The Image of the Other in the European Intercultural Dialogue
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Dana PANTEA, Ioan HORGA, Mircea BRIE The Image of the Other in the European Intercultural Dialogue The responsibility for the content of the articles belongs to the author(s) Contents Acknowledgements ..................................................................................... 7 Image, Culture, and Communication Dana PANTEA ...................................................................................... 9 Chapter I National and European Cultural Institutions - Dialogue and the Idea of Interculturality Maria Manuela TAVARES RIBEIRO .................................................. 15 Chapter II From the Nation of the State to the Nation of Society. The Political Challenge of the Emergence of a Cultural Polysemy of Collective Identities George CONTOGEORGIS .................................................................. 25 Chapter III New Narration of the EU Frontiers Ioan HORGA ....................................................................................... 37 Chapter IV Freedom – a Condition for Positioning of the Individual in Society: Legal and Moral Issues Ludmila ROŞCA .................................................................................. 61 Chapter V European Social Dialogue, a Hidden Phenomenon of the Intercultural Dialogue in Europe Lutz Michael BÜCHNER, Liubov ILIEVA .......................................... 75 Chapter VI Image of the Other: the Perspective on Ethnicity Mircea BRIE, Daniela BLAGA ........................................................... 93 Chapter VII IMAGE AND COMMUNICATION: THE STRAWBERRY PICKERS AND THE REPRESENTATION OF TRANSNATIONAL EXPERIENCE Gabriela GOUDENHOOFT ............................................................. 111 Chapter VIII ―Hannibal ante portas‖ or the Role of the Perception about the Irregular Migrant in the Construction of a Common European Identity Edina Lilla MÉSZÁROS .................................................................... 131 Chapter IX Catalan, Basque and Galician. Regional Languages at the Borders of Spain. The Culture of Region Mariana BUDA ................................................................................. 177 Chapter X The Image of Israel in the PUBLISHED DOCUMENTS regarding the BILATERAL POLITICS of Romania – Israel during the YEARS 1948- 1969 Anca OLTEAN ................................................................................... 197 Chapter XI Challenges in Extracting Spatial Features from Old Maps and Engraving Prints of Oradea Cosmin CHIRIAC, Călin GHEMIŞ, Liviu BUCUR .......................... 233 Chapter XII Mixed Marriages in Nădlac HUSZARIK Mihai-Răzvan ................................................................ 251 Chapter XIII The Role of the Intercultural Dialogue in preventing Separatism at EU Eastern BORDER: the Moldovan CASE Aurelian LAVRIC .............................................................................. 267 Chapter XIV European Identity the Context of Wider Europe Liubov MELNYCHUK ....................................................................... 293 Chapter XV The Impact of Europeanization on the Quality of Democracy in the Republic of Moldova Simion ROŞCA .................................................................................. 313 Chapter XVI The EU Seen as the Other in the UK POLGÁR István, Denis BORTIŞ ....................................................... 333 Chapter XVII Social CONTRACT AND State SOVEREIGNTY: Crisis, REGIONAL AUTONOMY AND INTEGRATION Carlos E. PACHECO AMARAL ........................................................ 353 Chapter XVIII Media Communication and Country Image. The Case of Romania in EU Luminiţa ŞOPRONI ........................................................................... 367 Acknowledgements The present volume explores issues raised by cultural identities, media productions, trade, the ever changing role of the institutions in public life, the necessity of new policies for the European integration, issues in which the Other and his or her image operate in different ways underlying the importance of dialogue in solving problems and conflicts. The collection of papers were presented to the Jean Monnet Conference ―The Image of the Other in the European Intercultural Dialogue”, event organized with the support of the European Commission Jean Monnet Action Programme of the European Union. The articles, the case studies span a large area of problems: image, identity, culture and communication at different levels of everyday life, in order to devise new means of solving the issues raised by the contemporary society. It was a great opportunity for the academics and students from different universities to discuss and disseminate their recent research findings and we would like to thank all the conference participants coming from different countries of Europe for their interesting and valuable contributions. This volume could not have been possible without the serious work and research done by the contributors to whom we express our gratitude. Image, Culture, and Communication Dana PANTEA* The globalized world we are living in has determined new patterns of people movement, networks and boundaries. The last ones are losing more and more their specific characteristics of being physical, geographical, acquiring symbolic attributes given in the process of communication in which culture has a significant role. Consequently, we witness a new spatial dynamics which influences communication and affects identities. Due to the massive human migration waves Europe has faced in the second half of the 20th century and nowadays, we assist to confrontations even conflicts between cultures, nations, and ethnic groups, each of them striving to keep their identity, and memories. The migrants have brought with them their traditions, culture, and respect them in an attempt to keep their identities, thus trying to feel at home in Europe. But in this way they have become the Other when interrelating either with the native population or with different ethnic groups. The images of the Other, their representations and the relations between them form a landmark in the vast system of social representation that has an important contribution to the way world is seen, interpreted and experienced. By studying the images, researchers can establish the links between past and present, point out the role of mental representations in the life of mankind and elaborate new concepts and policies that can help them * Lecturer, PhD, Department of International Relations and European Studies, Faculty of History International Relations, Political Science and Communication Sciences, University of Oradea, Romania 9 give solutions to the issues raised by the growing xenophobia against the asylum seekers and migrants. The image has a determinant function in communication as it bears a meaning which helps us understand and define the alterity from different perspectives. By means of comparative approach and concepts from the field of social psychology we can study the starting point of a prejudice, which can easily develop into a cliché and their evolution into discrimination. The relation between prejudice and discrimination, which manifests itself mostly in culture, reveals the strong connection between self-image and the image of the stranger, the Other. When these images can be found in writings, in the collective mentality, the stereotype is borne, which is nothing but an exaggerated image of certain characteristics (Mitu, 2000 265-265), later on to be applied to all individuals of a nation or ethnic group even if they are not bearers of such attributes. Thus, sometimes it will be difficult for researchers to point out the relation between the negative image and the reality, to find the real causes and significance of these images. The image of the Other is also relevant in the bilateral relations between countries as it offers new perspectives on different fields of human activity such as the economic, political, cultural ones thus paving the way for the academic research of alterity at international level. The research can be extended by studying public opinion because the image of a country or a nation is best reflected in the public opinion of another country through the means of media: television, radio, internet, consequently governments‘ and politicians‘ decisions concerning economic and foreign policy can be better analysed and understood. Our contemporary life, being more and more dominated by globalization over different aspects of life, reveals new shapes of identity determined by ―location and specific context‖ (Weedon, 2004, 22). As Chris Weedon points out, in Western societies all the forms of identity are 10 tied to national, local and family history, tradition, which together with collective memories give the individual the sense of belonging. With all the migration movements, asylum seekers, diaspora determined by dismantling empires, globalization, conflicts, wars or economic reasons, the sense of belonging to a certain group becomes loose, and identity awareness is a problem both for natives and newcomers. From this point of view, a good example is the issue of Britishness, its meaning – whether it represents the same thing as it used to in the nineteenth century or not, because today we speak about a multi-ethnic Britain. Dealing with cultural and ethnic diversity in Britain is not an easy job for the government, for the education institutions for officials and business people, as it is quite difficult to understand all cultural