Do ‘global citizens’ need the parochial cultural other? Discourse of immersion in study abroad and learning-by-doing

Abstract

Abstract The discourse of immersion is prevalent but little analysed in the field of study abroad. Linked generally to learning-by-doing, this discourse has significance for 'intercultural education'. Based on text analyses of three guidebooks on study abroad, this article suggests four effects of the discourse of immersion: It justifies study abroad as different from, if not better than, classroom learning and tourism. It emphasises the difference between students' home and host cultures and constructs each society as internally homogeneous. It constructs study-abroad students' home societies as globalised and their host societies as immobile and parochial, creating a hierarchy when globalisation is valorized. Finally, it exoticises the learning-by-doing 'teachers' – the host people – by portraying them as parochial 'cultural others'. This article suggests an uneven process where the call for production of 'global citizens' through study abroad constructs host societies as parochial and risks reproducing a colonialist hierarchy of exoticism through intercultural learning-by-doing. Keywords: intercultural learningstudy abroadexperiential learningglobalisationtext analysis Acknowledgments The earlier version of this article was presented as part of a session Doerr organized on learning by doing at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in November 2010, in New Orleans, USA. I would like to give thanks to other members of the session – Jennifer Creamer, Dawn Grimes-MacLellan, Jacquetta Hill, Yuri Kumagai and Greg Poole—for constructive comments on the earlier version of this article. I would also like to thank anonymous reviewers of Compare who provided helpful comments on the manuscript and Jaime Taber for copyediting the final manuscript. The text's deficiencies are wholly my responsibility. Notes 1. http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/eag_highlights-2011-en/01/10/index.html;jsessionid=rrempnmihja3.delta?contentType=&itemId=/content/chapter/eag_highlights-2011-12-en&containerItemId=/content/serial/2076264x&accessItemIds=/content/book/eag_highlights-2011-en&mimeType=text/html