Cultural Diversity and Transnational Practices

A group of children in a circle with their arms around each other.In a world increasingly characterised by rapid and constant cross-border flows, encounters with difference are unavoidable and the need to engage with otherness in diverse social and institutional settings is inevitable. The intensification of the 'throwing together' of differences may lead to a proliferation of social divisions and sites of tension, especially as new forms of fundamentalism and the 'clash of civilisations' increasingly frame international and domestic politics. At the same time, intergenerational change, communications and cultural adaptation produce forms of cultural syncretism and transnationality where differences aren't fixed but continuously converging and diverging. In this context, cultural diversity must be viewed as an entangled web of intertwining and dynamic differences and similarities, not as a grid of fixed, closed and mutually exclusive identities.

This new understanding of cultural diversity entails attention to the situated and multiscalar character of intercultural relations. Interactions between groups always take place in particular spaces which shape the nature of that interaction, whether it be within the world regional configurations of cultural governance (e.g. 'Asia Pacific') or - within nations - of rural towns and socalled 'global' cities, or - to switch scales again - in neighbourhoods, streets, schools, workplaces, and households. Our initial projects will examine mechanisms of cultural exchange and flow across these diverse social and institutional scales.

Events held under the Cultural Diversity and Transnational Practices theme

Books

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