INCONTRI INTERCULTURALI DI IERI
“Since the beginning of recorded time people from different cultures have met to trade, marry and make war.”
— G.HOFSTEDE
I worked at the editorial layout of Emanuele Maggioli BA degree thesis, an analysis and research on what ‘Culture’ mean. His dissertation aims at defining what happened in the past, when people from a culture came in contact with people whose cultural background was completely different. The purpose is also that of observing the most common communication dynamics, with an attempt to make a comparison between the past and the present in order to point out the main differences and similarities. Today a whole research field has been developed to avoid the problems that can arise from this kind of ‘meetings’— such as cross-cultural misunderstandings, mistakes in communication or interpretation, diplomatic rifts and conflicts. The fact is, that many years before the discovery of cross-cultural communication people were not even aware of different places in the world, where some other humans lived a different life with different ways of doing things and different traditions. Then some travellers established interconnections with countries far away from their own ones and they became aware of the above mentioned diversity. Yet, transactions among these people were often not peaceful: there was a dominant group trying to rule the other one. Most people had an ethnocentric attitude, that is they thought their culture was the right one and therefore all different behaviours were considered as wrong.
The common thread of this dissertation is represented by ethnocentrism, stereotypes and prejudices which made cross-cultural contacts more spontaneous, instinctual and slightly more dangerous because with no cross-cultural skills misunderstandings could occur more frequently and no one was able to avoid judgements towards unknown realities and behaviours.
110 pages
2018
softcover
12 x 20 cm
