As in many countries, internationalization and interculturality have become two key concepts in Finnish higher education. As such, several documents (often called 'survival guides') have been published by universities in this context to help international and exchange students to adapt to Finland and Finnish 'ways.' This article examines such a document dedicated to intercultural communication on Finnish campuses. We demonstrate by analyzing two different versions of the document that the constructed discourses contain rather culturalist, judgmental, and ethnocentric discourses about self and other. We argue that it represents a 'defeat of hospitality' or hostipitality. As such, interculturality and hospitality are reduced to 'educating' the students to adjust to certain stereotypical Finnish manners rather than teaching them to negotiate and co-construct new ways of being together. Our approach to interculturality is critical, constructivist, and relies on a pragmatic discursive analysis of two versions of the document.
Interreligious dialogue is a central objective in European and UNESCO policy and research documents, in which educational institutions are seen as central places for dialogue. In this article, we discuss this type of dialogue under the conditions of asymmetry and categorisation in two Finnish schools. Finnish education has often been lauded for its successful implementation of equity and equality by the thousands of 'pedagogical tourists' who visit the country's schools to witness the so-called miracle of Finnish education due to Finland's excellent results in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study. Through theoretically informed reading of ethnographic data, we examine how Self and Other are constructed in everyday encounters in school and how religions, religious groups and individuals become regarded as Others. We also ask whether the aims of interreligious dialogue in schools represent a viable way to learn about each other and to increase mutual understanding. The theoretical and methodological approaches derive from post-colonial, post-structural and related feminist theories as well as from recent research on intercultural education and communication.Uskontojenvälistä dialogia pidetään keskeisenä tavoitteena monissa eurooppalaisissa ja UNESCOn poliittisissa dokumenteissa ja tutkimusasiakirjoissa, joissa koulutusinstituutiot esitetään näissä usein keskeisiksi dialogin paikoiksi. Artikkelissamme tarkastelemme arjen kohtaamisiin liittyvää uskontodialogia sekä kohtaamisissa läsnä olevaa epäsymme-triaa ja kategorisointia kahdessa suomalaisessa koulussa. Suomalaisten koulutusjärjestel-män yhdenvertaisuutta ja tasa-arvoisuutta ovat kehuneet ne tuhannet 'koulutusturistit', jotka ovat vierailleet Suomen kouluissa tutustumassa OECD: n Programme for international student assessment (PISA) -arvioinnin erinomaisiin tuloksiin perustuvaan suomalaisen koulutuksen menestystarinaan. Tarkastelemme etnografista aineistoamme teoriasta ammentavan etnografisen luennan avulla analysoiden sitä, kuinka itse ja toinen rakentuvat koulun arjen kohtaamisissa ja kuinka uskontoja, uskonnollisia ryhmiä ja yksilöitä pidetään toisina. Pohdimme, pystyykö kouluihin sijoittuva uskontodialogi edistämään tavoitteidensa mukaisesti keskinäistä oppimista ja lisäämään keskinäistä ymmärtämistä. Artikkelimme teoreettiset ja metodologiset näkökulmat perustuvat jälkikoloniaalisiin ja jälkistrukturalistisiin feministisiin teoretisointeihin sekä viimeaikaiseen interkulttuurisen kasvatuksen ja vuorovaikutuksen tutkimukseen.
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