Cultural Encounters – (M.A.)

Cultural Encounters focuses on the study of cultural identities and symbolic representational and interpretational forms through an international, cross-cultural and global perspective. It is particularly concerned with problems related to processes where cultural identities and representations interact and are exchanged. As such the program reflects a cultural interface resulting from the intensified processes of globalisation and internationalisation.

In recent decades the explosion in communication and information and the strong growth in inter-national mobility have enabled the spread of culture, cultural exchange and cultural development, but they have also led to clashes and antagonistic positionings. Whatever forms they have taken, they dominate national and international political agendas in many different fields: for example in the labour market, education and cultural politics. This cultural dynamic and the cultural, social and linguistic problems which follow in its wake are the focal point for Cultural Encounters. It is not ethnicity and nationality alone which are relevant socio-cultural parameters, but also a number of other factors, which interact with these, such as language, gender, education, class, religion, age and generation.

The program focuses predominantly on contemporary issues and is particularly interested in those dynamics of change which are the result of both benevolent as well as clash prone cultural encounters. Hence questions related to integration, racism, ethnocentrism, cultural relativism and intercultural communication are central to the program. Equally important are questions related to the broader context of cultural encounters: power and ‘global culture’, cultural imperialism, nationalism, americanisation and ‘europeanisation’. The program includes aesthetic – e.g. literary and media orientated - theories and methods in the analysis of these relations and combines such analyses with the broader societal context. Such issues can lend themselves to analysis through postcolonial, globalisation and modernity theories. Also questions dealing with cultural encounters on the internet, and developments in cyberspace lie inside the program’s declared field of interest.

The focus on cultural complexity requires a multicultural and transcultural approach to conceptualisations of the individual. Each individual develops through the course of her/his life a whole range of more or less integrated experiences, identities and skills. These have been developed in linguistic and in other ways symbolically mediated social engagements with other people, both in the immediate and the more institutionalised environments which are important for the socialisation process of the individual and through the contact with different kinds of media, such as television and the internet. This includes in principle the possibility to demonstrate a certain degree of self reflexivity with regards to one’s own experience and identity. Each individual develops in this way a multicultural identity, but some have the economic, cultural and/or psychological resources to develop more cosmopolitan identities which relate to and critically work through the categories of ‘self’ and ‘other’ and the particular and the universal. Consequently, questions about ethnic and national identity, multicultural identity, cultural and social skills, cosmopolitanism and ‘third culture’ are important.

The humanities and the social sciences have in the 20th century and particularly post-1980 experienced what has become known as the linguistic turn, that is a general acceptance of the fact that language does not simply mirror society, but plays a constitutive role in the social practice by structuring experiences of reality, identities, ideologies and politics. Therefore, the linguistic dimension is both a natural and necessary element in any general cultural studies program. In this respect Cultural Encounters is fortunate to have people skilled in discourse analysis, conversation analysis, sociolinguistics and cultural linguistics, as well as in linguistic and cultural learning.

The attention to the linguistic, discursive dimension is reflected in different ways in the self reflexivity and in the program’s activities: Hence Cultural Encounters deals with questions pertaining to the relationship between discourse, knowledge, power and hegemony and draws on different discursive theories and methods: critical discourse analysis, discourse theory etc. Furthermore, it deals with issues of language and social reality (linguistic relativity) and the significance of language for the acquiring of experience, identity and opportunity for both individuals and groups. Multilingualism and code-switching are common throughout the world and gain further strength through globalisation, while English acquires still higher status as the international language of communication. Hence to work with issues of multiculturalism and intercultural communication entails in many cases paying close attention to phenomena such as multilingualism and bilingual education as well as linguistic imperialism and linguistic human rights.

Cultural Encounters’ location in Denmark is also reflected in the program’s activities, even if foreigners unable to read Danish will probably not work with this particular aspect. It is an integral part of the program to work both with ‘the world in Denmark’ and ‘Denmark in the world’. The first part deals with questions of the cultural landscape in Denmark: all kinds of cultural influences, cultural exchanges, cultural imports, immigration, in other words the particular shape which the organisation of diversity takes in Denmark. The second part deals among other things with Denmark and national identity and the relationship with the world outside Denmark, perceptions of ‘self’ and ‘other’ and the particular perspectives on the global development which operate in Denmark. One particular area where these two parts come together is in Denmark’s relationship with refugees and migrants as well as their countries of origin, including the knowledge – or lack of knowledge – about the social and cultural preconditions, skills and contacts the refugees and migrants have.

One particularly important general aspect of the program is the cultural and social reflexivity in all phases of the research process. The study of the process of cultural encounters will automatically involve the student in the cross-cultural process and demand that the student considers her/his influence on the cultural dynamics and reflects on her/his own identity, own motivation and cognitive interests.