A Perceptual Architecture of Intercultural Competence

Book excerpt: Few phenomena have incited as much passion as the unravelling of what ‘intercultural competence’ means. This book presents a novel, bio-cultural approach towards intercultural competence, arguing that a relevant perceptual architecture must be set up via acting competently in various contexts and situations over time. This enactive framework proposes various levels of integration of cultural differences fundamental for acting effectively in multicultural environments. Intercultural competence emerges here from the co-activation of specific sets of expertise, such as creativity, morality and gender, for which the integration of cultural otherness provides the pivotal axis. A specific perceptual architecture results from such novel functional connections, via the integration of cultural otherness into highly interlinked perception, cognition, affect and action systems.