CEU Trans-Cultural Dialogue

CEU Trans-cultural Dialogue

April 22nd - April 24th, 2005

Report

Initiated by CEU Student Andrej Nötzel, CEU hosted from April 22nd until April 24th a workshop on Transcultural Dialogue. The goal of the workshop was to make student familiar with the Dialogue Process as developed by the Quantum physicist David Bohm and the philosopher Martin Buber. Dialogue is not discussion or debate. It facilitates a space for collective thinking and mutual understanding and is therefore particularly suited for intercultural communication and conflict resolution.

CEU with its diverse student body provides an ideal environment for such a workshop. Although the time was not optimal for many students, around 8-12 people participated and represented a truly astonishing diversity of CEU with home countries as various as Romania, USA, Uzbekistan, Kenya, Hungary, Germany, Palestine, Bulgaria, Japan and the Roma community.

Dr. Kazuma Matoba from Witten/Herdecke University in Germany conducted the Workshop. He is a Trainer in Dialogue Process and Intercultural Communication and worked in Germany, Namibia, Albania, China, Japan and with Transnational Companies with this method.

After a short introduction, we started with a first preparatory exercise to improve Listening. This exercise is insofar very important as listening is one of the core competencies for dialogue. Then we started our first dialogue process with a given topic: Respect. We explored what respect means for us and when we lose it. How much respect can one have? We discovered a link with tolerance. But it was also questioned whether respect can be abused and whether sometimes it is necessary to withdraw respect in order overcome the tyranny of an oppressive system. One case was brought from Afghanistan where respect was seen as problematic by one of the participants who worked for 6month there. Furthermore, respect for elderly people was controversially discussed. Then we entered a interesting discussion about the difficulty to criticize other cultures from outside. Several participants mentioned cases from their own background where well-intentioned interventions from outside into their culture, be it a better diet for women in Kenya or to change gender–relations among Roma, is problematic and had negative side-effects. Furthermore, we discussed, what cultural change means, since some of the participants told from their experience that outside interference engenders adaptation to survive but not real changes from inside. Instead it leads to the opposite impulse where the traditional culture is preserved by all means. What I personally concluded from that round, is that without understanding, critique can have rather the opposite effect of reinforcing certain cultural traits instead of reforming them. One example are fake democracies where countries adapt to international demands but preserve internally an undemocratic culture.

The second day was the longest day with a program from morning until evening. In the morning we started again with a listening exercise. The dialogue round that followed was a generative dialogue which means that a topic is not predetermined but is generated by the group. We talked about racism, prejudices and how important cultural identity is. Then the dialogue developed further into a political discussion about globalization, the role of America in Developing countries, the role of the United Nations, Democracy-Movements and Anti-Americanism.

After lunch we did another exercise on our personal identity and the question who I am. We entered a third dialogue round with the topic: Diversity, Unity and Dialogue. Some told about their personal appreciation of diversity, others brought up its ambiguous social impacts and conflicts arising out of diversity. Opinions on the importance of unity were diverging. Then we talked about identities and an interesting thought was that we gain freedom when we float between identities. We discovered how related the topic of diversity and unity is with fear. Fear influences our attitudes, our thinking and actions. Very often this occurs unconsciously. So, how to cope with fear?

From there the dialogue took a turn towards gay people and we deliberated what we consider as normal and to what extent the state or the society should institutionalize protection for gays, particularly when it comes to gay-marriages and adoption of children. There we had quite different opinions in the group.

The third day began with a painting exercise. The fourth dialogue round started bumpy, which indicates a certain stage of the dialogue process somewhere between conflict stage and empty space. Dialogue has four stages: Talking nice, Talking Tough, Empty Space and Community Thinking. It took quite a while and we jumped from several propositions to talk, such as Muslim Culture and how liberal it can become, terrorism and what we are doing here and what we can learn from dialogue. All of sudden, again it took an unexpected turn which lead to a very open atmosphere when we told the group more about our personal background, and then about experiences, images and prejudices we have concerning Roma. Since one of the participants was a Roma, the issue of the Roma and their experiences was quite important during the days.

Although all participants had a lot of work from university or other obligations, most participated during the three days and found the workshop very enlightening and were really glad to have participated. Dialogue creates not only a open atmosphere, where you become more tolerant and get to know new friends, it enables therefore a space to explore topics really fundamentally and from different perspectives. In our case we all learned a lot about different cultures, discrimination, identity, international politics, minority problems, particularly those of the Roma.

I would like to thank Janka Jozsef, the Student Activity Fund and Alexandra Nerisanu and Laura Ranca from the HRSI for their financial and organizational support. It would make really sense to conduct dialogue in periods when people are less pressured by university requirements, such as in the first weeks or in January. It has the power to facilitate mutual understanding among people, to explore other cultures more deeply and to overcome mutual prejudices. Despite CEU is a tolerant and liberal space, some conflicts and prejudices among students are preserved. The recent strange public debate about Turkey or about the Armenian Genocide in the university mail system were indications of this state. With more dialogue instead of discussions happening at CEU, CEU could become a laboratory for mutual understanding in the region.

Andrej Nötzel, IRES