Cross-cultural
Encyclopedia
cross-cultural may refer to
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 signification 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 (IACCP) 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
(also known as intercultural communication
) developed as a prominent application of the cross-cultural paradigm, in response to the pressures of globalization
which produced a demand for cross-cultural awareness training in various commercial sectors.
and the pedagogical movement known as Writing Across the Curriculum
, which gave educators in the social sciences greater influence in composition pedagogy. Popular examples included Ourselves Among Others: Cross-Cultural Readings for Writers (1988), edited by Carol J. Verburg, and Guidelines: A Cross Cultural Reading Writing Text (1990), ed. Ruth Spack.
dealing with works or writers associated with more than one culture. Practitioners of cross-cultural cultural studies often use the term cross-culturalism to describe discourses involving cultural interactivity, or to promote (or disparage) 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 (1983), 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 (1986). 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 (albeit one derived from the term culture
itself). 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
(in which the protagonist experiences culture shock after traveling to Los Angeles
from New York City
) 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.
)
shared by cross-cultural writers, artists, etc. Examples include primitivism
, exoticism
, as well as culturally specific forms such as Orientalism
, Japonisme.
Cross-Cultural narratives tend to incorporate elements such as:
.
- cross-cultural studiesCross-cultural studiesCross-cultural studies, sometimes called Holocultural Studies, is a specialization in anthropology and sister sciences that uses field data from many societies to examine the scope of human behavior and test hypotheses about human behavior and culture. Cross-cultural studies is the third form of...
, a comparative tendency in various fields of cultural analysis - cross-cultural communicationCross-cultural communicationCross-cultural communication is a field of study that looks at how people from differing cultural backgrounds communicate, in similar and different ways among themselves, and how they endeavour to communicate across cultures.- Origins :The Cold War, the United States economy...
, a field of study that looks at how people from differing culturalCultureCulture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
backgrounds communicate - any of various forms of interactivity between members of disparate cultural groups (see also cross-cultural communicationCross-cultural communicationCross-cultural communication is a field of study that looks at how people from differing cultural backgrounds communicate, in similar and different ways among themselves, and how they endeavour to communicate across cultures.- Origins :The Cold War, the United States economy...
, interculturalismInterculturalismInterculturalism is the philosophy of exchanges between cultural groups within a society, as used by nationalists of the Canadian province of Quebec. Quebeckers have historically been sensitive to any perceived degradation of their heritage...
, intercultural relationsIntercultural relationsIntercultural relations is a relatively new formal field of social science studies. It deals with the ability to get along with others, especially those from a different cultural background.Some of the main topics of study are:...
, hybridityHybridityHybridity refers in its most basic sense to mixture. The term originates from biology and was subsequently employed in linguistics and in racial theory in the nineteenth century. Its contemporary uses are scattered across numerous academic disciplines and is salient in popular culture...
, cosmopolitanismCosmopolitanismCosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...
, transculturationTransculturationTransculturation is a term coined by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz in 1940 to describe the phenomenon of merging and converging cultures....
) - the discourse concerning cultural interactivity, sometimes referred to as cross-culturalism (See also multiculturalismMulticulturalismMulticulturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
, cosmopolitanismCosmopolitanismCosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...
, transculturationTransculturationTransculturation is a term coined by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz in 1940 to describe the phenomenon of merging and converging cultures....
, cultural diversityCultural diversityCultural diversity is having different cultures respect each other's differences. It could also mean the variety of human societies or cultures in a specific region, or in the world as a whole...
)
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 YaleYALE
RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...
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 signification 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
Social sciences
Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...
. Among the more prominent examples are the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) 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 Communication
By the 1970s, the field of cross-cultural communicationCross-cultural communication
Cross-cultural communication is a field of study that looks at how people from differing cultural backgrounds communicate, in similar and different ways among themselves, and how they endeavour to communicate across cultures.- Origins :The Cold War, the United States economy...
(also known as intercultural communication
Intercultural communication
Intercultural communication is a form of global communication. It is used to describe the wide range of communication problems that naturally appear within an organization made up of individuals from different religious, social, ethnic, and educational backgrounds. Intercultural communication is...
) developed as a prominent application of the cross-cultural paradigm, in response to the pressures of globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
which produced a demand for cross-cultural awareness training in various commercial sectors.
Cross-Cultural Pedagogies
The appearance of the term "cross-cultural" in the titles of a number of college readers and writing textbooks beginning in the late 1980s can be attributed to a convergence of academic multiculturalismMulticulturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
and the pedagogical movement known as Writing Across the Curriculum
Writing Across the Curriculum
The Writing Across the Curriculum movement is a subfield of writing studies and composition studies that asserts students acquire proficiency in writing through instruction and practice in a variety of courses and fields...
, which gave educators in the social sciences greater influence in composition pedagogy. Popular examples included Ourselves Among Others: Cross-Cultural Readings for Writers (1988), edited by Carol J. Verburg, and Guidelines: A Cross Cultural Reading Writing Text (1990), ed. Ruth Spack.
Cross-Cultural Cultural Studies
Cross-cultural cultural studies is an adaptation of the term cross-cultural to describe a branch of literary and cultural studiesCultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...
dealing with works or writers associated with more than one culture. Practitioners of cross-cultural cultural studies often use the term cross-culturalism to describe discourses involving cultural interactivity, or to promote (or disparage) various forms of cultural interactivity.
Cross-culturalism is nearly synonymous with transculturation
Transculturation
Transculturation is a term coined by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz in 1940 to describe the phenomenon of merging and converging cultures....
, a term coined by Cuban writer Fernando Ortiz
Fernando Ortiz
Fernando Ortiz Fernández was a Cuban essayist, ethnomusicologist and scholar of Afro-Cuban culture. Ortiz was a prolific polymath dedicated to exploring, recording, and understanding all aspects of indigenous Cuban culture...
in the 1940s to describe processes of cultural hybridity
Hybridity
Hybridity refers in its most basic sense to mixture. The term originates from biology and was subsequently employed in linguistics and in racial theory in the nineteenth century. Its contemporary uses are scattered across numerous academic disciplines and is salient in popular culture...
in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
. 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
Wilson Harris
Sir Theodore Wilson Harris is a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but has since become a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging.Wilson Harris was born in New Amsterdam in what was then...
, who wrote in The Womb of Space (1983), that "cultural heterogeneity or cross-cultural capacity" gives an "evolutionary thrust" to the imagination.
Anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
exerted a strong influence on the development of cross-culturalism in literary and cultural studies. French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has been called, along with James George Frazer, the "father of modern anthropology"....
was a key figure in the development of structuralism
Structuralism
Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...
and its successor, post-structuralism
Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
. Cross-influences between anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
and literary/cultural studies in the 1980s were evident in works like James Clifford
James Clifford
James Clifford is an historian and Professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Clifford and Hayden White were among the first faculty directly appointed to the History of Consciousness Ph.D. program in 1978, which was originally the only...
and George Marcus
George Marcus
George Marcus is an American anthropologist, founder of the journal and editor of the series.-Biography:Marcus served as the Joseph D. Jamail Professor at Rice University, where he chaired the anthropology department for 25 years...
's collection, Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (1986). Harvard anthropologist Clifford Geertz
Clifford Geertz
Clifford James Geertz was an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology, and who was considered "for three decades...the single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States." He served until...
was cited as an influence on literary critics like Stephen Greenblatt
Stephen Greenblatt
Stephen Jay Greenblatt is a literary critic, theorist and scholar.Greenblatt is regarded by many as one of the founders of New Historicism, a set of critical practices that he often refers to as "cultural poetics"; his works have been influential since the early 1980s when he introduced the term...
, while other literary/cultural scholars turned to works by Victor Turner
Victor Turner
Victor Witter Turner was a British cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals and rites of passage...
and Mary Douglas
Mary Douglas
Dame Mary Douglas, DBE, FBA was a British anthropologist, known for her writings on human culture and symbolism....
.
Like multiculturalism, cross-culturalism is sometimes construed as ideological, in that it advocates values such as those associated with transculturation
Transculturation
Transculturation is a term coined by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz in 1940 to describe the phenomenon of merging and converging cultures....
, transnationalism
Transnationalism
Transnationalism is a social movement and scholarly research agenda grown out of the heightened interconnectivity between people and the receding economic and social significance of boundaries among nation states....
, cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...
, interculturalism
Interculturalism
Interculturalism is the philosophy of exchanges between cultural groups within a society, as used by nationalists of the Canadian province of Quebec. Quebeckers have historically been sensitive to any perceived degradation of their heritage...
, and globalism
Globalism
Globalism can have at least two different and opposing meanings. One meaning is the attitude or policy of placing the interests of the entire world above those of individual nations...
. 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
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
. Whereas multiculturalism
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
deals with cultural diversity
Cultural diversity
Cultural diversity is having different cultures respect each other's differences. It could also mean the variety of human societies or cultures in a specific region, or in the world as a whole...
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
International
----International mostly means something that involves more than one country. The term international as a word means involvement of, interaction between or encompassing more than one nation, or generally beyond national boundaries...
. The cross-cultural can also be said to incorporate the colonial
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
and the postcolonial, since colonialism
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
is by definition a form of cross-culturalism. Travel literature
Travel literature
Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
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 (albeit one derived from the term culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
itself). 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
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution . In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in...
's Democracy in America
Democracy in America
De la démocratie en Amérique is a classic French text by Alexis de Tocqueville. A "literal" translation of its title is Of Democracy in America, but the usual translation of the title is simply Democracy in America...
or even Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
's Annie Hall
Annie Hall
Annie Hall is a 1977 American romantic comedy directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay co-written with Marshall Brickman and co-starring Diane Keaton. One of Allen's most popular and most honored films, it won four Academy Awards including Best Picture...
(in which the protagonist experiences culture shock after traveling to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
from New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
) 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 writers (autobiography, fiction, poetry)
- Meena AlexanderMeena AlexanderMeena Alexander is an internationally acclaimed poet, scholar, and writer. Born in Allahabad, India, and raised in India and Sudan, Alexander lives and works in New York City, where she is Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College in the and at the CUNY Graduate Center in the...
(IndiaIndiaIndia , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, SudanSudanSudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
, EnglandEnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
) - Elvia ArdalaniElvia ArdalaniElvia Ardalani or Elvia García Ardalani, born on June 4, 1963 in Heroica Matamoros Tamaulipas, Mexico, is a Mexican writer, poet, and storyteller...
(MexicoMexicoThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, IranIranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
) - Aimé CésaireAimé CésaireAimé Fernand David Césaire was a French poet, author and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the négritude movement in Francophone literature".-Student, educator, and poet:...
(MartiniqueMartiniqueMartinique is an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, with a land area of . Like Guadeloupe, it is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. To the northwest lies Dominica, to the south St Lucia, and to the southeast Barbados...
, FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
) - Charles EastmanCharles EastmanCharles Alexander Eastman was a Native American physician, writer, national lecturer, and reformer. He was of Santee Sioux and Anglo-American ancestry...
(SiouxSiouxThe Sioux are Native American and First Nations people in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many language dialects...
, United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
) - Olaudah EquianoOlaudah EquianoOlaudah Equiano also known as Gustavus Vassa, was a prominent African involved in the British movement towards the abolition of the slave trade. His autobiography depicted the horrors of slavery and helped influence British lawmakers to abolish the slave trade through the Slave Trade Act of 1807...
(IgboIgbo peopleIgbo people, also referred to as the Ibo, Ebo, Eboans or Heebo are an ethnic group living chiefly in southeastern Nigeria. They speak Igbo, which includes various Igboid languages and dialects; today, a majority of them speak English alongside Igbo as a result of British colonialism...
, United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, EnglandEnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
) - Lafcadio HearnLafcadio HearnPatrick Lafcadio Hearn , known also by the Japanese name , was an international writer, known best for his books about Japan, especially his collections of Japanese legends and ghost stories, such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things...
(GreeceGreeceGreece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, IrelandIrelandIreland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, JapanJapanJapan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
) - Joseph HecoJoseph HecoJoseph Heco was the first Japanese person to be naturalized as a United States citizen and the first to publish a Japanese language newspaper.-Early years:...
(Japan, United States) - Rudyard KiplingRudyard KiplingJoseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
(India, England, United States of America) - Jhumpa LahiriJhumpa LahiriJhumpa Lahiri is a Bengali American author. Lahiri's debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies , won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and her first novel, The Namesake , was adapted into the popular film of the same name. She was born Nilanjana Sudeshna, which she says are both...
(England, United States, India) - Anna LeonowensAnna LeonowensAnna Leonowens was an English travel writer, educator, and social activist. She worked in Siam from 1862 to 1868, where she taught the wives and children of Mongkut, king of Siam. She also co-founded the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design...
(India, England, Thailand, Nova Scotia) - Yone NoguchiYone NoguchiYone Noguchi, or Yonejirō Noguchi, born 野口 米次郎 / Noguchi Yonejirō , was an influential Japanese writer of poetry, fiction, essays, and literary criticism in both English and Japanese. He was the father of the sculptor Isamu Noguchi.-Early life:Noguchi was born in the town of Tsushima, near Nagoya...
(Japan, United States) - Marco PoloMarco PoloMarco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...
(Italy, China) - Victor SegalenVictor SegalenVictor Segalen was a French naval doctor, ethnographer, archeologist, writer, poet, explorer, art-theorist, linguist and literary critic....
(France, China)
Cross-cultural films
- The African Queen
- Anna and the KingAnna and the KingAnna and the King is a 1999 biographical drama film loosely based on Anna and the King of Siam, the story of Anna Leonowens, who was an English schoolteacher in Siam, now Thailand, in the 19th century...
- Babel
- The King and IThe King and IThe King and I is a stage musical, the fifth by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. The work is based on the 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon and derives from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, who became governess to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in...
- The Last SamuraiThe Last SamuraiThe Last Samurai is a 2003 American epic drama film directed and co-produced by Edward Zwick, who also co-wrote the screenplay based on a story by John Logan. The film was inspired by a project developed by writer and director Vincent Ward, who had previously filmed the movie in 1990, starring...
- The Man Who Would Be King (film)The Man Who Would Be King (film)The Man Who Would Be King is a 1975 film adapted from the Rudyard Kipling short story of the same title. It was adapted and directed by John Huston and starred Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Saeed Jaffrey, and Christopher Plummer as Kipling .The film follows two rogue ex-non-commissioned officers of...
- The Namesake (film)The Namesake (film)The Namesake is a 2006 film which was released in the United States on March 9, 2007, following screenings at film festivals in Toronto and New York City. It was directed by Mira Nair and is based upon the novel of the same name by Jhumpa Lahiri, who appeared in the movie. Sooni Taraporevala...
- Princess Tam TamPrincess Tam TamPrincesse Tam-Tam is a 1935 black-and-white film which starred Josephine Baker as a Tunisian local girl who is introduced to Parisian high society. Baker sings two songs in the film.- Plot :...
- Merry Christmas, Mr. LawrenceMerry Christmas, Mr. LawrenceMerry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is a 1983 film directed by Nagisa Oshima, produced by Jeremy Thomas and starring Jack Thompson, David Bowie, Tom Conti, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Yuya Uchida, and Takeshi Kitano.It was written by Oshima and Paul Mayersberg and based on Laurens van der Post's experiences...
- Jodhaa Akbar
- Mammoth
- OutsourcedOutsourcedOutsourced is a romantic comedy film, directed by John Jeffcoat, released in 2006.-Plot:When Todd Anderson's job and entire department are outsourced, he reluctantly travels to India to train his replacement...
Cross-cultural theatre
(note that currently the term "intercultural theatre" is preferred to "cross-cultural theatre" (see also Intercultural theatreIntercultural theatre
Intercultural theater also known as Cross-cultural theatre may transcend time, while mixing and matching cultures or subcultures.-Imitational Theatre:...
)
Plays/theatre pieces
- David BelascoDavid BelascoDavid Belasco was an American theatrical producer, impresario, director and playwright.-Biography:Born in San Francisco, California, where his Sephardic Jewish parents had moved from London, England, during the Gold Rush, he began working in a San Francisco theatre doing a variety of routine jobs,...
, Madame Butterfly - Gilbert and SullivanGilbert and SullivanGilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
, The MikadoThe MikadoThe Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations... - Tony KushnerTony KushnerAnthony Robert "Tony" Kushner is an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, and co-authored with Eric Roth the screenplay for the 2005 film, Munich.-Life and career:Kushner was born...
, Homebody/Kabul - Tom StoppardTom StoppardSir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
, Indian Ink - Miss SaigonMiss SaigonMiss Saigon is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, with lyrics by Boublil and Richard Maltby, Jr.. It is based on Giacomo Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly, and similarly tells the tragic tale of a doomed romance involving an Asian woman abandoned by her American lover...
- Peter Brook, The Mahabharata
Companies
- International Centre for Theatre ResearchInternational Centre for Theatre ResearchThe International Centre for Theatre Research sometimes also known as The International Centre for Theatre Creation was founded in 1970 by Peter Brook and Micheline Rozan. It is often abbreviated to the acronym CIRT as in French the group is called the Centre International de Recherche Théâtrale...
- The Bridge - Stage of the Arts
- TheatreWorks (Singapore)TheatreWorks (Singapore)TheatreWorks is an independent, non-profit theatre company in Singapore. Its artistic director is Ong Keng Sen. Its Managing Director is Tay Tong.-History:TheatreWorks Ltd was established in 1985...
Characteristics of cross-cultural narratives
Cross-Cultural narrative forms may be described in terms of common characteristics or tropesTrope (literature)
A literary trope is the usage of figurative language in literature, or a figure of speech in which words are used in a sense different from their literal meaning...
shared by cross-cultural writers, artists, etc. Examples include primitivism
Primitivism
Primitivism is a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics...
, exoticism
Exoticism
Exoticism is a trend in art and design, influenced by some ethnic groups or civilizations since the late 19th-century. In music exoticism is a genre in which the rhythms, melodies, or instrumentation are designed to evoke the atmosphere of far-off lands or ancient times Exoticism (from 'exotic')...
, as well as culturally specific forms such as Orientalism
Orientalism
Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...
, Japonisme.
Cross-Cultural narratives tend to incorporate elements such as:
- ethnographicEthnographyEthnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
description - travel writingTravel writingTravel writing is a genre that has, as its focus, accounts of real or imaginary places. The genre encompasses a number of styles that may range from the documentary to the evocative, from literary to journalistic, and from the humorous to the serious....
- culture shockCulture shockCulture shock is the anxiety, feelings of frustration, alienation and anger that may occur when a person is emplaced in a new culture.One of the most common causes of culture shock involves individuals in a foreign country. Culture shock can be described as consisting of one or more distinct phases...
- acculturationAcculturationAcculturation explains the process of cultural and psychological change that results following meeting between cultures. The effects of acculturation can be seen at multiple levels in both interacting cultures. At the group level, acculturation often results in changes to culture, customs, and...
or resistance to acculturation - social obstacles such as discriminationDiscriminationDiscrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be...
, racismRacismRacism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
, prejudicePrejudicePrejudice is making a judgment or assumption about someone or something before having enough knowledge to be able to do so with guaranteed accuracy, or "judging a book by its cover"...
, stereotypeStereotypeA stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
s, linguistic difficulties, linguicismLinguicismLinguicism or linguistic discrimination is a form of prejudice, an "-ism" along the lines of racism, ageism or sexism. Broadly defined, it involves an individual making judgments about another's wealth, education, social status, character, and/or other traits based on choice and use of language.The... - overcoming of social obstacles through acculturationAcculturationAcculturation explains the process of cultural and psychological change that results following meeting between cultures. The effects of acculturation can be seen at multiple levels in both interacting cultures. At the group level, acculturation often results in changes to culture, customs, and...
, tricksterTricksterIn mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior. It is suggested by Hansen that the term "Trickster" was probably first used in this...
ism, kindnessKindnessKindness is the act or the state of being kind, being marked by good and charitable behaviour, pleasant disposition, and concern for others. It is known as a virtue, and recognized as a value in many cultures and religions ....
, luckLuckLuck or fortuity is good fortune which occurs beyond one's control, without regard to one's will, intention, or desired result. There are at least two senses people usually mean when they use the term, the prescriptive sense and the descriptive sense...
, hard work, etc. - return home (often accompanied by further culture shockCulture shockCulture shock is the anxiety, feelings of frustration, alienation and anger that may occur when a person is emplaced in a new culture.One of the most common causes of culture shock involves individuals in a foreign country. Culture shock can be described as consisting of one or more distinct phases...
)
Cross-cultural visual artists
- Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita (Japan, France)
- Paul GauguinPaul GauguinEugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
(France, Tahiti) - Isamu NoguchiIsamu Noguchiwas a prominent Japanese American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known for his sculpture and public works, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several mass-produced lamps and furniture pieces,...
(United States, Japan, France, India)
Cross-cultural music
Music has long been a central medium for cross-cultural exchange. The cross-cultural study of music is referred to as ethnomusicologyEthnomusicology
Ethnomusicology is defined as "the study of social and cultural aspects of music and dance in local and global contexts."Coined by the musician Jaap Kunst from the Greek words ἔθνος ethnos and μουσική mousike , it is often considered the anthropology or ethnography of music...
.
See also
External links
- Cross-cultural experience narratives compiled by the Glimpse Foundation
- Cross-Cultural Study: Some Considerations
- Transtext(e)sTranscultures trilingual (English, Chinese, French) journal of the Institute for Transtextual and Transcultural Studies, University of Lyon, France.
- Comparing Nigerians and Canadians: Insights from Social Survey Research, 1990-2005
- Modes and models for transcending cultural differences, Journal of Research in International Education, Van Hook, S.R. 2011