Edwin Hoffman en Arjan Verdooren - Diversity competence

Diversity competence

level. Intercultural communication and competence hence needs to address not just a single adaptation to another cultural environment or community, but the ability to continuously adjust to a wide array of needs, habits and expectations. Secondly, culture itself in such a diverse context should be reconsidered. Even though cultures have often wrongly been seen as static and uniform ‘straight jackets’, in an environment with so much interconnection and exchange, the di versity and dynamics within and between cultures need to be taken even more seriously. There are then two common scenarios for how globalization relates to cultur al diversity. The first scenario is that it leads to an increasingly homogeneous world where everyone is influenced by the same worldwide, ‘Westernized’ cul ture. This view is often criticized, because it denies the diversity between the varied globalized discourses and cultural influences; the ‘West’ itself is far from homogeneous. Additionally, these discourses and influences do not only flow from ‘West’ to ‘non-West’, or from the powerful to the less powerful, but also vice versa. McDonald’s is globalized, but so are yoga and sushi. ‘Hollywood’ is globalized, but so are various branches of Islam and Black Lives Matter. The second scenario is that globalization only leads to superficial changes where everyone uses the same smartphones and tablets, watches the same movies and listens to the same music, yet at the same time continues to be steered by deep and time-independent core values that almost magically create homogeneous national groups. This view ignores the diversity, developments and conflicts within groups, as well as the fact that people can be truly and deeply affected by cultural phenomena outside their own ‘traditional’ heritage, as we will see later in this book. The first view would claim that globalization will soon make attention for in tercultural communication and competence obsolete, whereas the second view would argue that traditional intercultural models and approaches will invari ably remain relevant. We subscribe to the view that globalization does thoroughly change the scene for cultural and intercultural phenomena, by offering people a more diverse and dynamic range of cultural influences and inspirations. On the one hand, this makes people more different , because within national, ethnic or religious groups they can be influenced by many other cultural patterns outside their ‘traditional’ heritage. On the other hand, it can make people more similar across

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