Bridging Differences Understanding Cultural Interaction In Our Globalized World

Bridging Differences: Understanding Cultural Interaction in Our Globalized World

Bridging Differences: Understanding Cultural Interaction in Our Globalized World

This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2016. Cultural interaction in our worlds today is essential to building 21st century bridges between communities. The experiences and lessons learned from the authors of the articles herein are shared with empathy and humility across many disciplines. The creation and re-creation of individual identities and group identities due to migrations throughout history is an ongoing story. Never does one cultural profile remain constant. On the contrary, as boundaries change, so do people and therefore cultures. Interculturalism is the one valid approach to understanding these changes but should be used with great sensitivity. And sensitivity is the over-riding emotion emanating from the different studies in this volume: the search for one’s identity when the latter has been lost or has become difficult to recognize, the attempts to erase identities so as to conform to national unity, the will to create new identities to fit in with new environments, the need to re-evaluate oneself so as to remain true to oneself...These endeavors are subtly described in this vibrant compendium of intercultural monographies.

Global Social Media Design

Social media users fracture into tribes, but social media ecosystems are globally interconnected technically, socially, culturally, and economically. At the crossroads, Huatong Sun, author of Cross-Cultural Technology Design, presents theory, method, and case studies to uncover the global interconnectedness of social media design and reorient universal design standards. Centering on the dynamics between structure and agency, Sun draws on practice theories and transnational fieldwork and articulates a critical design approach. The "CLUE2 (CLUE squared)" framework extends from situated activity to social practice, and connects macro institutions with micro interactions to redress asymmetrical relations in everyday life. Why were Japanese users not crazed about Facebook? Would Twitter have had been more successful than its copycat Weibo in China if not banned? How did mobilities and value propositions play out in the competition of WhatsApp, WeChat, LINE, and KakaoTalk for global growth? Illustrating the cultural entanglement with a relational view of design, Sun provides three provocative accounts of cross-cultural social media design and use. Concepts such as affordance, genre, and uptake are demonstrated as design tools to bind the material with the discursive and leap from the critical to the generative for culturally sustaining design. Sun calls to reshape the crossroads into a design square where differences are nourished as design resources, where diverse discourses interact for innovation, and where alternative design epistemes thrive from the local. This timely book will appeal to researchers, students, and practitioners who design across disciplines, paradigms, and boundaries to bridge differences in this increasingly globalized world.