Intercultural Ethics Research Articles

A Socio-cognitive Discourse Analysis of Expats’ Construction of COVID-19 Pandemic

This study employed socio-cognitive discourse analysis to examine interviews with expatriates in China and explore how their cognitive discourse regarding collectivism amid the COVID-19 pandemic was formed. It revealed that the discursive strategies that the expats adopted to address disparities in values included reframing and de-ideologization. Additionally, the context model was introduced to investigate the process of how the interviewees’ social memories evolved into discourse, further unveiling the significance of intercultural communication elements in context, such as the politeness principle and intercultural ethics.

Artificial intelligence and depth ontology: implications for intercultural ethics

Abstract Despite increasing concerns over the use of AI in surveillance, privacy, public health, climate change, global migration and warfare, the implications of its use in the field of intercultural communication are still not clearly defined. This paper critically examines the contemporary emergence of AI through the lens of a critical realist depth ontology to argue that AI, with its unending interplay of signs and symbols, is the ultimate simulacrum. As such, AI vacates the normative terrain of judgemental rationality in favour of the relativist terrain of endless simulacra and the fetish appearances of postmodernism. To illustrate this, it is argued that the inability of AI to make judgements based on judgemental rationality (or Ethics1) occludes the possibility of intervening in the world to ameliorate real injustice. Therefore, if intercultural ethics remains within the realm of judgmental relativism (or Ethics2) it abdicates the possibility to have an impact in the material world.

Intercultural and Deliberative Disaster Ethics in Volcanic Eruptions

The objectives of this article are (i) to identify the most challenging ethical dilemmas and questions arising from the experiences of communities and professionals affected by or involved in volcanic eruptions, including risk management, the dissemination of information, and tourism; and (ii) to provide arguments for intercultural ethics to address these dilemmas. Intercultural ethics provide invaluable resources to disaster ethics across all three phases of the complete disaster management cycle. In this article, intercultural ethics is viewed as an ethics grounded in ongoing dialogue, facilitating the examination and establishment of norms and a critical reflection on values and their evolution. This approach recognizes power dynamics that may influence fair participation in dialogues and aims to address them, while also integrating elements of deliberative ethics to ensure that dialogues genuinely contribute to legitimizing decisions. Intercultural sensibility helps bridge the gap between experts and non-experts in both directions (a) by emphasizing the duty of transferring scientific knowledge (for experts) and the responsibility of acquiring scientific literacy (for citizens); and (b) by highlighting the importance of a ‘knowledge dialogue’ that acknowledges the non-scientific knowledge of citizens, rooted in their cultural background and experiences of dealing with past disasters, and shaping life in volcanic territories.

Harmonious Accommodation among Coexisting Multicultural Ethical Frameworks through Confrontation

This paper interrogates the skepticism surrounding comparative ethics, particularly the question of its relevance in a world where ethical decision-making processes are primarily presumed to be dictated by one universalist culture. The paper argues that all cultures are inherently intercultural, evidenced by the historical coexistence of ideas and practices. Post-comparative ethics, which emphasizes the situational application of intellectual comparison and integration, is inevitable for postcolonial, non-Western societies. Historically, societies have navigated a variety of ethical frameworks, with some, like medieval Chinese society, embracing a plurality of beliefs. This pluralism is exemplified by the harmonious accommodation (yuanrong 圓融) of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Using the example of Song Dynasty Chan master Dahui Zonggao 大慧宗杲, this article illustrates that intercultural ethics can be both diverse and sincere. Dahui’s pluralistic approach demonstrates that sincere commitment to multiple ethical systems is possible in our multicultural situation. I will discuss common approaches to the multicultural situation, such as expedient synthesis, theoretical synthesis, and crude syncretism, before illustrating the advantage of Dahui’s kanhua 看話禪method as harmonious accommodation through confrontation. This underscores the importance of shifting the debate from “Why compare?” to “How to compare?” in achieving the accommodation of different ethical frameworks.

‘South Asian’ Diaspora Theatre in Sydney: Cultural Politics of the Proscenium and Transforming the Mise-En-Scène

ABSTRACT The Nautanki Theatre Company (Nautanki) has been actively performing drama in Sydney since 2012, and it has been organising the South Asian Theatre Festival since 2016. We study their discourses, cultural politics, and practices; conduct an ethnographic observation of performances; and interview performers, organisers, and survey audiences of the 2019 theatre festival in-depth. We contend that by hosting performances and events, Nautanki creates a space for amicable, intercultural dwellings in which collective identity is forged through cross-cultural dialogue, deliberation, embodied aesthetics, and bottom-up intercultural ethics that shift state-promoted top-down multicultural ideas and policies. Nautanki also instils a sense of longing for cultural novelty, authenticity, and participation, and creates a hybrid cultural ‘South Asian’ community identity, in Sydney.

Sustaining Qatari heritage as intercultural competencies: towards a global citizenship education

ABSTRACT This study explores critical challenges for global citizenship education (GCE) in Qatar. This study contributes to Global Citizenship Education (GCE) studies in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. It reimagines cultural practices as pedagogical strategies to reorient students into global awareness and intercultural views, as stated in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In effect, the study draws attention to the pivotal role of education in nurturing a global ethical outlook by achieving a balance between local culture and global citizenship. The aim is to infuse the educational system with myriad social and family ethics in a way that vehemently transcends local specificities. It examines intercultural ethics within the Islamic and Qatari settings. How can intercultural practices born from the Qatari Islamic culture develop global citizenry? The study identifies two Qatari shared values that advocate for an intercultural understanding of global citizenship. More specifically, it examines specific intercultural practices, such as Al-Nafla and Al-Majlis, beyond the local level to endorse ethical responsibility toward global citizenship.

Ethics and Epistemic Injustice in the Global South: A Response to Hopman’s Human Rights Exceptionalism as Justification for Covert Research

Abstract This article investigates the risk of epistemic injustice in conducting sociolegal research in Global South contexts. Diving into the ethical imperatives of honouring knowledge, agency, and voice, we challenge extractive research practices and reframe participants as active, legitimate bearers of knowledge. Covert research is a highly controversial research practice which bypasses the right to informed consent of participants. Marieke Hopman’s article titled ‘Covert Qualitative Research as a Method to Study Human Rights Under Authoritarian Regimes’ advocates for covert research in the field of human rights, provided this covert research passes her proposed ‘ethical test’. We argue that this test permits and requires practices of knowledge-making which unjustly silence, undervalue, and exclude the capacity of systematically marginalised communities to produce knowledge claims. Hopman’s ethical test requires researchers to translate participants’ testimonies and situated knowledge into a doctrinal human rights framework, which comes with certain onto-epistemological assumptions which may not be shared by participants. Her approach frustrates research participants’ agency in choosing their own epistemic projects. Finally, her test exacerbates structural inequalities between the Global North and Global South by reinforcing unequal power relations. We advocate for a situated ethics approach to mitigate epistemic injustice in socio-legal research in the Global South. Cross-cultural ethical dialogue between western and non-hegemonic ethics on a non-hierarchical and equal basis can contribute to building ‘intercultural ethics’. Reflexivity – where researchers critically examine their worldviews and social position throughout the research process – can ensure greater accountability and integrity. Reciprocity – building mutual research relationships and producing research useful to the researched – can help shift the power imbalance between the researcher and researched.

Non-western AI ethics guidelines: implications for intercultural ethics of technology

Non-western AI ethics guidelines: implications for intercultural ethics of technology

Moral Distress Under Structural Violence: Clinician Experience in Brazil Caring for Low-Income Families of Children with Severe Disabilities.

Rigorous attention has been paid to moral distress among healthcare professionals, largely in high-income settings. More obscure is the presence and impact of moral distress in contexts of chronic poverty and structural violence. Intercultural ethics research and dialogue can help reveal how the long-term presence of morally distressing conditions might influence the moral experience and agency of healthcare providers. This article discusses mixed-methods research at one nongovernmental social support agency and clinic in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Chronic levels of moral distress and perceptions of moral harm among clinicians in this setting were both violent, following Nancy Scheper-Hughes' use of that term, and a source of exceptional and innovative care. Rather than glossing over the moral variables of work in such desperate extremes, ethnography in these settings reveals novel skills and strategies for managing moral distress.

Embodied others and the ethics of difference. Deterritorialising intercultural learning

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the embodied character of the relationship self-other in intercultural communication. I review Levinasian characterisations of the face of the other that are adopted in intercultural ethics to counteract cultural essentialism and I argue that these do not fully address the embodied relationality underpinning intercultural encounters. Employing the notion of a carnal hermeneutics, I look at the relation self-other to consider the implications of the epistemic erasure of ‘othered’ bodies and their struggles for recognition. In doing this, I interrogate the effects of positioning the body at the centre of intercultural learning space to deterritorialise intercultural education and to problematise the separation between body and mind, self and other, and intercultural communication understood primarily through the medium of English language learning.

CHALLENGES AND PERSPECTIVES OF INTERCULTURAL ETHICS IN THE THEORY OF GLOBAL MANAGEMENT

The development of the global market has created a need for global management ideas that can be overcome in practice by solving complex problems. The formation and development of global management ideas is strongly influenced by different cultural traditions and values of Eastern and Western cultures, which determine different management methods. The ability to organize production and manage processes on a global platform is critical to creating and maintaining high living standards. The vital foundation on which sustainable decisions in the field of management are based can have a strong impact on the fulfilment of humanity’s expectations for well-being and prosperity. The reasonable question therefore is: what value system could become the universal ethical framework that integrates different cultural traditions and worldviews and underpins the field global management? Intercultural ethics is one of the most recent research projects to analyze a wide range of ethical issues arising from the multidisciplinary perspective of societies and cultures. Intercultural ethics seeks to identify the existing different cultural, value beliefs, to define universal ethical principles on the basis of which intercultural decisions and agreements on the development, implementation, management and use of digital technologies are made. Different cultures disagree on common universal moral decisions because they are based on unique worldviews and value systems, and there is no universally accepted epistemically sound way to resolve such moral disagreements. The question is, what are the basic assumptions underpinning the impact of intercultural ethics on the theory of global management that would enable the common development and application of a system of universal ethical principles governing the development of global management processes in different regions and cultures of the world? The article hypothesizes that a synthesis of classical Aristotelian virtue ethics, Confucian ethics, and African ubuntu philosophical ethics could underpin intercultural ethics, embodying the universal ethical values of Western and Eastern cultures in global management theory.

Intercultural Ethics for Digital Well-Being: Identifying Problems and Exploring Solutions

Designing social media technologies to promote digital well-being requires designers to face many challenges. In this article, we explore one under-explored challenge, relating to how conceptions of what it means to flourish online show significant cultural variation. We believe that today’s design-based approaches to digital well-being are hobbled by a lack of ethical attention towards important cultural variations. To remedy this, we explore the potential for an intercultural approach to digital well-being, one that respects cultural differences while preserving what culturally distinct conceptions of human flourishing have in common.

Are universal ethics necessary? And possible? A systematic theory of universal ethics and a code for global moral education

This paper analyzes the political, philosophical, societal, legal, educational, biological, psychological and technological reasons why there is an urgent need for basic intercultural and interfaith ethics in the world and whether it is possible to formulate a valid code of such ethics. It is shown that universal ethics could be founded on natural law, which can be understood in both religious and secular ways. Alternatively, universal ethics could be based on a single supreme principle that is independent of worldview and culture: human dignity. In accordance with these concepts, a minimalist and normative code of essential, self-evident universal ethical principles and norms is proposed. The implementation of universal ethics in society is a long-term political task that could be achieved by including universal ethics in the compulsory school curriculum of all countries and in the UNESCO agenda of Global Citizen Education.

Engaging non-essentialism as lived wisdom: a dialogue between intercultural communication and Buddhism

ABSTRACT This paper examines some philosophical groundwork underlying intercultural studies through an inter-epistemic dialogue with Buddhism. This dialogue joins resonating developments in the two fields through their common goal of overcoming essentialism and comparable methods for praxis. It also illuminates on areas for potential advancement in intercultural theory and praxis through considering how Buddhism approaches these at nuanced levels. Particularly, the paper emphasises the needs to differentiate non-essentialism from anti-essentialism, incorporate a ‘responsibility for the self’ into intercultural ethics, and develop corresponding methods for co-existing with the vulnerability of the human mind that prompts one to act essentialistically in concrete situations. 本文借用与佛学‘跨界对话’的方式对当代跨文化研究的哲学理论基础进行分析论述。此对话将展示，跨文化研究和佛学均以对治本质主义为目标，并在指导实践行为方面发展出具有相似性的方法体系。同时，此对话也将通过对佛学在若干层面的细微解读，探讨跨文化理论和实践进一步发展的方向。此文建议，拓展跨文化研究应尤其考虑以下几点：‘非本质主义’需与‘反本质主义’相区别；跨文化伦理道德需纳入‘对自我的责任’的思考；以及（基于以上理论）发展相应的实践方法，帮助人们在生活中学习（练习）如何与人类自身思维的脆弱面（即驱使人类以本质主义的角度思维事物的‘本能’）积极共存。

Intercultural Living Together, the Integration and Recognition of Self and Other: Applied Intercultural Ethics

Rising global multidimensional migration has altered human/cultural interaction where one now needs to welcome another and the other needs to be welcome. Notwithstanding the intensified interaction, the resulting intercultural paradigm encounters myriad dehumanizing, alienating and subjugating challenges. While juxtaposing Europe’s and Quebec’s intercultural experiences, this article examines these challenges as fallouts of the difficulties or the unwillingness to complement the integration and recognition of self and other in fostering interactive intercultural communication to achieve intercultural living together. It underscores the exploitation of a pragmatic aptitude toward applied intercultural ethics – otherwise known as practical wisdom – to enhance deliberative reciprocity and motivate introversive and extroversive enhancements of the transition from simple living together to intercultural living together.

Culture as Suture: on the Use\xa0of \u201cCulture\u201d in Cross-Cultural Studies in and Beyond Intercultural Information Ethics

Intercultural information ethics (IIE), a field which draws on the limits and richness of human morality and moral thinking in different societies, epochs and philosophic traditions as well as on their impact on today’s social appropriation of information and communication technology, has been argued to lack an adequate theoretical understanding of culture. In this paper, we take a non-essentialist view of culture as a point of departure and discuss not what culture is, but what we (both in our everyday lives, and as researchers) do when we use the concept of culture. To do so, we look for inspiration in the concept of suture, a concept which means the thread which stitches, or the act of stitching, a wound, but has had a long and intricate journey within psychoanalysis and film studies concerning the issue of identification. Three understandings of the use of culture emerge: suture as cultural misidentification, the evil in the cultural suture, and multiple, repeated cultural sutures. We use these categories to diagnose the use of culture in IIE and beyond, and suggest that the use of culture as multiple, repeated sutures—in other words, a recognition that we constantly fail in describing culture or cultural differences, and that each suture is coloured by its conditions of production, and that we cannot but suture with culture anyway—might be a way forward for cross-cultural research.

Pragmatic Intercultural Ethics and the Emerging Democracy: The Case of “The Anglophone Cameroon Crisis”

ABSTRACT The emerging democracy in Cameroon has been experiencing unprecedented challenges in managing sociocultural/sociolinguistic diversity, thus, instigating “The Anglophone Cameroon crisis”. From the trajectory of applied ethics, this article substantially presents those challenges in their ensemble as a lacuna in intercultural governance, thereof demonstrating how the proper exploitation of the expertise of pragmatic intercultural ethics through interactive intercultural communication could help avert this crisis. By this, it is argued that using the wisdom of deliberative reciprocity, otherwise known as practical wisdom, pragmatic intercultural ethics could exploit the services of communicative ethics to contextually manage various disagreements between Anglophone Cameroon and the Government. Underscoring this insight as an indispensable but neglected pillar of emerging intercultural governance in post-colonial Africa, the author elucidates the likelihood that besides negligence and/or ignorance, the intercultural crisis in Cameroon could have been galvanized by “the happiness of the greatest number” theory. Wishing that the awareness of this pragmatic intercultural dexterity revitalizes the spirit of intercultural communication in Cameroon, the author draws the attention of their stakeholders to the wise recommendation of Plato that rulers should become philosophers – that they should seek justice more with the virtue of wisdom than with force/power.

Para una ética intercultural crítica

The purpose of this work is to analyze the concept of «critical interculturality» and to explore the way in which an appropriate ethics could be defined. To this end, I will raise the problem of cultural diversity and make a brief tour of some of the socio-political forms with which it has been managed in the last half century, mainly in egalitarian liberalism. Against this distinctly Anglo-American perspective, I will oppose a geographically and/ or epistemically situated approach in the Americas. Along the path, I will underline the notions that could backbone a critical intercultural ethics, among which I will highlight, within the framework of an intercultural philosophy, dialogue and cultural recognition.

THE CHALLENGE OF A FRATERNAL SOCIAL COEXISTENCE. A REFLECTION STEMMING FROM THE ESSAY “LA SFIDA DELLA CONVIVENZA” BY ALBERTO PIRNI

ABSTRACT This article starts from the analysis of the work “La sfida della convivenza” (2018), by Italian philosopher Alberto Pirni, to establish with it a dialogue around the principle of fraternity. In his essay, Pirni offers an essential lexicon to discuss the possibilities of social coexistence between different individuals, groups, communities and cultures in contemporary societies. The first part of the article offers a summary of the ideas of the author, who seeks to deepen the meaning of key concepts for the intercultural debate through a prevalently philosophical lens. In the second part, we establish a dialogue between Pirni's work and the reflections on the principle of fraternity, in its ethical and normative dimensions. The debate is based, above all, on the Italian, French and Brazilian literature about the theme. The central thesis is that the idea of fraternity can serve as guiding principle to the intercultural ethics defended by Pirni, as long as it is stripped of the excluding or reductive logics that still today is attributed to it. In the concluding remarks, we offer a brief reflection on the possibilities of using the idea offraternity as an intercultural ethical principle around which to structure deliberation spaces within multicultural societies.

The changing discourse of intercultural ethics: a diachronic meta-analysis

ABSTRACT Contemporary epistemological debates on how to research interculturality frequently draw on either side of a schism between positivist and essentialist approaches vs. critical and poststructuralist paradigms. The debate lives from its retrospective either-or character dividing the history of research on interculturality into a first epoch of epistemological naiveté and a more recent age of ethical consideration and reflection. This dichotomy however is too simplistic, and it blurs our views from perceiving a more complex present and past reality. This study assumes that research on interculturality has always built on normative orientations from social discourse and that this discourse has been under permanent change. Accordingly, it assumes that there has not been a paradigm shift or break in research but that this shift has only been used as a hegemonic instrument in inner-disciplinary discourses. This study re-traces this changing discourse of intercultural ethics using a grounded theory approach to central literature from the field. Since the 1960s, four epochs of different normative orientations have been identified from pragmatism via modesty and then a new hope up to a most recent epoch of new explorations. This results in a more complex picture of the normative discourse on interculturality beyond the positivism-poststructuralism debate.