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On this page, you'll be able to
find out what intercultural inquiry is, its philosophy, as
well as strategies for engaging in intercultural inquiry yourself.
Some of the texts are rather long, so they are available in
PDF files for easier reading.
What is Intercultural Inquiry?
PDF Format
INQUIRY is a search for understanding in the face of complex,
open questions with no "right" answer. It:
- Poses problems,
- Seeks rival hypotheses, and
- Constructs warranted, but revisable conclusions
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uses difference - cultural, racial, social difference-
not to explain difference, but to pose and solve share
problems, by creating
- More inclusive definitions of the problem
- More generative rival interpretations
- More diversely accountable conclusions
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One can not climb
a number of mountains simultaneously, but the views
had when different mountains are ascended supplement
one another,; they do not set up incompatible, competing
worlds.
- John Dewey |
INTERCULTURAL INQUIRY seeks out the situated, experiential
knowledge of diverse people in order to question and conditionalize
the knowledge couched in generalized claims and abstract concepts,
that often blinds us to diverse realities.
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elicits situated meanings by
- Acknowledging the agency of marginalized youth and
adults
- Seeking and honoring the expertise of everyday people
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The most significant
theme of the new cultural politics of difference is
the agency, capacity and ability of human beings who
have been culturally degraded, politically oppressed
and economically exploited by bourgeois liberal and
communist illiberal status quos. This theme neither
romanticizes nor idealizes marginalized peoples. Rather
it accentuates their humanity and tries to attenuate
the institutional constraints on their life-chances
for surviving and thriving. (Cornel West, 1993, p. 29)
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INTERCULTURAL INQUIRY addresses the problems it poses by
- Engaging in a hybrid discourse in which the voices of
research and policy, values and experience, speaking the
languages of academic and community literacy alike, meet
at a common table
- Constructing negotiated meanings in which diverse voices
and good rivals are still heard
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