Abstract: Pilot research on community conflict resolution, conducted in a local government area in southern Sydney in late 2006, revealed paradoxical findings: the simultaneous presence of both high levels of cross-cultural mixing and appreciation of the area's culturally diverse population; and the prevalence of prejudice against Arab and Muslim residents and visitors to the area. Many respondents, who supported cultural diversity, saw Arab and Muslim Australians as an exception and even a threat to harmonious community relations. Particularly striking was the anxiety and anger caused by their apparent large numbers, seen to be taking over certain public recreational spaces. This paper explores the contradictions in these findings in light of other contemporary Australian research and identifies complex and difficult issues to be addressed by research and by local government. In particular, the paper discusses the need to address the interconnections between both everyday multiculturalisms and everyday racisms, to...

Abstract: Challenges associated with the recent proliferation of cultural claims are exacerbated by the complex heritage and perplexities of the term culture. These difficulties lead those who are called to respond to cultural claims in conflict resolution and other fields to risk either overstating or devaluing human difference. Conflict resolution and culture scholar Kevin Avruch attempts to manage this problem by distinguishing between ‘political’ and ‘scientific’ uses of culture, but this strategy risks disavowing difference through an ethico-political dilemma with roots in European colonialism. Embracing and engaging the ambiguity of culture through Ernesto Laclau's notion of the empty signifier suggests a more complete and self-reflexive way of conceptualising culture. This approach involves valuing ineffable human difference aside from claims to have or know culture, attending to the process of constituting culture, and opening to other ways of knowing human difference.

Abstract: The paper critically engages with contemporary theories of cross-cultural understanding and cross-cultural subjectivity found in the areas of intercultural hermeneutics, intercultural social theory and the discourse on the stranger. Drawing on Gadamerian hermeneutics the paper takes some preliminary steps in formulating an alternative conception of the in-between subject and cross-cultural interpretation that incorporates the ambivalence of boundaries, the enabling dimension of essentialism and acknowledges the role that fore-meanings and fore-structures have on cross-cultural understanding. In contrast to existing theories I conclude that the cross-cultural subject is situated within the intercultural encounter rather than dwelling above it.

Abstract: Feminists have faced and are still facing a similar critique as NGOs and development organisations, namely, that they draw on predominantly Western, middle-class values and constructs in their work. The notions of reflexivity as used in feminist theory and the notion of constructive complicity as introduced in postcolonial theory are both responses to the need to find ways to operate productively and responsibly within unequal power structures. This paper will explore the parallels between this reflexivity and acknowledgement of complicity. It will consider whether and if so, how reflexivity and constructive complicity can be translated into NGO practices using material collected from interviews with women located in the global North who work for organisations that seek to support women in and from the global South.

Abstract: This paper explores the ways to develop a curriculum and pedagogy to teach Asian cultures and histories to US students – and by implication to students in the West – from critical postcolonial perspectives. In particular, by examining studies of Japan as an example, it identifies and discusses several key issues, including application of the concept of Orientalism, (commonsensical) binary oppositions that lurk in cross-cultural studies and understandings, and cultural essentialisms and nationalisms that emerge in (de-colonised and modernising) Asian nations. The paper argues that postcolonial perspectives can offer us a set of useful theoretical tools to counteract the hegemonic ways of teaching and studying about Asia.

Abstract: Conceptualising the public sphere as a form of sociability in the Sennettian sense, the paper explores the intimate connections between novel and Western forms of sociability and civility in nineteenth-century Pera – the most cosmopolitan and Westernised district of the Ottoman capital. It shows how through a distinct culture of social interaction transcending ethnic and religious lines, and a code and manner of dealing with strangers Pera stood at the juncture between the East and the West and opened up the prospects for the development of ‘cosmopolitan civility’ – a form of social relations between strangers, a coexistence and openness to unassimilated others. The paper argues that by attacking cosmopolitanism Turkish nationalism not only brought an end to this form of civility, but also transformed Pera by constructing it as a symbolic space falling outside the ideals and values of the ‘imagined community’.

Abstract: This study aims to elucidate the perceptions of new Chinese migrants towards Maori and discover the possible influence of the local Chinese media on the formation of those views. A quantitative questionnaire survey was undertaken to investigate the perceptions of new Chinese migrants towards Maori. A content analysis of Maori-related reports in the local Chinese media was carried out simultaneously to investigate how Maori were portrayed. The survey found that most Chinese participants had negative perceptions of Maori and were wary about the indigenous rights of Maori. Most participants had limited personal contact with Maori and relied heavily on local Chinese media to get information. The content analysis revealed that Maori were often negatively portrayed by the local Chinese media and that the source of most Chinese media stories was the mainstream media. The problematic portrayal of Maori in Chinese media sources may contribute significantly to the formation of new Chinese migrants’ negative percept...

Abstract: This paper takes the form of a three-part exploration of the uses and limitations of the Hegelian Master–Slave for the analysis of colonial and post-colonising subjectivities in Aotearoa New Zealand. In Hegel, the subjectivities of Master and Slave are socially constituted via a struggle for recognition that one ‘wins’ and the other ‘loses’. Subsequently their relations are mediated through Things. The first part of this paper demonstrates how struggles over colonial history (here the Hegelian Thing) constitute ‘Pākehā’ and ‘Māori’ as Master and Slave. This is not the end of Hegel's difficult story however. The second section explores the resulting dissatisfactions of the colonising subject and the possibilities for autonomy of the colonised. Finally, I outline the ultimate limitations of the Hegelian framework, identifying a number of significant ways in which ‘Pākehā’, ‘Māori’ and ‘History’ all escape the confines of the Master–Slave–Thing triad, suggesting possibilities for a reconceived postcolonial r...

Abstract: Although there has been some relaxation in attitudes towards Kurdish ethnicity in Turkey, established discourses still tend to either make Kurds invisible by emphasising the homogeneity of the Turkish nation, or denigrate them by (re)producing negative stereotypes about Kurds. On the other hand, Kurds in Turkey have access to very different perspectives on Kurdishness via the satellite television channels which can be received in Turkey, the best known being Roj TV. It is argued that humorous Kurdish sketches produced and sold on VCDs and put onto video sharing sites such as YouTube have emerged as a reaction to the often negative other-identifications in the Turkish mainstream. These sketches have their roots in Kurdish and Anatolian folklore and are arguably more successful than the media produced in the European diaspora in producing a discourse of ethnic belonging. The portrayal of a timeless, rural Kurdish world in the sketches has found resonance among Kurds from very varied backgrounds.

Abstract: The paper begins to elaborate an interpretative framework that takes account of the intercultural element of the human condition in-the-world. It situates itself within an emergent and diverse current of thought that emphasises the intercultural context of the recent ‘cultural turn’. Recent developments within phenomenological – and post-phenomenological – currents that emphasise cultural articulations of the world horizon, the ‘uncanniness of the alien’ or ‘the heterogeneity of the intercultural’ offer a range of important insights into this problematic. The paper turns to Johann P. Arnason's historical phenomenological investigations of the world horizon as a promising starting point. For Arnason, interculturality is an inescapable dimension of the world and the phenomenal field; he elaborates it along relational and interactive lines as part of his emphasis on the trans-subjective – that is, cultural – level of analysis. The paper reconstructs five overlapping approaches to the problematic of the inter...

Abstract: This paper examines the structural and contextual registers of the experience of language loss in the process of translingual subject formation. Using the psychoanalytic theory of bereavement, the paper argues that the psychic and social obstacles against mourning one's monolingual condition foster melancholic formations that manifest as recalcitrant enclavism in the language of origin or furious monolingual assimilation into the host language. In examining the socio-cultural conditions that hinder or facilitate the work of mourning, the paper proposes that productive bereavement of language loss requires some form of intersubjective witnessing. Accordingly, I explore the potential of translingual texts and performances to both provide viable models of identification for mourning linguistic injury and to increase our social awareness of the challenges entailed in commuting between languages.

Abstract: The cultural reforms introduced by the Turkish Republican elite after 1923 aspired to a Western-oriented civilisational transformation. Excluding Islamic symbols from the modern public sphere (such as the headscarf) was perceived as one indispensable prerequisite of the Westernisation process. The public sphere tightly monitored by the secular elites appeared as an outcome of state modernism, relegating religion to the private sphere. The emergence of an Islamist social movement in Turkey in the 1990s was characterised by its challenging of the laicity of urban spaces. Male and female activists presented themselves in a way that announced their Islamic identity, thus culturally and ideologically contesting the modernist/secularist public sphere. My argument is that the public performance of an Islamic identity in Istanbul in this period did not manifest itself as a movement of atomistic individuals, but neither was it an experience of a unified community. By contrast, Islamists pursued a form of subjectiv...

Abstract: For Charles Taylor, ‘‘Understanding ‘the Other’ will pose the twenty-first century’s greatest social challenge’’ (Taylor). The present issue of the Journal of Intercultural Studies begins to respond to this challenge by bringing together contemporary perspectives that theorise cultural forms of otherness and interculturality. A central presupposition of intercultural studies is human diversity. However, although the existence of a plurality of cultural universes seems a truism, adequate theoretical elaboration has proved more difficult. For example, in the wake of globalisation, an inexorable advancement towards a single ‘world society’ is posited, but in so doing, cultural difference is minimised and the richness of social meanings flattened. Another well-known approach emphasises the ‘clash of civilisations’; here the plurality of civilisational constellations is highlighted, but each civilisation is interpreted as a closed cultural world, mutually inaccessible, mutually antagonistic. Conceptually, these approaches fall within one of two broad theoretical schemas: in the former, the cultural ‘other’ is reduced to the identity of the ‘self ’ or ‘the same’; in the latter, ‘cultural otherness’ is envisaged as alterity, as unbridgeable and ultimately as mutually untranslatable. From another angle, difficulties ensue when cultural humanity is considered in its twofold aspect of unity and plurality. Approaches that tend to emphasise similarity, comparability or meta-historical constants between societies or civilisations, also tend to minimise historical diversity and social creativity, whereas approaches that emphasise the plurality and uniqueness of cultural universes and their respective historical trajectories tend to overstate the

Abstract: The critical reconstruction of classical perspectives and world history as contemporary civilisational analysis brings a fresh and alternative approach to twenty-first-century social science. It has been a robust basis for the critique of existing conservative scholarship of civilisations of the Samuel Huntington variety. A contentious notion of civilisation remains at its conceptual core, however, despite the uses and abuses of the term ‘civilisation’ in current-day political discourse. This paper aims to explore how far the critical reconsideration of civilisation goes in achieving intercultural goals. It pays particular attention to the versions of the civilisational paradigm developed by Johann Arnason and Shmuel Eisenstadt and evaluates these against the historical experiences of American civilisations. It is argued that Arnason's approach opens up great potential for intercultural analysis through its hermeneutics of encountering social formations, while Eisenstadt's is still burdened by an ‘objecti...

Abstract: The notion of enlightenment plays a crucial but increasingly contested role in the political intellectual discourse in the Republic of Turkey. The paper aims at reconstructing important elements of this discourse in the example of several representative texts and intends to demonstrate that the concept of enlightenment in Turkey while serving as the key element for modernity as defined in Kemalism continues to signify the Western ‘Other’, thus inherently diminishing the credibility of the argument by creating an orientalised and subaltern version of Turkey's ‘own’ history and tradition. The paper also tentatively investigates a ‘de-orientalising’ proposal of the historical process that may have caused the ‘forgetting’ of autochthonous traditions of enlightenment and the assimilation to the European strand.

Abstract: Music can be a brilliant vehicle for creating ‘memories’ about the place it evokes, even if its performers or listeners have never lived there. This paper describes a musical performance with Istanbul as its theme by the Australian Turkish Music Ensemble in Sydney, a group made up of first- and second-generation Turkish migrants. I argue that the sounds, modes, images and narratives moulded together in this musical event not only generate performers’ ties to Istanbul but they also demonstrate how remembering Istanbul in the present is connected to broader and contested historical knowledge about the city, especially that produced by the Turkish nation-state.

Abstract: There is a wide consensus on the secular character of Western societies. This is particularly evident in their articulation of the private and public spheres, based on the assumption that secular norms require that religious groups stay away from public arenas. The Habermasian public sphere appears then as a prototypical secular arena. The paper explores how the Habermasian notion can be enriched in a transcultural perspective. It shows that several Muslim actors are key contributors – and not opponents – to the renewal of the secular process, both within European societies and at a transnational level, notwithstanding their original understanding of the public sphere and of its normative fundaments.

Abstract: Recent developments in colonial and postcolonial studies have begun a process of reinterpreting the age of Spanish overseas expansion and conquest in ways that relativise imperial and colonial iden...

Abstract: The Turkish left, in both its ‘Social-democrat’ and ‘Communist’ manifestations, grew up in the garden of Turkish nationalism. And although in Turkey these two branches have quite different origins (unlike in many countries in Europe), the common point between them is their closeness to nationalism. In the last few years the nationalism of both social democrats and socialists has intensified, leading to a peculiar – in terms of leftist movements in most European societies – alliance between the Turkish left and the Turkish State and military. In this paper I trace the historical development of leftist politics in Turkey since the 1950s, noting both certain changes in ideology and political practice but even more strikingly much enduring continuity. The result in the present is a deep crisis of democracy in Turkey, partially produced by the Turkish left. Indeed, irrespective of European prejudices regarding Turkey's entrance into the EU, the open or secret opposition of the majority of leftist parties and g...

Abstract: In an era of heightened concern about the second generation of Muslim immigrants in connection with 'home-grown terrorism' and supposed refusal to 'integrate', this paper interrogates the common sense that the second generation is 'lost' between cultures. Informed by in-depth, open-ended, semi-structured interviews with young second-generation Lebanese-background immigrants, this paper presents empirical material from two cohorts of participants, one in 1997 and one in 2003. Five cases are considered here, three from 1997 and two from 2003: all Muslim young women. It is argued that, far from being 'lost', the young women are constructing blended identities which they reflect on consciously, under circumstances of everyday racism to which they respond strategically.

Abstract: This study is based on qualitative interviews with 20 adult international adoptees of colour and 8 adoptive parents with internationally adopted children in Sweden regarding their experiences of racialisation, ethnic identifications and coping strategies. The study finds that the non-white bodies of the adoptees are constantly made significant in their everyday lives in interactions with the white Swedish majority population, whether expressed as ‘curious questions’ concerning the ethnic origin of the adoptees or as outright aggressive racialisation. The study argues that race has to be taken into consideration by Swedish adoption research and the Swedish adoption community, in order to fully grasp the high occurrence of mental illness among adult adoptees as found by quantitative adoption research.

Abstract: This paper explores contemporary Turkey through the lens of education. Special attention is given to the recent curriculum reform of 2005 and the new Social Studies textbooks that have been redesigned as an aspect of Turkey's seeking admission to the European Union. The Ministry of Education policy statements about the new curriculum and textbooks involve a claim that they promote critical thinking and open-mindedness, along with a student-centred approach. However, a close analysis of the new textbooks shows that they are still imbued with an exclusive and narrow definition of nationalism and citizenship, backed by the myth of origin, ethnocentrism and essentialism. The paper discusses these issues in the context of the compatibility of a State-generated national ethos with democratic citizenship and argues that a notion of cosmopolitan education would extend the borders of a narrowly defined Turkish national identity.