Intercultural personhood: A non-essentialist conception of individuals for intercultural research

ABSTRACT

In this article, I explore the concept ‘intercultural personhood' by using creative-arts methods for students to make meanings about ‘who I am’ in their intercultural experience at a culturally-diverse UK university. Based upon their imaginative arts-mediated meaning-makings, I provide a conceptualisation of intercultural personhood as: a personalised hybrid construct of change and exchange which is negotiated through multipolarised tensions of being. This conceptualisation liberates the conception of individuals from essentialist and reductionist identifications. It provides a step towards the operationalisation of non-essentialist thinking in understanding individuals and their experiences for intercultural research.

本文中我探索“文化际人格”这一概念。为此我使用创意艺术的研究方法，让学生去探寻在一所文化多样的英国大学的文化际经历中，“我是谁”的意义。我定义“文化际人格”为：在多极张力的协商中，变换与交换所形成的个性化、混合化的构建。该定义将对个体人的理解，从本质主义、简化主义的身份标识中解放出来。它可以为文化际研提供一小步关于个体人及其经历的非本质主义认知。

KEYWORDS:

• Intercultural personhood
• intercultural experience
• intercultural education
• arts methods
• non-essentialism

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Dr Richard Fay, Dr Juup Stelma, and the two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments which played an important role in shaping the final article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Zhuo Min Huang is a Senior Tutor in Education in the Manchester Institute of Education at The University of Manchester. Her research interests include: intercultural personhood, intercultural ethics, intercultural education, mindfulness, and creative-arts methods.

Notes

1 As previously discussed, pseudonyms are used to present the participants.

2 The quotations of data are sometimes (also see below) presented in a poetic form in order to transparently reflect the flow of meanings articulated by the participants.