Transcultural literacy: between the global and the local

Abstract

In this paper the authors draw on a larger project related to diasporic identification in order to explore the concept of transcultural literacy. They argue that transcultural literacy grows out of border-crossing dynamics that extend beyond the binaries of 'us' and 'them' as these are lived within and between nations. In this way it is responsive to, and reflects, the various shifts between the local and the global; between place and space. Transcultural literacy is inseparable from social and cultural practices of meaning-and identity-making on the fault-line between various and often competing cultures. This model of transcultural literacy uses theorisations of space to connect textual practices to the construction of hybrid identities. In so doing, it offers an alternative to models of literacy premised on liberal or neo-conservative understandings of cultural difference. In this paper, we explore transcultural literacy in relation to current literacy debates.

Place-Related Identities Through Texts: From Interdisciplinary Theory to Research Agenda

“…The creative space and creative potential depends on openness to difference and various 'experienced horizons' that participants in interaction have (Bakhtin, 1990). The meeting place is the chronotope of dialogical encounter that explains the interdependence of self and the other in spatial-temporal terms (Kostogriz and Tsolidis, 2008). Bakhtin stressed the importance of being located outside the object of creative understanding in time, in space, and in culture.…”

“…The tensions are often expressed in binaries of familiar/foreign, local/global and same/other, resulting from a way of viewing the world that is territorial and political and a notion of place that connects a group of people with a site. This diversity within place is a socio-spatial formation that binds the local and the global, the particular and the abstract (Kostogriz and Tsolidis, 2008).…”

“…Scholarship in relation to education has been affected by the spatial turn, for example in literacy and its development (cf. Kostogriz and Tsolidis, 2008;Leander and Sheehy, 2004), identity (cf. Anderson and Jones, 2009;Hagood, 2004;Moje, 2004;Newman et al, 2006), attitudes to the environment (cf.…”

Cultural studies of education: filming fluid subjectivities in Indonesian universities

“…Dialogue engendered by films and other art forms assists schooling in fulfilling its potential as a contact zone and third space -a learning arena where students in any community can draw on fluid subjectivities and multiple recourses to make sense of the world (Huhtala and Lehti-Eklund 2010;Kostogriz and Tsolidis 2008). Third spaces are spatial and discursive Logli, C. Cultural studies in education: Filming fluid subjectivities in Indonesian universities.…”

Education for Y'all: Global Neoliberalism and the Case for a Politics of Scale in Sustainability Education Policy

“…A growing range of work examines the latter in the context of the maintenance and shifting of local Indigenous knowledge and perspectives (e.g. Smith, 1999;Kostogriz & Tsolidis, 2008;Shava, 2008;Siodmak, 2008), as well as in tracing the identities and points of strengths of transnational migrant and diasporic communities (e.g. Mirón et al, 2005;Francisco, 2008;Mawhinney, 2010).…”