Conclusion

Plato's Caves ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 230-248
Author(s):  
Rebecca LeMoine
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Engagement

This chapter addresses how Plato’s portrayal of foreigners as gadflies can contribute to contemporary debates on cultural diversity. It begins by laying out four major reasons for supporting cultural diversity within the scholarship. While each of these reasons tells part of the story of why cultural diversity is valuable, the image of “Plato’s caves” helps to tell the part that is often overlooked. Simply put, Plato shows how cross-cultural engagement can help one cultivate Socratic wisdom, or awareness of one’s ignorance. This means that cross-cultural engagement is vital for democratic citizens, as democracy’s downfall into tyranny takes place when citizens develop intellectual hubris. Ultimately, Plato’s likening of cross-cultural engagement to the liberating sting of the Socratic “gadfly” reveals that the proper object of our aversion is not diversity but, rather, the fear of education that prevents us from appreciating the epistemological value of exposure to cultural diversity.

Cultural Diversity and Critical Dietetics: A Scholarship of Cross-Cultural Engagement

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-31
Author(s):  
Craig Alan Hassel
Keyword(s):  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Knowledge Systems ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Cultural Engagement ◽  
Cultural Perspectives ◽  
Culturally Different ◽  
Classical Chinese Medicine

As every human society has developed its own ways of knowing nature in order to survive, dietitians can benefit from an emerging scholarship of “cross-cultural engagement” (CCE).  CCE asks dietitians to move beyond the orthodoxy of their academic training by temporarily experiencing culturally diverse knowledge systems, inhabiting different background assumptions and presuppositions of how the world works.  Although this practice may seem de- stabilizing, it allows for significant outcomes not afforded by conventional dietetics scholarship.  First, culturally different knowledge systems including those of Africa, Ayurveda, classical Chinese medicine and indigenous societies become more empathetically understood, minimizing the distortions created when forcing conformity with biomedical paradigms.  This lessens potential for erroneous interpretations.  Second, implicit background assumptions of the dietetics profession become more apparent, enabling a more critical appraisal of its underlying epistemology.  Third, new forms of post-colonial intercultural inquiry can begin to develop over time as dietetics professionals develop capacities to reframe food and health issues from different cultural perspectives.  CCE scholarship offers dietetics professionals a means to more fully appreciate knowledge assets that lie beyond professionally maintained parameters of truth, and a practice for challenging and moving boundaries of credibility.

Plato's Caves

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca LeMoine
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Student Protests ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Cultural Engagement ◽  
Good Citizen ◽  
Love Of Learning ◽  
Canonical Texts ◽  
Insight Into

From student protests over the teaching of canonical texts such as Plato’s Republic to the use of images of classical Greek statues in white supremacist propaganda, the world of the ancient Greeks is deeply implicated in a heated contemporary debate about identity and diversity. Plato’s Caves defends the bold thesis that Plato was a friend of cultural diversity, contrary to many contemporary perceptions. It shows that, across Plato’s dialogues, foreigners play a role similar to that of Socrates: liberating citizens from intellectual bondage. Through close readings of four Platonic dialogues—Republic, Menexenus, Laws, and Phaedrus—the author recovers Plato’s unique insight into the promise, and risk, of cross-cultural engagement. Like the Socratic “gadfly” who stings the “horse” of Athens into wakefulness, foreigners can provoke citizens to self-reflection by exposing contradictions and confronting them with alternative ways of life. The painfulness of this experience explains why encounters with foreigners often give rise to tension and conflict. Yet it also reveals why cultural diversity is an essential good. Simply put, exposure to cultural diversity helps one develop the intellectual humility one needs to be a good citizen and global neighbor. By illuminating Plato’s epistemological argument for cultural diversity, Plato’s Caves challenges readers to examine themselves and to reinvigorate their love of learning.

The relationship between supportive campus environment and cultural diversity in enhancing students’ sense of belonging in higher education

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaw Owusu-Agyeman
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Hierarchical Regression ◽  
Cultural Interaction ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Campus Environment ◽  
The Relationship

Purpose The current study examines the moderating effect of supportive campus environment on the relationship between cultural diversity and students’ sense of belonging in a university in South Africa. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was designed and used to gather data from a sample of 2,026 registered undergraduate students. Using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26 software, the data gathered were analysed by way of hierarchical regression analysis. Findings Results of the hierarchical regression analysis revealed that supportive campus environment and cross-cultural interaction serve as strong predictors of students’ sense of belonging. Furthermore, a simple slope analysis showed that supportive campus environment enhance: the positive relationship between cross-cultural interaction and students’ sense of belonging; and the positive relationship between students’ interaction with diverse peers and their sense of belonging. Originality/value This study addresses important knowledge and practical gaps in the relationship between supportive campus environment, cultural diversity and students’ sense of belonging in higher education. The results further highlight the significance of institutional structures, policies and practices that aim at enhancing students’ sense of belonging and reducing possible feeling of otherlings that arise due to a lack of supportive campus structures.

scholarly journals Cultural diversity in unequal societies sustained through cross-cultural competence and identity valuation

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Bunce
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Competence ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Field Methods ◽  
Cultural Boundaries ◽  
Majority Culture ◽  
Common Strategy

AbstractIn much contemporary political discourse, valued cultural characteristics are threatened by interaction with culturally distinct others, such as immigrants or a hegemonic majority. Such interaction often fosters cross-cultural competence (CCC), the ability to interact successfully across cultural boundaries. However, most theories of cultural dynamics ignore CCC, making cultural diversity incompatible with mutually beneficial inter-group interaction, and contributing to fears of cultural loss. Here, interview-based field methods at an Amazonian ethnic boundary demonstrate the prevalence of CCC. These data motivate a new theoretical mathematical model, incorporating competing developmental paths to CCC and group identity valuation, that illuminates how a common strategy of disempowered minorities can counter-intuitively sustain cultural diversity within a single generation: Given strong group identity, minorities in a structurally unequal, integrative society can maintain their distinctive cultural norms by learning those of the majority. Furthermore, rather than a rejection of, or threat to, majority culture, the valuation of a distinctive minority identity can characterize CCC individuals committed to extensive, mutually beneficial engagement with the majority as members of an integrative, multi-cultural society.

Speech Acts and Cross-Cultural Pragmatics

2019 ◽  
pp. 223-238
Author(s):  
Clara Bauler
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Linguistically Diverse ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Diverse Learners ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Dominant Language ◽  
Pragmatic Awareness ◽  
Linguistically Diverse Learners ◽  
Cultural Pragmatics

Linguistically diverse learners tend to first relate the pragmatic ability they already possess in their first or more dominant language (L1) to act in the L2; as a result, miscommunication and misunderstandings are frequent and common. Teachers can help learners develop awareness about L2 pragmatic norms by making visible how speech acts are performed in the L2 community of speakers while providing opportunities to engage in role-playing or real interactions involving the accomplishment of selected speech acts. This chapter offers an overview of the importance of context in cross-cultural interactions, a brief survey of the theories of speech acts, and concrete pedagogical ideas for teachers to develop linguistically diverse learners' pragmatic awareness and ability while celebrating and promoting linguistic and cultural diversity.

Byron and Weltliteratur

2018 ◽  
pp. 19-39
Author(s):  
Nicholas Halmi
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Engagement ◽  
Narrative Poems ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The ageing Goethe was fascinated with Byron whom he called the greatest poetic talent. Though suspicious of Byron’s Philhellenism, Goethe found in Byron an openness to encounter non-English cultures, an attentiveness to national histories and in interest in the relationship of the individual to social life. Byron’s self-contextualising, self-historicising narrative poems constitute a parallel to Goethe’s own literary campaigns for cross-cultural engagement in the 1810s and 1820s and, despite Byron’s alienation from England, offer hope for the prospects of what Goethe was to call “world literature”.

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