Multicultural Perspective Research Articles

The historical and architectural origins of palace buildings in the Kumbum Monastery from a multicultural perspective

ABSTRACT The Kumbum Monastery is a typical example of a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in China. This study focuses on 12 palace buildings within the Kumbum Monastery and aims to clarify the historical origins of their architecture, the regional architectural characteristics, and the influence of multiple cultures on the monastery. The study uses typological approaches and quantitative methods to analyze the architecture’s characteristics and origins (spatial layout, architectural forms, construction technology, and decorative elements). This paper attempts to provide a typological approach for the study of the history of the architextures in the Kumbum Monastery as well as a comprehensive understanding of the architecture through a culturally pluralistic perspective. The analysis shows that 1) the palace buildings are a complex mixture of traditional Tibetan architecture, Han-style architecture from the Central Plains during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and arched buildings from Central Asia and Inner Mongolia; 2) the palace buildings localized different cultures and reshaped their spatial modeling and spatial meaning through the means of “hybridity” and “adjustment”; 3) the complex multicultural nature of the palace buildings is due to the comprehensive influence of political changes, religious dissemination, trade and transportation, and ethnic migration from the Ming Dynasty to the Republic of China.

Multicultural Education: Concept, Emergence and Dimensions

Multicultural education is emerging perceptive in today's education. Most of the educator and tutors need to aware how to treat the culture diversity of students in the teaching learning process. This cultural phenomenon basically influences on in building school structure and curricula implementation in school. This multicultural perspective emerged during the 1960s and more influential till now. It has cleared that this emerging concept needs to address for ensuring the equity in education of students. For this, Banks provided the five dimensions viz. content integration, knowledge construction process, prejudice reduction, equity pedagogy and an empowering school culture and social structure to address the cultural diversity of people in education.

Intellectual servility, structural influences, and multicultural perspectives: a response to Ballantyne

ABSTRACT In this paper, we briefly respond to several points Ballantyne raises in ‘Recent Work on Intellectual Humility’ (this issue). First, we contend with the suggestion that IH is ‘hypoegoic’ which risks overlooking problematic vices of excesses, such as intellectual servility. Second, we add additional points to the discussion about whether IH is interpersonal, or simply correlated with interpersonal outcomes. Third, we suggest considering structural influences on the development of IH alongside Ballantyne’s three intrapersonal influences. Though individuals with privileged identities may be at greater risk for developing intellectual arrogance, individuals holding marginalized identities may experience structural pressures to over-own their limitations, causing them to develop the vice of intellectual servility. Finally, we highlight the importance of addressing multicultural perspectives on IH, including the risk for intellectual servility among marginalized groups and reconsidering whether IH is purely intrapersonal. We also propose measurement strategies aimed at addressing these concerns.

Reducing hotel employee turnover intention by promoting pride in job and meaning of work: A cross-cultural perspective

Characterizing with an image of low-skilled jobs and low social status, the hotel industry is undergoing a “great resignation” from staff due to stress post-Covid-19, urging a need to encourage hotel employees to stay with their jobs. This study attempted to explore whether employees’ turnover intention was decreased by promoting their pride in jobs and how job pride was predicted by dimensions of the meaning of work. Two online surveys were conducted on American and Vietnamese hotel employees. A structural equation modeling analysis revealed that work centrality, obligation norms, and work values positively affected job pride which subsequently reduced turnover intention. The study also showed the negative relationship between job pride and turnover intention was only significant for Americans, confirming the culture’s moderation role. The findings provide valuable theoretical contributions regarding employees’ behavioral intention from a multicultural perspective and managerial implications for hoteliers in human resources management practices.

Theoretical and cultural aspects of the development of family therapy in China

Nowadays, a multicultural perspective seems more pressing between clinicians and psychotherapists. For systemic family therapists, a cross-cultural conversation is necessary to respond well to this request. The past three decades have witnessed a rapid development of family therapy in China both clinically and academically since the late 1980s. Intending to lay a solid foundation for cross-cultural exchange between Western and Eastern therapists, this article gives a brief review on the application of family therapy in China along with cultural issues faced by Chinese psychotherapists. Some main topics are covered, such as the social background of the boom of family therapy, the cultural compatibility and the effectiveness of family therapy, the peculiarity of Chinese families, and the cultural adaptation of family therapy. Despite all the fruitful achievements, given the current Westerncentrism in the field of psychotherapy, it is still a long way to further the indigenisation of family therapy in China. From the review, it is clear that more theoretical research from a critical spirit and comparative research with an open-minded attitude is needed to further the indigenisation of family therapy in China.

Exploring the role of English in meritocracy in multilingual Indonesia: teacher beliefs, language use, and Global Englishes

ABSTRACT English features prominently in global communication as part of the knowledge economy in Indonesia and worldwide. Meritocracy represents a key concept within the rhetoric of this economy, as it promises that how well people do in life is not determined by external matters, but mostly by how hard they try. Included here is how hard they study English, and how well they perform on measures of English proficiency. No previous research has, however, considered English teachers' beliefs about the role of English in meritocracy. This is perhaps surprising given that the literature has increasingly highlighted the role of teachers as changemakers. To explore this issue, the present study considered the views of 260 English teachers in Indonesia. Findings revealed statistically significant correlations between teachers' beliefs in meritocracy for their own careers and for their students, on the one hand, and their views of English as a tool for success, on the other hand. This study not only makes an empirical contribution to the limited literature on the role of meritocracy in language education, but also advances conversation on language education from a multilingual and multicultural perspective by addressing the limits of meritocracy through Global Englishes with a translanguaging orientation.

Contestation of Islam Nusantara: Reasoning of Pluralism in Constructing Religious Harmony in Indonesia Context

The existence of religious pluralism in Indonesia cannot be separated from the dynamics of Islamic contestation in the Archipelago. The reasoning and practice of religious pluralism have not yet received full support from Muslims. Social conflicts are often injured in practice, such as intolerance, violence, and persecution between religious believers. This study aims to reveal the significance of reasoning and practice of religious pluralism in building religious harmony in the context of the plurality of the Indonesian as a nation. This literature research seeks to explore relevant data from various sources such asbooks, proceedings, and journals (Zed, 2004: 2-3). Data analysis was conducted through content analysis related to Indonesia's concept and practice of religious pluralism. This study shows that the reasoning and practice of religious pluralism have great significance for shaping the understanding, awareness, and religious attitudes of the majority of Indonesian Muslims who are tolerant in responding to differences in faith, worship rituals, and religious cultures. This religious attitude can display the moderate face of Islam in interfaith social and humanitarian interactions in society. The dialectical reasoning of religious pluralism in this study resulted in five basic findings, namely: Islam Nusantara: a localized meaning of Islam; religious plurality from a multiculturalism perspective; pluralism reasoning in building inclusive religious attitudes; religious meeting point towards religious harmony; and Pancasila (Five Principles of the republic) as the indigenous style of Islam Nusantara. The original form of Islamic contestation in the Archipelago is reflected in Pancasila is a common consensus, the estuary of encounter, and the style of the struggle of Islam Nusantara to date.

Covid-19 health communication barriers in multicultural communities in Indonesia

The central government and local governments conducted a series of health communication efforts to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. However, there is still a behaviour of rejection in the community that is published in the news in mass media, including online media. In public health, including health communication programs, especially in the health belief model, a person’s behaviour to follow or refuse can be influenced by health beliefs. Uncertainty can be an obstacle to behaviour. From a multicultural perspective, beliefs are one of the things that affect public health behaviour. This study tried to uncover the barriers to Covid-19 health communication in multicultural communities in Indonesia using online news content analysis methods on the five most popular news websites in Indonesia, namely okezone.com, tribunnews.com, pikiran-rakyat.com, kompas.com, and detik.com. The results revealed that the top five barriers to health communication were religion (17.2%), survival (12.67%), beliefs that Covid-19 does not exist (9.9%), self-immunity confidence (9.9%), and stigma (9.9%).

Emotional expression in vocal skill from the perspective of multiculturalism

The research is devoted to study the influence of emotional singing on the listeners' perception of vocal mastery in the process of intercultural musical dialogue. In the context of studying the influence of emotional singing on the quality of perception by listeners, an experiment was conducted; it involved 11 student vocalists from China, Russia, Italy, Brazil, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Greece, India, Canada, Korea, Nigeria, 5 independent listeners, and 5 music experts. The analytical experiment created an opportunity to reveal the impact of the vocalist's emotional expression when performing a national folk song on the listener perception. The percentage of coherence between emotional production and listener perception ranged from 62.8% to 76.2%. Vocal skills of a singer can reveal the emotional aspects of a piece of music to the public, which are of great value in contemporary art; they determine the popularity of a performer on the world stage.

The Country Wife, Southall Style: Restoration Comedy and the Multicultural Gaze

Abstract First performed at Watford Palace Theatre in 2004, Tanika Gupta’s version of William Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1675) relocates the Restoration classic to twenty-first-century London, reframing its libertine plot as a witty satire on sexual and gender mores in contemporary Britain. In this new setting, Wycherley’s comic masterpiece is revisited from a multicultural perspective, and his merciless exposure of social hypocrisies becomes infused with the adaptor’s keen awareness of diversity and its complexities. This article draws attention to Gupta’s play as a culturally significant intervention in the reception history of Restoration theatre culture. By opening up Wycherley’s comedy to the representation of Britain’s “new ethnicities,” I suggest, Gupta’s work has paved the way for the more inclusive, multiculturally conscious approach to the Restoration canon that is observable in the new spate of revivals and adaptations produced during the last decade or so.

From speech acts to lay understandings of politeness: multilingual and multicultural perspectives

Article From speech acts to lay understandings of politeness: multilingual and multicultural perspectives was published on November 1, 2022 in the journal Journal of Politeness Research (volume 0, issue 0).

Surviving Racism and Sexism in Academia: Sharing Experiences, Insights, and Perspectives

Surviving Racism and Sexism in Academia: Sharing Experiences, Insights, and Perspectives

An Exploration of the Reluctant Fundamentalist from Multicultural Perspective

This paper interrogates multiculturalism in The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. Multiculturalism is a technique which author use to tell their stories. When analyzing a novel, it is important to identify this technique. It is used in order to shed light on the ways in which they function in the story. Mohsin Hamid, an emerging novelist of Pakistan has given a new identity to the genre of Pakistani English Writing through his popular novels Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist and How to get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. In his first two novels Moth Smoke and the Reluctant Fundamentalist, Hamid has tried two different types of narrative techniques. While he has used Multiple Narrative Technique in Moth Smoke, in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, he uses monologue. The present research proposes to explore how these narrative techniques have their validity to theme and message, the novelist conveys. This study is going to focus on multiculturalism in The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Written in a critical time, this novel contains too different social issues of Pakistan. It is believed that narrative technique has a vital role to express the temperament of the characters hence; this paper aims at studying how the narrative technique “Monologue “and “Multiple Narrative” and “Multiculturalism” do express the temperament of characters in the selected novel.

The Representation of Foreign and Indonesian Cultures in English Text Books for Junior High School in Indonesia

The aim of this study is to examine the representation of foreign and Indonesian cultural content in three English textbooks of 9th-grade junior high school students in Indonesia. This is descriptive qualitative research and uses a multicultural perspective approach. The data was taken from three English texts books, Think Globally Act Locally, English in Focus and Bright An English. The content analysis of this textbook was carried out using four aspects of the cultural dimension; product, practice, perspective, and person. The data was analyzed, from two perspectives; the perspective of cultural components and the perspective of cultural presentation levels. Based on the data analysis, it has been discovered that Indonesian culture is overrepresented in the three English textbooks, resulting in a poor presentation of foreign cultural elements. Product dimension is the most prevalent in textbooks, followed by person dimension, practice dimension, and perspective dimension based on percentage distribution. The cultural content of the English textbooks reveals an unbalance between foreign and Indonesian cultures. Most of the English-language textbooks contain Indonesian cultures, while only a few include other cultures. In comparison to Indonesian cultures, there are fewer foreign cultural representations in the English textbooks. It is recommended that English textbooks should include more materials from the cultures of English-speaking countries.

Reconciliation and Coming Together in DeLillo’s Falling Man

This article underpins the possibility of coming together in the aftermath of 9/11 as depicted in Don DeLillo’s Falling Man. The reconciliation between the minorities and the mainstream Americans can be possible in case conflicting groups move ahead for negotiation by accepting cultural differences that became the cause of the contemporary problems in the American society in the immediate future of the 9/11 attacks. The paper has explored that there is a huge possibility of reconciliation among diverse communities when the liberal Americans take initiatives as portrayed in the novel. The obstacles to the move for negotiation are fundamentalist Muslims and orthodox Americans who intensify conflict for their vested interests. The paper has employed qualitative research design to analyze the narrative and has also looked into the issue from the multicultural perspective that respects differences. Unity in diversity and strength in togetherness is the finding of the paper. Characters like Amir in the novel are Muslim fundamentalists and characters like Martin and Nina are liberals who seek for reunion among American communities as represented by Keith and Lianne.

From Speech Acts to Lay Understandings of Politeness: Multilingual and Multicultural Perspectives, edited by Eva Ogiermann and Pilar G. Blitvich

From Speech Acts to Lay Understandings of Politeness: Multilingual and Multicultural Perspectives, edited by Eva Ogiermann and Pilar G. Blitvich

Intercultural exposure and global citizenship attitudes among affluent late adolescents: cultural intelligence as mediator

ABSTRACT Existent research on intercultural exposure and cultural intelligence has been largely conducted in management and management education, the latter with business student subjects. Aiming to attain a more holistic view in this regard, we attend to a civic-related outcome, namely, the emergence of (cosmopolitan-based) global citizenship attitudes, which can be regarded as a socio-political pre-condition for membership in an inclusive global world. We examined a mediation model among Israeli late-adolescents in which cultural intelligence reflects a causal mechanism in which intercultural exposure affects global citizenship attitudes. The survey included a sample of 954 affluent Israeli-Jewish late adolescents attending 12 high schools. Hypotheses were tested with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Findings concerning the measurement models of the multifaceted constructs (i.e., intercultural exposure, cultural intelligence, and global citizenship attitudes) pointed to a good fit; hence were validated. Moreover, the study findings supported a full mediation model, augmenting the accumulated evidence on cultural intelligence's significant role in developing a wide range of multicultural perspectives.

(Re)constructing environmental history: Excavating ecomemory with ecowomanist and intersectional AsianCrit framings for eco-justice pedagogical praxis

This article investigates the role of autoethnographic research as the methodological tool of choice for an Asian American educator-activist-scholar (Suzuki & Mayorga, Multicultural Perspectives, 16(1), 16–20, 2014) who positions herself with a collaborative, critical, and intersectional ecofeminist perspective. I propose that ecomemory, a counter memory of environmental history and the environmental histories of people of color, should be used as valid ethnographic research and can contribute toward the AsianCrit tenets of (re)constructive history and story, theory, and praxis. Autoethnography, ecomemory, critical race theory, and AsianCrit, define how I think about the world and have influenced how I engage in educational research. Producing autoethnographic research validates and acknowledges my positionality and interrogates my marginal position inside dominant structures of education and environmental education. Rooted in my own environmental autobiography, ecomemory frames my professional practice as an educator and provides the foundations for cultivating a culturally responsive and culturally sustaining teaching model for K-12 eco-justice education and teacher education.

Flerkulturalitet i opplæring av helsefagarbeidere

This study will focus on multicultural competence as a topic in vocational training of health care workers in upper secondary school in Norway. The research question is: How do vocational teachers practice multiculturalism in health care worker vocational education? According to OECD, multiculturalism is one of the core competencies of the 21st century. The need of healthcare professionals with expertise in multicultural sensitivity and health-communication will increase in the years ahead because this competence is essential for a good and caring professional health care. The theoretical perspective is related to a theoretical conceptual understanding of multicultural competence and to vocational didactic perspectives on health care worker vocational training. The data collection is based on semi-structured interviews with vocational teachers. The key findings show that multicultural issues are rarely highlighted in education and that multicultural topics are rarely linked to vocationally relevant professional tasks. Topics as health-communication and diet were poorly elucidated from a multicultural perspective. There will be a need to implement various occupationally relevant multicultural issues in health worker vocational training to prepared for the multicultural professional life.

How culture influences consumer creativity: A dual perspective of multiculturalism and loose-tight culture

In the context of globalization, consumers with multicultural experiences are increasingly involved in the process of value creation, yet there is a lack of understanding of how multiculturalism affects consumer creativity. Based on the dual perspectives of multiculturalism and loose-tight culture, this paper illustrates the mechanism of multicultural experience on consumer creativity and the moderating effect of loose-tight culture on this relationship. Two studies (a questionnaire study and an experimental study) were conducted to validate the theoretical model. The results revealed that multicultural experiences enhance consumer creativity, cognitive complexity mediates the relationship between the two, and loose-tight culture moderates the relationship between multicultural experiences and consumer creativity. The loose culture scenario has a positive enhancement effect, the tight culture scenario has a negative weakening effect, and the interaction between multicultural experiences and loose-tight culture affects consumer creativity through cognitive complexity. The results of this study provide a new perspective on the relationship between culture and consumer creativity, expanding the study of culture and consumer creativity from the cultural value dimension to the social norm dimension, enriching the research on creativity as a cognitive process at the consumer level, and providing guidance and reference for companies to better stimulate and utilize consumer creativity.