With my previous work thus far combined with what we've learned so far has given me some different ways to approach the idea of cultural competence in relation to ELS. The best lens, or at least my personal preference, is Appadurai's ideas of scapes. The idea of different scapes interacting and moving dynamically and fluidly is an idea and lens that makes sense to me and has multiple applications across cultures and across cultural boundaries.
When I think about how the idea of glocalization works, which is essentially disseminating information and knowledge across the boundaries of local and global to create a specialized product, idea, or service for a locality I think of how we might actually apply an idea of that magnitude. Here is where I think Appadurai's framework excels. It is fluid enough to be flexible and allow for Bennett's idea of ethnorelativism to flourish, but also has the concreteness of a heuristic to allow for application across many cultures and ideas. If we, as intercultural communicators, can examine the different fluid scapes that make up a locality we can really start to triangulate what that culture might consist of. Now, I'm not saying that we can exactly say what a culture is and isn't. Rather, if we were tasked, as Rich asked in class, to deal with multiple nationalities and cultures within an organization it would be useful to use these scapes to help us be adaptable and accepting of different cultures and perspectives.
I think heuristics are a solid place to start as they give us a broad approach to a specific cultural problem or more eloquently a barrier. In order to really delve in to the conflicts and the differences/similarities that arise between cultures we need Appadurai's flexible scapes to navigate and trace the ideas and traditions that pop up in cultures (including our own). In interacting with the ELS students I think the roundtable interview that we are having at ELS is really a great way to move through the different scapes since we can use them to model our questions a bit. By examining the scapes of the students through the course of a Q&A or an interview we can examine where our cultures differ and come together more clearly and from that develop methods for teaching and interacting with ELS students without trying to dominate their ideologies and own culture.
I think it is important to qualify that we might not be able to exactly say what a culture is and is not for a couple of reasons: first, we do not want to risk stereotyping one culture as a specific way based on what we can observe in the -scapes and secondly, without Bennet’s continuum I think we could quickly slip into viewing a -scape from one culture, save for mediascapes and ideoscapes, which seem to have an international perspective inherent in them. However, I do like the fluidity that these -scapes account for in a way the Bennet’s continuum does not.
ReplyDeleteInteresting thoughts, Michael. I like something flexible, too, like the -scapes, as a way to categorize but remind that all is always changing. Let's talk more about glocalization during class--the connection between the local and global is something that ELS students are no doubt thinking about a lot more than we generally do. How should we prepare our students for glocal thinking? It seems to me (and to many at TTU who brought about the latest QEP), that we should be challenging our students to think glocally a lot more. How might we do so in first year composition?
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