Construction Of Cultural Difference Research Articles

Education, difference and reform in the Pacific and modern British empire

ABSTRACT Education was a crucial transfer point within modern imperial projects; it was a key domain through which relationships between the state, religious institutions, various agents of reform, and Indigenous, colonised and enslaved peoples were negotiated. Exploring a range of case studies, this article highlights the multiple trajectories of colonial education in the modern British empire and the Pacific region, charting both continuities and moments of change, commonalities and divergences. Particular emphasis is placed on the centrality of evangelicalism in fashioning strong connections between education and social reform, both within the project of empire and in a range of indigenous social reform and anti-colonial movements. Within this context, the article also highlights the strong interplay between education and the construction of cultural difference, including through the changing shape of ethnological and anthropological knowledge. Exploring these questions, it is suggested, opens up fundamental questions about empire, colonialism and modernity itself.

North Korean Defectors as Cultural Other in South Korea: Perception and Construction of Cultural Differences

With around 34,000 North Korean defectors having arrived in South Korea (as of June, 2021), perceptions toward them remain ambiguous and unbalanced. The dominant discourse about North Korean defectors centers on adaptation, and cultural difference is often identified as one of the most challenging obstacles. This article examines how a specific conceptualization of culture is utilized to alienate North Korean defectors, while securing the belief in a single ethnicity of all Koreans. As a result, North Korean defectors are rendered as cultural other in South Korean society. While cultural difference is often believed to be the basis of discrimination for North Korean defectors, this article argues that social prejudice and discrimination reproduce and reinforce the discourse about cultural difference of North Korean defectors.

Caring for Victims of Human Trafficking: Staging and Bridging Cultural Differences in Germany and France

Abstract According to prosecuting authorities, victims trafficked into sexual exploitation are difficult to identify; it seems even harder to find ‘appropriate’ victims willing to testify in court. This is often ascribed to ‘cultural differences’ rooted in their (supposedly) foreign origin. In our contribution, we show how counselling centres for trafficking victims in France and Germany help to identify victims and to make them more suitable for prosecuting authorities. In doing so, we argue that these counselling centres position themselves as indispensable ‘cultural translators’: they help public authorities understand the victims, and they help the victims understand public authorities, thus providing the basis for any criminal procedure. Despite very different structures and legal circumstances between France and Germany, we found a number of similarities in how staff at German and French counselling centres first establish such cultural differences as a given to then be able to bridge them. In doing so, we argue, they (even unintendedly) contribute to ethnicising and further othering their clients, especially highly marginalized ‘groups’ like ‘Nigerians’ and ‘Roma’. Keywords: State ethnography, NGOs, human trafficking, construction of cultural differences

Caring for Equality? Administering Ambivalence in Kindergarten

Abstract In recent years, kindergartens in Austria have increasingly become the target of an ambivalent politics of belonging and difference. Looking at institutional childcare practices as processes of doing and undoing differences, this article explores how kindergarten staff translate societal missions of promoting both ‘integration’ and ‘diversity’ into practice by reflecting particularly on the role of bureaucratic practices within this dynamic. Ethnographic studies on the organisational dimensions of institutional childcare have mostly focused on their normalising effects. Based on ethnographic material from two Viennese kindergartens, I show that universalist claims to childcare as a vehicle for belonging are important. Yet, care and administration in kindergarten hardly proceed in clear-cut ways. Pedagogical/bureaucratic practices unfold at the nexus of ‘formal’ and ‘informal’, as well as ‘private’ and ‘public’ spheres, mediated by an ambivalent normative universe and within limited institutional resources. Using a case of staff negotiating kinship practices in one family, the article traces their interplay and shows how bureaucratic practices become entangled with gendered constructions of cultural difference. Keywords: Bureaucracy, childcare, kinship, doing difference, gender

Intercultural Experience of University International Students Based on Their Length of Stay in Korea: Analyzing Learners’Writing Samples with LIWC

Given the increasing numbers of international students in Korea and the lack of attention to them in existing research on intercultural relations in higher education, this current study was conducted in a Korean university to explore international students’ attitudinal or psychological changes by analyzing their writing task samples using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). The study focused on the international students’ construction of cultural difference within the educational context. The participants ranged in age from 20 to 25 years and came from over eight different countries. The results of the one-way ANOVA analysis indicated that the two groups divided by the length of stay in Korea have shown significant mean differences in Words per Sentence, First-person I, Cognitive Process words, and Achievement words. Specifically, the group of participants who stayed more than one and half years in Korea more generated Word per Sentence, First-person I, and Cognitive Process words than those who stayed less than one and half years in Korea. Meanwhile, those who stayed less in Korea more produced Achievement words in their writing samples. Implications and further research directions are discussed.

Learning and adaptation with regard to complementary medicine in a foreign context: Intercultural experiences of medical students from different cultural backgrounds

Little is known about challenges and transition that medical students from different cultural backgrounds face with regard to complementary medicine (CM). This paper explores such students’ experiences and perspectives of socio-cultural and academic difference with regard to CM and experiences of intercultural relations. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, 30 in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with medical students across 10 Australian medical schools. The data were rigorously analysed through a systematic process of coding, categorisation and theoretical development. The findings indicate that students adapted considerably to the host culture. Students with Western backgrounds integrated better socio-culturally and academically compared to students with non-Western backgrounds. Although nationality represented cultural identity, students’ construction of cultural difference was informed by their perception of diverging value systems within the specific educational environment. These values were, in turn, reflected in students’ reported behaviours, attitudes, and levels of engagement in socio-cultural and academic aspects of university life. Adaptation employed by students was evidenced largely due to their conflicting sense of responsibility towards familial culture regarding CM and focus on fitting in. While students’ tendency to gravitate towards cultural peers was evident, most students adapted to their host environment regarding CM to fit into normal intercultural encounters during medical school. In conclusion, students’ intercultural contact with regard to CM was both complex and problematic. At a time of significant diversification within the higher education student body, this paper highlights the role medical education institutions can play in fostering intercultural and academic guidance and support.

Excess spaces: Movement and ethnoscapes in Brian De Palma’s Scarface and Edward James Olmos’ American Me

This article explores notions of movement and spatiality in two US films about ‘Latino’ gangsters, Brian De Palma’s Scarface (1983) and Edward James Olmos’ American Me (1992). In examining the distinction between gangster films and specifically Latino gangster films, I consider how the detention centre, the penitentiary and the neighbourhood are constructed as ethnic spaces in the sense that they stand in an antagonistic and peripheral relation to mainstream perceptions of the ideal American home. I address the presence of ethnic traces that these films portray variously as archaic, exotic and remote, adding a dimension of excess to filmic constructions of cultural difference. This excess, flamboyantly or grimly displayed in both films under the guise of irrational violence, grotesque gender performativity and cultural deficiency represents – or, rather, figures – the contours of another space, an excess space that vaguely and hesitantly translates fantasies of Latino gangsters while imaging Latinos as gangsters.

Interrogating practice in culturally diverse classrooms: what can an analysis of student resistance and teacher response reveal?

As classrooms have increasingly become diverse and complex, developing culturally responsive pedagogies is a professional imperative for teachers. However, considerable international research suggests that meeting the needs of diverse pupil cohorts is challenging for many teachers. In this article, we highlight how curriculum and teaching practices reflect hegemonic values and cultural practices, and can potentially marginalise minority ethnic students. We draw on data from a study conducted in a culturally diverse lower secondary school in Austria where mandatory swimming classes are a source of tension between Muslim female students and their teachers. Our analysis of the intersection of student resistance and teacher authority raises issues of power, compliance and the construction of cultural difference as problematic. We suggest that scenario-based learning and in particular, the analysis of examples of student resistance and teacher response may facilitate teachers’ reflexivity about the values and beliefs that underpin their practice.

Accommodation and Conflict: The Incorporation of Miao Territory and Construction of Cultural Difference during the High Qing Era

Past studies of southwest Guizhou during the Qing dynasty tend to focus on the policy of “abolishment of the native chieftainships and extension of direct bureaucratic control” (gaitu guiliu) pursued under the Yongzheng emperor, and also to emphasize the correlation between state expansion and Miao revolts as a political process of institution building. Based on personal memoirs and ethnographic accounts of the Qing dynasty, this study focuses on the Qing incorporation of Miao territory (Miaojiang) in southeast Guizhou, where there were not even native chieftainships but only unorganized, or “raw,” Miao indigenes; it also examines the incorporation as an interactive process of cultural understanding and construction among the Yongzheng emperor, Governor-General Ortai, a group of local officials, represented by Zhang Guangsi and Fang Xian, and local Miao people, who had already interacted with Han migrants and started to seek the protection of the central government. The paper calls attention to the contribution of lower level Qing officials made in the decision-making process, the formation of knowledge by the Chinese about the long-ignored Miao territory, and the significance of mutual understanding of cultures. It argues that the tragic confrontation between the Miao people and the Qing state building was not necessarily inevitable, but contingent on the officials’ perception of the minority people’s culture and the handling of the relationship between the state and local indigenes.

Host Students' Perspectives of Intercultural Contact in an Irish University

Given the increasing numbers of international students in Ireland and the lack of attention afforded to host culture students in existing research on intercultural relations in higher education, a grounded theory study was conducted in an Irish university exploring host (Irish) students' perspectives on intercultural contact. The study focused on students' construction of cultural difference within the educational environment, the factors influencing intercultural contact, and students' experiences of such contact. The findings suggest that although nationality and age are used to differentiate students, the concept of “maturity”—underpinned by values and behaviors relating to academic motivations, responsibilities, and authority—is central to students' construction of cultural difference on campus. Diverse factors identified as impacting upon students' intercultural acquaintance prospects and relational development are presented and discussed. The findings highlight the complexity of promoting meaningful intercultural contact among students and also suggest conditions to foster intercultural contact based on students' feedback.

Building differences: material geographies of home(s) among Polish builders in London

This paper examines how embodied acts of building home(s) for others shape particular constructions of cultural difference and otherness. It presents a largely unexplored perspective of home – one that is uninhabited by its builders. This perspective becomes relevant through a study of Polish home‐builders who have legally entered the building sector in London since EU expansion in 2004, who put together homes for others, temporarily inhabiting them during building, and moving out as soon as the work is completed. Using participant photo‐diaries and semi‐structured interviews, this paper suggests that the building act – putting together of homes for others as part of a political economy of labour and materials in different localised contexts, produces particular distinctions between the ‘socio‐technical’ nature of homes across national territories. In doing so, it extends different perspectives on homes from cultural geography, anthropology and architecture to suggest a more nuanced material geography of home – as an assemblage of building elements under different contexts which, through the building acts of migrant men, allow scrutiny of cultural difference and otherness. Participants’ own homes left behind in Poland, homes they build for others in London and the future homes that they aspire to, suggest how differences in the ways that they are put together are ascribed cultural meanings of dwelling that are inherently corporal. Building homes is a deeply masculine act – a sexualised and embodied politics of home, which validates particular versions of gendered ethno‐national identities as Polish men, and locates the future home within a Polish home/land. Although inhabiting the future home is uncertain, building this home is seen as an extension of their identity as Polish men who ensure the continuity of the Polish home and family.