Intercultural Dialogues in Third Spaces: A Study of Learning Experiences of Museum Visitors

Bodo (2012) called for the need of museum exhibitions to create “third spaces” where individuals can cross the boundaries of belonging (both physical and psychological) to engage in intercultural dialogues. The imaginary cultural space of museum has propelled us into a realization that we are in an era where interculturality, transculturalism, and the eventual prospect of identifying a cosmopolitan citizenship can become a reality. Predicated on a five-month ethnography work at a provincial museum in British Columbia, Canada, this research explores the following questions: how have cultural and historical museum exhibitions put us in contact with the other and foster an understanding of the other? And how has transculturalism led to the establishment of a cosmopolitan citizenship? This study lends support to the potentiality of a cultural and historical museum transforming into “third spaces” where visitors may actively engage in exploration of complex multitudes of cultural identities and cosmopolitan citizenship. The findings of this study contribute to the literature on “third spaces” and transculturalism by providing an empirical study of learning experiences of visitors in museums. It reaffirms the notion of transculturalism by proposing a new humanism in recognition of the other, and in expressing oneself in a conscious subjective manner with cultural empathy. From a practical perspective, it suggests that in order to encourage international visitors to cross the cultural and psychological boundaries and engage in dialogues, the museum professionals may design interactive programs in a creative manner. It also suggests that museum administrators improve their services to more diverse groups of visitors to enhance inclusiveness.

Reducing the Risk of Co-Optation in Alternative Food Networks: Multi-Stakeholder Cooperatives, Social Capital, and Third Spaces of Cooperation

Farming cooperatives are organisations fundamentally based on social capital. However, the neoliberal and globalisation turn in the food system have led to the economisation of agricultural cooperatives as their main objective and criteria for evaluating their performance, and to a retreat from their participation in the wider cooperative movement. Nevertheless, new models of cooperation may provide a method to divert from this neoliberalisation trend by promoting social capital and mutual learning amongst different actors committed to a transition to sustainable food systems. This paper applies the anthropological concept of third spaces to examine the case of multistakeholder cooperatives. This type of food and farming cooperatives are composed of a diverse membership groups (e.g., producers, consumers, coordinators, buyers, etc). A nuanced analysis of these cooperatives’ capacity to generate social capital, and more specifically to blur the boundaries between bonding, bridging, and linking social capital, is presented. Evidence from five case studies suggests that multistakeholder cooperatives that remain at the border of their game, operating in both real and symbolic third spaces, are more likely to be based on and reproduce different types of social capital as well as social and environmental sustainability, while in turn reducing the risk of co-optation of their transformative practices.

Salafist Third Spaces and Hybridic Purity on YouTube

This case study applies aspects of third space theory (Bhabha, 2004; Hoover & Echchaibi, 2014) to investigate the activism on the YouTube channel Salafimedia UK (smuk) and their claim to be the self-proscribed “truest” and “purest” Islamic sect. This chapter introduces the somewhat paradoxical concept of “hybridic purity” – an emerging ideology that seeks to encompass pre-modern Islamic practices of the salaf (“predecessors” or first generations of Muslims) as the purest form of Islam (see also Wagemakers, 2016); modern values of individuality and reliance on the “self”; the affordances of the YouTube channel; and resistance to present-day Western cultural and political values, especially those of the United Kingdom (UK), as well as to the UK government’s censorship and bans of Salafist movements. This hybridic purity becomes authoritative as it compels YouTube audience members to take responsibility for their own growth and activism as pious Salafists.

Walking with Youth in Los Platanitos: Learning Mobilities, Youth Inclusion, and Co-production in International Planning Studios

This article examines the role of mobile spaces to foster trans-disciplinary learning in international planning studios. Drawing from Indigenous ontologies and critical pedagogy, we suggest that walking and learning together between students and partners is critical to situated understandings of power and co-production of knowledge. We reflect on two years of studio courses in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, to illustrate three different modalities of walking-learning spaces, each of which have different learning outcomes for students and youth participants. We find that mobile “third” spaces enable students to traverse social, geographic, and epistemological boundaries, while allowing youth’s planning priorities to emerge.

Engraved Biographies: Rock Art and the Life-Histories of Bronze Age Objects

This article deals with engravings depicting some­ times life­sized Bronze Age metal objects from “closed” burial contexts and “open­air” sites in northern Europe. These rock art images have mainly been used for comparative dating with the purpose of establishing rock art chronologies, or interpreted as a poor man’s” substitute for real ob­ jects that were sacrificed to immaterial gods and goddesses. In this article, these rock art images are pictured from a perspective that highlights the mu­ tual cultural biography of humans and objects. It is argued that the rare engravings of bronze ob­ jects at scale 1:1 are best explained as famous ani­ mated objects that could act as secondary agents, which sometimes allowed them to be depicted and remembered. Moreover, two different social set­ tings are distinguished for such memory practice: maritime nodes or third spaces where Bronze Age Argonauts met before, during or after their jour­ neys, e.g. places where novel technological and/or famous objects entered and re­entered the social realms, and burial contexts where animated objects sometimes was buried at the end of their life­course

Engendering Orientalism

This study explores the elements of Orientalism in German-Turkish director Fatih Akin's films Head-On (2004) and The Edge of Heaven (2007). Utilizing Homi Bhabha's theory of “third spaces,” which immigrants often inhabit, and Edward Said's lens of the postcolonial gaze, I analyze the degree to which the bodies of immigrants willingly embody the mysterious “oriental,” and how and when it is projected upon male and female characters in these two films. Akin's characters dwell between a perceived and imaginary Occident and Orient, while living and traveling in the soil of both Germany and Turkey.