion and exclusion. The co-evolution of media and society has led to the emgergence of novel public spaces, potentially laying the foundation for socially and culturally diverse encounters and public debates. Some technophile authors assert that this development has greatly improved forms of political participation, simply by endowing minorities and disadvantaged individuals with a communication channel. There is, however, little doubt that, in the words of Nancy Fraser, ‘objective’ or material and ‘intersubjective’ or recognition-related conditions may still impede parity of participation. From the communication-theoretical viewpoint employed here, these conditions translate into chances of understanding. In other words, the question is not whether the subaltern in the sense of Spivak ‘have’ or obtain a voice and thus become addresses of communication, but rather whether they can not only be heard but also be understood. Among the obstacles to understanding discussed here are the anatomy of political communication when its guiding distinction of friend and enemy is moralized, the corresponding ascription of value-laden emotions to others and self, the crisis of public institutions, particularly of truth as opposed to the triumphant progress of subjectivities, the global spread of highly ritualized models of communication with their respective forms of capital or “media of success” such as popularity and authenticity, and culture-specific emotion worlds. Intercultural mediation aims at generating bi- and multilateral understanding and, in order to do so, lays open these obstacles to understanding and highlights the underlying divides. It renders reflexive its own position by making transparent its embeddedness in political, economic, ideological, epistemological, etc. discourses and promotes reason-guided reflexivity and ethnographic comprehension as its cherished aims. A comprehensive approach to intercultural mediation employs these insights in both bottom-up practices related to individual cases and top-down practices that create the riverbed of a ‘parity of understanding’.
Seema Yasmin – Stanford University
Transcultural communication during a misinfodemic: how news deserts enhance vulnerability to beliefs in false health and science information
The medical establishment, public health agencies and government institutions typically employ the knowledge deficit model of science communication against which resistance to beliefs and attitudinal changes via cognitive biases and heuristics have been documented. The use of a suboptimal communications model further distances the publics—and in particular minoritized, marginalized and racialized people—from the agencies and governing bodies that wield power over them. This ostracization and fostering of mistrust and distrust is compounded by a communications paradigm that perpetuates hierarchies of power and fails to elicit feedback from a perceived monolithic public; instead, this model dictates a one-size-fits-all message to heterogenous populations which hold varied beliefs about science and health based on cultural differences, politics, history, faith traditions, language and other factors. Publics are not equally vulnerable to the circulation of anti-science misinformation and disinformation and only recently has access to information, and specifically access to broadband internet, been recognized as a social determinant of health. Information (in)equity, including access to credible, fact-checked local news, influences the likelihood of following non-pharmaceutical public health interventions such as stay-at-home orders and hand-washing, and strength of beliefs in anti-vaccine, anti-mask and anti-government messaging. Increasingly larger swathes of the United States can be classified as news deserts, regions which lack access to local journalism. Most news deserts are in rural or low-income areas inhabited by a disproportionate number of Black, indigenous and minoritized communities. Covid-19 vaccination coverage is lower in regions where a local newspaper has shut down in recent years, further establishing information equity as a crucial factor in the wellbeing of populations and a compounding factor in the enhanced vulnerability of already susceptible communities to both disease and disinformation about disease.
María Margarida Marques – Nova University of Lisbon
Migration and cultural diversity Language and social configurations
This paper addresses migration-led diversity. It explores the language used to identify, describe and designate diversity and the social configurations underpinning such framing.
A study on expressions of culture identified as Black or African, in Lisbon, and the mediating processes introducing them into the public space is used as an auxiliary device to illustrate the analysis.
A tentative conclusion about the role that academic research may have on the way public discourses by the agents of the “worlds of diversity” are framed will ensue.
Omer Shapira – Ono Academic College
Ethical Challenges for Intercultural Mediators
The use of mediation as a form of peaceful dispute resolution process has been on the rise in the last decades, gaining acceptance and formal recognition by states, international organizations, public bodies, and businesses across the globe. At the heart of mediation lies a simple idea: a facilitated dialogue between disagreeing individuals, groups, and even states with the help of a third party – a mediator – can promote understanding by the disputing parties of what is important to them and to others, help them assess differences and similarities in needs, attitudes, and goals, identify and evaluate potential courses of action, and make their own, uncoerced decisions. This idea has evolved into numerous accounts of mediation in a myriad of mediation programs, styles, rules, and legislation, which have been applied to all aspects of human conflicts in many parts of the world in areas such as family and divorce, labor, environment, community, commercial, public, health, and law and order.
The role of the mediator as facilitator of dialogue has always been a challenging one, even more so when issues of culture enter the mediation. Mediators assisting parties belonging to a culture different from their own or parties from different cultures face complex professional and ethical challenges. For example, every mediator is expected to have the knowledge and skills (competence) required to carry out the mediation. What special knowledge and skills are required from an intercultural mediator?
Mediators are required to be neutral and act impartially. The professional and ethical literature in the field of mediation deal extensively with the challenge of the mediator’s neutrality, especially in situations where there are power imbalances between the parties to the mediation and concerns arise regarding the fairness and integrity of the process. Intercultural mediations intensify this challenge, especially when one of the parties or the mediator belongs to a dominant culture in the society in which the meeting of cultures takes place. Can or should the intercultural mediator maintain neutrality?
Mediation is based on the principle of party self-determination (autonomy) and the mediator is expected to carry out a process that respects this value. The cultural component can have major implications for the ability of parties to understand the process, participate in it effectively, express their wishes, withstand pressures, and knowingly and voluntarily consent to the outcome of the process. What is required of the mediator to allow the parties to an intercultural mediation to exercise free choice?
The paper will discuss these challenges, illustrate them with practical examples from intercultural scenarios, and offer recommendations for ethical practice.
Richard Madsen – University of California, San Diego
Sacred Paths to Magnanimity In a Polarized World
In previous generations, among many communities of citizens in modern polities, the languages for talking about the public good have overlapped, but over the past generation they seem to have been pulled further apart.
Given the political hostility in which inhabitants of these different language worlds find themselves, it is difficult to envision a method of translation that would open channels of constructive conversation between them. One thing they have in common, though, is to make straw men of the other side, for example, for those in the world of sacred language to see the other side as completely materialistic, utilitarian technocrats, and for the “libs” to see the other side as rigid, racist, authoritarian theocrats.
But the contrasts do not have to be so stark. Around the globe, there are indeed robust examples of communities built on a resonant language of moral commitment, bolstered often by religious ritual, that sacralizes openness, inclusivity, a just social equality, and a respect for science, including social science, for providing means to achieve these.
These are models for community that can translate between the universalistic, impersonal languages of expertise and the redolent languages of fidelity to particular persons in accordance with sacred traditions, which unite people from different social classes and ethnicities and enable them to see themselves as part of a sacred whole without shutting themselves off from other communities but engaging with diverse others in a quest for the common good.
Here I explore three examples, one Catholic and close to the heart of Pope Francis, the second, Buddhist, and the third “secular” but with sacred commitments grounded in the civic republican tradition. They all build bridges between class, race, gender, and religion and they all bring a strong moral voice to dialogues with science and politics. In important ways they present a common model for doing this, although they all have particular strengths and weaknesses arising from their different traditions and historical contexts.
