“Wherever we look today, it is clear that the movement of people, goods, and ideas has reached such a dimension that it has become one of the most striking phenomena of contemporary times. If we stick to the more common understanding of globalization, we run the risk of being reductive, that is, of emphasizing only one of its dimensions, forgetting or subalternating the resistances and dissensions.
The confrontation between local and global, in turn, defines a logic of polarization that is still insufficient, reproducing, to a large extent, one of the central debates with which modernity was built. It is in the diffuse, liminal space that separates these two ideas that this book seeks to focus. What exists between the local and the global? Between homogenization and cultural diversity? What are the identity dynamics underlying the processes of cultural hybridization?
The European Year of Intercultural Dialogue was the pretext for an international meeting held at the University of Minho in April 2008 and this book is the result. At this meeting we tried to discuss how we are weaving and thinking about the relationships between people and social groups; between the idea of Nation-State and the transformation of the idea of the frontier; between the benefits of globalization and the defense of cultural specificity. The objective of the researchers was not, of course, to find univocal answers to the dilemmas and challenges that the idea of Intercultural Communication enunciates, but only to debate some of the ideas and points of view that cross around this complex and multifaceted reality of communication between cultures“. [back cover]
