NÅR KULTUR KOMMER I VEJEN: Kapitalmøder og kulturforståelser på en international uddannelse i Danmark

Abstract

Over the past 10-15 years internationalisation has become a buzz word in university
 education. International institutions as well as national and regional governments
 promote international exchange of students and teachers, and universities compete
 to attract foreign students. Internationalisation is generally based on the idea of
 intercultural compatibility, which implies that ‘scholastic capital’ fairly easily can
 be transferred from one university context to another and that educational settings
 can promote and benefit from cultural diversity. With reference to a study of one
 internationalised educational setting in Denmark, this article explores some of the
 less recognised challenges in relation to internationalisation of university education.
 Inspired by Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital and Gregory Bateson’s
 concept of framing, the article argues that the combination of differences in cultural
 capital and differences in locally embedded ‘context knowledge’ may produce
 obstacles to fruitful intercultural interaction. It argues, moreover, that the interactions
 between students are to a large extent based on an unequal relationship
 between a home-team and a foreign team rather than on an equal relationship
 between different nationalities. The obstacles this creates are, to a large extent,
 unacknowledged, because individuals tend to interpret differences as ‘national
 differences’.