Historical Intersections of Intercultural Studies (I)

Intercultural Research: Series Foreword

Michael H. PROSSER

Chair of the SII International Advisory Board

Ancient Athens served as an intercultural and intellectual crossroads for Asia and Europe. The Greek philosopher, Socrates’ famous statement “I am neither a citizen of Athens, nor of Greece, but of the world” speaks eloquently of the impact of intercultural communication, comparative analysis, and the importance of identity clarification both in his and contemporary society. Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all looked outward from their own culture, identifying or debating major world value orientations such as goodness, justice, truth, and happiness. For East Asia, multiple schools of thought developed during the Spring and Autumn Period, shaping China’s cross-state communication. Confucius’ Analects articulated the role of ren (benevolence and kindness), li (propriety and right living through ritual), de (moral power), dao (internalized moral direction), and mianzi or lian (externalized social image and harmony). These Confucian orientations were integrated into what became the fabric of not only the Chinese state, but the educational and philosophical orientation of much of East and South-Eastern Asia.

All of these early cultural conceptualizations of identities and values strongly support the potentially positive intercultural, multicultural, and global world orientations that have enhanced a dialogue of civilizations and cultures, and stress factors that are unifying rather than divisive. The challenge continues to be substantial since intercultural, multicultural, and global communication might just as easily be highly negative with increasing war, poverty, crime, and pandemics. The goal of all those interested in promoting a better local and global society vastly prefers the former.

The location from which this series originates shows some of these dynamics and contradictions. Just as each nation and people must deal with highs and lows, China is grappling both with some of the positive dialogues of modernization and internationalization, and also the challenges of divergent cultural or global discourses. From the depths of the Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan that rallied not only the nation’s, but the world’s sympathy, engagement and commitment to rebuild, to the heights of the spectacularly well-orchestrated and successful 2008 Beijing Olympics; from the ongoing challenges of natural disasters like floods or human tragedies and accidents or the global financial crisis, to the futuristic development of Shanghai and its visionary and record-breaking participation and cooperation at the 2010 Shanghai Expo, we see these human and intercultural dynamics at work.

I would suggest that intercultural communication as a field has emerged to embody and embrace both these challenges of human clashes and the dialogues across cultures and civilizations. The anthropologists Edward T. Hall and Ruth Benedict serve as the symbolic grandparents of intercultural communication in North America, though neither set out to begin a new field. Others in North America in the 1960s and 1970s and coming from various viewpoints (see Vol. 2 for the complete list of influencing scholars) and I sought early to develop an intercultural communication discipline or sub-discipline, which has now spread broadly through much of the academic world.

When the field of intercultural communication began to develop rapidly in China during the 1980s and 1990s, Chinese scholars each brought and Sinocized many of these western intercultural theories and practical implications for China. Concerned international scholars have also sought to indigenize social and cultural psychology and the humanities to strengthen Chinese scholarship on intercultural communication. Currently many Chinese scholars, either in China itself, in North America, or other regions around the world, have developed robust theories and models or have postulated newer ones, as documented in the premier volume of this series, Intercultural Perspectives on Chinese Communication (2007).

The SISU Intercultural Institute (SII) of Shanghai International Studies University’s (SISU), under Steve J. Kulich (Gu Lixing 顾力行), has accepted a mandate to undertake an Intercultural Research series of volumes which seeks to publish “cutting edge and seminal articles on the state of the intercultural field” in a variety of areas. As formulated in the establishment of the series, Kulich emphasized that “Each volume will focus on one primary domain and will include diverse theoretical and applied research from cultural, intercultural or cross-cultural approaches for that area, seeking to present and frame a ‘state of the art’ or an extended development summary on the topic.”

The SII is committed to close cooperation with both Chinese and international scholars, and that was reflected since the first, where domestic scholars of the CAFIC were joined by international scholars from various disciplinary or research perspectives to contribute IC research from their respective areas of focus. SII is also committed to highlight and bring some integration to the diverse disciplines that influence, contribute to or are informed by intercultural scholarship. This is illustrated particularly by efforts in that first and subsequent volumes to invite contributions from communication studies at both the interpersonal (jiaoji) as well as mass communication (chuanbo) levels and also to include the perspectives of cultural psychology, cultural anthropology and other related fields. The interdisciplinary nature of IC motivates the SII team to identify and integrate those aspects that contribute to shared foundations for the field, especially as these reflect intercultural, multicultural human development, or in short, to “develop a discipline to develop people.”

This focus on cooperation continued first with disciplinary assessment and development seminars (in 2006, 2010, 2014, 2016, a continuing hallmark of the institute), the biennial thematic IC conferences held by Shanghai Normal University, dynamic cooperation among CAFIC Shanghai Branch institutions (which also includes regular cross-city scholar forums and the annual IC outstanding MA thesis conference) and international partners like the University of Bayreuth, Bavaria, Germany (from which the collaboration for this volume has emerged). Each volume has highlighted interdisciplinary and multi-perspective scholarship on Identity and Intercultural Communication: focusing on I: Theoretical and Contextual Construction (Vol. 2), and II: Conceptual and Contextual Applications (Vol. 3). Other volumes in the series take up the important topic of IC values – Value Frameworks at the Theoretical Crossroads of Culture (Vol. 4) and Value Dimensions and their Contextual Dynamics Across Cultures (Vol. 5). Later volumes focus on subsequent themes, like IC and acculturation (Vols. 6 and 7), IC and comparative literature, which now has nationally listed disciplinary status (Vols. 8, 9, and 10), historical trajectories, and other topics for IC disciplinary development.

Naturally, since Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press is publishing the series, Chinese academic contributions are especially encouraged, as well as those from the wider international academic community. In his foreword for the first volume, Intercultural Perspectives on Chinese Communication (2007), Shijie Guan noted that three features characterize the series: (1) It serves as an interdisciplinary platform for China’s IC research; (2) It emphasizes the importance of scientific methodology in IC research; (3) It focuses on the localization of IC research. He concludes his remarks by saying that “The publication of this series is an occasion to celebrate for the entire Chinese community: My hope is that it develops into a series that is interdisciplinary, methodology-promoting, indigenized into the Chinese settings and blend well theories with practice (p. xvi).” As he also notes in that foreword, “In today’s world, communication between various cultures have become an important task for human beings. Just as Lourdes Arizpe, chair of the Scientific Committee of the World Culture Report, 2000, says, ‘Cultural exchanges are in fact the axis of the new phenomena’ as global cultures develop and change (p. ix).”

Since the initial books by Edward T. Hall, The Silent Language, The Hidden Dimension, Beyond Culture, and The Dance of Life began to shape the early study of intercultural communication theoretically and practically, so too, it is reasonable to assume that these volumes might provide new impetus for the academic study of various cultural contexts. The historical development, frameworks and research approaches presented both by well-established and emerging scholars in these volumes will surely move the academic understanding of key intercultural topic areas ahead. Each volume’s contribution toward highlighting theoretical constructs, clarifying the “state of the art” and presenting cutting edge research and practical applications will hopefully contribute to a new apex in the field of intercultural communication. To the ongoing development of the intercultural communication discipline both in China and abroad this series is dedicated.

International Academy for Intercultural Research (IAIR)

2015 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner

Charlottesville, Virginia

Preface to the Intercultural Research Series

Steve J. KULICH

Series Founder and Continuing Chief Co-Editor

Researching the fascinating dynamics and challenges of human interaction as they are grouped around the world, “comparative,” “cross,” or “inter” + “cultural” approaches have been engaging areas of academic inquiry since the 19^th century. Intercultural studies as such can now be credited with clocking over 90 years of development since the first uses of the term “intercultural.” Research shows (Kulich, 2017, Kulich et al., 2020) that the term was first published by philosophers like Edmund Husserl (1931), sociologists and comparative religion scholars like Albert Haydon (1934), Mordecai Kaplan (1934), and S. L. Joshi (1934), as well as educational pioneers like Rachel Davis DuBois in 1935 (noted in DuBois & Okorodudu, 1984) as she and her “Service Bureau” team developed her “intercultural education” initiatives (DuBois, 1938), coursework, and intercultural contact programs at New York University (cf. Brown, 1939), and anthropologists like Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict before and after World War II (cf. Leeds-Hurwitz, 2010). The foundations for this field of “intercultural relations” or “intercultural communication” are widely acknowledged to have been more systematically developed through the comparative analysis and intercultural training approaches pioneered by Edward T. Hall and his colleagues (e.g., Hall & Trager, 1953) at the Foreign Staff Institute (FSI) in the 1950s (cf. Leeds-Hurwitz, 1990), particularly inspired by Hall’s publication of The Silent Language (1959).

This ever-morphing “interdisciplinary discipline” has not only brought together important historical perspectives, but also developed novel methods and analytical approaches to address the ever-changing issues needing to be examined and addressed over these decades (cf. Kulich & Tong, 2025). The field of “intercultural communication” was formalized in the 1970s by the founding of a series sponsored by the Commission on International and Intercultural Communication of the Speech Communication Association (SCA) under the editorships of Casmir (1974-1976) then Jain (1977, 1979, 1982), which became an annual theme-based series starting with the editorship of Gudykunst (1983). It strengthened and expanded the field and continued into the 21^st century when it was transformed into a key SCA journal.

Influenced and inspired by these and later impulses in both theory and practice, our own book publishing efforts go back nearly 20 years since our first theme-based volume in the Intercultural Research series. Even though geographically limited by publication location to readers mostly across China, the series has drawn attention and acclaim from a wide range of scholars and practitioners. As a team we are very pleased to be updating and reissuing this book series internationally.

The Preface to the first volume of this series (Kulich, 2007) highlighted important steps related to the founding of the SISU Intercultural Institute (SII) at Shanghai Intercultural Studies University, which was formalized in 2006. The institutional launch of the SII’s flagship series followed soon afterwards by invitation of Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press (SFLEP), one of China’s most prolific publishers of textbooks and academic works in English. Volume 1 on “Intercultural Perspectives on Chinese Communication,” which appeared in 2007, reflected a continuing commitment to include Western as well as Chinese and other non-Western contributions, interdisciplinary perspectives, and diverse methodological approaches in its coverage of each volume topic. The series has continued to offer a range of inter- and transcultural volume topics with 12 volumes so far.

The first volume’s “Call for Scholarly Papers” (SISU Intercultural Institute, 2007) clarifies the original and continuing intent of these volumes:

Intercultural Research seeks to publish cutting edge and seminal articles on the state of the intercultural field in a variety of areas. Each volume will focus on one primary domain and will include diverse theoretical and applied research from cultural, intercultural or cross- cultural approaches for that area, seeking to present and frame a “state of the art” or an extended development summary on the topic. (p. 377)

For the upcoming volume(s) […] we welcome comprehensive literature reviews, theoretical discussions, critical perspectives, regional summaries and specific research findings on a variety of topics related to the intercultural or cross-cultural study of [each designated topic/theme]. (p. 378)

With profound gratitude to the incredible group of distinguished contributors and co-editors, we as co-editors are pleased to affirm that the series has continued to carry out this initial thematic mission, and we hope that republishing the updated volumes internationally will further expand their readership and influence. Over the last 20 years, Intercultural Research has sought to cover seminal issues in the field of intercultural relations and studies, comprising one or more volumes on each designated area such as Identity and Intercultural Communication (Volumes 2 and 3), Value Frameworks and Value Dimensions (Volumes 4 and 5), Intercultural Adaptation (Volume 6), Literature and Interculturality (Volumes 8, 9 and 10), and Historical Intersections of Intercultural Studies (Volumes 11 and 12).

In his original series Foreword, my founding co-editor Michael Prosser wrote: “It is reasonable to assume that these volumes might provide new impetus for the academic study of various cultural contexts.” On behalf of our editorial team and esteemed contributors, it is my hope that, in their new shape and broader open-source circulation, the volumes in the series will give impulses for fresh research from many cultural environments.

Shanghai,

SISU Intercultural Institute (SII)

November 2024

Volume Foreword: Why Interculturality is Problematic

Wim M. J. VAN BINSBERGEN

African Studies Centre, University of Leiden; Erasmus University, Rotterdam

The concept of interculturality has presented itself to the world as a program characterized by clarity and hope. It has often suggested that the constituent parts into which humankind seems to be divided are on the one hand unmistakably defined, internally integrated in themselves, and unequivocally marked within their own neat boundaries – but on the other hand, that between these parts constructive interaction and mutual understanding are possible, even on what is commended as a basis of equality – so that we may at long last be on our way Zum ewigen Frieden, to peace eternal (Kant, 1959). In light of the promises of interculturality as a collective representation, many of the historical ills of humanity – our divisiveness, group hatred, mutual exclusion, exploitation, mutual violence, historical inequality as in slavery and class formation, anomia (given the recent destruction – under the onslaught of globalization and of the technological innovations that made it possible – of long-established religious beliefs and cultural values) may appear to be ephemeral and epiphenomenal. Against the background of this lofty (even though patently unrealistic) prospect, it is little wonder that the concept of interculturality has conquered not only the media but also the world of scholarship over the last quarter of a century¹ – a trend to which the present Intercultural Research book bears witness.

The present composite argument, which I am offering here and then at greater length in the chapter “The Shadow Play,” consists of several parts.