Toward a New Cartography of Intercultural communication: Mapping Bias,Business,and Diversity

Abstract

Courses in intercultural communication often put non-Western students at a dis advantage. In developing a course with a majority of non-Western participants at The University of Waikato, we adapted critical pedagogy to address the Western biases in the texts and approaches of intercultural communication. We selected both mainstream and alternative readings that allowed students to connect the field's neo-colonial business present with its colonialist past, to question the ethics and efficacy of an often skewed territorialisation of knowledge; and to redress tra ditional distortions by introducing perspectives from a range of critical and post colonial theorists. The readings were reinforced by student presentations of their own experiences crossing cultural borders. These experiences were then assessed in class, so that we didn't rely on the simulated experiences recorded in the conven tional texts.