Acculturation of Missionaries – How Religious Orientations Affect Cultural Adjustment?
Although it is evident that religiously motivated missions are part of a long historical tradition in various ‘world religions’ (e.g. Smith, 1991) in the course of which experiences of ‘cultural exchange’ (Burke, 1997) and of intercultural communication, cooperation and competence (cf. Deardorff, 2009; Matsumoto, 2010; Straub, Weidemann, & Weidemann, 2007) due to clashes of different, partially incompatible cultural life forms play a crucial role, there is almost no empirically grounded cultural psychological research on this topic. In addition, personal experiences of cultural difference, alienation and otherness made by missionaries in cross-cultural practice, the interwoven transformations of their personal identity and relevant learning processes which enlarge their performative potential have barely been systematically analyzed as yet. So far, processes of acculturation and intercultural learning due to intercultural encounters have only been examined in specific groups of people such as immigrants, exchange students, managers, and other professionals (cf. Sam & Berry, 2006; Ward, Bochner, & Furnham, 2001; for a critic see Weidemann, 2004). Guided by an interest in an empirical psychological acculturation research, this paper presentation aimed at compensating these deficits while making an attempt to answer the question how religious orientations of (Christian) missionaries can affect their cultural adjustment and, generally, how can processes of intercultural learning before, during and after missionary assignments be structured. read more…
According to the “Status of Global Mission” (Bonk, 2011, p.29), widely considered as serious statistics of missionary population, in the year 2011 approximately 4,800 mission societies (“foreign-mission sending agencies”; line 44) and about 409,000 “foreign missionaries” (line 50) were counted. As these figures cannot even reveal the full picture of the situation, in future we may additionally expect an increased cultural differentiation and pluralization of cross-cultural encounter in the context of Christian mission. Missionaries are more than ever involved in intercultural communication and cooperation and engaged in an intense struggle with experiences of cultural difference and alterity, and in this they are likely to fulfill many requirements necessary to achieve “intercultural competence” (cf. Straub, Weidemann & Weidemann, 2007). Moreover, in a recent cultural psychological analysis of autobiographical narratives of German Protestants, empirically grounded on a cultural psychology of religion (cf. Belzen, 2010) and symbolic action theory (cf. Boesch, 1991), has been shown that missionary assignments create many new possibilites of religious self-realization and provide missionaries with the opportunity to develop their full “action potential” (ibid.). read more…
New Book Forthcoming: Europe and America in the Mirror – Culture, Economy, and History
A vivid and more or less stable partnership between European and American countries is generally regarded as a key issue and particularly serious challenge in terms of cultural, economic, historical, political, and social developments and changes on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
Book cover (draft from publisher Nomos)
This volume aims at bringing together various approaches, concepts, and analyses that are currently on the agenda in academic discussions in transatlantic and international relations studies. With a collection of essays from young scholars who pursued their research in a wide-ranging field of interdisciplinary research this volume not only contributes to intensifying important aspects of the study and analysis of transatlantic relations, but also reflects on recent developments in different European regions that can only be understood in a global dimension such as anti-Americanism, popular culture and media, contemporary regionalist movements, and secularization in modern societies. In all cases, the contributors’ findings and research perspectives shape not only the content of this book, but develop in many respects an innovative understanding of transatlantic and international relations and help us to gain new important insights into this specific relationship.
