Intercultural relations, sometimes called intercultural studies, is a field of Social science. It is a multi-disciplinary academic field designed to train students to understand, communicate, and accomplish specific goals outside their own cultures. Intercultural relations involves, at a fundamental level, learning how to see oneself and the world through the eyes of another. It seeks to prepare students for interaction with cultures both similar to their own or very different from their own. Some aspects of intercultural relations also include, their power and cultural identity with how the relationship should be upheld with other foreign countries.
Cultural identity is a part of a person's identity, or their self-conception and self-perception, and is related to nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, generation, locality, gender, or any kind of social group that has its own distinct culture. In this way, cultural identity is both characteristic of the individual but also of the culturally identical group of members sharing the same cultural identity or upbringing. Cultural identity is an unfixed process that is continually evolving within the discourses of social, cultural, and historical experiences. Some people undergo more cultural identity changes as opposed to others, those who change less often have a clear cultural identity. This means that they have a dynamic yet stable integration of their culture.
Interculturalism is a political movement that supports cross-cultural dialogue and challenging self-segregation tendencies within cultures. Interculturalism involves moving beyond mere passive acceptance of multiple cultures existing in a society and instead promotes dialogue and interaction between cultures. Interculturalism is often used to describe the set of relations between indigenous and western ideals, grounded in values of mutual respect.
Intercultural communication is a discipline that studies communication across different cultures and social groups, or how culture affects communication. It describes the wide range of communication processes and problems that naturally appear within an organization or social context made up of individuals from different religious, social, ethnic, and educational backgrounds. In this sense, it seeks to understand how people from different countries and cultures act, communicate, and perceive the world around them. Intercultural communication focuses on the recognition and respect of those with cultural differences. The goal is mutual adaptation between two or more distinct cultures which leads to biculturalism/multiculturalism rather than complete assimilation. It promotes the development of cultural sensitivity and allows for empathic understanding across different cultures.
The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) is an initiative that attempts to "galvanize international action against extremism" through the forging of international, intercultural and interreligious dialogue and cooperation. The Alliance places a particular emphasis on defusing tensions between the Western and Islamic worlds.
Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami introduced the idea of Dialogue Among Civilizations as a response to Samuel P. Huntington's theory of a Clash of Civilizations. The term was initially used by Austrian philosopher Hans Köchler who in 1972, in a letter to UNESCO, had suggested the idea of an international conference on the "dialogue between different civilizations" and had organized, in 1974, a first international conference on the role of intercultural dialogue with the support and under the auspices of Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor.
Cultural competence, also known as intercultural competence, is a range of cognitive, affective, behavioural, and linguistic skills that lead to effective and appropriate communication with people of other cultures. Intercultural or cross-cultural education are terms used for the training to achieve cultural competence.
The International Communication Association (ICA) is an academic association for scholars interested in the study, teaching and application of all aspects of human and mediated communication.
Integrative communication theory is a theory of cross-cultural adaptation proposed by Young Yun Kim. The first widely published version of Kim's theory is found in the last three chapters of a textbook authored by William Gudykunst with Young Yun Kim as second author. See acculturation and assimilation.
The Science Communication Observatory is a Special Research Centre attached to the Department of Communication of the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, set up in 1994. This centre is specialized in the study and analysis of the transmission of scientific, medical, environmental and technological knowledge to society. The journalist Vladimir de Semir, associated professor of Science Journalism at the Pompeu Fabra University, was the founder and is the current director of the centre. A multidisciplinary team of researchers coming from different backgrounds is working on various lines of research: science communication; popularization of sciences, risk and crisis communication; science communication and knowledge representation; journalism specialized in science and technology; scientific discourse analysis; health and medicine in the daily press; relationships between science journals and mass media; history of science communication; public understanding of science; gender and science in the mass media, promotion of scientific vocations, science museology, etc.
The Union for the Mediterranean is an intergovernmental organization of 43 member states from Europe and the Mediterranean Basin: the 27 EU member states and 16 Mediterranean partner countries from North Africa, Western Asia and Southern Europe. It was founded on 13 July 2008 at the Paris Summit for the Mediterranean, with an aim of reinforcing the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (Euromed) that was set up in 1995 as the Barcelona Process. Its general secretariat is located in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
Cultural sensitivity, also referred to as cross-cultural sensitivity or cultural awareness, is the knowledge, awareness, and acceptance of other cultures and others' cultural identities. It is related to cultural competence, and is sometimes regarded as the precursor to the achievement of cultural competence, but is a more commonly used term. On the individual level, cultural sensitivity is a state of mind regarding interactions with those different from oneself. Cultural sensitivity enables travelers, workers, and others to successfully navigate interactions with a culture other than their own.
The double-swing model is a model of intercultural communication, originated by Muneo Yoshikawa, conceptualizing how individuals, cultures, and intercultural notions can meet in constructive ways. The communication is understood as an infinite process where both parties change in the course of the communicative or translational exchange.
Caroline Y. Robertson-von Trotha is a Scottish sociologist and cultural scientist, working in Germany.
The Center for Intercultural Dialogue (CID) was established by the Council of Communication Associations (CCA) in March 2010. Intercultural dialogue occurs when members of different cultural groups, who hold conflicting opinions and assumptions, speak to one another in acknowledgment of those differences. As such, it forms "the heart of what we study when we study intercultural communication." The goal of CID is double: to encourage research on intercultural dialogue, but to do so through bringing international scholars interested in the subject together in shared intercultural dialogues about their work.
The Center for Intercultural Dialogue is an academic organization founded in 2010 by the Council of Communication Associations, a United States non-profit designed to encourage research on intercultural dialogue.
The World forum on Intercultural dialogue is an international forum held in the Republic of Azerbaijan since 2011 to establish an effective and efficient dialogue between cultures and civilizations. Based on the Baku process and related declaration in 2008.
Faisal bin Abdulrahman bin Muaammar is the founding Secretary General of the King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue and the King Abdulaziz Center for National Dialogue. He is also notable as Supervisor General of the King Abdulaziz Public Library.
Fawzi Boubia, born in 1948 in Khemisset, is a Moroccan intellectual.
Interreligious studies, sometimes called interfaith studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field that researches and teaches about interfaith dialogue and encounters between religions. It often involves religious scholars in interfaith activism. This concept has injected itself as not entirely interfaith dialogue; which is more often religious than academic in nature. The field emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, as a result of the collective efforts of theologians and interfaith practitioners, during a period of interfaith activism, especially in the North America.