Cross-Cultural Scenario in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing and Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Dr. Sudhir Nikam ◽  
Mr. Kamble Rajiv Bhimrao
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Indian Literature ◽  
Ethnic Conflicts ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Native Culture ◽  
Social Opportunities

There is hardly a country in this industrialized world today, where one can find an ethnically homogenous population. The aftermath of colonialism, the creation of refugees- often the result of ethnic conflicts- and the movement of people in search of greater economic, political or social opportunities have contributed to the worldwide mix of people. Canada and India are the countries affected by the growing diversity. However this diversity has different facets in both the countries. In the literary world Canada, Multiculturalism is the main theme of writing and in India, presentation of cultural diversity is yet at the beginning stage. This statement has to be tasted on the fictional works of Margaret Atwood from Canada and Bharati Mukherjee from India. Both the writers are very unique in their writing and have trodden the different ways of using Cultural-diversity. Culture is an integral part of a human society and its nation. Then the question arises: what is culture? The Oxford English Dictionary defines culture as a “particular form or type of intellectual development in a society generated by its distinctive customs, achievements and outlook.” At the wide canvass, culture is taken as consolidating the way of life of an entire society and includes codes of manners, dress, language, rituals, social customs and folklore of a nation. Every country has a typical and distinctive culture of its own. However, when an independent country becomes a colony, the native culture goes under a change. This is the case with the countries like Kenya, Nigeria and India. When these countries came in contact with western culture, a process of change in culture was initiated, and this journey made the traditional culture of respective countries destroyed. While Indian literature had cross cultural encounters with the English studies, Canada has been undergoing a cultural metamorphosis with the mix of second races and people from all over the world.

scholarly journals Spaces of cross-cultural encounter

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Emma McNeill
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Q Methodology ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Cultural Encounter ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Cultural Interactions

<p>The landscape of cultural relations in Aotearoa is complex and entangled. While academics and policy makers imagine Aotearoa as a multicultural society, there is a lack of understanding of how cultural diversity is lived every day in Aotearoa.  There is an emerging literature on the geographies of encounter. This encourages us to address the historical predicament of how we are to live together in increasingly super diverse communities by considering the existing everyday negotiations of difference. This thesis contributes to that literature by undertaking a case study of Newtown, Wellington, in order to: 1) understand where Newtown residents and employees experience cross-cultural social interactions; and 2) what type of places help encourage positive cross-cultural interactions. Through this I explore how cross-cultural encounters and exchanges might be encouraged.  Q-methodology was used to investigate locations of cross-cultural social interactions, I conducted and analysed 23 Q-sorts with Newtown, Wellington residents and local employees. I argue that places of cross-cultural encounter take many forms. The identification of these places is closely linked to participants’ characteristics, such as socioeconomic position, and age. The participants in this study represent diverse Newtown. They have diverse socialising practices and identify a wide range of positive places for cross-cultural interactions. In conjunction with this people understand and experience encounters with cultural diversity differently. I argue that an encounter across cultural difference is not limited to an explicit interaction but can also be through the sharing of space and engagement in similar activities. I also argue for the importance of space in cross-cultural encounters; certain spatial and material qualities of spaces appear to animate cross-cultural social interaction.  This research argues that: engagement in cross-cultural interactions is often mediated by other identifiers, that everyday multiculturalism is demographically complex, and that the materiality and spatially of spaces is effectual in animating these interactions.</p>

scholarly journals Spaces of cross-cultural encounter

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Emma McNeill
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Q Methodology ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Cultural Encounter ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Cultural Interactions

<p>The landscape of cultural relations in Aotearoa is complex and entangled. While academics and policy makers imagine Aotearoa as a multicultural society, there is a lack of understanding of how cultural diversity is lived every day in Aotearoa.  There is an emerging literature on the geographies of encounter. This encourages us to address the historical predicament of how we are to live together in increasingly super diverse communities by considering the existing everyday negotiations of difference. This thesis contributes to that literature by undertaking a case study of Newtown, Wellington, in order to: 1) understand where Newtown residents and employees experience cross-cultural social interactions; and 2) what type of places help encourage positive cross-cultural interactions. Through this I explore how cross-cultural encounters and exchanges might be encouraged.  Q-methodology was used to investigate locations of cross-cultural social interactions, I conducted and analysed 23 Q-sorts with Newtown, Wellington residents and local employees. I argue that places of cross-cultural encounter take many forms. The identification of these places is closely linked to participants’ characteristics, such as socioeconomic position, and age. The participants in this study represent diverse Newtown. They have diverse socialising practices and identify a wide range of positive places for cross-cultural interactions. In conjunction with this people understand and experience encounters with cultural diversity differently. I argue that an encounter across cultural difference is not limited to an explicit interaction but can also be through the sharing of space and engagement in similar activities. I also argue for the importance of space in cross-cultural encounters; certain spatial and material qualities of spaces appear to animate cross-cultural social interaction.  This research argues that: engagement in cross-cultural interactions is often mediated by other identifiers, that everyday multiculturalism is demographically complex, and that the materiality and spatially of spaces is effectual in animating these interactions.</p>

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.

South Sea Tales

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Louis Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Robert Louis Stevenson ◽  
Global Culture ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
South Sea ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Subject Material

The literary world was shocked when in 1889, at the height of his career, Robert Louis Stevenson announced his intention to settle permanently on the Pacific island of Samoa. His readers were equally shocked when he began to use the subject material offered by his new environment, not to promote a romance of empire, but to produce some of the most ironic and critical treatments of imperialism in nineteenth-century fiction. In these stories, as in his work generally, Stevenson shows himself to be a virtuoso of narrative styles: his Pacific fiction includes the domestic realism of ‘The Beach at Falesé, the folktale plots of ‘The Bottle Imp’ and ‘The Isle of Voices’, and the modernist blending of naturalism and symbolism in The Ebb-Tide. But beyond their generic diversity the stories are linked by their concern with representing the multiracial society of which their author had become a member. In this collection - the first to bring together all his shorter Pacific fiction in one volume - Stevenson emerges as a witness both to the cross- cultural encounters of nineteenth-century imperialism and to the creation of the global culture which characterizes the post-colonial world.

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