I Diversity of situations that can be considered intercultural II Defining and Integrating context and scales in ICC III Culture A Vernacular and scholarly definitions pros and cons B Historical Origins of our notions of culture Contributions of Boasian Anthropology 1 Culture as a critique of race 2 Culture culureS plurality relativism social and behavioral learning and transmission of group differences IV How to apply notions of culture critically Is culture a thing a noun Be prepared for pop quizzes on reading 1 6 imperatives in the headlines In small groups pick 3 headlines and discuss which of the imperatives are relevant Demographic Technological Economic Self awareness Ethical peace 2 What counts as an intercultural encounter Shared features Unshared features 3 Compare two intercultural events Judith Martin s conflict with her French landlady while she was studying abroad Misunderstanding between George Bush senior and Saddam Hussein 4 Similarities Differences Best and worst possible outcomes in each scenario 5 Similarities Unshared interpretations and assumptions Differences Contexts that surround and result from the interaction vary enormously 6 How does a given interaction both reflect and impact a larger social context What is the relationship between a given interaction fight with landlady fight between politicians and a broader longer lasting social order US Iraqi relations French American relations an interpersonal relationship society culture 7 The CONTEXT S in intercultural communication 8 What is Context Scholarly and everyday definitions 9 Problems Merriam Webster Dictionary definition 1 the parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light on its meaning 2 the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs environment setting the historical context of the war NOT the last word Problems with depending on the dictionary 10 How to define and connect relevant contexts scales How people link specific interactions to larger social contexts scales He said that because of his American culture She did that because of racism 11 Which contexts to understand intercultural interactions shorter term events contexts and longer term processes contexts Specific Interactions unfolding over seconds minutes social processes contexts that occur over longer time scales 12 How to relate scales levels of context Contexts as levels or scales of relevant social space and time How do these scales contexts reflect and or impact each other Interactional scale context Ex A one time conversation occurring over seconds to minutes Broader longer lasting sociohistorical scales contexts Culture colonial legacy racism 13 Which context s scales are relevant for understanding an intercultural interaction How to decide as participants and analysts No simple matter Contextualization 14 Examples 15 In class writing Write a paragraph about one intercultural interaction you ve experienced that maybe went well and maybe didn t What context s might be relevant for understanding it 16 What is Culture For Martin and Nakayama For Piller 17 In class writing Off the top of your head what s your culture you can only use one word 18 Culture was Merriam Webster s 2014 word of the year The most looked up word of 2014 Why 19 Culture is 20 The Meaning of Culture Joshua Rothman The New Yorker 12 16 14 The problem is that culture is more than the sum of its definitions If anything its value as a word depends on the tension between them The critic Raymond Williams writes that culture has three divergent meanings there s culture as a process of individual enrichment as when we say that someone is cultured culture as a group s particular way of life as when we talk about French culture company culture or multiculturalism and culture as an activity pursued by means of the museums concerts books and movies that might be encouraged by a Ministry of Culture or covered on a blog like this one These three senses of culture are actually quite different There s a historical sense too in which culture is a polemical word In the nineteenth century culture was often opposed to civilization Civilization the thinking went was a homogenizing system of efficient rational rules designed to encourage discipline and progress Culture was the opposite an unpredictable expression of human potential for its own sake Today we don t often use the word civilization we prefer to talk more democratically in terms of culture but we re still conflicted All this might make you wonder Does it even make sense to have a single word culture with such divergent uses Maybe not many people Williams writes have called culture a loose or confused term 21 Culture Concept How does one get one s hands conceptually speaking around the cultural concept It seems so definite And yet as one examines the concept it appears increasingly illusive Different people perceive it in different ways and perhaps not unexpected given its popularity the concept often carries in its different renditions various political overtones Many people embrace the concept in the abstract But they argue sometimes heatedly over what the term actually means Robert Borofsky 2001 432 in When A conversation about culture American Anthropologist 103 2 432 446 22 What does Culture refer to at Illinois http illinois edu resources results html search search type all skinId cx 00654979 9505564222509 3A 8lddip9q2g cof FORID 3A11 t 2 q culture sa Go 23 Person off the street views https www youtube com watch v m8pbmb feoHs different folk theories people appeal to 24 Culture vs culturAL Noun or Adjective I find myself frequently troubled by the word culture as a noun but centrally attached to the adjectival form of the word cultural much of the problem with the noun form has to do with its implication that culture is some sort of object thing or substance whether physical or metaphysical Viewed as a physical substance culture begins to smack of any variety of biologisms If culture as a noun seems to carry associations with some sort of substance in ways that appear to conceal more than they reveal cultural the adjective moves one into a realm of differences contrasts and comparisons that is more helpful the most valuable feature of the concept of culture is the concept of difference a contrastive rather than a substantive property of certain things less as a property of individuals and groups and more as a heuristic device that we can use to talk about difference