Introduction
pp. 1-23
in: Michal Rozbicki (ed), Perspectives on interculturality, Berlin, Springer, 2015Abstract
An intercultural encounter is ultimately a relation of difference. It occurs in the space where people with distinct ways of interpreting the world reciprocally negotiate their otherness. It engages a wide spectrum of groups with discrete sub-cultures, identities, social positions, and rules of operation—from associations and professions to corporations, tribes, ethnicities, and nations—with varying levels of involvement and uneven degrees of internal coherence. The intercultural does not need a meeting in the same physical space; people may come into contact with ideas and things that originate in a culture that is not in direct proximity to them. Interculturality may be said to take place when people come into contact with cultural otherness. At that point they become aware that they have been taking for granted certain perceptions of reality shared by their own group, that is, that these perceptions are not universal but conventional, generated by their own environment. The responses to this realization may be defensive, adaptive, or coexistential, but whatever form they assume, intercultural relationships are one of the most dynamic forces driving historical change.