Transcultural Identities Research Articles

Identity and health in transcultural mediation: The Model of Culture-Synergetic Transcultural Mediation and its Impacts

Over the past decades, interest in the field of conflict research has developed worldwide. A broad range of literature evaluates conflicts as stressors with negative health effects. Particularly in transcultural situations conflict parties experience stress due to the lack of transcultural understanding, differences in value-orientations and culture-specific attitude and behaviour. This article introduces the model of "Culture-Synergetic Transcultural Mediation" (CSTM), which is based on transformative mediation philosophy and promotes culture-synergetic processes in conflict situations. These processes aim at transforming personal, relationship-based, structural and cultural identities. They particularly integrate the concept of identity and salutogenesis as important aspects in conflict transformation. The article presents the dynamic interrelationship of CSTM, transcultural identities and salutogenetic aspects in transcultural conflict situations.

Mixed Marriages and Transnational Families in the Intercultural Context: A Case Study of African–Spanish Couples in Catalonia

One of the consequences of international migration and the permanent settlement of immigrants in southern EU countries is the growing number of inter-country marriages and the formation of transnational families. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, this article examines patterns of endogamy and exogamy (i.e. marriage within/outside a particular group or category) among African immigrants in Catalonia, focusing on bi-national Senegalese– and Gambian–Spanish couples. Socio-demographic profiles, transnationality, the dynamics of cultural change or retention, and the formation of transcultural identities are explored. The evidence presented suggests that social-class factors are more important than cultural origins in patterns of endogamy and exogamy, in the dynamics of living together and in the bringing-up of children of mixed unions. Such a conclusion negates culturalists’ explanations of endogamy and exogamy while, at the same time, emphasising the role of social actors as active subjects in these processes. I further argue that mixed couples and their offspring deal—to a greater or lesser extent—with multiple localisations and cultural backgrounds (i.e. here and there), rather than experiencing a ‘clash between two cultures’. Therefore, it would be a mistake to pretend that multicultural links do not exist and that they cannot be revitalised and functional. The paper starts and ends by addressing the complexities of processes of interculturalism, resisting an interpretation of hybridity and segregation as contradictory or exclusive realities.

Zinovy Zinik's Narratives of Cultural Dislocation

The study examines Zinik's use of translation, theatre and misreading as metaphors for the act of border crossing in his novels and short stories. Through close readings of Zinik's novels The Lord and the Gamekeeper, The Mushroom Picker and The Russian Service, it is demonstrated that Zinik integrates these themes into his work with intent to expose novelistic conventions, confuse the boundary between art and life, and blur the roles of the author, reader and literary protagonist. Zinik's invitations to the reader to enter the worlds of his texts and experience cultural dislocation firsthand are continued in his recent short stories, which reflect the social changes and fluid cultural boundaries associated with globalisation. It is argued that, at the same time, Zinik's work reveals the limitations of conventional binary oppositions such as actor/audience and the utopian claims behind translation, interpretation and globalisation. Thus, it asserts the need to affirm new cultural symbols and practices through which individuals will shape transcultural identities as visions of a homogeneous global culture become more prevalent.

PRACTICES OF MIGRATION VOICING RISK

The recent emergence of raï music among Moroccan immigrants living in Spain marks a new moment in the history of the form. However, it was not altogether unexpected. Since its inception in the cities of Algeria around thirty years ago as a result of increased rural to urban population flows, raï has been a musical form arising from the experience of migration. As such, it opened a space for the articulation of displaced, uprooted North African identities and is marked by traces of difficult and disjunctured encounters with new forms of modernity. Raï, as it is currently being constructed in Barcelona, offers a discourse for immigrant Moroccans living in Spain with which to construct specific transnational and transcultural identities in their new socio-cultural and economic surroundings. This new strand of raï moves beyond lyrics of love to underline the unmistakeably physical risks attendant on illicit migration across the Straits of Gibraltar. It is this overt emphasis on physical risk that specifically distingishes Spanish/Moroccan raï. In recent years, risk as a defining feature of late modernity has been the subject of considerable theoretical exploration. In the light of such theorizations, this essay examines the first raï CD released in Spain, Chab Samir (Afro-Blue Records, 1999), from the perspective of its music and lyrics, and personal interviews with the lead singer, Samir, and other members of his band.

Postcolonial theory and Francophone literary studies

Introduction 1. Productive Intersections, by Anne Donadey and H. Adlai Murdoch Part I. Rethinking Theoretical Beginnings 2. Power, Purpose, the Presumptuousness of Postcoloniality, and Frantz Fanon's Peau noire, masques blancs, by E. Anthony Hurley 3. Unfathomable Toussaint: The (Un)Making of a Hero, by Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi 4. A Neglected Precursor: Roland Barthes and the Origins of Postcolonialism, by Alec G. Hargreaves Part II. Postcolonialism, Modernity, and French Identities 5. Nomadic Thought, Postcolonialism, and Maghrebian Writing, by John D. Erickson 6. Narratives of Internal Exile: Cixous, Derrida, and the Vichy Years in Algeria, by Ronnie Scharfman 7. Meinoires d'Immigres: Bougnoul for What? by Kenneth W. Harrow 8. French Interwar Cinema as Vernacular Modernism: Pabst's Drame de Shanghal (1938), by Winifred Woodhull Part III. Displacing Francophonie: Migration and Transcultural Identities 9. Quebec and France: La Francophonie in a Comparative Postcolonial Frame, by Eloise A. Briere 10. Displaced Discourses: Post(-)coloniality, Francophone Space(s), and the Literature(s) of Immigration in France, by Michel Laronde 11. The Francophone Postcolonial Field, by Jacques Coursil and Delphine Perret Part IV. Theorizing the Black Atlantic 12. Borders, Books, and Points de Repere, by Renee Latrier 13. Francophone Studies / Postcolonial Studies: Postcolonializing through Relation, by Anjali Prabhu and Ato Quayson 14. Intersections and Trajectories: Francophone Studies and Postcolonial Theory, by Dominic Thomas 15. Afterword: Francophonie, Postcolonial Studies, and Transnational Feminisms, by Francoise Lionnet