Journal articles on the topic '420308 Multicultural, Intercultural and Cross-cultural Studies'

The paper aims to show the international impact of 50 years of cross-cultural psychology on interdisciplinary intercultural studies and intercultural psychology, as developed in French-speaking countries. An original overview of the most prominent research carried out by Association pour la Recherche Interculturelle (ARIC, Association for Intercultural Research) and the research team Interculturation Psychique et Contacts Culturels (IPCC, Psychological Interculturation and Cultural Contacts) is suggested, while tending to cover the worldwide research related to the individual in intercultural situations. ARIC’s main topics are education, socio-political aspects and identity, individual, and cultures. This international association focuses on the articulation of research and practice to propose better policies to multicultural societies. In this perspective, it has carried out research about the immigration challenges considering the immigrants as well as the host societies. As it concerns intercultural psychology, it develops according to interculturation, that is, the psychological process that allows to overcome the cultural differences. It shapes intercultural personality and identity and the cognitive, affective and behavioral reactions of individuals or groups in any cultural contact. The various fields of application of both underline the undoubtable influence of cross-cultural psychology and the possibilities for further in-depth collaboration due to mutual contributions.

In a society that is becoming more and more globalized, and internationalization has become the new norm, intercultural competence (IC) has been proven to be a valuable skill since people are expected to behave responsibly and productively in cross-cultural interactions. The paper reviews educational intervention studies to demonstrate methods for increasing intercultural competency as well as their efficiency in a multicultural university setup. The idea of intercultural competence will be emphasized, along with the values, attitudes, skills, knowledge, and understanding that collectively make up this ability. Following this, a variety of strategies that universities can employ, such as initiatives to foster students' intercultural competence, will be examined.

Psychotherapy models, some of which now have a history over a century, have been practiced worldwide. However, considering that the most prevalently applied psychotherapy models are the products of Western culture, questioning the extent of these models’ effectiveness and efficiency for people belonging to diverse cultural backgrounds is legitimate. No doubt, ethno-cultural groups living in Western multicultural societies will interact with Western culture more deeply compared with people living in non-Western countries; therefore, to also think that their needs will differ is reasonable. In this case, the quantity and quality of the required adaptations may also change. Although a promising number of studies exist on intercultural adaptations necessitated by the needs of multicultural societies, the literature on the effectiveness of these models in the non-Western world and the local psychotherapy models is quite limited. One important question is whether psychotherapy models can be adapted to address non-Western cultures without transforming their fundamental assumptions, and if so, can this be conducted efficiently? With these questions in mind, the aim is to review the current state of scientific studies on psychotherapy practices in various cultures. In addition, considering the large spectrum of cultural migration taking place in modern days and the difficulty of receiving mental health services in underdeveloped countries, the importance of adapted and local psychotherapy research has been emphasized and some suggestions for consideration in future research have been made.

Students studying and living in local universities find themselves failing in conducting fluent communication with people with different cultural backgrounds, due to the rare access to direct interactions with foreigners in person. Hence, to change that situation and help them construct cross-cultural minds is severely necessary. Abundant of achievements on cross-cultural communication have been reached, and a lot of rewards in the research have been granted to those studies analyzed, discussed and interpreted from the perspective of social-psychology, which can not propose an appropriate and efficient approach to constructing cross-cultural minds for students in the local universities. The studies from the perspective of cognitive process and more specifically the schema theory, however, can claim due attention to understand and construct the procedure of intercultural communication where multi-cultures are represented, processed and accommodated. This work is intended to address the issues of how students can efficiently obtain knowledge, how multicultural knowledge can be effectively acquired by students, and how beliefs can be shared and multicultural minds constructed finally.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to show how individuals perceive the quality of intercultural interactions at work in multinational subsidiaries and to address the question of what actually prevails in their accounts, i.e., “the dark side” or “the bright side.” Design/methodology/approach The authors report the findings from five subsidiaries located in Poland and interviews with 68 employees of these companies. Findings The “bright side” dominated the interviewees’ accounts. The phenomenon of high social identity complexity or common in-group identity can help explain the findings. The results also shed some new light on the associations between the context of subsidiaries and the perception of the quality of intercultural interactions. Research limitations/implications The paper contributes to the literature on cultural diversity and intercultural interactions in multinational subsidiaries. As the “bright side” of interactions was emphasized in the interviews, it particularly supports positive cross-cultural scholarship studies. Yet the explorative research does not allow for a broader generalization of the results. Practical implications Managers of multinational corporations (MNCs) should do the following: shape the context of MNCs to influence the dynamics of intercultural interactions and the way they are seen by their employees; emphasize common in-group identity to help their employees to adopt more favorable attitudes toward intercultural interactions; look for individuals with multicultural identity who display more positive approaches to intercultural contacts; place emphasis on recruiting individuals fluent in the MNC’s functional language; offer language training for the staff; and recruit employees with significant needs for development who will perceive more opportunities in intercultural contacts. Social implications The research demonstrates that the multicultural workplace of MNCs may be recognized by employees as activating the positive potential of the individuals and organizations that make up a society. Originality/value The accounts of intercultural interactions are analyzed to illuminate some significant foundations of how individuals perceive such interactions. The study provides a qualitative lens and highlights the positive approach to intercultural interactions. It may redress the imbalance in prior research and satisfy the need for positive cross-cultural scholarship.

The article is concerned with the problem of cross-cultural training of psychologists. The author analyses various approaches to the definition and development of intercultural competence and highlights professional and ethical problems of psychological activity related to cultural competence/incompetence of specialists. Particular attention is paid to the specifics in training psychologists for cross-cultural counselling, the experience of organising psychological work in a multi-cultural environment, using the example of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), as well as some important aspects in how psychologists develop and manifest intercultural competence during ethnopsychological field studies. An analysis of the accumulated practical experience in a multicultural environment made it possible to identify the conditions for the successful development of cross-cultural competence, setting the psychologist’s value foundations and motivational readiness to communicate with people of other cultures. These conditions include: (1) a humanistic approach in psychology; (2) a subjectsubject approach to communication; (3) formation of scientific and professional thinking; (4) purposeful development of such mechanisms of understanding other people as decentration and reflection; and (5) mastering of conflict-resolution and group-work technologies. In this regard, the author concludes that the development of intercultural competence in the domestic psychologists’ training system requires not only a detailed discussion of ethical issues related to the psychologist’s activities or specifics of cross-cultural communication within the studied disciplines, but also the introduction of special cross-cultural communication development programmes and trainings in intercultural competence and cultural sensitivity. The cross-cultural training of psychologists can be based on the working model of ethnocultural competence proposed by T.G. Stefanenko. It is emphasized that the development of intercultural competence should involve not only an individual person but the entire professional community through research and open discussion of the current state of cross-cultural competence of psychologists as well as the entire complex of ethical issues.

AbstractThe cross-cultural differences and the intercultural aspects of the collaboration have become increasingly prevalent over recent years. Undoubtedly, this diversity may generate different patterns of behavior in project teams. The research goal of the exploratory study is to identify advantages and obstacles to collaboration in multicultural teams at designing business solutions among Polish students – participants in intensive entrepreneurship programme (IP) within the framework of the international ECMT+ project1. In addition, the cognitive goal is to diagnose entrepreneurial attitudes and determinants of setting up one’s own company. During the two-week workshops in multicultural project teams in March 2017 at Karelia University in Finland, a participant observation method was applied. The main research method was, however, a semi-structured direct interview based on a questionnaire. Respondents were chosen purposeful and included six Polish students from Poznan University of Technology who carried out business projects in six multicultural teams – in total 48 participants were from 14 countries worldwide. The obtained results of the study point to measurable benefits of intercultural collaboration in project teams. Great commitment of the teams to achieve the goal and their healthy competition all remain noteworthy. Undoubtedly, however, a great diversity of attitudes and views in multicultural teams, national experiences and entrepreneurial knowledge make it necessary to overcome additional barriers, especially those with cultural backgrounds. The main limitation to the study is the non-representativeness of the sample and being limited to Polish participants. The findings presented in the article are very preliminary and further investigation in this field is necessary, i.e. comparative studies covering the remaining workshop participants.

Over recent years, globalisation occasioned a dramatic rise in cross-cultural interactions until this was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The ability to competently engage in a multicultural world is often considered the “literacy of the future”. Global interconnectedness has brought studies into intercultural competence to centre stage. This has increased the demand for cross-cultural education experiences that facilitate such learning. However, there is a dearth of empirical research into the issues and effects surrounding short-term cross-cultural educational experiences for adolescents. This mixed-methods study extends previous research by looking specifically into what impact short-term cross-cultural experiences may have on the formation of intercultural competence (IC) and emotional intelligence (EI) of Australian high school students. This study used two instruments for measuring IC and EI in a pre- and post-test quasi-experimental design (n = 14), the General Ethnocentrism (GENE) Scale and Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ). Moreover, it conducted in-depth post-experience qualitative interviews (n = 7) that broadly followed a phenomenological paradigm of inquiry. The findings suggest that fully embodied cross-cultural immersive experiences can effectively support the formation of IC and EI in high school students and may thereby play a contributing role in redressing ignorance, xenophobia, prejudice, and discrimination. A greater understanding of the linkages between immersive cross-cultural experiences and intercultural competence offers prospects for policymakers, educators, pastoral carers, and other relevant stakeholders who might employ such experiential learning to foster more interculturally and interracially harmonious human relations.

The article generalizes incipience of cross-cultural education is examined in the countries of Europe and United States. It is marked, that the educational programs of aviation Higher Education Institutions do not pay enough attention on a cross-cultural constituent in the structure of disciplines. It is analyzed foreign experience in the question of cross-cultural co-operation and communication of the known aviation universities, namely: educational programs, structure of base disciplines, organization of educational process. The key aspects of effective introduction of cross-cultural education are distinguished in Ukraine. It is studied that forming of cross-cultural educational process of the program of establishments of higher education of countries of Europe and United States built by means of next key descriptions: realization of the global, national, regional and institutional educational programs; forming of personality and professional competence for all students, that allows to them successfully to work and live in multicultural and multilingual society; the table of contents of studies from disciplines includes a national and cultural constituent necessarily; an educational process is sent to preparation of students to operate in an unknown international situation, extending the limits of their thinking and forming of capacity for the creative and critical thinking; a considerable role is taken to possessing foreign languages (in particular, to English) among students and teachers; stimulation of development of international research activity. While analyzing experience of foreign Higher Education Institutions, it was noticed that the aim of every university is effective cross-cultural communication and co-operation at global level, composition of students is multinational in fact. The educational programs and structure of disciplines are built taking into account a cross-cultural constituent, namely: cultural and historical values of different countries; ability of students to respect traditions of other ethnos; ability to set international contacts by means of effective cross-cultural co-operation. Also, it is marked that large attention of teachers is spared to the psycho emotional state of every student. The separate special courses are conducted: work in a command, tolerance, sensitivity, respect to the culture and traditions different nationalities. Key words: foreign experience, aviation specialist, intercultural education, culture, intercultural interaction

Lecturers increasingly face the challenge of managing conflicts in a cross-cultural study environment. Cultural variations have a significant impact on communication in general and conflict communication in particular. The study aims to examine Asian preferences concerning conflict behavior. Understanding of different conflict styles in conflict is important for facilitating intercultural competence. This article reviews the findings on Asian preferences for avoiding, integrating, and dominating while managing interpersonal conflicts. Seven studies were reviewed. The results of this review indicate that although Asian nations have often been labelled as “collectivists”, there is a difference between the “Asians”. Koreans are more likely to use a dominating style, Taiwanese and Hong Kong Chinese are more likely to use an avoiding style, and Thais and Japanese are more likely to use an integrating style to solve an interpersonal conflict.

Every interaction at the supranational level is, to a greater extent, contingent upon the individuals’ mutual understanding. In this sense, the knowledge of the target culture’s norms in interpersonal relationships is of utmost significance. Although scholars in applied linguistics and trans-disciplinary social studies admit the culture’s outstanding roles in multicultural communities, there is no extensive consensus, to date, over the integration of culture into the language instruction due to its multidimensional aspects. The current study investigated the role of the media density in the enhancement of the intercultural sensitivity. To this end, 41 male and female EFL students with the age range of 18-45 at the intermediate level of proficiency at Shoukoh and Safir language institutes were selected through the one-stage cluster sampling technique to fulfill the aim of the present study. During 16 instructional sessions over eight weeks, the students in three groups confronted three different tasks and input-modalities i.e., Audio-only listening, Text-based reading, and Audio-visual mediated instruction. The participants were primarily asked to complete the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (Chen & Starosta, 2000) in the beginning phase of the study. After receiving the appropriate input, they were again asked to complete the same Scale. The statistical analysis through one-way ANOVA indicated that the integration of the audio-only input into the visual-support leads into the betterment of the EFL learners’ cultural sensitivity. This change in the mean score of the three groups of the study, however, was not in the margin of significance.

PurposeThis article examines the existing body of knowledge on acculturation, identifies the gaps, discusses its potential consequences for theory and proposes a possible way forward for educational policy and practice in the globalised world.Design/methodology/approachThe body of knowledge on acculturation has developed tremendously during the last century. However, some scholars are critical of its impact on acculturating people, particularly in the societies of settlement. This paper adopted an integrative literature review approach to critique and synthesise the published text on acculturation and education in the era of globalisation.FindingsDespite phenomenal growth in acculturation research and theory, the dominant perspectives and research methodologies hardly help to respond to the emerging trends in intercultural contact and its associated issues in education. A culture learning approach to the study of acculturation can help address the existing gaps, extend the theory, draw contextualised conclusions and take appropriate steps in education to prepare younger generations for an interconnected and interdependent world.Research limitations/implicationsResearchers and practitioners in education may need to be sensitive to the sociopolitical realities in a given context and contextualise their educational endeavours in preparing younger generations for an ever-changing social world.Practical implicationsThis narrative review suggests that an intercultural learning approach to education in contemporary times may better facilitate acculturation processes amongst immigrants and non-immigrants alike. Educational systems in multicultural societies may need to undertake context-specific interventions for immigrant children and adolescents in helping them acculturate to the societies of their settlement.Social implicationsAn intercultural approach to education in general and social studies education, in particular, can help younger generations better respond to the emerging trends of acculturation in the multicultural societies of their residence.Originality/valueGiven that young people follow diverse trajectories of acculturation, irrespective of their status of immigration, researchers in cross-cultural studies may need to reflect on existing theories, approaches, frameworks and methodologies with greater sensitiveness to the ecological context, cultural distance hypothesis and the nature of intercultural contact for a deeper understanding of immigrants' acculturation in plural societies.

En este estudio se evaluó la sensibilidad intercultural, el clima escolar y contacto intergrupal de 1729 adolescentes de escuelas municipales de la comuna de Santiago, 74,4% de los cuales nacidos en Chile. Se realizó un estudio cuantitativo transversal, con cuestionarios autoadministrados, analizando luego los datos con t de Student, ANOVA y análisis regresión múltiple. Los resultados dan cuenta de que el alumnado presenta niveles aceptables de sensibilidad intercultural sin diferenciarse por edad. Las adolescentes y el alumnado extranjero presentan mayor sensibilidad intercultural que sus pares. Los resultados también indican que la presencia de estudiantes de distintas nacionalidades, por sí sola, no favorece la sensibilidad intercultural. Es el clima escolar, a través del apoyo al pluralismo cultural en las escuelas, las interacciones positivas y negativas entre estudiantes, junto con el contacto intergrupal en forma de tareas conjuntas, las dimensiones que inciden en la sensibilidad intercultural, explicando un 23% de su varianza. Los resultados son concordantes con estudios internacionales y suponen un insumo para el desarrollo de intervenciones en aulas multiculturales enfocadas a favorecer la comunicación intercultural entre estudiantes de distintas nacionalidades. In this study the intercultural sensitivity was assessed together with school climate and intergroup contact of 1729 primary and secondary students from Santiago de Chile, 74,4% were born in Chile. The study was a cross-sectional quantitative study with self-administered questionnaires. Data was analysed using T-Students, ANOVA and multiple linear regression. The results show that students have intercultural sensitivity with no difference by age. At the same time, girls and foreign-born children present more intercultural sensitivity than their peers. The results also show that the mere presence of students from different nationalities does not favour intercultural sensitivity. It is the school climate, especially through support to cultural pluralism, positive and negative interactions with peers, together with intercultural contact in the form of doing homework together, that affect intercultural sensitivity, explaining 23% of its variance. The results are in line with international studies and are an input for multicultural classrooms focused in intercultural communication between students of different nationalities.

Multiculturality of the modern world assigns a special role to teaching foreign languages in higher education institutions: a future specialist is to get a high level of foreign language knowledge and skills as well as to learn how to use them to meet the challenges of professional communication with representatives of different cultures. To face these needs a university student is to develop intercultural competence, by which we mean a set of special knowledge necessary for intercultural dialogue, appropriate orientations that will ensure personal interaction based on understanding, respect, tolerance and interest to the values of another culture and a set of skills necessary for intercultural communication. While forming these abilities we should acknowledge that modern information technologies provide students with access to massive amounts of information and this charateristic of professional training actualizes the development of critical thinking skills — comprehension, analysis, systematization and evaluation of the acquired knowledge. Theoretical and practical studies on the correlation between cross-cultural competence and critical thinking allowed us to formulate the requirements to the assignments’ content aimed at developing critical thinking skills during foreign language classes: it is important to provide students with the opportunity to introduce them to the realities that are extra to their own experience and to diversify their intercultural interactions’ scenario. Observations about the changes in the students’ communicative and cultural activities led us to the conclusion that critical thinking stimulates the development of such important intercultural competence skills as multicultural awareness, readiness to learn cultural diversity, positive reaction to different viewpoints, formulating hypotheses and making assumptions about partner’s behavior and selecting an appropriate personal behavior model after identify similarities and differences, drawing independent and objective conclusion.

Purpose While researchers have argued that multicultural marketplaces are conceptually different from other types of marketplaces, the marketing literature has only recently begun to develop multicultural perspective studies, and very little research has been done to examine intergroup complexities in consumption contexts (Demangeot et al., 2015). The purpose of this study is to fill this research gap by developing and empirically testing a research model to examine the effects of socio-political constructs and intergroup-based emotional variables on consumer decisions to consume cross-ethnic products. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire designed to assess the effects of socio-political constructs and intergroup-based emotional variables on consumer decisions to consume cross-ethnic products was developed and administered to 294 students at a Midwestern US university. The data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) techniques. Findings Results indicate that all path coefficients are significant. Social dominance, intergroup anxiety and intergroup experience were found to be important predictors of intergroup tolerance and, importantly, intergroup tolerance was found to significantly affect consumer attitude toward cross-ethnic products. Research limitations/implications In terms of limitations and future research implications, this research suffers from inherent limitations associated with self-reported survey research in a limited geographic region. Accordingly, study respondents may not be representative of consumers across the nation or the world, the respondents may not have understood the questions in the intended manner, and reported intentions may not reflect actual behaviour. This study was conducted among college students, but other target segments may have different intergroup experiences and perceptions of ethnic products. Practical implications Findings from this research suggest that firms offering ethnic products can increase crossover consumption appeal by implementing marketing communication programmes that integrate cultural forums and event tactics to promote positive intergroup experiences and tolerance among their multicultural customers. Social implications Regarding policy implications, public policymakers and social thinkers may use the findings of this study as a prism to better explicate intercultural dealings among multicultural consumers. The contention of this study about public policy implications is supported by Neal et al.’s (2013) perspectives on how consumption situations can serve as a lens for explicating intergroup emotions in multicultural marketplaces. Originality/value This is one of only a few studies in marketing to assess the effects of socio-political constructs in a consumption context. This is the first known study to underscore the importance of intranational ethnic differences and assess the effects of socio-political and intergroup-based emotional variables on attitude to consume ethnic products, specifically.

Muslim life on the individual, family, and community levels continues to revolve around fundamental spiritual principles, themes, and values with corresponding meanings that impact purpose of life and even lifestyle. Muslim parents pursue ways and means to nurture their children’s spirituality, strengthen their moral resilience, and shape their identity as effective members of society. This theoretical study explores Islamic insights into spiritual parenting, addressing questions around what defines spiritual parenting and constitutes its core tenets, characteristics and approaches, and principles and guidelines used by Muslims to raise spiritual children. This study identifies a rich Islamic conceptualization and theoretical approach to holistic spiritual parenting that engages with modernity and allows room for adaptation, creativity, and intercultural experience. Further empirical research is needed to shed light on the current dynamics of Muslim spiritual parenting, parents’ struggles, accommodations, adaptations, as well as caregiver resistance in practices of spiritual parenting, which would help us better understand the needs and challenges facing Muslim families today and further enrich our understanding of comparative and cross-cultural parenting in multicultural societies.

The article discusses the phenomenon of acculturation in the professional activities of international profile in terms of intercultural communication. The author emphasizes that acculturation problems related to intercultural communication have not only domestic but also international dimension. The article presents the theory and methodology of acculturation problems at different stages ofdevelopment of foreign and domestic scholars (specialists in cultural studies, ethnographers, ethnosociologists) and specifies the defference between the concepts of acculturation and assimilation of national and regional cultures. It further describes the strategy of acculturation (separation, marginalization, integration), emphasizes the role of integration strategy that makes it possible to preserve the cultural identity of a specialist in international relations along with an awareness of the regional culture of the host country. Special attention is given to the task of the university in preventing possible assimilation of future specialists in international relations and building "immunity" to the cultural (regional) adaptation and sustainable cultural identity as a representative the Russia. The article marks the mission of Russian culture as a medium of traditions, moral and spiritual values that built the Russian nation as a single community and state. The author writes that ethno-cultural component brings together many cultures, ethnic groups and nationalities of Russia, forms a common multicultural ground and brings about the need for cross-cultural awareness in international relations. That is confirmed by the State Federal Standard of Higher Education which describes specific competences that students of international relations are supposed to possess.

This paper not only attempts to outline in one location the many barriers faced by visible minority families in their attempt to integrate into Canadian Society, but it also seeks to offer the development of a new approach to the solution of the problem of Cultural Sensitivity. On the premise that education is transformational, programs like Global education, Multicultural Education, Intercultural Education, Antiracist Education, and Diversity Education have been instituted in Canadian schools. Unfortunately these programs have had serious problems and have been severely criticized in their implementation even by their supporters. They all have different focuses and agendas that do not strike at the core of the problems nascent to majority/minority dynamics in Canada. The ultimate goal of these programs, presumed to be able to attain cross-cultural competence, has left many wondering how effective these programs have been. McChesney (1996) wondered if there was hope for cultural studies. The problems of the visible minority immigrant families have seemed persistent. The frustrations of the younger generation of visible minority families continue to be bewildering. This writer feels it is time to change course.

This article analyzes the relationship between creative tourism and intercultural interaction. The research took place in Barcelona, a city that has become, during the last three decades (1990-2020), a renowned international urban destination. El Raval, a central and multicultural neighbourhood, is the most serious example of a neighbourhood in the city that has experienced rapid tourism growth and pressure. Given the city’s wholesale adoption of the co-creation of place, some of the criteria of creative tourism experiences have been used to determine a baseline of engagement attitudes and behaviours of residents and visitors in El Raval neighbourhood. A special emphasis has been given to the role of social media, and how it might affect the relationship between residents and visitors from a creative tourism point of view. The authors created a specific survey which was distributed online to residents and visitors. The results of this study show different perceptions between residents and visitors. On one hand, residents are less willing to engage in the creative tourism enterprise than are visitors. On the other hand, residents underestimate the interest of visitors in connecting with them, while visitors overestimate the interest of residents in connecting with them, suggesting that communication is something that can be improved. Those results make evident the need to use and develop social media tools to connect residents and visitors, and promote cross-cultural interactions and creative tourism.

This study examines the implementation of village funds related to the development of cross-cultural activities in Badung and Buleleng. Whether the pattern is instructive translation of sloganitic deconcentration tasks or participatory institutionalization that sets out the need for cross-cultural issues in the village. The Tamatea Study (2006), Parker (2017), and Gottowick (2010) discuss multiculturalism as the nature of local wisdom which is described as responding to people's daily problems. Another study, Kwon (2018) and Selenica (2018) looked at multiculturalism in the perspective of intercultural conflict. This research takes a different position from previous research by criticizing the construction of state control over multiculturalism that runs at the grassroots. Control construction is seen from the management of village funds for cross-cultural activities that are operationalized through guaranteed equality of ethnic and religious groups. The research paradigm is non-positive with case studies. Data collection methods utilize observation, interviews and documentation. The perspective used is interpretive with the theory of discourse. Research results show that state control is firmly embedded in the development of multiculturalism in villages. The nature of control is meaningfully driven, administrative control of budgeting has the potential to have an inhibiting effect on the development of the potential of the village concerned, including the development of multiculturalism activities in the village. Such as overlapping regulations on financial accountability, lack of socialization of regulations and assume that village human resources have understood every multicultural development program (especially the deconcentration program), injustice attitude views the potential of the village and bias behavior rules that are biased. Various attitudes are often shown by vertical government officials, such as sub-districts, offices (OPD), and ministries, which are counterproductive to oversee the development of the attitude of the development of multiculturalism in the village. Villages are forced to translate multicultural development programs that are trapped in administrative accountability which in reality compartmentalize the potential of the resources within.

This article summarizes some of the results of the first QS Subject Focus Summit on Linguistics and Modern Languages held jointly with the RUDN University on December 15-17, 2020. It provides rationale for the choice of venue of this linguistic forum and analyzes the most relevant topics of discussion, including interdisciplinarity in modern linguistic research, comparative studies of languages and cultures, and intercultural and cross-cultural communication. Participants explored the topics as diverse as the role of linguistics in developing artificial intelligence systems and application of artificial intelligence in linguistic research, the dynamics of languages in minority situations and the efforts in preserving endangered languages. They dwelt on the current state of translation studies and discussed prospects for their future in view of advances in computer technologies, and many others. The articles included in this issue and authored by the Summit participants clearly show that language has become an object of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary studies. Moreover, the interdisciplinary research paradigm is manifested not only in the convergence of linguistics with other areas of humanities, but also with sciences. This article provides a brief overview of the contributions which present major paradigms of modern linguistics. It highlights the importance of applying computer technologies in linguistic research and emphasizes the necessity to modify language policies in order to preserve minority languages and meet the needs of language education in a multilingual and multicultural environment.

This case study investigated how one teacher, Lidia (a pseudonym), used her own cross-cultural experiences to socially and academically assist elementary school students who were crossing cultural boundaries of their own. This study used ethnographic interviews and classroom observations to explore Lidia’s experiences and struggles as she crossed cultural boundaries and built intercultural competence and how those experiences related to her teaching methods. Lidia used stories, multicultural images, and the students’ home languages so that her students could become confident in their multicultural and multilingual identities instead of solely assimilating. Teaching interculturally for Lidia meant empowering students to balance their home cultures while creating meaningful opportunities for them to practice English and school cultural norms. This study adds to literature on intercultural competence and communities of practice by exploring how interculturality may be advantageous in helping teachers work with diverse and international students by allowing them to act as brokers within the school’s community.

The main problem highlighted in this essay is the challenges being faced by Christian migrants in Indonesia. They are expected to succeed in overcoming the cross-cultural problems within their Christian communities, and externally to take part in building a fellowship beyond their own groups. Indonesia's multireligious and multicultural landscape has suffered in the past few decades from the politics of identity. The Christian migrants have also been affected by this. Whilst they need support in formulating afresh their Christian identity, they also require a broader intercultural mindset. Through observations, focus group discussions and literature reviews, the paper tries to formulate the role Christian migrants can explore in their cross-cultural contexts. The basic position it takes is that the Catholic migrants (a case in this paper) are also agents of mission and that migration is to some extent a process of building bridges among diverse peoples in society. The paper argues that there is a need for the migrants to be equipped with intercultural competencies and interreligious spirituality.

The ability, will, and belief that it is possible to deal effectively with members of other cultural/ethnic groups are still gaining importance all over the world. However, the majority of studies on intercultural relations focus on Western Europe and the USA, applying constructs and theories that replicate a western-centered worldview. As a consequence, it is unclear whether established measures for intergroup attitudes and intercultural competence may be applied in Eastern European countries and to what extent they display comparable ideas, thoughts, and feelings. The current study thus explores cross-cultural commonalities and differences in established measures of ethnic identity, prejudice, acculturation strategies, intercultural intelligence, and multicultural personality. Therefore, we compare the scale structure, difficulty, and sensitivity in samples from Germany and the Eastern European countries Hungary, Serbia, and the Czech Republic (etic-perspective), as well as the culture-specific conceptions of said concepts (emic-perspective). Results show that the investigated scales do not work comparably across German and Eastern European samples. Differences might be rooted in variations of underlying thinking patterns and connotations of single expressions. Those variations are likely to be related to the constant individual societal and historical developments of cultures, shaping the way individuals think and talk about cultural diversity. Future studies are encouraged to consider culture-specific and generalizable aspects of constructs when conducting cross-cultural research on intercultural relations.

AbstractThis paper examines one consequence of the increasingly multilingual and multicultural labor market, resulting from migratory flows caused in part by globalization. It focuses on selected legal and translation issues in labor relations arising from misinterpretations and cultural disparities in communication between different languages and cultures. It draws on decisions of the United States National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), where there were misleading and ambiguous translations. It employs a theoretical approach based on concepts from cross-cultural management, including cultural theory, and thereby expands the discipline of Translation Studies. The findings suggest that an understanding of the cultural content, particularly in the practice of intercultural management, is imperative. The paper concludes that a systematic methodology linking culture and language in labor relations should be adopted.

Due to proceeding globalization processes, involving a rise in mobility and international interdependencies, the frequency and relevance of intercultural contact situations increases. Consequently, the ability to deal effectively with intercultural situations is gaining in importance. However, the majority of studies on measures of intercultural competence focuses on Western Europe and the United States or cultures of the Far East. For the present study, previously understudied Eastern European (former communist) cultures were included, by sampling in Hungary, Serbia, and the Czech Republic, in addition to (the Central or Western European country) Germany. Thus, this study enabled comparisons of scale characteristics of the cultural intelligence scale (CQS), the multicultural personality questionnaire (MPQ), as well as the blatant and subtle prejudice scales, across samples from different cultures. It was also examined how the CQS and MPQ dimensions are associated with prejudice. To analyse scale characteristics, the factor structures and measurement invariances of the used instruments were analyzed. There were violations of configural measurement invariance observed for all of these scales, indicating that the comparability across samples is limited. Therefore, each of the samples was analyzed separately when examining how the CQS and MPQ dimensions are related to prejudice. It was revealed that, in particular, the motivational aspect of the CQS was statistically predicting lower prejudice. Less consistently, the MPQ dimensions of open-mindedness and flexibility were statistically predicting lower prejudice in some of the analyses. However, the violations of measurement invariance indicate differences in the constructs' meanings across the samples from different cultures. It is consequently argued that cross-cultural equivalence should not be taken for granted when comparing Eastern and Western European cultures.

As culturally different individuals work together, energy may be employed as a resource towards building and sustaining a work relationship. However, current scholarship on energy at work and relational energy fail to take into account cultural considerations. To address this gap, we develop novel theory that distinguishes amongst various forms of energy to explicate how they are differentially interpreted in interactions based on cultural orientation. Integrating theories of interaction rituals and energy at work, our theorizing calls into question common assumptions in prior literature which privilege certain forms of energy expression (such as high intensity) over others (such as calm restraint). We further theorize that energy becomes a resource when culturally-different relationship partners go through a process of discovery as they interact, in which they learn about their partner’s energy contributions and communication preferences. Through adaptation, intercultural partners can then establish an equilibrium, or balanced state, of energy contributions to their interactions. The relational energy gained from reaching this equilibrium replenishes personal resources used in interdependent work with culturally diverse others. We explain how such resource enhancement plays a critical role in sustaining high quality interdependent work in multicultural organizations.

Bicultural identity orientations have rarely been examined in relation to both perceived discrimination and psychological distress. Furthermore, these constructs have usually been studied in isolation, but their intersection is essential for understanding intercultural relations in multicultural societies. Using cross-sectional data from 1,143 Canadian undergraduate students from immigrant families, this study explored the relationship between perceived discrimination and psychological distress, and how bicultural identity orientations might mediate this relationship. The structural equation modeling results indicated that perceived discrimination was associated with higher levels of psychological distress and hybrid, monocultural, alternating, and conflicted orientations, but lower levels of complementary orientation. Alternating and conflicted orientations were related to higher psychological distress, whereas the other orientations were not. Alternating and conflicted orientations mediated the relationship between perceived discrimination and psychological distress, whereas the other orientations did not. The findings are discussed in light of theories on identity integration, rejection–identification, and acculturation.

Abstract Background French Guiana is characterized by a very multicultural population, made up of formerly settled groups (Amerindians, Maroons, Creoles) and more recent migrants (mostly from Latin America and the Caribbean). It is the ideal place to try to understand the influence of intercultural exchanges on the composition of medicinal floras and the evolution of phytotherapies under the effect of cross-culturalism. Methods A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was used. Semi-directive interviews were conducted in 12 localities of French Guiana’s coast between January 2016 and June 2017, and the responses to all closed questions collected during the survey were computerized in an Excel spreadsheet to facilitate quantitative processing. Herbarium vouchers were collected and deposited at the Cayenne Herbarium to determine Linnaean names of medicinal species mentioned by the interviewees. A list of indicator species for each cultural group considered was adapted from community ecology to this ethnobiological context, according to the Dufrêne-Legendre model, via the “labdsv” package and the “indval” function, after performing a redundancy analysis (RDA). Results A total of 205 people, belonging to 15 distinct cultural groups, were interviewed using semi-structured questionnaires. A total of 356 species (for 106 botanical families) were cited. We observed that pantropical and edible species hold a special place in these pharmacopeias. If compared to previous inventories, 31 recently introduced species can be counted. Furthermore, this study shows that the majority of the plants used are not specific to a particular group but shared by many communities. However, despite this obvious cross-culturalism of medicinal plants between the different cultural communities of French Guiana, divergent trends nevertheless appear through the importance of 29 indicator/cultural keystone species in 10 cultural groups. Finally, we have emphasized that the transmission of herbal medicine’s knowledge in French Guiana is mainly feminine and intra-cultural. Conclusion French Guianese medicinal flora is undoubtedly related to the multiple cultures that settled this territory through the last centuries. Cultural pharmacopeias are more hybrid than sometimes expected, but cultural keystone species nevertheless arise from a common background, allowing to understand, and define, the relationships between cultural groups.

Cross-border migration leads to a diversification of societies, which is reflected in the education system, where classrooms are composed of students with heterogeneous cultural, linguistic, socio-economic characteristics. However, this diversity is only to a limited extent reflected in the teacher population, even though teachers from different backgrounds can bring specific intercultural competencies, have more positive attitudes toward multicultural heterogeneity and act as role models. To facilitate the diversification of the teaching profession, it is imperative that the cohorts of students entering teacher education programs represent the diversity of societies, however studies have shown students with migration backgrounds or from families with lower socio-economic status are underrepresented in such programs. This study considered the demographic constellation of applicants for admission into the teacher education program in Luxembourg (2015–2019) and investigated to what extent the admission process (dis)advantages certain groups. Results revealed that although applicants come from diverse backgrounds, proficiency in the country’s native languages poses a disadvantage for students with migration backgrounds. In addition, applicants coming from more privileged families stand a better chance of being admitted. Results are interpreted within the framework of social mobility and social reproduction. Implications for the admission to the teachers’ education program are discussed.

07–305Allen, Shanley E. M. (Boston U, USA), Martha Cregg & Diane Pesco, The effect of majority language exposure on minority language skills: The case of Inuktitut. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.5 (2006), 578–596.07–306Barkhuizen, Gary (U Auckland, New Zealand), Ute Knoch & Donna Starks, Language practices, preferences and policies: Contrasting views of Pakeha, Maori, Pasifika and Asian students. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (Multilingual Matters) 27.5 (2006), 375–391.07–307Bedore, Lisa M. (U Texas at Austin, USA; lbedore@mail.utexas.edu), Christine E. Fiestas, Elizabeth D. Pena & Vanessa J. Nagy, Cross-language comparisons of maze use in Spanish and English in functionally monolingual and bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.3 (2006), 249–261.07–308Boumans, Louis (Radboud U, Nijmegen, the Netherlands; l.boumans@let.ru.nl), The attributive possessive in Moroccan Arabic spoken by young bilinguals in the Netherlands and their peers in Morocco. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.3 (2006), 233–247.07–309de Klerk, Vivian (Rhodes U, Grahamstown, South Africa), Codeswitching, borrowing and mixing in a corpus of Xhosa English. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.5 (2006), 597–614.07–310Dorian, Nancy C., Negative borrowing in an indigenous-language shift to the dominant national language. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.5 (2006), 557–577.07–311Fflur Huws, Catrın, Adran y Gyfraıth & Adeılad Hugh Owen (Ceredigion, Wales, UK; trh@aber.ac.uk), The Welsh language act 1993: A measure of success. Language Policy (Springer) 5.2 (2006), 141–160.07–312Finkbeiner, Matthew (Harvard U, USA), Jorge Almeida, Niels Janssen & Alfonso Caramazza, Lexical selection in bilingual speech production does not involve language suppression. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (American Psychological Association) 32.5 (2006), 1075–1089.07–313Hamel, Rainer Enrique (U Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico) & Norbert Francis, The teaching of Spanish as a second language in an indigenous bilingual intercultural curriculum. Language, Culture and Curriculum (Multilingual Matters) 19.2 (2006), 171–188.07–314Ho, Debbie G. E. (U Brunei, Brunei), ‘I'm not west. I'm not east. So how leh?’English Today (Cambridge University Press) 22.3 (2006), 17–24.07–315Hohenstein, Jill (King's College London, UK; jill.hohenstein@kcl.ac.uk), Ann Eisenberg & Letitia Naigles, Is he floating across or crossing afloat? Cross-influence of L1 and L2 in Spanish–English bilingual adults. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.3 (2006), 263–280.07–316Huguet, Ángel (U Lleida, Spain), Attitudes and motivation versus language achievement in cross-linguistic settings. What is cause and what effect?Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (Multilingual Matters) 27.5 (2006), 413–429.07–317Lee, Borim (Wonkwang U, Korea; brlee@wonkwang.ac.kr), Susan G. Guion & Tetsuo Harada, Acoustic analysis of the production of unstressed English vowels by early and late Korean and Japanese bilinguals. Studies in Second Language Acquisition (Cambridge University Press) 28.3 (2006), 487–513.07–318McCarty, Teresa L. (Arizona State U, Phoenix, USA), Mary Eunice Romero-Little & Ofelia Zepeda, Native American youth discourses on language shift and retention: Ideological cross-currents and their implications for language planning. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.5 (2006), 659–677.07–319Mills, Kathy A. (Christian Heritage College, Australia), ‘Mr travelling-at-will Ted Doyle’: Discourses in a multiliteracies classroom. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy (Australian Literacy Educators' Association) 29.2 (2006), 132–149.07–320Ngai, Phyllis Bo-Yuen (U Montana, USA), Grassroots suggestions for linking native-language learning, Native American studies, and mainstream education in reservation schools with mixed Indian and white student populations. Language, Culture and Curriculum (Multilingual Matters) 19.2 (2006), 220–236.07–321Pika, Simone (U St Andrews, Scotland; sp60@st-andrews.ac.uk), Elena Nicoladis & Paula F. Marentette, A cross-cultural study on the use of gestures: Evidence for cross-linguistic transfer?Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.3 (2006), 319–327.07–322Portelli, John (U Malta), Language: An important signifier of masculinity in a bilingual context. Gender and Education (Routledge/Taylor & Francis) 18.4 (2006), 413–430.07–323Prevost, Philippe (Laval U, Canada; philippe.prevost@lli.ulaval.ca), The phenomenon of object omission in child L2 French. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.3 (2006), 281–297.07–324Reagan, Tımothy (U Witwatersrand, South Africa; reagant@hse.wits.ac.za), Claıre Penn & Dale Ogılvy, From policy to practice: Sign language developments in post-apartheid South Africa. Language Policy (Springer) 5.2 (2006), 187–208.07–325Reichelt, Melinda (U Toledo, USA), English in a multilingual Spain. English Today (Cambridge University Press) 22.3 (2006), 3–9.07–326Salamoura, Angeliki (U Cambridge, UK; as350@cam.ac.uk) & John N. Williams, Lexical activation of cross-language syntactic priming. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.3 (2006), 309–318.07–327Sánchez, Liliana (Rutgers U, New Brunswick, USA), Kechwa and Spanish bilingual grammars: Testing hypotheses on functional interference and convergence. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.5 (2006), 535–556.07–328Schwartz, Ana I. (U Texas at El Paso, USA; aischwartz@utep.edu) & Judith F. Kroll, Bilingual lexical activation in sentence context. Journal of Memory and Language (Elsevier) 55.2 (2006), 197–212.07–329Sııner, Maarja (Copenhagen, Denmark; maarja_siiner@hotmail.com), Planning language practice: A sociolinguistic analysis of language policy in post-communist Estonia. Language Policy (Springer) 5.2 (2006), 161–186.07–330Smits, Erica (Antwerp U, Belgium; erica.smits@ua.ac.be), Heike Martensen, Ton Dijkstra & Dominiek Sandra, Naming interlingual homographs: Variable competition and the role of the decision system. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press) 9.3 (2006), 299–307.07–331Soukup, Barbara (Georgetown U, USA; bks5@georgetown.edu), Language news in review: UNESCO and the quest for cultural diversity. Language Policy (Springer) 5.2 (2006), 209–218.07–332Tillman, Amy E. (Georgia State U, USA), A love affair with pidgin. English Today (Cambridge University Press) 22.3 (2006), 53–60.07–333Torres, Lourdes (DePaul U, Chicago, USA), Bilingual discourse markers in indigenous languages. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.5 (2006), 615–624.07–334Trudell, Barbara (SIL International, Nairobi, Kenya), Language development and social uses of literacy: A study of literacy practices in Cameroonian minority language communities. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters) 9.5 (2006), 625–642.07–335Wang, Hongyuan & Ying Yang (Yulin College, Shaanxi, China), Using letter words in China. English Today (Cambridge University Press) 22.3 (2006), 51–52.07–336Yiakoumetti, Androula (U Cambridge, UK), A bidialectal programme for the learning of Standard Modern Greek in Cyprus. Applied Linguistics (Oxford University Press) 27.2 (2006), 295–317.

Introduction Most developed countries, including Australia, have a strong focus on national, state and local strategies for emergency management and response in the face of disasters and crises. This framework can include coping with catastrophic dislocation, service disruption, injury or loss of life in the face of natural disasters such as major fires, floods, earthquakes or other large-impact natural events, as well as dealing with similar catastrophes resulting from human actions such as bombs, biological agents, cyber-attacks targeting essential services such as communications networks, or other crises affecting large populations. Emergency management frameworks for crisis and disaster response are distinguished by their focus on the domestic context for such events; that is, how to manage and assist the ways in which civilian populations, who are for the most part inexperienced and untrained in dealing with crises and disasters, are able to respond and behave in such situations so as to minimise the impacts of a catastrophic event. Even in countries like Australia that demonstrate a strong public commitment to cultural pluralism and social cohesion, ethno-cultural diversity can be seen as a risk or threat to national security and values at times of political, natural, economic and/or social tensions and crises. Australian government policymakers have recently focused, with increasing intensity, on “community resilience” as a key element in countering extremism and enhancing emergency preparedness and response. In some sense, this is the result of a tacit acknowledgement by government agencies that there are limits to what they can do for domestic communities should such a catastrophic event occur, and accordingly, the focus in recent times has shifted to how governments can best help people to help themselves in such situations, a key element of the contemporary “resilience” approach. Yet despite the robustly multicultural nature of Australian society, explicit engagement with Australia’s cultural diversity flickers only fleetingly on this agenda, which continues to pursue approaches to community resilience in the absence of understandings about how these terms and formations may themselves need to be diversified to maximise engagement by all citizens in a multicultural polity. There have been some recent efforts in Australia to move in this direction, for example the Australian Emergency Management Institute (AEMI)’s recent suite of projects with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities (2006-2010) and the current Australia-New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee-supported project on “Harnessing Resilience Capital in Culturally Diverse Communities to Counter Violent Extremism” (Grossman and Tahiri), which I discuss in a longer forthcoming version of this essay (Grossman). Yet the understanding of ethno-cultural identity and difference that underlies much policy thinking on resilience remains problematic for the way in which it invests in a view of the cultural dimensions of community resilience as relic rather than resource – valorising the preservation of and respect for cultural norms and traditions, but silent on what different ethno-cultural communities might contribute toward expanded definitions of both “community” and “resilience” by virtue of the transformative potential and existing cultural capital they bring with them into new national and also translocal settings. For example, a primary conclusion of the joint program between AEMI and the Australian Multicultural Commission is that CALD communities are largely “vulnerable” in the context of disasters and emergency management and need to be better integrated into majority-culture models of theorising and embedding community resilience. This focus on stronger national integration and the “vulnerability” of culturally diverse ethno-cultural communities in the Australian context echoes the work of scholars beyond Australia such as McGhee, Mouritsen (Reflections, Citizenship) and Joppke. They argue that the “civic turn” in debates around resurgent contemporary nationalism and multicultural immigration policies privileges civic integration over genuine two-way multiculturalism. This approach sidesteps the transculturational (Ortiz; Welsch; Mignolo; Bennesaieh; Robins; Stein) aspects of contemporary social identities and exchange by paying lip-service to cultural diversity while affirming a neo-liberal construct of civic values and principles as a universalising goal of Western democratic states within a global market economy. It also suggests a superficial tribute to cultural diversity that does not embed diversity comprehensively at the levels of either conceptualising or resourcing different elements of Australian transcultural communities within the generalised framework of “community resilience.” And by emphasising cultural difference as vulnerability rather than as resource or asset, it fails to acknowledge the varieties of resilience capital that many culturally diverse individuals and communities may bring with them when they resettle in new environments, by ignoring the question of what “resilience” actually means to those from culturally diverse communities. In so doing, it also avoids the critical task of incorporating intercultural definitional diversity around the concepts of both “community” and “resilience” used to promote social cohesion and the capacity to recover from disasters and crises. How we might do differently in thinking about the broader challenges for multiculturalism itself as a resilient transnational concept and practice? The Concept of Resilience The meanings of resilience vary by disciplinary perspective. While there is no universally accepted definition of the concept, it is widely acknowledged that resilience refers to the capacity of an individual to do well in spite of exposure to acute trauma or sustained adversity (Liebenberg 219). Originating in the Latin word resilio, meaning ‘to jump back’, there is general consensus that resilience pertains to an individual’s, community’s or system’s ability to adapt to and ‘bounce back’ from a disruptive event (Mohaupt 63, Longstaff et al. 3). Over the past decade there has been a dramatic rise in interest in the clinical, community and family sciences concerning resilience to a broad range of adversities (Weine 62). While debate continues over which discipline can be credited with first employing resilience as a concept, Mohaupt argues that most of the literature on resilience cites social psychology and psychiatry as the origin for the concept beginning in the mid-20th century. The pioneer researchers of what became known as resilience research studied the impact on children living in dysfunctional families. For example, the findings of work by Garmezy, Werner and Smith and Rutter showed that about one third of children in these studies were coping very well despite considerable adversities and traumas. In asking what it was that prevented the children in their research from being negatively influenced by their home environments, such research provided the basis for future research on resilience. Such work was also ground-breaking for identifying the so-called ‘protective factors’ or resources that individuals can operationalise when dealing with adversity. In essence, protective factors are those conditions in the individual that protect them from the risk of dysfunction and enable recovery from trauma. They mitigate the effects of stressors or risk factors, that is, those conditions that predispose one to harm (Hajek 15). Protective factors include the inborn traits or qualities within an individual, those defining an individual’s environment, and also the interaction between the two. Together, these factors give people the strength, skills and motivation to cope in difficult situations and re-establish (a version of) ‘normal’ life (Gunnestad). Identifying protective factors is important in terms of understanding the particular resources a given sociocultural group has at its disposal, but it is also vital to consider the interconnections between various protective mechanisms, how they might influence each other, and to what degree. An individual, for instance, might display resilience or adaptive functioning in a particular domain (e.g. emotional functioning) but experience significant deficits in another (e.g. academic achievement) (Hunter 2). It is also essential to scrutinise how the interaction between protective factors and risk factors creates patterns of resilience. Finally, a comprehensive understanding of the interrelated nature of protective mechanisms and risk factors is imperative for designing effective interventions and tailored preventive strategies (Weine 65). In short, contemporary thinking about resilience suggests it is neither entirely personal nor strictly social, but an interactive and iterative combination of the two. It is a quality of the environment as much as the individual. For Ungar, resilience is the complex entanglements between “individuals and their social ecologies [that] will determine the degree of positive outcomes experienced” (3). Thinking about resilience as context-dependent is important because research that is too trait-based or actor-centred risks ignoring any structural or institutional forces. A more ecological interpretation of resilience, one that takes into a person’s context and environment into account, is vital in order to avoid blaming the victim for any hardships they face, or relieving state and institutional structures from their responsibilities in addressing social adversity, which can “emphasise self-help in line with a neo-conservative agenda instead of stimulating state responsibility” (Mohaupt 67). Nevertheless, Ungar posits that a coherent definition of resilience has yet to be developed that adequately ‘captures the dual focus of the individual and the individual’s social ecology and how the two must both be accounted for when determining the criteria for judging outcomes and discerning processes associated with resilience’ (7). Recent resilience research has consequently prompted a shift away from vulnerability towards protective processes — a shift that highlights the sustained capabilities of individuals and communities under threat or at risk. Locating ‘Culture’ in the Literature on Resilience However, an understanding of the role of culture has remained elusive or marginalised within this trend; there has been comparatively little sustained investigation into the applicability of resilience constructs to non-western cultures, or how the resources available for survival might differ from those accessible to western populations (Ungar 4). As such, a growing body of researchers is calling for more rigorous inquiry into culturally determined outcomes that might be associated with resilience in non-western or multicultural cultures and contexts, for example where Indigenous and minority immigrant communities live side by side with their ‘mainstream’ neighbours in western settings (Ungar 2). ‘Cultural resilience’ considers the role that cultural background plays in determining the ability of individuals and communities to be resilient in the face of adversity. For Clauss-Ehlers, the term describes the degree to which the strengths of one’s culture promote the development of coping (198). Culturally-focused resilience suggests that people can manage and overcome stress and trauma based not on individual characteristics alone, but also from the support of broader sociocultural factors (culture, cultural values, language, customs, norms) (Clauss-Ehlers 324). The innate cultural strengths of a culture may or may not differ from the strengths of other cultures; the emphasis here is not so much comparatively inter-cultural as intensively intra-cultural (VanBreda 215). A culturally focused resilience model thus involves “a dynamic, interactive process in which the individual negotiates stress through a combination of character traits, cultural background, cultural values, and facilitating factors in the sociocultural environment” (Clauss-Ehlers 199). In understanding ways of ‘coping and hoping, surviving and thriving’, it is thus crucial to consider how culturally and linguistically diverse minorities navigate the cultural understandings and assumptions of both their countries of origin and those of their current domicile (Ungar 12). Gunnestad claims that people who master the rules and norms of their new culture without abandoning their own language, values and social support are more resilient than those who tenaciously maintain their own culture at the expense of adjusting to their new environment. They are also more resilient than those who forego their own culture and assimilate with the host society (14). Accordingly, if the combination of both valuing one’s culture as well as learning about the culture of the new system produces greater resilience and adaptive capacities, serious problems can arise when a majority tries to acculturate a minority to the mainstream by taking away or not recognising important parts of the minority culture. In terms of resilience, if cultural factors are denied or diminished in accounting for and strengthening resilience – in other words, if people are stripped of what they possess by way of resilience built through cultural knowledge, disposition and networks – they do in fact become vulnerable, because ‘they do not automatically gain those cultural strengths that the majority has acquired over generations’ (Gunnestad 14). Mobilising ‘Culture’ in Australian Approaches to Community Resilience The realpolitik of how concepts of resilience and culture are mobilised is highly relevant here. As noted above, when ethnocultural difference is positioned as a risk or a threat to national identity, security and values, this is precisely the moment when vigorously, even aggressively, nationalised definitions of ‘community’ and ‘identity’ that minoritise or disavow cultural diversities come to the fore in public discourse. The Australian evocation of nationalism and national identity, particularly in the way it has framed policy discussion on managing national responses to disasters and threats, has arguably been more muted than some of the European hysteria witnessed recently around cultural diversity and national life. Yet we still struggle with the idea that newcomers to Australia might fall on the surplus rather than the deficit side of the ledger when it comes to identifying and harnessing resilience capital. A brief example of this trend is explored here. From 2006 to 2010, the Australian Emergency Management Institute embarked on an ambitious government-funded four-year program devoted to strengthening community resilience in relation to disasters with specific reference to engaging CALD communities across Australia. The program, Inclusive Emergency Management with CALD Communities, was part of a wider Australian National Action Plan to Build Social Cohesion, Harmony and Security in the wake of the London terrorist bombings in July 2005. Involving CALD community organisations as well as various emergency and disaster management agencies, the program ran various workshops and agency-community partnership pilots, developed national school education resources, and commissioned an evaluation of the program’s effectiveness (Farrow et al.). While my critique here is certainly not aimed at emergency management or disaster response agencies and personnel themselves – dedicated professionals who often achieve remarkable results in emergency and disaster response under extraordinarily difficult circumstances – it is nevertheless important to highlight how the assumptions underlying elements of AEMI’s experience and outcomes reflect the persistent ways in which ethnocultural diversity is rendered as a problem to be surmounted or a liability to be redressed, rather than as an asset to be built upon or a resource to be valued and mobilised. AEMI’s explicit effort to engage with CALD communities in building overall community resilience was important in its tacit acknowledgement that emergency and disaster services were (and often remain) under-resourced and under-prepared in dealing with the complexities of cultural diversity in emergency situations. Despite these good intentions, however, while the program produced some positive outcomes and contributed to crucial relationship building between CALD communities and emergency services within various jurisdictions, it also continued to frame the challenge of working with cultural diversity as a problem of increased vulnerability during disasters for recently arrived and refugee background CALD individuals and communities. This highlights a common feature in community resilience-building initiatives, which is to focus on those who are already ‘robust’ versus those who are ‘vulnerable’ in relation to resilience indicators, and whose needs may require different or additional resources in order to be met. At one level, this is a pragmatic resourcing issue: national agencies understandably want to put their people, energy and dollars where they are most needed in pursuit of a steady-state unified national response at times of crisis. Nor should it be argued that at least some CALD groups, particularly those from new arrival and refugee communities, are not vulnerable in at least some of the ways and for some of the reasons suggested in the program evaluation. However, the consistent focus on CALD communities as ‘vulnerable’ and ‘in need’ is problematic, as well as partial. It casts members of these communities as structurally and inherently less able and less resilient in the context of disasters and emergencies: in some sense, as those who, already ‘victims’ of chronic social deficits such as low English proficiency, social isolation and a mysterious unidentified set of ‘cultural factors’, can become doubly victimised in acute crisis and disaster scenarios. In what is by now a familiar trope, the description of CALD communities as ‘vulnerable’ precludes asking questions about what they do have, what they do know, and what they do or can contribute to how we respond to disaster and emergency events in our communities. A more profound problem in this sphere revolves around working out how best to engage CALD communities and individuals within existing approaches to disaster and emergency preparedness and response. This reflects a fundamental but unavoidable limitation of disaster preparedness models: they are innately spatially and geographically bounded, and consequently understand ‘communities’ in these terms, rather than expanding definitions of ‘community’ to include the dimensions of community-as-social-relations. While some good engagement outcomes were achieved locally around cross-cultural knowledge for emergency services workers, the AEMI program fell short of asking some of the harder questions about how emergency and disaster service scaffolding and resilience-building approaches might themselves need to change or transform, using a cross-cutting model of ‘communities’ as both geographic places and multicultural spaces (Bartowiak-Théron and Crehan) in order to be more effective in national scenarios in which cultural diversity should be taken for granted. Toward Acknowledgement of Resilience Capital Most significantly, the AEMI program did not produce any recognition of the ways in which CALD communities already possess resilience capital, or consider how this might be drawn on in formulating stronger community initiatives around disaster and threats preparedness for the future. Of course, not all individuals within such communities, nor all communities across varying circumstances, will demonstrate resilience, and we need to be careful of either overgeneralising or romanticising the kinds and degrees of ‘resilience capital’ that may exist within them. Nevertheless, at least some have developed ways of withstanding crises and adapting to new conditions of living. This is particularly so in connection with individual and group behaviours around resource sharing, care-giving and social responsibility under adverse circumstances (Grossman and Tahiri) – all of which are directly relevant to emergency and disaster response. While some of these resilient behaviours may have been nurtured or enhanced by particular experiences and environments, they can, as the discussion of recent literature above suggests, also be rooted more deeply in cultural norms, habits and beliefs. Whatever their origins, for culturally diverse societies to achieve genuine resilience in the face of both natural and human-made disasters, it is critical to call on the ‘social memory’ (Folke et al.) of communities faced with responding to emergencies and crises. Such wellsprings of social memory ‘come from the diversity of individuals and institutions that draw on reservoirs of practices, knowledge, values, and worldviews and is crucial for preparing the system for change, building resilience, and for coping with surprise’ (Adger et al.). Consequently, if we accept the challenge of mapping an approach to cultural diversity as resource rather than relic into our thinking around strengthening community resilience, there are significant gains to be made. For a whole range of reasons, no diversity-sensitive model or measure of resilience should invest in static understandings of ethnicities and cultures; all around the world, ethnocultural identities and communities are in a constant and sometimes accelerated state of dynamism, reconfiguration and flux. But to ignore the resilience capital and potential protective factors that ethnocultural diversity can offer to the strengthening of community resilience more broadly is to miss important opportunities that can help suture the existing disconnects between proactive approaches to intercultural connectedness and social inclusion on the one hand, and reactive approaches to threats, national security and disaster response on the other, undermining the effort to advance effectively on either front. This means that dominant social institutions and structures must be willing to contemplate their own transformation as the result of transcultural engagement, rather than merely insisting, as is often the case, that ‘other’ cultures and communities conform to existing hegemonic paradigms of being and of living. In many ways, this is the most critical step of all. A resilience model and strategy that questions its own culturally informed yet taken-for-granted assumptions and premises, goes out into communities to test and refine these, and returns to redesign its approach based on the new knowledge it acquires, would reflect genuine progress toward an effective transculturational approach to community resilience in culturally diverse contexts.References Adger, W. Neil, Terry P. Hughes, Carl Folke, Stephen R. Carpenter and Johan Rockström. “Social-Ecological Resilience to Coastal Disasters.” Science 309.5737 (2005): 1036-1039. ‹http://www.sciencemag.org/content/309/5737/1036.full> Bartowiak-Théron, Isabelle, and Anna Corbo Crehan. “The Changing Nature of Communities: Implications for Police and Community Policing.” Community Policing in Australia: Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) Reports, Research and Policy Series 111 (2010): 8-15. Benessaieh, Afef. “Multiculturalism, Interculturality, Transculturality.” Ed. A. Benessaieh. Transcultural Americas/Ameriques Transculturelles. Ottawa: U of Ottawa Press/Les Presses de l’Unversite d’Ottawa, 2010. 11-38. Clauss-Ehlers, Caroline S. “Sociocultural Factors, Resilience and Coping: Support for a Culturally Sensitive Measure of Resilience.” Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 29 (2008): 197-212. Clauss-Ehlers, Caroline S. “Cultural Resilience.” Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology. Ed. C. S. Clauss-Ehlers. New York: Springer, 2010. 324-326. Farrow, David, Anthea Rutter and Rosalind Hurworth. Evaluation of the Inclusive Emergency Management with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) Communities Program. Parkville, Vic.: Centre for Program Evaluation, U of Melbourne, July 2009. ‹http://www.ag.gov.au/www/emaweb/rwpattach.nsf/VAP/(9A5D88DBA63D32A661E6369859739356)~Final+Evaluation+Report+-+July+2009.pdf/$file/Final+Evaluation+Report+-+July+2009.pdf>.Folke, Carl, Thomas Hahn, Per Olsson, and Jon Norberg. “Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 30 (2005): 441-73. ‹http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.energy.30.050504.144511>. Garmezy, Norman. “The Study of Competence in Children at Risk for Severe Psychopathology.” The Child in His Family: Children at Psychiatric Risk. Vol. 3. Eds. E. J. Anthony and C. Koupernick. New York: Wiley, 1974. 77-97. Grossman, Michele. “Resilient Multiculturalism? Diversifying Australian Approaches to Community Resilience and Cultural Difference”. Global Perspectives on Multiculturalism in the 21st Century. Eds. B. E. de B’beri and F. Mansouri. London: Routledge, 2014. Grossman, Michele, and Hussein Tahiri. Harnessing Resilience Capital in Culturally Diverse Communities to Counter Violent Extremism. Canberra: Australia-New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee, forthcoming 2014. Grossman, Michele. “Cultural Resilience and Strengthening Communities”. Safeguarding Australia Summit, Canberra. 23 Sep. 2010. ‹http://www.safeguardingaustraliasummit.org.au/uploader/resources/Michele_Grossman.pdf>. Gunnestad, Arve. “Resilience in a Cross-Cultural Perspective: How Resilience Is Generated in Different Cultures.” Journal of Intercultural Communication 11 (2006). ‹http://www.immi.se/intercultural/nr11/gunnestad.htm>. Hajek, Lisa J. “Belonging and Resilience: A Phenomenological Study.” Unpublished Master of Science thesis, U of Wisconsin-Stout. Menomonie, Wisconsin, 2003. Hunter, Cathryn. “Is Resilience Still a Useful Concept When Working with Children and Young People?” Child Family Community Australia (CFA) Paper 2. Melbourne: Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2012.Joppke, Christian. "Beyond National Models: Civic Integration Policies for Immigrants in Western Europe". West European Politics 30.1 (2007): 1-22. Liebenberg, Linda, Michael Ungar, and Fons van de Vijver. “Validation of the Child and Youth Resilience Measure-28 (CYRM-28) among Canadian Youth.” Research on Social Work Practice 22.2 (2012): 219-226. Longstaff, Patricia H., Nicholas J. Armstrong, Keli Perrin, Whitney May Parker, and Matthew A. Hidek. “Building Resilient Communities: A Preliminary Framework for Assessment.” Homeland Security Affairs 6.3 (2010): 1-23. ‹http://www.hsaj.org/?fullarticle=6.3.6>. McGhee, Derek. The End of Multiculturalism? Terrorism, Integration and Human Rights. Maidenhead: Open U P, 2008.Mignolo, Walter. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton U P, 2000. Mohaupt, Sarah. “Review Article: Resilience and Social Exclusion.” Social Policy and Society 8 (2009): 63-71.Mouritsen, Per. "The Culture of Citizenship: A Reflection on Civic Integration in Europe." Ed. R. Zapata-Barrero. Citizenship Policies in the Age of Diversity: Europe at the Crossroad." Barcelona: CIDOB Foundation, 2009: 23-35. Mouritsen, Per. “Political Responses to Cultural Conflict: Reflections on the Ambiguities of the Civic Turn.” Ed. P. Mouritsen and K.E. Jørgensen. Constituting Communities. Political Solutions to Cultural Conflict, London: Palgrave, 2008. 1-30. Ortiz, Fernando. Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar. Trans. Harriet de Onís. Intr. Fernando Coronil and Bronislaw Malinowski. Durham, NC: Duke U P, 1995 [1940]. Robins, Kevin. The Challenge of Transcultural Diversities: Final Report on the Transversal Study on Cultural Policy and Cultural Diversity. Culture and Cultural Heritage Department. Strasbourg: Council of European Publishing, 2006. Rutter, Michael. “Protective Factors in Children’s Responses to Stress and Disadvantage.” Annals of the Academy of Medicine, Singapore 8 (1979): 324-38. Stein, Mark. “The Location of Transculture.” Transcultural English Studies: Fictions, Theories, Realities. Eds. F. Schulze-Engler and S. Helff. Cross/Cultures 102/ANSEL Papers 12. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2009. 251-266. Ungar, Michael. “Resilience across Cultures.” British Journal of Social Work 38.2 (2008): 218-235. First published online 2006: 1-18. In-text references refer to the online Advance Access edition ‹http://bjsw.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2006/10/18/bjsw.bcl343.full.pdf>. VanBreda, Adrian DuPlessis. Resilience Theory: A Literature Review. Erasmuskloof: South African Military Health Service, Military Psychological Institute, Social Work Research & Development, 2001. Weine, Stevan. “Building Resilience to Violent Extremism in Muslim Diaspora Communities in the United States.” Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict 5.1 (2012): 60-73. Welsch, Wolfgang. “Transculturality: The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today.” Spaces of Culture: City, Nation World. Eds. M. Featherstone and S. Lash. London: Sage, 1999. 194-213. Werner, Emmy E., and Ruth S. Smith. Vulnerable But Invincible: A Longitudinal Study of\ Resilience and Youth. New York: McGraw Hill, 1982. NotesThe concept of ‘resilience capital’ I offer here is in line with one strand of contemporary theorising around resilience – that of resilience as social or socio-ecological capital – but moves beyond the idea of enhancing general social connectedness and community cohesion by emphasising the ways in which culturally diverse communities may already be robustly networked and resourceful within micro-communal settings, with new resources and knowledge both to draw on and to offer other communities or the ‘national community’ at large. In effect, ‘resilience capital’ speaks to the importance of finding ‘the communities within the community’ (Bartowiak-Théron and Crehan 11) and recognising their capacity to contribute to broad-scale resilience and recovery.I am indebted for the discussion of the literature on resilience here to Dr Peta Stephenson, Centre for Cultural Diversity and Wellbeing, Victoria University, who is working on a related project (M. Grossman and H. Tahiri, Harnessing Resilience Capital in Culturally Diverse Communities to Counter Violent Extremism, forthcoming 2014).

“There is nothing more public than privacy.” (Berlant and Warner, Sex) How did it come to this? How did it happen that a one-off, two-hour event at a public swimming pool in a suburb of outer Melbourne ignited international hate mail and generated media-fanned political anguish and debate about the proper use of public spaces? In 2010, women who attend a women’s only swim session on Sunday evenings at the Dandenong Oasis public swimming pool asked the pool management and the local council for permission to celebrate the end of Ramadan at the pool during the time of their regular swim session. The request was supported by the pool managers and the council and promoted by both as an opportunity for family and friends to get together in a spirit of multicultural learning and understanding. Responding to criticisms of the event as an unreasonable claim on public facilities by one group, the Mayor of the City of Greater Dandenong, Jim Memeti, rejected claims that this event discriminates against non-Muslim residents of the suburb. But here’s the rub. The event, to be held after hours at the pool, requires all participants older than ten years of age to follow a dress code of knee-length shorts and T-shirts. This is a suburban moment that is borne of but exceeds the local. It reflects and responds to a contemporary global conundrum of great political and theoretical significance—how to negotiate and govern the relations between multiculturalism, religion, gender, sexual freedom, and democracy. Specifically this event speaks to how multicultural democracy in the public sphere negotiates the public presence and expression of different cultural and religious frameworks related to gender and sexuality. This is demanding political stuff. Situated in the messy political and theoretical terrains of the relation between public space and the public sphere, this local moment called for political judgement about how cultural differences should be allowed to manifest in and through public space, giving consideration to the potential effects of these decisions on an inclusive multicultural democracy. The local authorities in Dandenong engaged in an admirable process of democratic labour as they puzzled over how to make decisions that were responsible and equitable, in the absence of a rulebook or precedents for success. Ultimately however this mode of experimental decision-making, which will become increasingly necessary to manage such predicaments in the future, was foreclosed by unwarranted and unhelpful media outrage. "Foreclosed" here stresses the preemptive nature of the loss; a lost opportunity for trialing approaches to governing cultural diversity that may fail, but might then be modified. It was condemned in advance of either success or failure. The role of the media rather than the discomfort of the local publics has been decisive in this event.This Multicultural SuburbDandenong is approximately 30 kilometres southeast of central Melbourne. Originally home to the Bunorong People of the Kulin nation, it was settled by pastoralists by the 1800s, heavily industrialised during the twentieth century, and now combines cultural diversity with significant social disadvantage. The City of Greater Dandenong is proud of its reputation as the most culturally and linguistically diverse municipality in Australia. Its population of approximately 138,000 comprises residents from 156 different language groups. More than half (56%) of its population was born overseas, with 51% from nations where English is not the main spoken language. These include Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, India, China, Italy, Greece, Bosnia and Afghanistan. It is also a place of significant religious diversity with residents identifying as Buddhist (15 per cent) Muslim (8 per cent), Hindu (2 per cent) and Christian (52 per cent) [CGD]. Its city logo, “Great Place, Great People” evokes its twin pride in the placemaking power of its diverse population. It is also a brazen act of civic branding to counter its reputation as a derelict and dangerous suburb. In his recent book The Bogan Delusion, David Nichols cites a "bogan" website that names Dandenong as one of Victoria’s two most bogan areas. The other was Moe. (p72). The Sunday Age newspaper had already depicted Dandenong as one of two excessively dangerous suburbs “where locals fear to tread” (Elder and Pierik). The other suburb of peril was identified as Footscray.Central Dandenong is currently the site of Australia’s largest ever state sponsored Urban Revitalisation program with a budget of more than $290 million to upgrade infrastructure, that aims to attract $1billion in private investment to provide housing and future employment.The Cover UpIn September 2010, the Victorian and Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal (VCAT) granted the YMCA an exemption from the Equal Opportunity Act to allow a dress code for the Ramadan event at the Oasis swimming pool that it manages. The "Y" sees the event as “an opportunity for the broader community to learn more about Ramadan and the Muslim faith, and encourages all members of Dandenong’s diverse community to participate” (YMCA Ramadan). While pool management and the municipal council refer to the event as an "opening up" of the closed swimming session, the media offer a different reading of the VCAT decision. The trope of the "the cover up" has framed most reports and commentaries (Murphy; Szego). The major focus of the commentaries has not been the event per se, but the call to dress "appropriately." Dress codes however are a cultural familiar. They exist for workplaces, schools, nightclubs, weddings, racing and sporting clubs and restaurants, to name but a few. While some of these codes or restrictions are normatively imposed rather than legally required, they are not alien to cultural life in Australia. Moreover, there are laws that prohibit people from being meagerly dressed or naked in public, including at beaches, swimming pools and so on. The dress code for this particular swimming pool event was, however, perceived to be unusual and, in a short space of time, "unusual" converted to "social threat."Responses to media polls about the dress code reveal concerns related to the symbolic dimensions of the code. The vast majority of those who opposed the Equal Opportunity exemption saw it as the thin edge of the multicultural wedge, a privatisation of public facilities, or a denial of the public’s right to choose how to dress. Tabloid newspapers reported on growing fears of Islamisation, while the more temperate opposition situated the decision as a crisis of human rights associated with tolerating illiberal cultural practices. Julie Szego reflects this view in an opinion piece in The Age newspaper:the Dandenong pool episode is neither trivial nor insignificant. It is but one example of human rights laws producing outcomes that restrict rights. It raises tough questions about how far public authorities ought to go in accommodating cultural practices that sit uneasily with mainstream Western values. (Szego)Without enquiring into the women’s request and in the absence of the women’s views about what meaning the event held for them, most media commentators and their electronically wired audiences treated the announcement as yet another alarming piece of evidence of multicultural failure and the potential Islamisation of Australia. The event raised specific concerns about the double intrusion of cultural difference and religion. While the Murdoch tabloid Herald Sun focused on the event as “a plan to force families to cover up to avoid offending Muslims at a public event” (Murphy) the liberal Age newspaper took a more circumspect approach, reporting on its small vox pop at the Dandenong pool. Some people here referred to the need to respect religions and seemed unfazed by the exemption and the event. Those who disagreed thought it was important not to enforce these (dress) practices on other people (Carey).It is, I believe, significant that several employees of the local council informed me that most of the opposition has come from the media, people outside of Dandenong and international groups who oppose the incursion of Islam into non-Islamic settings. Opposition to the event did not appear to derive from local concern or opposition.The overwhelming majority of Herald Sun comments expressed emphatic opposition to the dress code, citing it variously as unAustralian, segregationist, arrogant, intolerant and sexist. The Herald Sun polled readers (in a self-selecting and of course highly unrepresentative on-line poll) asking them to vote on whether or not they agreed with the VCAT exemption. While 5.52 per cent (512 voters) agreed with the ruling, 94.48 per cent (8,760) recorded disagreement. In addition, the local council has, for the first time in memory, received a stream of hate-mail from international anti-Islam groups. Muslim women’s groups, feminists, the Equal Opportunity Commissioner and academics have also weighed in. According to local reports, Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne, Shahram Akbarzadeh, considered the exemption was “nonsense” and would “backfire and the people who will pay for it will be the Muslim community themselves” (Haberfield). He repudiated it as an example of inclusion and tolerance, labeling it “an effort of imposing a value system (sic)” (Haberfield). He went so far as to suggest that, “If Tony Abbott wanted to participate in his swimwear he wouldn’t be allowed in. That’s wrong.” Tasneem Chopra, chairwoman of the Islamic Women’s Welfare Council and Sherene Hassan from the Islamic Council of Victoria, both expressed sensitivity to the group’s attempt to establish an inclusive event but would have preferred the dress code to be a matter of choice rather coercion (Haberfield, "Mayor Defends Dandenong Pool Cover Up Order"). Helen Szoke, the Commissioner of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, defended the pool’s exemption from the Law that she oversees. “Matters such as this are not easy to resolve and require a balance to be achieved between competing rights and obligations. Dress codes are not uncommon: e.g., singlets, jeans, thongs etc in pubs/hotels” (in Murphy). The civil liberties organisation, Liberty Victoria, supported the ban because the event was to be held after hours (Murphy). With astonishing speed this single event not only transformed the suburban swimming pool to a theatre of extra-local disputes about who and what is entitled to make claims on public space and publically funded facilities, but also fed into charged debates about the future of multiculturalism and the vulnerability of the nation to the corrosive effects of cultural and religious difference. In this sense suburbs like Dandenong are presented as sites that not only generate fear about physical safety but whose suburban sensitivities to its culturally diverse population represent a threat to the safety of the nation. Thus the event both reflects and produces an antipathy to cultural difference and to the place where difference resides. This aversion is triggered by and mediated in this case through the figure, rather than the (corpo)reality, of the Muslim woman. In this imagining, the figure of the Muslim woman is assigned the curious symbolic role of "cultural creep." The debates around the pool event is not about the wellbeing or interests of the Muslim women themselves, nor are broader debates about the perceived, culturally-derived restrictions imposed on Muslim women living in Australia or other western countries. The figure of the Muslim woman is, I would argue, simply the ground on which the debates are held. The first debate relates to social and public space, access to which is considered fundamental to freedom and participatory democracy, and in current times is addressed in terms of promoting inclusion, preventing exclusion and finding opportunities for cross cultural encounters. The second relates not to public space per se, but to the public sphere or the “sphere of private people coming together as a public” for political deliberation (Habermas 21). The literature and discussions dealing with these two terrains have remained relatively disconnected (Low and Smith) with public space referring largely to activities and opportunities in the socio-cultural domain and the public sphere addressing issues of politics, rights and democracy. This moment in Dandenong offers some modest leeway for situating "the suburb" as an ideal site for coalescing these disparate discussions. In this regard I consider Iveson’s provocative and productive question about whether some forms of exclusions from suburban public space may actually deepen the democratic ideals of the public sphere. Exclusions may in such cases be “consistent with visions of a democratically inclusive city” (216). He makes his case in relation to a dispute about the exclusion of men exclusion from a women’s only swimming pool in the Sydney suburb of Coogee. The Dandenong case is similarly exclusive with an added sense of exclusion generated by an "inclusion with restrictions."Diversity, Difference, Public Space and the Public SphereAs a prelude to this discussion of exclusion as democracy, I return to the question that opened this article: how did it come to this? How is it that Australia has moved from its renowned celebration and pride in its multiculturalism so much in evidence at the suburban level through what Ghassan Hage calls an “unproblematic” multiculturalism (233) and what others have termed “everyday multiculturalism” (Wise and Velayutham). Local cosmopolitanisms are often evinced through the daily rituals of people enjoying the ethnic cuisines of their co-residents’ pasts, and via moments of intercultural encounter. People uneventfully rub up against and greet each other or engage in everyday acts of kindness that typify life in multicultural suburbs, generating "reservoirs of hope" for democratic and cosmopolitan cities (Thrift 147). In today’s suburbs, however, the “Imperilled Muslim women” who need protection from “dangerous Muslim men” (Razack 129) have a higher discursive profile than ethnic cuisine as the exemplar of multiculturalism. Have we moved from pleasure to hostility or was the suburban pleasure in racial difference always about a kind of “eating the other” (bell hooks 378). That is to ask whether our capacity to experience diversity positively has been based on consumption, consuming the other for our own enrichment, whereas living with difference entails a commitment not to consumption but to democracy. This democratic multicultural commitment is a form of labour rather than pleasure, and its outcome is not enrichment but transformation (although this labour can be pleasurable and transformation might be enriching). Dandenong’s prized cultural precincts, "Little India" and the "Afghan bazaar" are showcases of food, artefacts and the diversity of the suburb. They are centres of pleasurable and exotic consumption. The pool session, however, requires one to confront difference. In simple terms we can think about ethnic food, festivals and handicrafts as cultural diversity, and the Muslim woman as cultural difference.This distinction between diversity and difference is useful for thinking through the relation between multiculturalism in public space and multicultural democracy of the public sphere. According to the anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen, while a neoliberal sensibility supports cultural diversity in the public space, cultural difference is seen as a major cause of social problems associated with immigrants, and has a diminishing effect on the public sphere (14). According to Eriksen, diversity is understood as aesthetic, or politically and morally neutral expressions of culture that are enriching (Hage 118) or digestible. Difference, however, refers to morally objectionable cultural practices. In short, diversity is enriching. Difference is corrosive. Eriksen argues that differences that emerge from distinct cultural ideas and practices are deemed to create conflicts with majority cultures, weaken social solidarity and lead to unacceptable violations of human rights in minority groups. The suburban swimming pool exists here at the boundary of diversity and difference, where the "presence" of diverse bodies may enrich, but their different practices deplete and damage existing culture. The imperilled Muslim woman of the suburbs carries a heavy symbolic load. She stands for major global contests at the border of difference and diversity in three significant domains, multiculturalism, religion and feminism. These three areas are positioned simultaneously in public space and of the public sphere and she embodies a specific version of each in this suburban setting. First, there a global retreat from multiculturalism evidenced in contemporary narratives that describe multiculturalism (both as official policy and unofficial sensibility) as failed and increasingly ineffective at accommodating or otherwise dealing with religious, cultural and ethnic differences (Cantle; Goodhart; Joppke; Poynting and Mason). In the UK, Europe, the US and Australia, popular media sources and political discourses speak of "parallel lives,"immigrant enclaves, ghettoes, a lack of integration, the clash of values, and illiberal cultural practices. The covered body of the Muslim woman, and more particularly the Muslim veil, are now read as visual signs of this clash of values and of the refusal to integrate. Second, religion has re-emerged in the public domain, with religious groups and individuals making particular claims on public space both on the basis of their religious identity and in accord with secular society’s respect for religious freedom. This is most evident in controversies in France, Belgium and Netherlands associated with banning niqab in public and other religious symbols in schools, and in Australia in court. In this sense the covered Muslim woman raises concerns and indignation about the rightful place of religion in the public sphere and in social space. Third, feminism is increasingly invoked as the ground from which claims about the imperilled Muslim woman are made, particularly those about protecting women from their dangerous men. The infiltration of the Muslim presence into public space is seen as a threat to the hard won gains of women’s freedom enjoyed by the majority population. This newfound feminism of the public sphere, posited by those who might otherwise disavow feminism, requires some serious consideration. This public discourse rarely addresses the discrimination, violation and lack of freedom experienced systematically on an everyday basis by women of majority cultural backgrounds in western societies (such as Australia). However, the sexism of racially and religiously different men is readily identified and decried. This represents a significant shift to a dubious feminist register of the public sphere such that: “[w]omen of foreign origin, ...more specifically Muslim women…have replaced the traditional housewife as the symbol of female subservience” (Tissot 41–42).The three issues—multiculturalism, religion and feminism—are, in the Dandenong pool context, contests about human rights, democracy and the proper use of public space. Szego’s opinion piece sees the Dandenong pool "cover up" as an example of the conundrum of how human rights for some may curtail the human rights of others and lead us into a problematic entanglement of universal "rights," with claims of difference. In her view the combination of human rights and multiculturalism in the case of the Dandenong Pool accommodates illiberal practices that put the rights of "the general public" at risk, or as she puts it, on a “slippery slope” that results in a “watering down of our human rights.” Ideas that entail women making a claim for private time in public space are ultimately not good for "us."Such ideas run counter to the West's more than 500-year struggle for individual freedom—including both freedom of religion and freedom from religion—and for gender equality. Our public authorities ought to be pushing back hardest when these values are under threat. Yet this is precisely where they've been buckling under pressure (Szego)But a different reading of the relation between public and private space, human rights, democracy and gender freedom is readily identifiable in the Dandenong event—if one looks for it. Living with difference, I have already suggested, is a problem of democracy and the public sphere and does not so easily correspond to consuming diversity, as it demands engagement with cultural difference. In what remains, I explore how multicultural democracy in the public sphere and women’s rights in public and private realms relate, firstly, to the burgeoning promise of democracy and civility that might emerge in public space through encounter and exchange. I also point out how this moment in Dandenong might be read as a singular contribution to dealing with this global problematic of living with difference; of democracy in the public sphere. Public urban space has become a focus for speculation among geographers and sociologists in particular, about the prospects for an enhanced civic appreciation of living with difference through encountering strangers. Random and repetitious encounters with people from all cultures typify contemporary urban life. It remains an open question however as to whether these encounters open up or close down possibilities for conviviality and understanding, and whether they undo or harden peoples’ fears and prejudices. There is, however, at least in some academic and urban planning circles, some hope that the "throwntogetherness" (Massey) and the "doing" of togetherness (Laurier and Philo) found in the multicultural city may generate some lessons and opportunities for developing a civic culture and political commitment to living with difference. Alongside the optimism of those who celebrate the city, the suburb, and public spaces as forging new ways of living with difference, there are those such as Gill Valentine who wonder how this might be achieved in practice (324). Ash Amin similarly notes that city or suburban public spaces are not necessarily “the natural servants of multicultural engagement” (Ethnicity 967). Amin and Valentine point to the limited or fleeting opportunities for real engagement in these spaces. Moreover Valentine‘s research in the UK revealed that the spatial proximity found in multicultural spaces did not so much give rise to greater mutual respect and engagement, but to a frustrated “white self-segregation in the suburbs.” She suggests therefore that civility and polite exchange should not be mistaken for respect (324). Amin contends that it is the “micro-publics” of social encounters found in workplaces, schools, gardens, sports clubs [and perhaps swimming pools] rather than the fleeting encounters of the street or park, that offer better opportunities for meaningful intercultural exchange. The Ramadan celebration at the pool, with its dress code and all, might be seen more fruitfully as a purposeful event engaging a micro-public in which people are able to “break out of fixed relations and fixed notions” and “learn to become different” (Amin, Ethnicity 970) without that generating discord and resentment.Micropublics, Subaltern Publics and a Democracy of (Temporary) ExclusionsIs this as an opportunity to bring the global and local together in an experiment of forging new democratic spaces for gender, sexuality, culture and for living with difference? More provocatively, can we see exclusion and an invitation to share in this exclusion as a precursor to and measure of, actually existing democracy? Painter and Philo have argued that democratic citizenship is questionable if “people cannot be present in public spaces (streets, squares, parks, cinemas, churches, town halls) without feeling uncomfortable, victimized and basically ‘out of place’…" (Iveson 216). Feminists have long argued that distinctions between public and private space are neither straightforward nor gender neutral. For Nancy Fraser the terms are “cultural classifications and rhetorical labels” that are powerful because they are “frequently deployed to delegitimate some interests, views and topics and to valorize others” (73). In relation to women and other subordinated minorities, the "rhetoric of privacy" has been historically used to restrict the domain of legitimate public contestation. In fact the notion of what is public and particularly notions of the "public interest" and the "public good" solidify forms of subordination. Fraser suggests the concept of "subaltern counterpublics" as an alternative to notions of "the public." These are discursive spaces where groups articulate their needs, and demands are circulated formulating their own public sphere. This challenges the very meaning and foundational premises of ‘the public’ rather than simply positing strategies of inclusion or exclusion. The twinning of Amin’s notion of "micro-publics" and Fraser’s "counterpublics" is, I suggest, a fruitful approach to interpreting the Dandenong pool issue. It invites a reading of this singular suburban moment as an experiment, a trial of sorts, in newly imaginable ways of living democratically with difference. It enables us to imagine moments when a limited democratic right to exclude might create the sorts of cultural exchanges that give rise to a more authentic and workable recognition of cultural difference. I am drawn to think that this is precisely the kind of democratic experimentation that the YMCA and Dandenong Council embarked upon when they applied for the Equal Opportunity exemption. I suggest that by trialing, rather than fixing forever a "critically exclusive" access to the suburban swimming pool for two hours per year, they were in fact working on the practical problem of how to contribute in small but meaningful ways to a more profoundly free democracy and a reworked public sphere. In relation to the similar but distinct example of the McIver pool for women and children in Coogee, New South Wales, Kurt Iveson makes the point that such spaces of exclusion or withdrawal, “do not necessarily serve simply as spaces where people ‘can be themselves’, or as sites through which reified identities are recognised—in existing conditions of inequality, they can also serve as protected spaces where people can take the risk of exploring who they might become with relative safety from attack and abuse” (226). These are necessary risks to take if we are to avoid entrenching fear of difference in a world where difference is itself deeply, and permanently, entrenched.ReferencesAmin, Ash. “Ethnicity and the Multicultural City: Living with Diversity.” Environment and Planning A 34 (2002): 959–80.———. “The Good City.” Urban Studies 43 (2006): 1009–23.Berlant, Lauren, and Michael Warner. “Sex in Public.” Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 547–66.Cantle, Ted. Community Cohesion: A Report of the Independent Review Team. London, UK Home Office, 2001.Carey, Adam. “Backing for Pool Cover Up Directive.” The Age 17 Sep. 2010. ‹http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/backing-for-pool-coverup-directive-20100916-15enz.html›.Elder, John, and Jon Pierick. “The Mean Streets: Where the Locals Fear to Tread.” The Sunday Age 10 Jan. 2010. ‹http://www.theage.com.au/national/the-mean-streets-where-the-locals-fear-to-tread-20100109-m00l.html?skin=text-only›.Eriksen, Thomas Hyland. “Diversity versus Difference: Neoliberalism in the Minority Debate." The Making and Unmaking of Difference. Ed. Richard Rottenburg, Burkhard Schnepel, and Shingo Shimada. Bielefeld: Transaction, 2006. 13–36.Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Social Text 25/26 (1990): 56–80.Goodhart, David. “Too Diverse.” Prospect 95 (2004): 30-37.Haberfield, Georgie, and Gilbert Gardner. “Mayor Defends Pool Cover-up Order.” Dandenong Leader 16 Sep. 2010 ‹http://dandenong-leader.whereilive.com.au/news/story/dandenong-oasis-tells-swimmers-to-cover-up/›.Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2001.Hage, Ghassan. White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society. Sydney: Pluto, 1998.hooks, bell. "Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance." Media and Cultural Studies Keyworks. Eds. Meenakshi Gigi and Douglas Kellner. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001. 366-380.Iveson, Kurt. "Justifying Exclusion: The Politics of Public Space and the Dispute over Access to McIvers Ladies' Baths, Sydney.” Gender, Place and Culture 10.3 (2003): 215–28.Joppke, Christian. “The Retreat of Multiculturalism in the Liberal State: Theory and Policy.” The British Journal of Sociology 55.2 (2004): 237–57.Laurier, Chris, and Eric Philo. “Cold Shoulders and Napkins Handed: Gestures of Responsibility.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 31 (2006): 193–207.Low, Setha, and Neil Smith, eds. The Politics of Public Space. London: Routledge, 2006.Massey, Doreen. For Space. London: Sage, 2005.Murphy, Padraic. "Cover Up for Pool Even at Next Year's Ramadan.” Herald Sun 23 Sep. 2010. ‹http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/cover-up-for-pool-event-during-next-years-ramadan/story-e6frf7kx-1225924291675›.Nichols, David. The Bogan Delusion. Melbourne: Affirm Press, 2011.Poynting, Scott, and Victoria Mason. "The New Integrationism, the State and Islamophobia: Retreat from Multiculturalism in Australia." International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 36 (2008): 230–46.Razack, Sherene H. “Imperilled Muslim Women, Dangerous Muslim Men and Civilised Europeans: Legal and Social Responses to Forced Marriages.” Feminist Legal Studies 12.2 (2004): 129–74.Szego, Julie. “Under the Cover Up." The Age 9 Oct. 2010. < http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/under-the-coverup-20101008-16c1v.html >.Thrift, Nigel. “But Malice Afterthought: Cities and the Natural History of Hatred.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30 (2005): 133–50.Tissot, Sylvie. “Excluding Muslim Women: From Hijab to Niqab, from School to Public Space." Public Culture 23.1 (2011): 39–46.Valentine, Gill. “Living with Difference: Reflections on Geographies of Encounter.” Progress in Human Geography 32.3 (2008): 323–37.Wise, Amanda, and Selveraj Velayutham, eds. Everyday Multiculturalism. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.YMCA. “VCAT Ruling on Swim Sessions at Dandenong Oasis to Open Up to Community During Ramadan Next Year.” 16 Sep. 2010. ‹http://www.victoria.ymca.org.au/cpa/htm/htm_news_detail.asp?page_id=13&news_id=360›.

Introduction‘Dream’ has been researched across numerous fields in its multiplicity within both a physical and emotional capacity. For Pagel et al., there is no fixed definition of what ‘dream’ is or are. However, in an advertising context, ’dream’ is the idealised version of our desires, re-visualised in real life (Coombes and Batchelor 103). It could be said that for countless consumers, advertising imagery has elicited dreams of living the perfect life and procuring material pleasures (Manca et al.; Hood). Goodis asserts, “advertising doesn’t always mirror how people are acting but how they are dreaming, in a sense what we are doing is wrapping up your emotions and selling them back to you” (qtd. in Back and Quaade 65). One component of this notion of ‘dream’ in advertising is captured by wishful images of the face and body in their ‘perfect form’ presented in a field of other beauty ideals. For our purposes, ‘dream’ is a “philosophical concept” (Pagel et al. 14) by which dreams are a series of aspirations and desires that consumers internalise, while at the same time, find difficult to achieve. ‘Dream’, then, will be used to critically explore how the beauty and advertising industries collectively employ ethnic ambiguity in addition to other tactics and strategies to sell us dream-like visions of idealised beauty. Forever Dreaming: The Introduction of Ethnic AmbiguityWe can link dreams to beauty as both areas of analysis contain many cultural interpretations and can be deconstructed to reveal different meanings (Sontag). In many ways, beauty is another dream and Sontag notes that the concept of beauty is often linked to certain physical traits that an individual possesses. These physical traits are capitalised upon by product marketing by which Hood claims, aims to enhance one, or even more, of them. For example, lipstick is not marketed as simply as a mixture of wax and pigment but rather a way to “obtain beauty, find romance or gain confidence” (7). As a result, global beauty brands can find long term marketing success through meaningful product marketing. This long-term marketing success relies on influencing human behaviour and perceptions. As a result of meaningful marketing, consumers may find themselves driven to purchase implicit qualities in products advertised to reflect their dreams (Hood).Following the 1980s, this version of meaningful marketing has become a driving purpose for advertising agencies around the globe (Steel). Advertising agencies rely on deeper human insights, identifying latent desires to create a brief that must ultimately sell a dream (Steel). The ideal strategy needs to define something that will build brand loyalty and encourage consumers to have a symbiotic relationship connecting their dreams with the product being sold. As Hood argues, “advertising consists of selling not just things but also dreams”. While this concept is one that “some see as inherently damning”, it is also inherently necessary (7). We understand that people are emotional beings, investing in the artefacts they build, obtain or use with significance “beyond merely utilitarian” (7). For these reasons, beauty advertisers act as the purveyors of dreams in the form of physical perfection as an articulation of consumer’s own aspirations of beauty.These aspirations of dream beauty are a direct representation of our thoughts and feelings. As such, it should be noted that we as consumers are often encouraged to draw inspiration from imagery that is often times seen as ethnically ambiguous. “Ethnic ambiguity” is the absence of any one prominent ethnic or racial feature that is easily discernible to one specific group (Garcia 234; Harrison et al.). An example of this ethnic ambiguity can be seen in marketing campaigns by high end makeup artist and her eponymous range of cosmetics, Charlotte Tilbury. Most notably, in a 2015 launch for her “Makeup Wardrobe”, Tilbury’s makeup palettes boasted 10 aspirational ‘looks’ and personas that could be achieved simply through purchase. The images of women featured on a figurative ‘wheel of fortune’ digital display used to market products online. This digital ‘wheel of fortune’ comprised of ethnically ambiguous models against descriptive persona’s such as “The Dolce Vita” and “The Glamour Muse”. These kinds of digital marketing tools required consumers to make a decision based on what their dream ‘look’ is through an ethnically ambiguous lens and from here are guided to purchase their desired aesthetic. Like Charlotte Tilbury, the beauty industry has seen a growing body of cosmetic brands that employ ethnic ambiguity to sell dreams of homogenised beauty. We will see the ways in which modern day beauty brands, such as Kylie Jenner Cosmetics and Fenty Beauty have come to adopt ethnic ambiguity or embrace entire ethnic and racial groups in order to expand their consumer influence.Aspirational Ambiguity: Dreams of DisempowermentSince the early 2000s, beauty advertising has seen a prominent rise in the use of ethnically ambiguous models. Some see this as an effort to answer the global desire for diversity and inclusion. However, the notion that beauty standards transcend racial boundaries and is inclusive, is simply another form of appropriating and fetishising ethnicity (R. Sengupta). In many ways, these manufactured dream-like versions of beauty have evolved to reach wider markets, in the hope that consumers will be emboldened to both embrace their racial heritage, and at the same time conform to homogenised standards of beauty (Frith et al.; Harrison et al.).In this bid to diversify and extend consumer reach, there are three prominent reasons why ethnically ambiguous models are more likely to be featured over models whose African, Indigenous, and/or Asian heritage is more prominent. Firstly, ethnically ambiguous models do not seem to conform to a particular notion of what is considered beautiful. For many decades, popular culture has been saturated with images of thin, of young, of narrow noses and hips, of blonde, blue eyes, and Caucasian hair textures (Harrison et al.; Hunter; Saraswati). These Westernised beauty ideals have been historically shaped through years of colonial influence, grounded in an imbalance of power and imposed to create a culture of dominance and oppression (Saraswati). Secondly, ethnic models are featured to convey “the sense of the ‘exotic’, and their ‘otherness’ acts to normalise and entrench the dominant ideal of white beauty” (qtd. in Redmond 175). ‘Otherness’ can be defined as the opposite of the majority, in Westernised society this ‘other’ can mean “people who are other than white, male, able bodied, heterosexual” (qtd. in Graycar 74). This ‘otherness’ showcased by ethnically ambiguous models draws viewers in. Physical features that were possessed by one specific ethnic group such as African, Asian, Latinx or Indigenous peoples have now become blended and are no longer confined to one race. Additionally, ethnically ambiguous models enable white consumers to dream about an exotic local or lifestyle, while at the same time providing ethnic audiences a way to see themselves.Finally, it is undeniable that ethnically ambiguous and mixed-race models have become desirable due to a historical preference for light skin (Saraswati). The visual references of light-skinned beauty epitomise a colonial dream and this standardisation has been transferred to indigenous peoples, or ethnic minorities in Western countries. According to Harrison et al, “marketers use mixed-race representations as cultural currency by mythologising mixed-race bodies as the new beauty standard” to represent a racial bridge, “tailored to ameliorate perceived racial divides” (503). Therefore, ethnically ambiguous models have an assumed advantage over their racially dominant counterparts, because they appear to straddle various racial boundaries. They are constructed to embody whomever, from wherever and whenever, fetishising their roleplay for the industry, when it pleases. This further exoticises multi-racial beauty models and renders them a commodified fantasy for many consumers alike. The continued commodification of ethnic ambiguity is problematic as it exploits models with distinctly mixed-race heritage to continue to sell images of white-washed beauty (Solomon et al.). An argument could be made that scarcity contributes to mixed-race models’ value, and therefore the total number of advertising opportunities that are offered to mixed-race models remains limited. To date, numerous studies highlight a limited use of racially diverse models within the beauty industry and does not reflect the growing global body of diverse consumers with purchasing power (Wasylkiw et al.; Redmond; Johnson; Jung and Lee; Frith et al.). In fact, prior to globalisation, Yan and Bissell claim that “each culture had a unique standard of attractiveness, derived from traditional views about beauty as well as the physical features of the people” (197) and over time the construction of dream beauty is characterised using Western features combined with exoticised traits of indigenous ethnic groups. Akinro and Mbunyuza-Memani claim that this “trend of normalising white or 'western' feminine looks as the standard of beauty” has pervaded a number of these indigenous cultures, eventually disseminated through the media as the ultimate goal (308). It can also be argued that the “growing inclusion of mixed-race models in ads is driven less by the motivation to portray diversity and driven more by pragmatism,” and in a more practical sense has implications for the “financial future of the advertised brands and the advertising industry as a whole” (Harrison et al. 513). As a result, uses of mixed-race models “are rather understood as palatable responses within dominant white culture to racial and ethnic minority populations growing in … cultural prominence” (513) in a tokenistic bid to sell a dream of unified beauty.The Dream Girl: Normalisation of Mixed-RaceIn 2017, an article in CNN’s Style section highlighted the growing number of mixed-race models in Japan’s fashion and beauty industry as a modern-day phenomenon from Japan’s interlocking history with the United States (Chung and Ogura). These beauty and fashion influencers refer to themselves as hafu, an exclusionary term that historically represented an “othered” minority of mixed-race heritage in Japanese society signalling complex and troubled interactions with majority Japanese (Oshima). The complications once associated with the term ‘hafu’ are now being reclaimed by bi-racial beauty and fashion models and as such, these models are beginning to defy categorisation and, in some ways, national identity because of their chameleon-like qualities. However, while there is an increasing use of mixed-race Japanese models, everyday mixed-race women are regularly excluded within general society; which highlights the incongruent nature of ‘half’ identity. And yet there is an increasing preference and demand from fashion and beauty outlets to feature them in Japanese and Western popular culture (Harrison et al.; Chung and Ogura). Numéro Tokyo’s editorial director Sayumi Gunji, estimated that almost 30-40 per cent of runway models in present day Japan, identify as either bi-racial mixed-race or multi-racial (Chung and Ogura).Gunji claims:"Almost all top models in the their 20s are hafu, especially the top models of popular fashion magazines ... . [In] the Japanese media and market, a foreigner's flawless looks aren't as readily accepted -- they feel a little distant. But biracial models, who are taller, have bigger eyes, higher noses [and] Barbie-doll-like looks, are admired because they are dreamy looking but not totally different from the Japanese. That's the key to their popularity," she adds. (Qtd. in Chung and Ogura)The "dreamy look" that Gunji describes is attributed to a historical preference toward light skin and a kind of willingness and sensuality, that once, only white models could be seen to tout (Frith et al. 58). Frith et al. and O’Barr discuss that beauty in Japanese advertising mirrors “the way women are portrayed in advertising in the West” (qtd. in Frith et al. 58). The emergence of hafu in Japanese beauty advertising sees these two worlds, a mixture of doll-like and sensual beauty, converging to create a dream-like standard for Japanese consumers. The growing presence of Japanese-American models such as Kiko Mizuhara and Jun Hasegawa are both a direct example of the unattainable ‘dreamy look’ that pervades the Japanese beauty industry. Given this ongoing trend of mixed-race models in beauty advertising, a recent article on Refinery29 talks about the significance of how mixed-race models are disassembling their once marginalised status.A. Sengupta writes:In contrast to passing, in which mixedness was marginalized and hidden, visibly multiracial models now feature prominently in affirmative sites of social norms. Multiracial looks are normalized, and, by extension, mixed identity is validated. There’s no cohesive social movement behind it, but it’s a quiet sea change that’s come with broadened beauty standards and the slow dismantling of social hierarchies.Another example of the normalisation in multi-racial identity is Adwoa Aboah, a mixed-race British model and feminist activist who has been featured on the covers of numerous fashion publications and on runways worldwide. In British Vogue’s December 2017 issue, titled “Great BRITAIN”, Adwoa Aboah achieved front cover status, alongside her image featured other politically powerful names, perhaps suggesting that Aboah represents not only the changing face of a historically white publication but as an embodiment of an increasingly diverse consumer landscape. Not only is she seen as both as a voice for those disenfranchised by the industry, by which she is employed, but as a symbol of new dreams. To conclude this section, it seems the evolution of advertising’s inclusion of multi-racial models reveals a progressive step change for the beauty industry. However, relying simply on the faces of ethnically ambiguous talent has become a covert way to fulfil consumer’s desire for diversity without wholly dismantling the destructive hierarchies of white dominance. Over this time however, new beauty creations have entered the market and with it two modern day icons.Architecting Black Beauty through the American DreamAccording to Kiick, the conception of the ‘American Dream’ is born out of a desire to “seek out a more advantageous existence than the current situation” (qtd. in Manca et al. 84). As a result of diligent hard work, Americans were rewarded with an opportunity for a better life (Manca et al.). Kylie Jenner’s entry into the beauty space seemed like a natural move for the then eighteen-year-old; it was a new-age representation of the ‘American Dream’ (Robehmed 2018). In less than five years, Jenner has created Kylie Cosmetics, a beauty empire that has since amassed a global consumer base, helping her earn billionaire status. A more critical investigation into Jenner’s performance however illustrates that her eponymous range of beauty products sells dreams which have been appropriated from black culture (Phelps). The term cultural appropriation refers to the way dominant cultures “adopt and adapt certain aspects of another’s culture and make it their own” (qtd. in Han 9). In Jenner’s case, her connection to ethnic Armenian roots through her sisters Kourtney, Kim, and Khloe Kardashian have significantly influenced her expression of ‘othered’ culture and moreover ethnic beauty ideals such as curvier body shapes and textured hair. Jenner’s beauty advertisements have epitomised what it means to be black in America, cherry picking racialised features of black women (namely their lips, hips/buttocks and afro-braided hairstyles) and rearticulated them through a white lens. The omission of the ‘black experience’ in her promotion of product is problematic for three reasons. Firstly, representing groups or people without invitation enables room for systemic stereotyping (Han). Secondly, this stereotyping can lead to continued marginalisation of minority cultures (Kulchyski). And finally, the over exaggeration of physical attributes, such as Jenner’s lips, hips and buttocks, reinforces her complicity in exoticising and fetishising the “other”. As a result, consumers of social media beauty advertising may pay less attention to cultural appropriation if they are already unaware that the beauty imagery they consume is based on the exploitation of black culture.Another perspective on Jenner’s use of black culture is in large part due to her cultural appreciation of black beauty. This meaning behind Jenner’s cultural appreciation can be attributed to the inherent value placed on another person’s culture, in the recognition of the positive qualities and the celebration of all aspects of that culture (Han). This is evidenced by her recent addition of cosmetic products for darker complexions (Brown). However, Jenner’s supposed fascination with black culture may be in large part due to the environment in which she was nurtured (Phelps). As Phelps reveals, “consider the cultural significance of the Kardashian family, and the various ways in which the Kardashian women, who are tremendously wealthy and present as white, have integrated elements of black culture as seemingly “natural” in their public bodily performances” (9). Although the Kardashian-Jenner family have faced public backlash for their collective appropriation they have acquired a tremendous “capital gain in terms of celebrity staying power and hyper-visibility” (Phelps 9). Despite the negative attention, Kylie Jenner’s expression of black culture has resurfaced the very issues that had once been historically deemed insignificant. In spite of Jenner’s cultural appropriation of black beauty, her promotion through Kylie Cosmetics continues to sell dreams of idealised beauty through the white lens.In comparison, Rihanna Fenty’s cosmetic empire has been touted as a celebration of diversity and inclusion for modern-age beauty. Unlike Kylie Cosmetics, Fenty’s eponymous brand has become popular for its broader message of inclusivity across both skin tone, body shape and gender. Upon her product release, Fenty Beauty acknowledged a growing body of diverse consumers and as a direct response to feature models of diverse skin tones, cultural background and racial heritage. Perhaps more importantly, Fenty Beauty’s challenge to the ongoing debate around diversity and inclusion has been in stark contrast to Kylie Jenner’s ongoing appropriation of black culture. Images featured at the first brand and product launch of Fenty Beauty and in present day advertising, show South Sudanese model Duckie Thot and hijab-wearing model Halima Aden as central characters within the Fenty narrative, illustrating that inclusion need not remain ambiguous and diversity need not be appropriated. Fenty’s initial product line up included ninety products, but most notably, the Pro Filt’r foundation caused the most publicity. Since its introduction in 2017, the foundation collection contained range of 40 (now 50) inclusive foundation shades, 13 of these shades were designed to cater for much darker complexions, an industry first (Walters). As a result of the brand’s inclusion of diverse product shades and models, Fenty Beauty has been shown to push boundaries within the beauty industry and the social media landscape (Walters). Capitalising on all races and expanding beauty ideals, Fenty’s showcase of beauty subscribes to the notion that for women everywhere in the world, their dreams can and do come true. In conclusion, Fenty Beauty has played a critical role in re-educating global consumers about diversity in beauty (Walters) but perhaps more importantly Rihanna, by definition, has become a true embodiment of the ‘American Dream’.Conclusion: Future Dreams in BeautyIt is undeniable that beauty advertising has remained complicit in selling unattainable dreams to consumers. In the context of ‘dream’ as a philosophical concept, it is more important than ever to ensure our dreams are mirrored, not as an ambiguous body of consumers, but as diverse and unique individuals. Changemakers in the industry such as Fenty Beauty are challenging this status quo and beauty advertising in general will have to evolve their strategy in a bid to answer to an increasingly globalised market. It must be reinforced however, that while “beauty companies and advertisers work effectively to reach a growingly multicultural market, scholars have a responsibility to assess the ramifications that accompany such change,” (Harrison et al. 518). If advertising’s role is to mirror consumers’ dreams then, our roles as dreamers have never been so important. ReferencesAkinro, Ngozi, and Lindani Mbunyuza-Memani. "Black Is Not Beautiful: Persistent Messages and the Globalization of 'White' Beauty in African Women’s Magazines." Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 12.4 (2019): 308–324.Back, Les, and Vibeke Quaade. “Dream Utopias, Nightmare Realities: Imaging Race and Culture within the World of Benetton Advertising.” Third Text 7.22 (1993): 65–80. DOI: 10.1080/09528829308576402.Barry, Ben. “Selling Whose Dream? A Taxonomy of Aspiration in Fashion Imagery.” Fashion, Style & Popular Culture 1.2 (2014). 22 Jan. 2020 <http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/fspc/2014/00000001/00000002/art00004>.Brown, Ann. “Kylie Jenner’s Going after Black Beauty Consumers Now with New Lip Shade for Darker-Skinned Women.” Madame Noire 9 Sep. 2016. 1 Feb. 2020 <https://madamenoire.com/716586/kylie-jenner-going-black-beauty-consumer-new-lip-shade-women-darker-hues/>.Cho, Hannah. “Advertising in the Beauty Industry: Digital Media and Conceptions of Beauty.” Senior Capstone Projects 820 (2018). 1 Mar. 2020 <https://digitalwindow.vassar.edu/senior_capstone/820>.Chung, Stephy, and Junko Ogura. “What It Means to Be a Mixed-Race Model in Japan.” CNN, 26 Oct. 2018. 29 Jan. 2020 <https://www.cnn.com/style/article/rina-fukushi-japanese-hafu-models/index.html>.Coombs, Danielle Sarver, and Bob Batchelor. We Are What We Sell: How Advertising Shapes American Life ... and Always Has. California: ABC-CLIO, 2014.Crawford, Robert. “‘Truth in Advertising’: The Impossible Dream?” Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy 119.1 (2006): 124–137.Engeln-Maddox, R. “Buying a Beauty Standard or Dreaming of a New Life? Expectations Associated with Media Ideals.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 30.3 (2006): 258–266.Frith, Katherine, Ping Shaw, and Hong Cheng. “The Construction of Beauty: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Women’s Magazine Advertising.” Journal of Communication 55.1 (2005): 56–70.García, Justin D. “‘You Don’t Look Mexican!’ My Life in Ethnic Ambiguity and What It Says about the Construction of Race in America.” Multicultural Perspectives 15.4 (2013): 234–238.Graycar, Reg. “Gender, Race, Bias and Perspective: OR, How Otherness Colours Your Judgment.” International Journal of the Legal Profession 15.1-2 (2008): 73–86. DOI: 10.1080/09695950802439734."Great Britain." British Vogue, 2017: 240-310. 28 Jan. 2020 <https://www.zinio.com/gb/british-vogue/december-2017-i392997>.Han, Hsiao-Cheng (Sandrine). “Moving from Cultural Appropriation to Cultural Appreciation.” Art Education 72.2 (2019): 8–13.Harrison, Robert L., Kevin D. Thomas, and Samantha N.N. Cross. “Restricted Visions of Multiracial Identity in Advertising.” Journal of Advertising 46.4 (2017): 503–520.Hood, John McDonald. Selling the Dream: Why Advertising Is Good Business. Westport: Praeger, 2005.Hunter, Margaret L. ““If You’re Light, You’re Alright”: Light Skin Color as Social Capital for Women of Color.” Gender & Society 16.2 (2002): 175–193.Johnson, Melissa A. "How Ethnic Are U.S. Ethnic Media: The Case of Latina Magazines." Mass Communication and Society 3.2–3 (2000): 229–248.Jung, Jaehee, and Yoon-Jung Lee. “Cross-Cultural Examination of Women’s Fashion and Beauty Magazine Advertisements in the United States and South Korea.” Clothing and Textiles Research Journal 27.4 (2009): 274–286.Manca, Luigi, Alessandra Manca, and Gail W. Pieper. Utopian Images and Narratives in Advertising: Dreams for Sale. Maryland: Lexington Books, 2012.Ohmann, Richard. "Review of Culture and the Ad: Exploring Otherness in the World of Advertising." Contemporary Sociology 24.6 (1995): 821–823.Oshima, Kimmie. "Perception of Hafu or Mixed-Race People in Japan: Group-Session Studies among Hafu Students at a Japanese University." Intercultural Communication Studies 23.3 (2014): 22-34.Pagel, J.F., et al. “Definitions of Dream: A Paradigm for Comparing Field Descriptive Specific Studies of Dream.” Dreaming 11 (2001). DOI: 10.1023/A:1012240307661.Peter Kulchyski. “From Appropriation to Subversion: Aboriginal Cultural Production in the Age of Postmodernism.” American Indian Quarterly 21.4 (1997): 605.Phelps, Katherine. “Lil’ Gangstas and Good Girls: Tween Girls’ Racial Performances Online.” Conference Papers -- American Sociological Association. (2019): 1–29.Redmond, Sean. “Thin White Women in Advertising: Deathly Corporeality.” Journal of Consumer Culture 3.2 (2003): 170–190.Robehmed, Natalie. “How 20-Year-Old Kylie Jenner Built a $900 Million Fortune in Less than 3 Years.” Forbes Magazine, 11 July 2018. 29 Jan. 2020 <https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesdigitalcovers/2018/07/11/how-20-year-old-kylie-jenner-built-a-900-million-fortune-in-less-than-3-years/#33e64869aa62>.Saraswati, L. Ayu. “Cosmopolitan Whiteness: The Effects and Affects of Skin-Whitening Advertisements in a Transnational Women’s Magazine in Indonesia.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 10.2 (2010): 15–41.Sengupta, Anita. “Is Fashion’s Newfound ‘Inclusivity’ Only Skin Deep?” Refinery29, 8 May 2018. 27 Jan. 2020 <https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/multiracial-women-fetishized-in-fashion-industry-controversy>.Sengupta, Rhea. “Reading Representations of Black, East Asian, and White Women in Magazines for Adolescent Girls.” Sex Roles 54.11 (2006): 799–808.Solomon, Michael R., Richard D. Ashmore, and Laura C. Longo. “The Beauty Match-Up Hypothesis: Congruence between Types of Beauty and Product Images in Advertising.” Journal of Advertising 21.4 (1992): 23–34.Sontag, Susan. “An Argument about Beauty.” Daedalus 134.4 (2005): 208–213.Steel, Jon. Truth, Lies, and Advertising: The Art of Account Planning. New Jersey: Wiley, 1998.Walters, Jenna. “‘FINALLY SOME DIVERSITY’: An Exploration into the Public’s Perceptions of the ‘Fenty Beauty’ Campaign in Relation to How It Challenges the Lack of Diversity in the Mainstream Westernized Beauty Industry.” Hons. diss. Cardiff: Cardiff Metropolitan University, 2018. 27 Jan. 2020 <https://repository.cardiffmet.ac.uk/handle/10369/9985>.Wasylkiw, L., et al. “Are All Models Created Equal? A Content Analysis of Women in Advertisements of Fitness versus Fashion Magazines.” Body Image 6.2 (2009): 137–140.Yan, Yan, and Kim Bissell. “The Globalization of Beauty: How Is Ideal Beauty Influenced by Globally Published Fashion and Beauty Magazines?” Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 43.3 (2014): 194–214.