Cross-cultural
Cross-cultural may refer to
- cross-cultural studies, a comparative tendency in various fields of cultural analysis
- cross-cultural communication, a field of study that looks at how people from differing cultural backgrounds communicate
- any of various forms of interactivity between members of disparate cultural groups
- the discourse concerning cultural interactivity, sometimes referred to as cross-culturalism
Cross-cultural communication
Cultural communication differences can be identified by 8 different criteria:
- when to talk;
- what to say;
- pacing and pausing;
- the art of listening;
- intonation;
- what is conventional and what is not in a language;
- degree of indirectness; and
- cohesion and coherence.
Cross-cultural pedagogies
Cross-cultural studies
Cross-cultural studies is an adaptation of the term cross-cultural to describe a branch of literary and cultural studies dealing with works or writers associated with more than one culture. Practitioners of cross-cultural studies often use the term cross-culturalism to describe discourses involving cultural interactivity, or to promote various forms of cultural interactivity.Cross-culturalism is nearly synonymous with transculturation, a term coined by Cuban writer Fernando Ortiz in the 1940s to describe processes of cultural hybridity in Latin America. However, there are certain differences of emphasis reflecting the social science derivation of cross-culturalism.
The term "cross-culturalism" became prevalent in cultural studies in the late 1980s and 1990s. An early proponent of the term was the Guyanese writer Wilson Harris, who wrote in The Womb of Space, that "cultural heterogeneity or cross-cultural capacity" gives an "evolutionary thrust" to the imagination.
Anthropology exerted a strong influence on the development of cross-culturalism in literary and cultural studies. French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss was a key figure in the development of structuralism and its successor, post-structuralism. Cross-influences between anthropology and literary/cultural studies in the 1980s were evident in works like James Clifford and George Marcus's collection, Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Harvard anthropologist Clifford Geertz was cited as an influence on literary critics like Stephen Greenblatt, while other literary/cultural scholars turned to works by Victor Turner and Mary Douglas.
Like multiculturalism, cross-culturalism is sometimes construed as ideological, in that it advocates values such as those associated with transculturation, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, interculturalism, and globalism. Nevertheless, cross-culturalism is a fundamentally neutral term, in that favorable portrayal of other cultures or the processes of cultural mixing are not essential to the categorization of a work or writer as cross-cultural.
Cross-culturalism is distinct from multiculturalism. Whereas multiculturalism deals with cultural diversity within a particular nation or social group, cross-culturalism is concerned with exchange beyond the boundaries of the nation or cultural group.
Cross-culturalism in literary and cultural studies is a useful rubric for works, writers and artists that do not fit within a single cultural tradition. To the extent that cultures are national, the cross-cultural may be considered as overlapping the transnational. The cross-cultural can also be said to incorporate the colonial and the postcolonial, since colonialism is by definition a form of cross-culturalism. Travel literature also makes up a substantial component of cross-cultural literature. Of the various terms, "cross-culturalism" is the most inclusive, since it is free of transnationalism's dependence on the nation-state and colonialism/postcolonialism's restriction to colonized or formerly-colonized regions. This inclusiveness leads to certain definitional ambiguity. In practice, "cross-cultural" is usually applied only to situations involving significant cultural divergence. Thus, the term is not usually applied in cases involving crossing between European nations, or between Europe and the United States. However, there is no clear reason why, for example, Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America or even Woody Allen's Annie Hall could not be considered cross-cultural works.
Although disagreement over what constitutes a "significant" cultural divergence creates difficulties of categorization, "cross-cultural" is nevertheless useful in identifying writers, artists, works, etc., who may otherwise tend to fall between the cracks of various national cultures.
Cross-cultural studies in the social sciences
The term "cross-cultural" emerged in the social sciences in the 1930s, largely as a result of the Cross-Cultural Survey undertaken by George Peter Murdock, a Yale anthropologist. Initially referring to comparative studies based on statistical compilations of cultural data, the term gradually acquired a secondary sense of cultural interactivity. The comparative sense is implied in phrases such as "a cross-cultural perspective," "cross-cultural differences," "a cross-cultural study of..." and so forth, while the interactive sense may be found in works like Attitudes and Adjustment in Cross-Cultural Contact: Recent Studies of Foreign Students, a 1956 issue of The Journal of Social Issues.Usage of "cross-cultural" was for many decades restricted mainly to the social sciences. Among the more prominent examples are the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, established in 1972 "to further the study of the role of cultural factors in shaping human behavior," and its associated Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, which aims to provide an interdisciplinary discussion of the effects of cultural differences.
Cross-cultural films
- The African Queen
- Anna and the King
- Babel
- Bride and Prejudice
- Jodhaa Akbar
- Mammoth
- Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
- The King and I
- The Last Samurai
- The Man Who Would Be King
- The Namesake
- Outsourced
- Princess Tam Tam
Cross-cultural theatre
Companies
- International Centre for Theatre Research
- The Bridge Stage of the Arts
- TheatreWorks
- Darpana Academy of Performing Arts
Plays and theatre pieces
- Homebody/Kabul by Tony Kushner
- Indian Ink by Tom Stoppard
- Madame Butterfly by David Belasco
- Miss Saigon
- The Mahabharata by Peter Brook
- The Mikado, a comic opera in two acts by Gilbert and Sullivan
Characteristics of cross-cultural narratives
Cross-cultural narratives tend to incorporate elements such as:
- acculturation or resistance to acculturation
- culture shock
- ethnographic description
- overcoming of social obstacles through acculturation, tricksterism, kindness, luck, hard work, etc.
- return home
- social obstacles such as discrimination, racism, prejudice, stereotypes, linguistic difficulties, linguicism
- travel writing
Cross-cultural music
Cross-cultural theatre directors
- Peter Brook
Cross-cultural visual artists
- Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita
- Paul Gauguin
- Isamu Noguchi
Cross-cultural writers (autobiography, fiction, poetry)
- Meena Alexander
- Elvia Ardalani
- Ruth Benedict
- Aimé Césaire
- Charles Eastman
- Olaudah Equiano
- Lafcadio Hearn
- Joseph Heco
- Rudyard Kipling
- Jhumpa Lahiri
- Anna Leonowens
- Yone Noguchi
- Marco Polo
- Victor Segalen
- Khal Torabully.