(Page Updated 7/29/21)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/transculturation
Alternative forms: transculturisation, transculturization
Etymology: trans- + culture + -ation, coined by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz in 1947.
Noun transculturation: The phenomenon of merging and converging cultures.
Applying transculturation to the Optima Bowling Coach culture design-build project relates to a merging and converging of coaching cultures to create something fundamentally new, learning-creating as a life-quest movement through teaching, knowing, understanding, and creating.
The first resource reference for this topic is from the 2016 B Future Forum conference.
BFF 2016 is designed as a transdisciplinary engagement in a deep dialogue and creative discussion with the objective of developing a set of practicable initiatives for transforming multicultural conflict to transcultural coherence.
There exist 6,000 distinct languages and 10,000 different ethnocultures on the planet, and 8,000 separate academic disciplines to study everything in and of the universe.
With the advancement of the transportation and the information-communication
technologies in the 20th and 21st centuries, humanity is exposed to the
tremendous richness as well as diversity of the human cultures in a way
completely unprecedented in history.
We live in a world of immense cultural diversity, the likes of which no previous generation has experienced, posing a host of challenges, which we have not found ways to resolve. One of the prevailing challenges posed by this diversity is the multicultural conflict that rages throughout the Western world.
The noted linguist Sebastian Shaumyan has developed the conception of language as the folk model of the world. “Language as the folk model of the world is a bond of thought and sound that serves as an interpretation of the world imposed on all members of a speech community.”
Therefore, a language is a conventionalized communicative interpretation of thought that stands between thought and reality as a particular folk model of the world. The fact that there are 6,000 distinct languages means that there are 6,000 different interpretations of reality and 6,000 distinct speech communities in the world.
Furthermore, there exist 10,000 different ethnocultural units in the world some of which share the same basic language and yet differ from one another in ethnicity and culture.
Multiculturality is a reality of the present world. In the reality of multiculturality, multiculturalism assumes the equality in value of all different cultures and seeks a common ground amongst all cultures for mutual acceptance and accommodation without understanding the significance of the differences that exist and separate one culture from another.
Although it may be fair in its assumption and noble in its intention, multiculturalism lacks in the critical understanding concerning the inherent differences existing between and amongst cultures and the possible and actual consequences that arise from the existence of the differences.
Transculturalism does not assume equality in value of all different cultures because the concept of value as such is inherently relative and diverse and differs from one culture to another, nor does it seek a common ground for mutual acceptance and accommodation but a higher ground from which to apprehend and appreciate the differences and to relate to each culture in a manner that is most appropriate.
Transculturalism, which is an in vivo [within a living organism] application of transdisciplinarity and transparadigmatic mode of thinking, concerns that which is at once between cultures, across different cultures, and beyond all cultures. Its purpose is to develop a higher perspective and knowledge of the present world with which to efficiently meet the challenges of immense multidimensional diversity and to effectively attain resolutions.
The last article I have quoted in this section is “Trans-Paradigmatic, Trans-Disciplinary, and Trans-Cultural Coherence” from “The Infinite Game Platform” (IGP).
From “The Infinite Game Platform (IGP) For the Creation Of The Omnicentric Civilization”
By Yasuhiko Genku Kimura & Neelesh Marik (2017)
The term “paradigm” is used to denote a framework containing a set of basic assumptions and ways of knowing-thinking-being-doing and a mono-logical construction upon the assumptions generally accepted by members of a collective. Human beings at the current stage of evolution usually operate mono-paradigmatically, meaning that every person subscribes to and is unconsciously imprisoned by a certain system of mono-logic. While this has been useful in agricultural and industrial societies where challenges and tasks were mostly mechanical in nature, it is becoming a serious constraint with the wicked problems of the 21st-century information society.
Hyper-complexity requires collaboration at scale, which requires communication at scale. However, true communication (which is an emergent property of interaction between many psychic systems) rarely happens because each person is able to understand issues only from his/her own paradigm, not the paradigm of others. This inability to stand under other paradigms renders rapport and perspectival integration very difficult, if not impossible. ‘Transparadigmatic’ refers to the cognitive fluency and fecundity to understand each paradigm through the lens of its underlying assumptions without getting attached or overly committed to their “universal truth.” The transparadigmatic mind has the freedom to inhabit multiple paradigms and to choose one most conducive to a situation or challenge-opportunity. It is also creative enough to construct new paradigms based on a fresh set of assumptions that are appropriate for new situations or challenge-opportunities arising in phenomenal reality.
Disciplinary specialization in academia, functional specialization in the enterprise, and occupational specialization in the socio-economy constitutes a pragmatic foundation for the interdependent organization of human effort to satisfy social needs; it also creates conditions for the fulfillment of social interests through the pursuit of self-interest by individuals. However, when specialization continues at the expense of a generalized understanding of the whole, wicked problems tend to go unattended or unsolved. Higher education in some parts of the western world has begun to espouse multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches to learning. However, large parts of the world citizenry are still trapped in both personal and institutional silos of understanding and hence ill equipped to deal with challenge-opportunities that demand trans-disciplinary synthesis and application. Climate science is a prominent example, which involves over 20 disciplines, which beg a proper action-oriented synthesis.
Transculturalism, unlike multiculturalism, does not assume equality in value of all different cultures because the concept of value as such is inherently relative and diverse and differs from one culture to another, nor does it seek a common ground for mutual acceptance and accommodation but a higher ground from which to apprehend and appreciate the differences and to relate to each culture in a manner that is most appropriate.
Monological multiculturalism that supposedly and logically includes itself as one of the multiple cultures and yet gives itself a privileged position is inherently self-contradictory. Transculturalism, which is an in vivo application of dialogical transdisciplinary and transparadigmatic mode of thinking, concerns that which is at once between cultures, across different cultures, and beyond all cultures.
The transparadigmatic, transdisciplinary, and transcultural mind may appear philosophically idealistic because ordinary human beings have not yet realized its liberating potentiality. IGP is premised on its gradual enculturation through the use of the scientific principle of complementary cognitive artifact. Complementary cognitive artifacts have the capacity of the restructuring of brain chemistry and neural pathways and wiring to make them more functional, agile, and versatile. An abacus is an example of a complementary cognitive artifact that not only enhances arithmetic capacity but also geometric and linguistic competence. Similarly, using maps and topologies helps not just in navigation but enhances other brain functions such as connective awareness, representational thinking, course correction agility which have wide implications beyond the immediate navigation maneuver.
The platform logic, user interface, and workflow will be designed to embed this new and enhanced form of thinking by leveraging the cutting-edge of the semantic web, pattern language, semiotic linguistic, and artificial intelligence technologies. Morphic resonance theory also shows that once a critical mass of people adopts a certain mode of thinking, it makes it easier for the rest of the population to leverage the benefit of the ‘Hundredth Monkey Effect’. We do not wish to speculate on what that critical proportion might or could be, nor can we forecast what exact design configuration of the artifact will be most successful, but we understand that this artifact construction is both necessary and possible in our lifetime.
The Infinite Game Platform (IGP) (Kimura & Marik 2017)
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