Fatemeh Kamali-Chirani – Center for Intercultural Dialogue

KC105 Acculturation

The next issue of Key Concepts in intercultural Dialogue is now available. This is KC105: Acculturation, by Fatemeh Kamali-Chirani. Click on the thumbnail to download the PDF. Lists organized chronologically by publication date and number, alphabetically by concept in English, and by languages into which they have been translated, are available, as is a page of acknowledgments with the names of all authors, translators, and reviewers.

Kamali-Chirani, F. (2022). Acculturation. Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue, 105. Available from: https://centerforinterculturaldialogue.files.wordpress.com/2022/07/kc105-acculturation.pdf

The Center for Intercultural Dialogue publishes a series of short briefs describing Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue. Different people, working in different countries and disciplines, use different vocabulary to describe their interests, yet these terms overlap. Our goal is to provide some of the assumptions and history attached to each concept for those unfamiliar with it. As there are other concepts you would like to see included, send an email to the series editor, Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz. If there are concepts you would like to prepare, provide a brief explanation of why you think the concept is central to the study of intercultural dialogue, and why you are the obvious person to write up that concept.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Kamali-Chirani: Pakistan: Incoming & Outgoing Migration

Kamali-Chirani, Fatemeh. (2021). Pakistan: Incoming and outgoing migration; Framework for a discussion on resettling Afghans after the Taliban’s victory. Islamabad, Pakistan: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

Fatemeh Kamali-Chirani, who has previously examined intercultural dialogue as part of the foreign relations between Germany and Iran, and who is now based in Pakistan, has just published a report focused on migration both into and out of that country. It is one of her final conclusions which will be of greatest interest to followers of CID:

There should be projects to connect people of Pakistan and Afghanistan culturally and socially. There is a crucial need to initiate dialogue. Although dialogue cannot solve all problems but at least it can emphasize on what both countries have in common and clarify misunderstandings about sensitive issues such as Afghanistan-India relationship and terrorism. (p. 27)

Fatemeh Kamali-Chirani: Cultural Diplomacy & ICD

Cultural Diplomacy, Intercultural Dialogue, and Sustainable Development: A View of the Cultural Diplomacy Potential of the City of Islamabad. Guest post by Fatemeh Kamali-Chirani.

Cultural diplomacy based on intercultural dialogue creates trust by assuring the equality of all partners engaging in communication.

After concluding my PhD on intercultural dialogue between Muslim and Western countries (with a focus on the foreign cultural policies of Iran and Germany), I experienced one of the most attractive career opportunities of my life. Specifically, I started to work as a researcher (at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute) and a teacher (at the School of Politics and International Relations, Qauid-i-Azam University) in the fields of development and international relations in Pakistan.

Development as a discipline brought new light to my understanding about culture. I learned about the significance of “sustainable” development and its 17 goals (SDGs). In terms of a definition, I learned that it means development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, often called the Brundtland Report). Sustainable development thus requires change through culture. That piqued my curiosity as to why despite all attempts of the UN state members and international organizations like the World Bank still culture, which must be taken as a driving engine of integration of nations to serious change, is neglected and has not yet gotten the attention it deserves. Culture, even rhetorically, is just not a part of the SDGs’ list. Yet it needs to be.

Download the complete essay as a PDF.

Fatemeh Kamali-Chirani Interview

Dr. Fatemeh Kamali-Chirani was interviewed about international relations, intercultural dialogue, and refugee work on February 4, 2021, by Rehana Paul, CID intern.

Dr. Kamali-Chirani answers the following questions:

What is the role of intercultural dialogue in International Relations?
How does refugee work require an understanding of dialogue between cultures?

For a comparison of international communication with intercultural, intracultural, and cross-cultural communication, see CID Posters, #4: Types of cultural communication.

Cultural Diplomacy in the Times of COVID-19 (Pakistan)

Cultural Diplomacy in the Times of COVID-19, as part of 23rd Sustainable Development Conference, Islamabad, Pakistan, 14-17 December, 2020.

The Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) is pleased to announce its Twenty-third Sustainable Development Conference (SDC) from 14 – 17 December 2020 in Islamabad, Pakistan. The overarching theme of this year’s Conference is Sustainable Development in the Times of COVID-19. This year, keeping the COVID-19 pandemic in mind, organizers are looking at a conference where some speakers will be able to attend in person taking care of the social distancing and other precautionary measures, while the rest will participate through a web-based platform meant for virtual conference.

Culture is one of the main topics of this conference. The panel “Cultural Diplomacy in the Times of COVID-19” is scheduled on 16th December, 1.45-3.15 pm (Pakistan Standard Time). The panel is supported by both SDPI and the German foundation, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Pakistan, and will be chaired by Dr. Fatemeh Kamali- Chirani, who is affiliated with CID.

Kamali-Chirani: Does Intercultural Dialogue Matter?

Kamali-Chirani, Fatemeh. (2019). Does intercultural dialogue matter? The role of intercultural dialogue in the foreign cultural policy of Iran and Germany. Berlin: Lit Verlag.

Fatemeh Kamali-Chirani examines intercultural dialogue as part of the foreign relations between Germany and Iran. She asks: “What role has intercultural dialogue played with regard to the foreign cultural policy of Iran and Germany towards each other, and why?” (p. 18).

Perhaps the most important quote from the book is this, from page 158, because it applies to all contexts, not just Iran-Germany exchanges:

It is necessary but not sufficient to offer dialogue; it is also necessary that the other side accepts to join the dialogue.

Kamali-Chirani first describes the foreign cultural policy of each country, and then presents details of a series of specific organizations and projects intended to further intercultural dialogue. In Iran, the most typical terms are “interfaith dialogue” and “dialogue among civilizations,” whereas Germany often uses “European-Islamic cultural dialogue.” This section is arranged by organization attempting dialogue, populated with quotes from the main actors. She gained remarkable access, up to and including the separate forewords by Mohammad Khatami (former President of Iran, known for promoting dialogue among civilizations as a goal) and Kurt-Jurgen Maas (former Secretary General, Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations).

In the end, Kamali-Chirani concludes that “Intercultural dialogue was an instrument of political goals, not a goal by itself” (p. 198). Her final thought: “participants mostly agree that it was worth the effort, and that they should continue. This author, after spending five years of research on the topic, tends to agree.”

KC14 Dialogue Translated into German

Continuing translations of Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue, today I am posting KC#14: Dialogue, which John Stewart wrote for publication in English in 2014, and which Fatemeh Kamali-Chirani has now translated into German.

As always, all Key Concepts are available as free PDFs; just click on the thumbnail to download. Lists of Key Concepts organized chronologically by publication date and number, alphabetically by concept, and by languages into which they have been translated, are available, as is a page of acknowledgments with the names of all authors, translators, and reviewers.

Stewart, J. (2018). Dialogue [German]. (F. Kamali-Chirani, trans). Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue, 14. Available from:
https://centerforinterculturaldialogue.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/kc14-dialogue_german.pdf

If you are interested in translating one of the Key Concepts, please contact me for approval first because dozens are currently in process. As always, if there is a concept you think should be written up as one of the Key Concepts, whether in English or any other language, propose it. If you are new to CID, please provide a brief resume. This opportunity is open to masters students and above, on the assumption that some familiarity with academic conventions generally, and discussion of intercultural dialogue specifically, are useful.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Cultural Civil War

Hippler, J., & Kamali-Chirani, F. (2018). Cultural civil war. In European Union National Institutes for Culture, Culture Report: EUNIC Yearbook 2017/2018 (pp. 36-41). Stuttgart, Germany: European Union National Institutes for Culture.

Brief overview provided by the authors:

For a long time, Europe and the United States have presented themselves through “Western values” such as liberalism, liberty, and democracy; nevertheless, currently they are in a state of what can be described as cultural civil war. On one hand stands US President, Donald Trump, who proudly applies the “America first” policy. On the other hand stands Brexit, which demonstrates the rise of populism and Euroscepticism in the UK. At the same time, governments in Poland and Hungary are cultivating extreme nationalist discourses, again with strong xenophobic elements and anti-Muslim hysteria. Remarkably, there has also been a weakening of the independence of the courts, restricting freedom of expression, and aiming for a kind of democracy controlled from above. In France, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, and Italy there has been a rise of right-wing populist movements doing well at the polls. Such trends are not specific to the West alone. Putin, Erdoğan, and Duterte are part of the right-wing populism that has emerged on every continent. We have to accept that today we are going through a cultural civil war. Jochen Hippler and Fatemeh Kamali-Chirani argue in their article that this war is not being fought with weapons but in people’s minds at the grassroots of society, online, on radio and TV, and in print media. They also present solutions for how to win this war by dealing with the causes of the breakdown of the political culture in the West, and by going on the offensive culturally, in order to re-conquer the hill of cultural hegemony.

Fatemeh Kamali-Chirani Profile

Fatemeh Kamali-Chirani (PhD) is is currently a research associate at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism (HAIT), TU Dresden (Dresden University of Technology), in Germany.

Fatemeh Kamali-Chirani

She received her BA (in Journalism) and her MA (in North American Studies) from Tehran University, Iran, where she was a journalist and NGO activist.

Fatemeh completed her PhD (2012-2018) at the University of Augsburg in Germany with a scholarship from Brot für die Welt (Bread for the World) on the subject of intercultural dialogue between Western and Muslim countries. From 2020 until January 2022, Fatemeh worked in Pakistan as a Visiting Research Fellow at SDPI (a development organization) and was a Visiting Faculty Member at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad.

Her publications are in the areas of intercultural dialogue, foreign cultural policy, sustainable development, migrants and refugees (especially Afghans) in Germany and Pakistan.

She is currently working on the project “Women who migrated from, to and within Germany,” focusing on acculturation of Afghan women in Germany, as a researcher at HAIT, TU Dresden (Dresden University of Technology).

For further details, see her LinkedIn profile.

Selected publications:

In English

Kamali-Chirani, F. (2019). Review of Afiya S. Zia’s Faith and feminism in Pakistan: Religious agency or secular autonomy? Digest of Middle East Studies, pp. 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1111/dome.12192

Kamali-Chirani, F. (2019). Does intercultural dialogue matter? The role of intercultural dialogue in the foreign cultural policy of Iran and Germany. Münster, Germany: Lit Verlag.

Kamali-Chirani, F. (2019). Review of Mohammad Zaman’s Islam in Pakistan: A history. Digest of Middle East Studies, 28(1), 1-5.

Hippler, J., & Kamali-Chirani, F. (2018). Cultural civil war. In European Union National Institutes for Culture, Culture Report: EUNIC Yearbook 2017/2018 (pp. 36-41). Stuttgart, Germany: European Union National Institutes for Culture.

Kamali Chirani, F. (2018). Review of Baumgartner and Towner’s The Internet and the 2016 presidential campaign. International Journal of Communication, 12, 2940–2943.

Kamali Chirani, F. (2018). Review of Miriam Müller’s A spectre is haunting Arabia: How the Germans brought their communism to Yemen. Middle East Media and Reviews, 6(3).

Kamali Chirani, F. (2018) Review of Yadullah Shahibzadeh’s The Iranian political language: From the late nineteenth century to the present. Digest of Middle East Studies, 27(1), 157-160.

Kamali Chirani, F. (2017). Incapability of institutional structures as an obstacle for the intercultural dialogue between Iran and Germany. In O. Ernst (Ed.), Iran-Reader 2017 (pp. 109-111). Sankt Augustin/Berlin: Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung.

In German

Kamali Chirani, F. (2013). Dialog unter staatlicher Aufsicht [Dialogue under state supervision]. Welt-Sichten Journal, 6, 46-47.

In Farsi

Kamali Chirani, F. (2018). Potānsielhāy-e Goftoguy-e Farhangi dar Jāme’ey-e Ālmān [Potentials of intercultural dialogue in German society] Dialog Center of the Imam Musa Sadr Institut.

Shokrkhah, Y., &Shokrkhah, Y.Kamali Chirani, F. (2009). Ruznāmenegāri Hamrāh va Pušeš-e Xabari Jang-e Iraq: Motāle’āt-e Muredi-ye Foxnews [Embedded journalism and coverage of the 2003 Iraq war: Case study by Foxnews]. Iranian Journal of Cultural Research, 2(5), 156-171.

Work for CID:

Fatemeh Kamali-Chirani has written a guest post, Cultural diplomacy, intercultural dialogue, and sustainable development: A view of the cultural diplomacy potential of the city of Islamabad; and also written KC105: Acculturation. She has also translated KC14: Dialogue into German, and then KC14: Dialogue into Persian. In addition, she was interviewed about international relations and its connection to intercultural dialogue. See the description of her recent report on immigration to and from Pakistan.

KC14 Dialogue Translated into Persian

Stewart, J. (2018). Dialogue [Persian]. (F. Kamali-Chirani, trans). Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue, 14. Available from:
https://centerforinterculturaldialogue.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/kc14-dialogue_persian.pdf

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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