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The intercultural mediation: looking to live together when we are diferent
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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
To talk about intercultural mediation is to admit that there has to be transformations of the parties
involved, in terms of attitudes, behaviour, representations and actions, so as to find platforms of
understanding which are not fixed arithmetic points, but rather, movable third places, depending on the
themes and agreements under discussion. But this process is not linear and it does not always have a
happy ending in the story just like in the romantic films. Cultural shocks and the interpersonal shocks,
which are also cultural shocks, are always eminent as a present and future hypothesis. Hence, it is
important to reflect on the culture shocks experienced, differently, depending on the individuals that
interact, each one with their own life story. Therefore, this results in interaction processes in a more
dialogical, intercultural, mediating, creative and transformative form, or on the other hand, more
enhancers and linkers of personal and social boundaries which become ethnocultural and therefore
more monocultural.
It is understood that those who live in cultural stability with few interactions with otherness have the
tendency to have more monocultural attitudes and attitudes which are closer to the culture’s modal
behaviour in which they are naturally inserted with their peers and relatives. Those who, for various
reasons, undergo social mobility processes, whether ascendant or descendant, or cross various
sociocultural contexts in the social trajectory due to migratory processes, schooling processes or others,
are submitted to cultural metamorphosis processes and therefore reconstruct their personal identities:
the image that the self has of oneself and the one that it offers to others is reconstructed.
The intercultural mediation is presented as a social pedagogy to learn how to live together when We are
from different cultural contexts.
Although using biographical studies that we did with immigrants in Portugal, this communication has a
pedagogical intention and not just an investigative one. We intend to show, precisely, how intercultural
mediation is inscribed in a different paradigm from that of classical mediation, which is basically based
on conflict resolution techniques. On the contrary, we intend to show how in hyper multicultural societies,
what is so often called conflict, is nothing more than a clash of cultures because individuals act according
to mental frames culturally constructed throughout their life history and in the cultural contexts they
cross.
Thus, from a hermeneutic, biographical and ethnobiographical methodology, with immigrants seeking
Portugal as a host society for a future life project, we want to show that living together when we are
culturally different, implies learning interculturality as philosophy of life, on the part of those who welcome
and those who are welcomed. Such interculturality can be achieved through Intercultural mediation here
considered as a social pedagogy, as we will exemplify with life stories of Brazilian immigrants in Portugal
and with the identity strategies that they use to include themselves in Portugal, and, at the same time,
maintain a belonging to the original culture, the Brazilian, without, however, living in an ambivalent way.
Rather, interculturally, assuming a plural and composite self of diverse cultural and educational
influences.
Description
Keywords
Intercultural mediation Living together Monocultural attitudes Intercultural attitudes
Citation
Vieira, R., e Vieira, A. (2020). The intercultural mediation: looking to live together when we are diferente, ICERI2020 Proceedings 13th International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation, IATED Academy, pp. 6455-6459, 9-10 November, ISBN: 978-84-09-24232-0, ISSN: 2340-1095.
Publisher
IATED Academy