From Roots to Research and Praxis
from Part I - Theoretical Foundations of Intercultural Training
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2020
The process of recording, defining, and narrating the development of any given academic field most often results in an unfortunate reduction and reification of multiple streams, movements, and figures into a single story. The field of intercultural communications faces this challenge to a greater degree, as it involves remembering and recognizing the nuanced roots and unique influences of multiple fields of origin (linguistics, anthropology, psychology, linguistics, communication, education, and more). Recent scholarship has called for re-examining the genealogy of lines traced back to Edward T. Hall to better account for, affirm, and give agency to other perspectives in our complex history. Thus, this chapter seeks to answer the question: “Outside of the mainstream narrative, what are the historical contexts, events, people, places, theories, concepts, processes, and impacts that we cannot afford to forget as a field?” This Bordieuan-guided sociology of knowledge and praxis will be organized into three main areas: (1) influential philosophical thinking on culture and social relations (pre-1900s); (2) comparative and intercultural initiatives that provided conceptualizations, critiques, and applications of social and cultural theory (pre-Hall and pre-1970s); and (3) concurrent parallel tracks that formalized fields of cross- or intercultural studies, which continue to cross-over, contend, and realign to meet the needs of today’s complex cultural contexts (since the 1970s). By approaching the disciplinary history of the field(s) of intercultural studies in an intercultural (multiple-perspectival, reflective, context-sensitive) manner, both revived and new insights are garnered for grappling with and finding new approaches to the important issues facing inter-group relations and intercultural communication research and praxis today.
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