From my own to the unknown and back to my own

T Greuel, Ma Van Der Westhuizen

Description

In this book the reader is presented with a journey or a process of moving towards positive intercultural awareness. The hope is that this positive awareness can result in a different understanding of other cultures that can lead to tolerance between cultural groups and a celebration of the value of diversity that will transform intercultural relationships. The title of this book From my own to the unknown and back to my own places the emphasis on the practical journey towards intercultural relationships. The thinking behind this has deeply to do with the transformation of ourselves that takes place in the journey with the unknown, which then in turn has a transformative impact on ourselves.

Informations

• Publié par: CLF Publishers
• Date de parution: 01 août 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781868045044
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

“ From my own
to the unknown
and back to my own ”

A practical journey to intercultural relationships

MA van der Westhuizen • T Greuel • CH Thesnaar
“From my own to the unknown and back to my own”
©2018 MA Van der Westhuizen, T Greuel, CH Thesnaar
Christian Literature Fund
Private Bag x19
Wellington, 7654
[e-mail]
021 873 6964
www.clf.co.za
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form nor any means, electronically, mechanically, photocopying recording or otherwise without prior permission from the author and publisher.
Biblical citations are from the Good News Translation unless indicated otherwise.
Text editor: Marinda Cilliers
Cover design and layout by Amanda Carstens
Printed by Print on Demand
6 Koets Street
Parow Industria
First print 2018
978-1-86804-504-4

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Contents
Chapter 1: Background 9
Conception
Point of departure
The structure of the journey
End remarks
Preparing for the journey
Chapter 2: Our approach on this journey 22
The journey
Transforming, transformation and transformative work
Appreciative enquiry
End remarks
Chapter 3: Using non-verbal communication to transform relationships 29
A hermeneutical perspective
The use of arts in the hermeneutical process
End remarks
Chapter 4: Planning the journey 38
Leading and facilitating a journey
Who can lead-facilitate such a journey and where should it be done?
Dos and Don’ts for leader-facilitators of the journey
End remarks
Introducing the stations on the journey 47 Chapter 5: Station 1 – From my own 50
What is happening
End remarks



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Chapter 6: Station 2 – To the unknown 65
What does it mean? End remarks
Chapter 7: Station 3 – From the unknown 80
What have we learned?
End remarks
Chapter 8: Station 4 – Back to my own 93
What do we do? End remarks
Chapter 9: Concluding thoughts 102
Some challenges to expect
Resources
Final word
Refrences 107



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1 BACKGROUND
The segregation laws of the tragic apartheid years in South Africa influenced contact and interaction between cultural groups. This limited contact and interaction led to a lack of understanding of other cultures that contributed to prejudice and intolerance which, in turn, resulted in painful intercultural experiences.
In the present-day South African society, intercultural contact and interaction between the many cultural groups are still influenced by the remaining divisions between these groups. Contact and interaction are also still influenced by the meanings individuals, groups and communities attach to situations and contexts of “others”; what is perceived as foreign or unknown to own cultural contexts (Van der Westhuizen, Greuel and Thesnaar 2015:2). This is true despite the greater mobility between different cultural groups in post-apartheid South Africa (Gibson & Gouws 2005:2). For example: Church time on Sunday mornings is still one of the most divided hour in our communities. However, we believe that intergroup contact can create the conditions for friendships, reduced negative perceptions, and reciprocal recognition (cf. also Wale 2013:38).
Intercultural relationships that influence the social well-being of individuals and groups are not only dependent on ethnicity, but the concept also relates to gender groups, age groups, sexual orientation and so on.
In this book, we hope to present you with a journey or a process of moving towards positive intercultural awareness. We hope that this positive awareness can result in a different understanding of other cultures that can lead to tolerance between cultural groups and a celebration of the value of diversity that will transform intercultural relationships.
The title of this book is From my own to the unknown and back to my own and the subtitle places the emphasis on the practical journey towards intercultural relationships. The thinking behind this has deeply to do with the transformation of ourselves that takes place in the journey with the unknown, which then in turn has a transformative impact on ourselves.



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The term transformation is more than merely change. It has to do with a true metamorphosis within ourselves, based on the experiences with the unknown during the journey.
We argue that one has to start with this journey by exploring one’s own cultural identity. Zhang (2011:51-52), for example, explains that positive intercultural relationships require knowledge and competence in effective and creative communication that should ultimately lead to a better understanding of oneself and of “others”. We will refer to “others” as the unknown in this book.
We do not claim that this journey is a quick fix or that it will play out in the same way for every individual, group or community as everyone’s context is different. We recommend that you read the whole book, and not only turn to the description of the implementation of the journey we provide.
To be able to contribute towards transforming cultural relationships requires wisdom, a sense of responsibility and a willingness to understand the diversity of the contexts in which we live and function. It also requires continuous accountability towards myself in relation to others.
Conception
The content of this book is based on outcomes of four related research projects over a five- year period. The common focus of these projects was on an exploration of how to creatively transform relationships in multicultural contexts. Moreover, we became aware that we ourselves unknowingly embarked on a journey where we learned not only on an academic level, but also on both intra- and interpersonal levels. The figure below illustrates this professional and personal journey that informed this book.



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Three individuals doing research
Common focus:
Transforming relationships
Reflecting together
Embarking on the journey
Discovering a practical way to
transform intercultural relationships
The conception of the content of this book
The idea to develop a journey for transforming relationships in a multicultural society was firstly born from the reality of living and working in a society where intolerance, prejudice and mistrust often continue to derail movements towards building an intercultural society. For clarity, we will discuss our understanding of the terms “multicultural” and “intercultural” later in this chapter.














































































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Secondly, the development of the idea involved a transdisciplinary journey of becoming aware that the development towards transformative intercultural relationships requires an acknowledgment that this is the task of more than one discipline. We must be aware of how different disciplines approach the issue of transforming relationships and how scholars and practitioners from different organisational contexts can join forces to work towards finding suitable outcomes. You will notice that, in this book, three authors from three different disciplines, namely social work, music and theology have joined forces.
For us this is important, as the concept does not belong to one discipline and therefore the goal of this book is to provide any person or organisation who works with relationships in a multicultural context with some guidelines to develop a suitable journey to transform these relationships within their context.
Thirdly, our journey from different disciplines unexpectedly involved a personal journey . It became clear that, for us to be able to develop such a journey that could work in practice we could not merely explore existing theories, find ideas, give advice and explain our understanding of transformative intercultural relationships. We had to be willing to expose ourselves, engage with the unknown, listen to the unknown, learn from the unknown, and be moved and transformed by the unknown. While doing research on the topic of transformative intercultural relationships, we became participants who explored this topic with the people who are affected by painful experiences in intercultural relationships (Bergold and Thomas 2012:2). In this regard, we had to look at ourselves, become brave to move towards creative ways of doing and thinking and be willing to develop an alternative and relevant way of looking at ourselves and at the unknown, as well as the work that we do.
To illustrate this journey, we want to use the analogy of a train moving towards its destination. This train will move fr