Full Description
Intercultural Mirrors: Dynamic Reconstruction of Identity contains (auto)ethnographic chapters and research-based explorations that uncover the ways our intercultural experiences influence our process of self-discovery and self-construction. The idea of intercultural mirrors is applied throughout all chapters as an instrument of analysis, an heuristic tool, drawn from philosophy, to provide a focus for the analysis of real life experiences. Plato noted that one could see one's own reflection in the pupil of another's eye, and suggested that the mirror image provided in the eye of the other person was an essential contributor to self-knowledge. Taking this as a cue, the contributors of this book have structured their writings around the idea that the view of us held by other people provides an essential key to one's own self-understanding.
Contributors are: James Arvanitakis, Damian Cox, Mark Dinnen, James Ferguson, Tom Frengos, Dennis Harmon, Donna Henson, Alexandra Hoyt, William Kelly, Lucyann Kerry, Julia Kraven, Taryn Mathis, Tony McHugh, Raoul Mortley, Kristin Newton, Marie-Claire Patron, Darren Swanson, and Peter Mbago Wakholi.
Contents
Foreword
Raoul Mortley
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
1 Expansion of Self through Intercultural Experiences
Julia Kraven
2 Hansel and Gretel Revisited: Quixotic Reflections of Online Dating
Marie-Claire Patron
3 Doni Doni Kononi Danala - Little by Little the Little Bird Builds Its Nest: Intercultural Reflections: Western Travel in Non-Western Culture
Alexandra Hoyt
4 Migration and Making Sense of Place: Against a Backdrop of Negative Media Discourse About Africa
Peter Mbago Wakholi
5 Mirror Mirror: What Culture Am I?: Using Philosophy to Reconstruct Our Images and Cultural Identities
Tom Frengos
6 Spreading Roots Globally, Losing Roots Locally: Coming to Terms with Being an Expat as an Intercultural Identity
Lucyann Kerry
7 Barceloneta as Heterotopic Mirror: A Place of Different Spaces
Tony McHugh
8 Reflection and Aspiration: Mirrors and Models in Traditional European and Chinese Thought
R. James Ferguson
9 Becoming a Person through Intercultural Communication: A White American's Experiences in Asia and Africa
William Kelly
10 Affect Mirrors
Damian Cox
11 List Yourself: An Autoethnography of Intercultural Identity
Donna Henson
12 I'm So Normal, I Must Be Different
Taryn J. Mathis
13 The Decentred Delegate: Adapting Identity within a Model United Nations Learning Environment
Dennis Harmon II and Mark Dinnen
14 Scotland the Brave? An Exile's Perspective on Scottish Identity from Abroad
Darren Swanson
15 Intercultural Mirrors and Cultural Humility: My Journey as an Educator
James Arvanitakis
16 Cultural Observations and a Conversation about Drawing by a Wandering Artist
Kristin Newton
