Category: Resources in ICD

Histories of the Internationalization of the Field of Communication Studies

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Lopes, M. I. V., & Fuentes-Navarro, R. (Eds.). (2023). Special issue: Histories of the internationalization of the field of communication studies. MATRIZes, 17(3).

The new issue of MATRIZes – Journal of the Graduate Program in Communication Sciences of the University of São Paulo, Brazil – has just been published, and it is available free to download. Articles are in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The topic is telling the history of how the field of communication studies has been gradually moving toward internationalization, and that seems directly relevant to the interests of many of those affiliated with this Center.

In keeping with the theme of the special issue, the international edition, with articles in English, Spanish, and Portuguese is available here.

The Portuguese edition is available here.

UNESCO e-Platform on ICD

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UNESCO created an e-platform for intercultural dialogue in 2018, which recent followers may not have noticed. It is designed to be “a global collaborative hub” intended “to promote good practices  from all over the world, that enable to build bridges between people from diverse backgrounds in order to create more inclusive societies through mutual understanding and respect for diversity.”

One section presents a concepts glossary, explaining terms from intercultural dialogue to cultural identity to intercultural citizenship. These will be particularly familiar to all those who have previously read Intercultural Competences: A conceptual and operational framework from 2013, which I drafted for UNESCO (with many contributions by others named in the notes), as they all come directly from that publication.

Another section provides good practices for a wide range of topics, intended to serve as models. CID Posters and several publications (Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue and Constructing Intercultural Dialogues) have been accepted for inclusion.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Participatory ESOL Report and Podcasts

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Coole, M., et al. (2023). Participatory ESOL: Taking Stock. Working Papers in
Urban Language &
Literacies, Paper 319, and 5 podcasts.

ESOL refers to teaching English to adult speakers of other languages. Here are links to five podcasts and a report on the practitioner research project, Participatory ESOL: Taking Stock.  The project was organised by English for Action and the Hub for Education & Language Diversity (HELD) at King’s College London in collaboration with teachers from different organisations across the ESOL sector.  The report and the podcasts provide a reflective account of developments in Participatory ESOL over the last 15 years, drawing on the experiences of 11 participatory ESOL teachers, but also focus more broadly on the position of participatory ESOL in the sector as a whole, pointing forward to implications for policy and ESOL teacher education more generally.

PE [Participatory ESOL] emerges … as an approach that listens to students and engages them in dialogue, that reaches beyond traditional student-teacher roles to include critique and action on social conditions, and that maintains an explicit focus on language throughout while also questioning the hegemony of English itself.

Educating for Intercultural Dialogue, Peacebuilding, Constructive Remembrance & Reconciliation

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Clarke-Habibi, S. (2020). Educating for intercultural dialogue, peacebuilding, constructive remembrance, and reconciliation: A toolkit for teachers in the Western Balkans. UNICEF Albania and Regional Youth Cooperation Office.

Although prepared specifically for teachers in the Western Balkans, this toolkit should be useful to anyone in a teaching context working with any of the major concepts. As explained in the introduction:

This Toolkit focuses on education for intercultural dialogue, peacebuilding, constructive remembrance and reconciliation. It is designed for teachers and trainers who work with adolescents (14-18 years) in formal and non-formal education settings. It may be adapted, however, for other contexts and age groups, such as for activities with older youth, for pre-service teacher training, and for teacher professional development programmes. (p. 7)

The objectives of this Toolkit are:

  1. To support teachers’ professional competences to engage adolescents and youth in intercultural dialogue.
  2. To support teachers in their use of teaching strategies and techniques, which help adolescents and youth to learn and practice open and respectful dialogue.
  3. To develop teachers’ professional competences and confidence to engage adolescents and youth in discussing controversial issues, particularly related to past and current causes of conflict in the region, and to manage all this safely and effectively.
  4. To support teachers to create ‘safe spaces’ in the classroom where adolescents and youth can explore issues that concern them freely and without fear.
  5. To support teachers’ professional competences to nurture young people’s understanding of the foundations of sustainable peace and to strengthen their agency as peacebuilding actors (p. 8).

Cruz & Miranda: Storytelling as Media Literacy and Intercultural Dialogue

Resources in ICD“ width=Cruz, M. T., & Miranda, M. (2022). Storytelling as media literacy and intercultural dialogue in post-colonial societies. Media and Communication, 10(4), 294-304.

Based on the experience of a citizenship project about the post-colonial condition and Afro-European interculturality, this essay reflects on digital storytelling, and co-creative practices as relevant literacy and education strategies for furthering interculturality in contemporary societies. The authors propose storytelling as a tool for intercultural dialogue, in the framework of media literacy.

…we need educational strategies and literacies that continue to provide the training of imagination required for intercultural dialogue in the information society (p. 302)

Li & Lee: Transpositioning: Translanguaging and the Liquidity of Identity

Resources in ICD“ width=Li, W., & Lee, T. K. (2023). Transpositioning: Translanguaging and the liquidity of identity.
Applied Linguistics, 20, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amad065

Transpositioning is an adaptation of the concept of positioning as used in social psychology, and is defined as “the process in which individuals articulate their personhood by taking up changeable identities in interaction” (p. 2). It should be relevant to those studying intercultural dialogue, though it has not yet been used in that context. See KC99: Translanguaging for a brief explanation of that concept.

“This essay seeks to address the seemingly random, ever-expanding, and shifting communicative demands of liquid modernity by focussing on two key issues: the need to reconceptualize language and communication as a consequence of the diversification of media and resources users draw upon to meet these demands; and the need for a new analytical framework to capture how people perform multiplex roles spontaneously and simultaneously through dynamic and adaptive communicative practices. We do the former with the concept of translanguaging and the latter with transpositioning.” (p. 1)

“Translanguaging facilitates transpositioning. The juxtaposition of the two terms underscores the simultaneous activation of multiple identities by way of mobilizing resources across the boundaries of named languages, new media, and entrenched ideologies. In this process, borders are renegotiated, circumvented, even outright rejected. What ensues are emergent and evolving semiotic spaces in which play—in the sense of a certain lightness of being, marked by a creative and critical ludicity—is a method of social engagement. One might thus say that communication in the liquid modern age comprises a non-committal play of identities where language users, in the manner of free-and-easy tourists creating itineraries on the whim, spontaneously (re)invent themselves by orchestrating all available and accessible resources in their semiotic repertoire in response to communicative stimuli from others.” (p. 14)

For a brief introduction to the topic, see KC99: Translanguaging.

UNESCO: We Need to Talk: ICD and Peace

Resources in ICD“ width=UNESCO and Institute for Economics and Peace. (2022). We Need to Talk: Measuring intercultural dialogue for peace and inclusion. Paris, France: UNESCO.

For those interested in the relationship between intercultural dialogue and peace, this new publication by UNESCO may be of particular interest.

“For the first time, We Need to Talk presents evidence of the link between intercultural dialogue and peace, conflict prevention and non-fragility, and human rights. Building upon the groundbreaking data from the new
UNESCO Framework for Enabling Intercultural Dialogue, this report highlights key policy and intervention opportunities for intercultural dialogue as an instrument for inclusion and peace.

Using data covering over 160 countries in all regions, the report presents a framework of the structures, processes and values needed to support intercultural dialogue, examining the dynamics and interlinkages between them to reveal substantial policy opportunities with broad spanning benefits.”

See also KC64: Peacebuilding and/or KC91: Peace Communication for brief explanations of those two concepts.

Global Citizenship Education

Resources in ICD“ width=Hayden, Matthew J. (2022). Moral agonism: Acknowledging the moral in global citizenship education. Prospects, 46(1). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-022-09603-y

For those interested in cosmopolitanism, or global citizenship education, this article on moral agonism may be useful.

I will propose a theoretical pedagogical approach that would move students beyond a simple understanding of interconnectedness and intercultural awareness to immerse them in ongoing, real-world participation in the analysis and reconstruction of values and knowledge in real time with real consequences.

See also KC2: Cosmopolitanism for a brief explanation of that concept, if it is new to you.

UNESCO Initiative “Arab Latinos!” to Promote ICD in Brazil

Resources in ICD“ width=UNESCO. (2022, August 31). “Arab Latinos!” initiative promotes intercultural dialogue for social cohesion.

Building on the centuries-old ties between the Arab region and Latin America and the Caribbean, UNESCO organized the first expert meeting on “Arab Latinos!” in São Paulo, Brazil, on 22 August 2022. The main purpose of this initiative of UNESCO Social and Human Sciences Sector is to encourage intercultural dialogue and tolerance for social cohesion.

The event, hosted by the Arab-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, took place on 23 – 24 August 2022 in São Paulo, kicked off by an official ceremony followed by an expert meeting. The discussions between fifteen experts from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico resulted in a five-year Plan of Action for a potential new route of intercultural dialogue at UNESCO. The proposed Plan of action would be articulated over four pillars: 1) Research and Knowledge production; 2) Awareness-raising; 3) Capacity-building; and 4) International Coalition.

Since the end of the 19th century, significant migratory flows from the Arab countries arrived in Latin America and the Caribbean. Today the population of Arab descent in the region is currently estimated to be between 17 and 20 million.

Stranger at the Gate

Resources in ICD“ width=Seften, Joshua, & Lo, Jasper K. (14 September 2022). A veteran’s Islamophobia transformed, in “Stranger at the gate.” The New Yorker.

After 25 years of service, U.S. Marine Mac McKinney returns home to Indiana filled with an all-consuming rage toward the people he had been fighting against. Still fueled by his desire to fight for his country, he plans to bomb the local mosque.

But when he comes face to face with the community of Afghan refugees and others of Muslim faith that he seeks to kill, his plan takes an unexpected turn.

He thought they were the enemy.
They thought he was a friend.

“They were able to build an impossible bridge to one another,” Seftel says of McKinney and members of the Muncie Islamic center. “If that could happen, anything is possible. They gave us a blueprint for how we could all do this.” (Blake, 2022)

This is an astonishing documentary, and a great resource.

For further information, see: 

Stranger at the Gate.

Blake, John. (8 October 2022). A Marine who hated Muslims went to a mosque to plant a bomb. His intended victims ended up saving his life. CNN.

See also KC55: Stereotypes, KC39: Otherness and the Other, and KC89: Xenophobia.