Citizenship Across the Curriculum

2 De-Stabilizing Culture and Citizenship: Crafting a Critical Intercultural Engagement for University Students in a Diversity Course

2 De-Stabilizing Culture and Citizenship Crafting a Critical Intercultural Engagement for University Students in a Diversity Course Rona Tamiko Halualani One afternoon in a diversity/intercultural communication course . . . ‘‘Dr. Halualani, excuse me, can I bother you for a moment?’’ Lita∞ , a Filipina business major, tapped me on my shoulder as I reached for my books. The first day of my COMM 174: Intercultural Communication class (a required general education diversity course) had just concluded. I was packing up my books when Lita approached me. ‘‘Of course,’’ I replied, ‘‘Do you have a question for me?’’ Lita burst out: ‘‘I just want to let you know how excited I am about this course and how I can’t wait until you tell us about all the cultures out there, what they do and think, so we know how to communicate with them. Are we going to get a huge list of all the information, you know, of all the cultures and how they behave?’’ I smiled. I have been teaching this course for twelve years and this is not an uncommon question. Students come to this course year after year, expecting and wanting a comprehensive guide to ‘‘knowing’’ all cultural groups: their world views and communication styles. Their desire to immerse themselves into the already known and certain world of culture speaks volumes about how these students under- De-Stabilizing Culture and Citizenship ⭈ 37 stand and act toward culture. They see culture as fixed, known entities that are consumable and ‘‘out there’’—detached from their own influence, imprint, and perspective. In that moment with Lita, I debated whether to ask her why she presumed that intercultural scholars and cross-cultural psychologists possess the full range of information about complex and unpredictable cultural groups. But, as I always do every semester, I held back. ‘‘Lita,’’ I said, ‘‘you’ll be exposed to many di√erent points of view about many di√erent cultures. We’ll see what you think about them, what you think can truly be known about a culture, and what information and questions still linger after our exploration.’’ She smiled back with a puzzled look. We parted ways and I knew that the entire process of opening up a critical intercultural engagement for my students was about to begin. Citizenship and Culture Engaged citizenship can refer to many things: an active and participatory group of individuals who draw connections between themselves and their surrounding society; an experience in and through a community to help it solve a problem and address a significant issue; or a positionality that requires the formation of incisive questions and demands regard for the sociopolitical shifts within a community . In context of specific university courses, ‘‘engagement’’ is strongly influenced by a given discipline’s subject matter and the ways in which disciplinary knowledge and authorial claims are established within that discipline. In this essay, I focus on a Communication Studies course, highlighting how course material on ‘‘culture’’ and ‘‘intercultural communication’’ presents a distinctive challenge in crafting an engaged positionality for students. The challenge lies in dismantling the widespread view (often encouraged by intercultural scholars, anthropologists, and cross-cultural psychologists themselves) of culture as ‘‘known,’’ ‘‘fixed,’’ ‘‘certain,’’ and ‘‘apprehendable.’’ As experts in the field have unintentionally and intentionally framed culture as a product and commodity, it is no surprise that university students have similarly approached culture as fixed tablets of knowledge to be applied and consumed without hesitation. Likewise, the notion of ‘‘citizenship’’ presumes that one is actively involved and immersed in one’s surrounding community and civic society. However, the framings of citizenship used in the academy do not adequately unpack the problematic dilemmas associated with citizenship—especially in the context of a diverse society. Conventional conceptions of citizenship carry with them a great deal of historical and political baggage insofar as they rely on a national/ governmental body to o≈cially recognize an individual as a legitimate, full- fledged member of a society with rights and a voice. In this country and others, many members of society are not formally recognized as citizens by virtue of 38 ⭈ rona tamiko halualani their country of origin, the conditions of their arrival, and their socioeconomic positionality. ‘‘Undocumented’’ immigrants, for example, are never understood or recognized as citizens. Sojourners and ‘‘temporary’’ residents (many of whom are in political and religious exile in the U.S.) are also not viewed as citizens...