The Unifying Aspects of Cultures

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Section: Intercultural Education

Terri Kim (London)
Mobile Internationals: a study of intercultural identity formation

Intercultural understanding is becoming a new theme in the changing context of both the academic and real worlds we are living in. The paper will examine the ways in which internationally mobile academics form their intercultural reflexive identities in the contemporary English university work environment. The first part of the paper will stabilise the concepts of the paper, including 'mobile internationals', reflexive identity, notions of otherness and intercultural society. The second part of the paper will examine the changing patterns of international academic mobility specifically in the context of contemporary English universities; and sketch some of the ways in which these changes are linked to the local English context of academic positions and to the processes of internationalisation and localisation policies in higher education.

The paper is an exploratory one and takes, as its background, a concern for larger theoretical issues such as interculturality, coloniality, and cosmopolitan hybridity - as distinct from internationalism or multiculturalism. However, the immediate purpose of this brief paper is to try to escape from generalised discussions of postmodernity, globalisation, and intercultural education and to figure out comparatively crucial but smaller issues (on the basis of auto-biographical and ethnographic account) of international academics and their reflexive identities and their implications for intercultural practices in academic life.

THE UNIFYING ASPECTS OF CULTURES

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