What is interculturality?

A practical approach to understanding seemingly elusive concepts is to cut them up into their constituent parts. We can apply the same trick to ‘interculturality’ and explore ‘inter’ and ‘culture’. Let’s start with the second term and do an experiment.

About ‘culture’

Stop reading, close your eyes for a minute and think of the first ideas, words and images that come to your mind when you are asked to think about ‘culture’. A typical ‘Western’ mind (forgive the generalization) tends to take one of two paths. Firstly, perhaps you will think of the last opera or theatre performance you saw, or an exhibition or concert that touched you. Rarely do people think of such mundane activities such as washing the dishes or even sitting and reading a trainer’s handbook. As Ralph Linton puts it, culture

refers to the total way of life of any society, not simply to those parts which the society regards as higher or more desirable. Thus culture, when applied to our own way of life, has nothing to do with playing the piano or reading Browning. For the social scientist such activities are simply elements within the totality of our culture. This totality also includes such mundane activities as washing dishes or driving an automobile, and for the purpose of cultural studies these stand quite on par with the ‘finer things of life’.^[1]

Moreover, these manifestations of culture, daily or not, are not fixed in an immutable form. On the contrary, they change, they are transformed and they evolve during their transmission, according to the generations and the exchanges between cultures. The need to give a logical meaning to our cultural practices according to our context pushes us to reinterpret and recode them constantly. This can be seen, for example, in religious practices. If paying homage to a god can be central to the cultural practices of a group, the way of doing so, as well as the reasons, still depend on the individuals and their relationship to this practice.

Secondly, when you think of ‘a culture’, images could emerge of a not too close, not too distant cultural group, usually a national group, centred on some key distinguishing features. For example, I might think of ‘the Japanese’ because yesterday I saw The Last Samurai and, in my mind, I would have an image of Japanese people in rather traditional clothes. We rarely think of a group that we are part of in this instance, and we rarely think of a group of people of great diversity – of seniors, of non-binary people, accountants or adherents of extreme right parties – although these would be as valid for ‘cultural groups’ as ‘the Japanese’.^[2] Even so, can ‘culture’ be equated with a group of people? The truth is, for ‘culture’ to develop, we do need groups of people: there is no solitary culture developed by one single person. However, even using the word ‘culture’ to refer to a particular group will always be a simplification: any group of people will be heterogeneous, each integrating a special mix of different cultural values, norms, traits and behaviours in slightly different ways. Reflect on yourself: how many different types of cultures are you connected to?

Now that this first overview of culture is completed, we can tackle the second part of the word ‘intercultural’.

About ‘inter’

If culture is a constantly changing set of values, norms and practices, if ‘cultures’ are not fixed and statically definable sets of people, what does the ‘inter’ or ‘between’ refer to? How can we compare or encounter entities that are constantly changing? This is the interesting part: the ‘inter’ constructs the reality of cultures, either by rigidifying them or by engaging in a dynamic and constructive exchange.

Indeed, we can be quite oblivious to the idea of culture until the moment we actually meet someone from another culture. This does not mean that we would not be cultural beings, we would still be motivated by cultural values and display cultural behaviour. However, it is through an encounter that a fluid conception of culture may take a more static shape. As Dietz proposes: ‘The encounter between individuals from two different cultures generates a mutual recourse to reciprocal stereotypes as a reaction to cultural ambiguities’.^[3]

That said, static rigidity is not the only possible outcome of intercultural encounters. The ‘awkward, unequal, unstable and creative qualities of interconnection across difference’^[4] can also result in new combinations, meanings, hopefully even ‘new arrangements of culture and power’.^[5] The mission, then, is to see how an ‘intercultural’ moment can be an occasion for fruitful new meanings – rather than the rigidification of static conceptions – and an opportunity for new arrangements and the promotion of an exchange, a co-construction that is not crushed by conscious or unconscious power dynamics. How can cultural heritage become an ally or a catalyst in this mission?

Interculturality as a turning point overcoming the illusion of our cultural neutrality

The intercultural approach that we propose starts with accepting a certain intercultural humility: becoming aware that our perception is not as objective as we may have believed, and also that we are subject to a range of cognitive and social biases which influence the way we contemplate others. We see interculturality as a way to fight against the stereotyping process – not to eradicate it but to de-rigidify it. Being aware of our own stereotyping processes allows us to limit ethnocentrism.

Interculturality as a desire to give more visibility to cultural groups with less power

If the promotion of the heritage of minorities is intended to be a tool for the promotion of diversity – notably at the level of international political bodies – the mere recognition of diversity is not enough to create a common ground, because it maintains an identity-based, even reified, conception of heritage. Because of this, the first attempts to build this common heritage were based on the principle that this cultural heritage had to go through a phase of de-appropriation, including in its public dimension. Because of the power dynamics at stake, this was done mainly using a national geopolitical model (e.g. French, Polish heritage), which was to the detriment of minorities, who only played a minor role in the decision-making process, as well as in the processes of representation within this common heritage.

The intersectional approach to culture reveals a valorization of certain cultural practices or groups at the expense of others. This hierarchization of culture according to the prism of the so-called ‘dominant culture’ is notably visible through the choices of valorization of cultural heritage. For example, if we refer to the UNESCO List of World Heritage,^[6] 47% of the world heritage validated by the institution is located in Europe/North America, 24% in Asia, and only 8.5% in Africa and 7.6% in the Arab States. Bearing in mind our previous reflection, this hierarchization is not only geographically based but also has effects on all areas of culture. This can be seen in everyday life, but also in the media. Ask yourself: In such and such a film, which practices are promoted? Which cultural groups are invisible?

Interculturality as readiness to hear the voices of minorities

There is a growing reconsideration of cultural heritage in a more intercultural way so as to give voice to those in the minority.^[7] As Rautenberg and Rojon argue:

The transformations of the conceptions of heritage opened by the new international conventions provide a context of transformation of the forms of communication. States no longer play the central and unifying role that was theirs, even if it is not theirs, even if one should not neglect the weight of the big cultural institutions, which remains important, particularly in the French case. The possibility of producing and disseminating images oneself, as well as of accessing resources and archives more easily have further accentuated the flows of cultural circulation and multiplied their uses.^[8]

We are also seeing more and more hybrid processes that involve institutions and people from minority groups in ways that co-construct the preservation and transmission of cultural heritages. In the case of museums, for example,^[9] we are moving away from a paradigm centred on ‘the collection’, that is from a model of the museum oriented to its own holdings to museums connected to communities (understood here as populations-publics-territories). Institutions must not only function in response to their audiences and meet their expectations, but also be anchored, that is, locally relevant, as heritage-based community services.

Here, we have the founding principles of the ‘community ecomuseum’, for which the museum is an instrument that can serve the community and help it to think and act on common problems: it serves social time to fill a political function. There is no distinction between professionals, researchers or the public insofar as everyone is considered an actor and contributes to the development process. This is just as much a question of enhancing the value of ‘heritage’ as it is of enhancing the lives of the people who are its bearers.