Building Capacity for Intercultural Citizenship

Abstract

Changing national boundaries, migration and mobility, multinational residence, and the cross-border flow of refugees are challenging traditional views of citizenship. The term “intercultural citizenship” is coined to refer to a definition based more on affiliation with a cultural group than on legal ascription to a nation state. The implications of citizenship based on belonging carry some of the same rights and responsibilities as legal citizenship, but in addition they include 1) conscious identification with chosen groups; 2) acceptance of responsibility for sustaining the commonweal in a variety of ways; 3) development of flexible perceptual boundaries that allow for multiple group identifications; and 4) participation in the group coordination of meaning and action that constitutes the maintenance of a living culture. Three major factors in building capacity for intercultural citizenship are explored: 1) capacity for empathy, which involves overcoming the golden rule and its assumption of similarity to embrace the platinum rule and the assumption of difference; 2) capacity for mutual adaptation, which generates virtual third cultures, or forms of communicative intersectionality; and 3) capacity for intercultural ethicality, which demands that judgments be made among viable alternatives revealed by empathic perspective-taking.