Edwin Hoffman en Arjan Verdooren - Diversity competence

Diversity competence

One way to reconcile both the stability and the constant changes culture un dergoes in the hands of its members is to view it as a repertoire of behaviours, ideas and symbols that help its members to go about their lives. These members – people – subsequently apply, expand, change, re-invent, adjust, ignore or ne gotiate their repertoires in real-life experiences. One of the main arguments of this book is thus that intercultural communication and interaction always takes place between people , not cultures. Focus on international, interethnic and interreligious interactions Culture is generally related to nationality (national culture), ethnicity (ethnic culture), and increasingly also to religion (e.g. ‘Islam’ or ‘Buddhism’). People tend to consider situations intercultural when they involve individuals of dif ferent national, ethnic or religious backgrounds. On the one hand, we argue that almost any social group is characterized by a particular culture of behav iours, ideas and symbols; companies, regions, families, sports associations, cit ies, professional groups and generations, for example, all have a particular cul ture. Consequently, any interaction between people from different groups is an intercultural one, and since people are unavoidably also members of different groups, virtually any interaction could strictly speaking be considered intercul tural. This is an important point, because it enables us to see that in the inter actions that most people consider ‘intercultural’, there are often very basic and general interpersonal dynamics at work. On the other hand, throughout this book we have chosen to focus on inter actions between people of different national, ethnic or religious backgrounds, because, justifiably or not, these are often associated with cultural difference and considered as more challenging or difficult . There is therefore a psycholog ical, professional and even political need to address these kinds of interactions – with the paradoxical subtext that ethnicity, religion and nationality are not necessarily the most important factors in these interactions. A British teacher and an Italian student may misunderstand each other not so much because of their different nationalities as because of a generational gap. A conflict between an Islamic doctor and a Christian nurse need not be related to their religions, but could derive from their different professional backgrounds. Diversity competence transforms strangeness into normality From the perspective that any situation can technically be considered inter cultural, we follow Stefanie Rathje (2009) by stating that – from a competence perspective – interculturality is caused by an experience of strangeness or unfa miliarity. Given that cultures provide their members with a feeling of familiari-

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