Suchergebnisse

"There are wonders that I want to perform" says the name of Ireland's first African-Irish theatre company, Arambe Productions, which derives from the Nigerian saying ara m be ti mo fe da. The company performs stories of the African-Irish community, yet their dramatizations ponder a larger reality of an Ireland that has gone from a country of emigrants to a nation re-shaped by inward-migration. The sudden shifts brought on by the mid-1990s Celtic Tiger economic boom and unprecedented immigration have plunged the Irish population at large into a state of wondering. What does it mean that the non-Irish born population residing in the Republic grew from less than 5% to more than 12% in a little over a decade? How will Ireland model a vision of interculturalism that avoids the failures of multiculturalism in Western Europe and the U.S.? How have race and gender created a hierarchy amongst migrant communities and subjects? Through performance, Arambe Productions transforms such wondering into a process of "working together," signaling a second meaning of the company's name: harambee in Swahili means "work together." The company's collective labors aim to create a post-Celtic Tiger intercultural vision of Irish identity and belonging. But can this vision be performed into existence?My dissertation project, "Performing the `New Irish': Race, Gender, and Interculturalism in the Post-Celtic Tiger Nation," argues that performance is at the center of conceptualizing interculturalism as social policy, philosophy and aspiration in contemporary Ireland. While some might see interculturalism as referring to two cultures meeting in the moment of performance, I argue, rather, that in Ireland today, the term refers to the process of inventing a new pluralistic Irish identity, one that accommodates Irish-born as well as migrant communities. Irish interculturalism connotes practical policy measures regarding integration, access to social benefits and services, and public eduction about racism, but it also translates into cultural initiatives that stress the arts as a zone of contact between diverse populations. My research examines theatres, public festivals and arts/social organizations that make use of performance to theorize interculturalism as embodied practice. Theatre companies like Arambe, Camino de Orula Productions, Calypso Productions, and NGOs like Spirasi, Migrant Rights Centre Ireland, and the Forum on Migration and Communication bid for cultural recognition of minority groups through performance, arts, and media activism. These efforts are endorsed by diverse governmental and non-governmental bodies, which range from the Office of the Minister of Integration, the now-defunct National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism, to the Irish government Task Force on Active Citizenship. The diverse sponsors and forums for these projects, however, generate tension between state-managed visions for interculturalism and the goals of community-based or non-governmental groups advocating for an interculturalism from below which remains critical of the Irish state's treatment of minority groups and management of inward-migration more generally. My investigation of the interplay between social and aesthetic theories of interculturalism exposes the embodied challenges of analyzing relationships between the Irish state, minority communities and the nation at large. Using ethnographic methods, I position performance as the crucible in which Irish theories of interculturalism are tested and reimagined through the work of bodies who must bear the labor of social change. I trace the struggles to craft an analytical language around race and ethnicity in Ireland frames these projects, and how the intersection of gender with these former categories complicates this task. My sites range from the Abbey Theatre stage to the Migrant Rights Center's photography exhibit by domestic workers and the Dublin St. Patrick's Festival Parade in order to capture the diversity of venues in which performing bodies are called upon to embody post-Celtic Tiger social change. My case studies interrogate whether these projects have the power to push against material limits of social access, paths to citizenship and racism/discrimination and reveal that these performances frequently reinscribe relationships of power between minority and Irish-born communities by falling back on top-down models of interculturalism. Perhaps it is through the reiterative power of performance that the wonders of an egalitarian Irish interculturalism can come into being, but these moving bodies must first be situated in broader matrixes of power which index the role of race and gender in shaping the future of post-Celtic Tiger Irish identities.

Afirmacija razumijevanja i prihvaćanja između pripadnika različitih kultura predstavlja jedan od temeljnih zadataka odgojno-obrazovnih sustava u suvremenim demokratskim društvima. Kako bi se taj zadatak što uspješnije realizirao, ističe se važnost uvođenja interkulturalizma kao dimenzije cjelokupne odgojno-obrazovne djelatnosti. Polazeći od shvaćanja prema kojem odgojno-obrazovne ustanove imaju važnu ulogu u formiranju interkulturalnog razumijevanja, vrijednosti, stavova i ponašanja njenih članova, u radu se razmatra problematika promicanja interkulturalizma u školskom okruženju. Na temelju pregleda dosadašnjih istraživanja, razmatraju se različita područja i obilježja odgojnoobrazovnog djelovanja te s njima povezane pretpostavke za izgradnju škole kao mjesta interkulturalnog učenja. ; The affirmation of understanding and acceptance among members of different cultures represents one of the major tasks of the educational systems in modern democratic societies. Successful realization of that task implies the importance of promoting interculturalism as an important dimension of the entire educational activity.Drawing on the assumption according to which educational institutions play important role in the formation of the intercultural understanding, values, attitudes and behaviours of its members, this paper discusses the issue of promoting interculturalism in the school environment. Based on a review of previous findings, different areas and features of educational activity are discussed as well as related assumptions for building a school as a place for intercultural learning.

With the rise of interculturalism as an alternative paradigm to the dominant multicultural integration policies in immigration countries, the importance of cities, as landscapes of intercultural interactions and consumption has become more and more important. This study aims to investigate how cities and city-related consumption practices play a role in consumer acculturation, an area that is largely overlooked in previous research. A hermeneutic approach is used to analyse and interpret the data collected through semi-structured and unstructured go-along interviews with 18 Iranian immigrants who live in Dortmund, Germany. Beyond the dichotomy of the home and host countries, the findings of this study show how city-related activities and interactions can lead to the construction of a sense of belonging to the hosting society. We show how such a sense of belonging can be constructed through immigrant consumers' involvement in city-related rituals, private appropriation of public space and reterritorialisation.

Education is instrumental in preparing students to participate in increasingly diverse Irish, European and global societies, with higher education having a part to play in the process. Issues around migration and cultural diversity have gained less attention in the higher education sector in Ireland than at primary and post primary level with a few notable exceptions. Higher education is regarded as having a "critical role" to play in terms of "enriching Ireland's cultural life, nurturing our understanding of our own national identity and that of other cultures and belief systems" [1]. Influenced by developments at European Union level, the approach adopted to cultural diversity in Ireland is one of interculturalism. This paper aims in the first instance to analyse the application of interculturalism in the Irish higher education sector from a strategy and policy perspective. It briefly traces the promotion of interculturalism as a policy response to cultural diversity at a European level, before highlighting a number of the concept's salient characteristics. The second part of the paper analyses the implementation of interculturalism in the Irish context. While critically reflecting on the higher education setting as a site where interculturalism can be put into practice, the focus is placed specifically on the question of language and the need to take it into consideration.

For a long time French local and regional authorities were largely excluded from debates on cultural policy, and even more so from international cultural exchanges. Their intervention in this second area, in its most conventional forms to its contemporary networks, occupies a special place in the present issues. Being sustained by large increases in local and national budgets for culture, such an evolution necessarily raised certain strategic issues and debates, which are discussed in the paper. The international element of local cultural policies has only recently appeared as a potential area for local strategy development. It can be seen as the result of the cultural generation of the 1980s, from the point of view of actors in both the public and professional domain. This paper examines the three following aspects: the forms taken by cultural decentralization in its main stages, through the conferral of negotiated powers; the modifications in centre‐periphery relations brought about by this decentralization; and the emergence of an international exchange dynamic as a result of these first two processes.

The debate on multiculturalism in Australia & Canada has provided a forum for a conceptualization of its alternatives. By the late 1980s, both governments abandoned the utopian pluriculturalist experiments of the 1970s & introduced interculturalist policies. However, the early 1990s have seen the emergence of another ethnoracialist ideology -- multiracialism -- which presents many similarities with institutionalized multiculturalism. At the same time, a new transcultural understanding of Canadian & Australian social realities has suggested avenues by which to reach a model of nonracialism. The features of these pluralist society projects are outlined, & their relevance for the process of nation building in postcolonial democracies is assessed. Adapted from the source document.