Intercultural Encounter

What is an Intercultural Encounter?

Intercultural or cross-cultural encounters have taken place throughout history in all parts of the world. They involve contact and interactions of various types, whether peaceful or violent, and between people from different backgrounds. These types include overseas students studying at college level in a country other than the place that they received their elementary and secondary education (Gill, 2007), business people employed in multinational corporations (Jameson, 2007), tourists engaging in short-term stays in another culture (Mclntosh and Zahra, 2007) and military personnel assigned as advisers in other countries (Winslow and Soeters, 2006). Research on cultural encounters investigates questions concerning cultural translations, continuity and change, the meaning of borders, authenticity, hybridity and transcultural processes.

Chapter 3 40 The term “cultural encounter” is used to refer to social relations, places and objects. The new experience, whether drastically new or very commonplace, that a newcomer meets in the new environment brings new learning and growth. And the ability to face challenges and acquire new knowledge and competence is one of the characteristics of the human mind. It contains profound and all-encompassing challenges for newcomers as it might change their previous assumptions and cognitions about such things as languages and social customs. They are separated from their accustomed habits and they experience a series of psychological crises caused by their lack of understanding of the symbols and activities in the new environment. Indeed, an encounter with the new culture brings about culture shock (Furnham, 2012) and pushes them to learn the new cultural system. Learning activities are the very essence of the acculturation (Kim, 2008) or “re-socialisation” process (Seweryn, 2007) they will need to undergo in order to comprehend the native cultural practices across a wide-ranging area. Therefore, it requires adjustment and learning, which seldom takes place without conflict. Intercultural encounters bring with them movement and change, whether as a result of tourism, migration, colonialism, or war. They challenge ideas about cultural homogeneity and the unchanging nature of traditions; at the same time, they are also indicators of change and innovation.

After a number of studies shifted the focus from psychopathology to moderate forms of psychological distress, where researchers went beyond mental health, researchers started to consider issues such as identity, values and acculturation strategies. The diversity of the studies gave rise to the research area of international education for the first time. After efforts to end the investigation without theories, there appeared theoretical models that were developed to guide research and account for the findings in a systematic and integrated way. Early theories tended to be more descriptive than explanatory and at a low level of conceptual sophistication (Ward et al, 2005). For instance, sojourner adjustment at that time was focused on the noxious aspects in the cross-cultural contact. From the clinical perspective to the dynamic nature of cross-cultural experience, the evolving theories assumed that it was the inabilities or weaknesses in individuals’ characters that were responsible for the failures of sojourners. Later, there emerged a model from a

Chapter 3 41 different perspective, which regarded the cross-cultural exposure as a learning experience (Zhou et al., 2008). It emphasised the preparation, orientation, and acquisition of culture-related skills. Besides the research into the experience of the intercultural interaction, another trend of investigation began to focus on the cultural issues among the cross-cultural encounters.

Intercultural or Cross-cultural Encounter?

The prefixes “inter-“ and “cross-“ have been applied frequently in the relevant research and are used interchangeably in the literature. Although they are not mutually exclusive, and, in a broader sense, these two terms could be interchanged, they do have different foci. There are subtle differences between the two prefixes. ‘On the one hand, the notion of “cross-cultural” originally stresses boundary crossing, differences and diversity; ‘intercultural’, on the other hand, ‘encompasses both domestic and international contexts and implies cultures interacting’ (Landreman, 2003).

Although the term “cross-cultural” has been used very often in the literature, “intercultural” is the more powerful term in the context of this study because it indicates deeper relations than “cross-cultural”. “Intercultural” emphasises a bidirectional relationship, with building and learning from one another; while a “cross-cultural” encounter happens when people reach across cultural boundaries, differences are understood and acknowledged, but a change might or might not take place. For these reasons, in this study, I prefer to use “intercultural” as the term to explore the deep interaction and communication between Chinese students and the local Christian community.

Culture in Intercultural Encounters

“Culture” as a term has been applied in various ways throughout different disciplines. One of the common understandings of “culture” as agreed by many anthropologists and major sociologists is that it is the way of life for a group of people. In the field of cross-cultural research, the most often cited definitions are from Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952) and

Chapter 3 42 Triandis (1977). According to Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952), culture ‘consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behaviour acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artefacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached value; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other as conditioning elements of further action.’ Triandis (1977), from the perspective of subjective culture, pointed out that culture is people’s response to the ‘man-made part of the environment, or to a group’s characteristic way of perceiving its social environment.’ In a given culture, a large number of everyday behaviours, personal traits, standards (e.g. of physical beauty, success, intelligence), and recommended norms for morality are regarded as proper, good or correct. Cultural differences due to the complex and nuanced nature of culture thus become more evident with the increasing levels of globalisation (Castles, 2002).

In the analysis of cross-cultural contact, culture could be conceptualised in two ways: 1) the unfamiliar people with whom an individual interacts, or 2) as a more abstract concept, focusing on people’s characteristic behaviour, ideas, and values (Brinlis, 1981). The former definition means that people engaged in cross-cultural contact would meet people of different colour, language, heritage, or from a different government system. The latter definition is also helpful to understand intercultural contact as it attempts to see how the culture affects the behaviour of its members and how a different culture affects intercultural interactions.

In terms of identifying a specific meaning of culture for international students (it is reviewed in Section 3.4), the problem remains unsolved, no matter which approach is taken to operationalise the terms “intercultural” and “culture” for research purposes. There is not a universally satisfactory way to define it, and each approach contains drawbacks. Bennett and Bennett (1994) suggested, ‘it is not an accident that most of the literature on the cultural differences on campuses glosses over precise definitions of its subjects.’ The concept of “culture” is conceptualised according to students’ nationalities in the majority of

Chapter 3 43 studies on intercultural contact in higher education, including Bird and Holmes (2005), Gareis (2002) and Kashima and Loh (2006). It implies that intercultural contact refers to the contact between students of different nationalities. This passport approach is efficient but ignores the reality of cultural diversity within and outside the culture. This thesis applies the passport approach, as there is no comparison within the Chinese culture or within British culture.