Beyond De-Westernization: Transcultural Communication Studies Perspectives From the Global South — An Introduction

This Special Issue of the Journal of Transcultural Communication is proactively incorporating the terms “Beyond De-Westernization” and “Perspectives from the Global South.” Three factors inspire the use of the terms “Beyond De-Westernization.” First, academic topics on “De-Westernization” have enjoyed popularity in the broader fields of communication for nearly two decades (see for examples: de Albuquerque et al., 2020; Ganter & Ortega, 2019; Waisbord, 2022; Waisbord & Mellado, 2014; Willems, 2014). In recent times, the phrase has also come to denote and connote decolonization with the basic premise being that communication flows are continuously being reproduced through the critiqued notions, practices, and ideologies of Western colonialism. The concepts of cross-cultural and intercultural communication speak to the ideas around De-Westernization which the concept of transcultural communication liberatingly transcends. While these perspectives still possess validity and cannot be dismissed out of hand, we believe there is scope to expand beyond “critique” with a view to contributing new bodies of knowledge that comprehend cultural communication practices that do not stop at the oppositional, De-Western conceptions. This is a key gap in the broader field of communication that this Special Issue seeks to contribute without being constrained to a vision of De-Westernization as debilitatingly hegemonic as not to be transcended.

The second point is the understanding that a critique of Western notions of cultural communication shall not necessarily be a validating justification for scholarship on cultural communication from the Global South. Despite the fact that a background reading of De-Western literature can and in some cases should form the basis for the synthesis of debates. But to stop at the synthesis of literature would be to do a disservice to large swathes of the world that have been labelled the Global South. In these regions of the world, cultures are dynamic and evolving thus the need arises for new perspectives with which to make sense of them. This indeed explains the second part of the title of this Special Issue: “Perspectives from the Global South.” As articles in this Issue amply demonstrate, there are multiple ways in which cultures from the Global South mingle and intersect in explicit and implicit ways. Indeed, Global South is itself a complex and contested notion in such a way that works looking to analyze cultural communication can help illuminate. One only needs to think of the Chinese food and cuisine cultures that today sit side by side with African ones in cities such as Lagos, Nairobi, and Johannesburg. Indeed, the term trans-regionalism, increasingly popular in the social sciences speaks to the emergent fusions of cultures that do not necessarily emanate from the West in the globalized world we live in today. The realities of cultural connection in the Global South – forged in unique socio-economic milieus – can, at any rate, greatly contribute to what may be referred to as global cultures. The world is so much poorer without understanding transcultural communication from the Global South. And, scholars from the Global South ought not self-consciously to demur by seeking validation from the Global North before analysing observable cultural communications forged in their encounters.

The third point returns us to the essence of transcultural communication studies. It is increasingly patent that no single discipline, philosophy, theory or method in the social sciences and humanities can explain communication. If we think of transcultural communication as the intermingling of cultures from different regions and cultures, then we also have to reckon with the fact that theories and methods from different cultures have a major influence. For instance, the philosophies of Ubuntu and Confucianism forged in the humanistic art of storytelling imply that the disciplines of history, politics, literature, sociology, and linguistics. The defining question in these respects is how theories founded from a Global South standpoint or what we may refer to as theories from the South. This question can be brought to bear on global knowledge production. Does this return us to De-Westernization? Not quite! In many respects, drawing on Global South theories serves as a theory-building approach to knowledge production in the sense that even theories that originate from the West can be re-theorized, reinvited and made relevant to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In these respects, therefore, we can think of transcultural communication as a site for innovative transdisciplinary work, the plumbing together of communications across disciplines.

Through a series of original research articles and review essays, this Special Issue provides nuanced and multidimensional perspectives focusing on the topic of De-Westernizing transcultural communication theories, practices, and pedagogies. In reading this Special Issue, you are embarking on an exciting journey that takes you through different approaches: both theoretical and empirical, allowing you to (re)think and (re)evaluate the global communication landscape as well as transcultural communication theories, methods, practices, and pedagogies.

The studies of transcultural communication should be situated in historical context. Brazilian scholar Esther Marinho Santana and Chinese academic Eddie Hanchen Feng’s collaborative article discusses the first Peking Opera presentations in Brazil in 1956. Traveling from the then-recently founded People’s Republic of China, a touring company demonstrated the country’s diplomatic efforts to obtain international recognition and was enthusiastically welcomed by Brazilian audiences. Although Chinese scenic conventions and aesthetics failed to be properly understood by local spectators and no apparent substantial exchanges between the highly diverse cultures of China and Brazil were reached, the authors argue that such a unique episode should not be disregarded. Using transcultural communications theories, they investigate this encounter to inquire what each different side shared, transgressed, and transcended. Their paper makes two important contributions: first, it deepens the historical understanding of this unique contact between Brazil and China, despite the absence of more substantial comments from the 1950s to the present; second, it argues that the “trans” perspective of transcultural communication provides a philosophical way to study the cases in which disparate cultures meet, yet the exchanges seem unobtrusive.

South African media and communication scholar Herman Wasserman’s contribution addressed critical issues in media and communication studies, including international inequality in communication and media studies, the importance of decolonizing communication studies, and the need to include more vantage points from the Global South in communication scholarship and knowledge production in general. Wasserman also discusses the importance of revisiting indigenous African philosophy while alerting us against romanticizing or essentializing these philosophies. He also sheds light on media ethics, and disinformation, and how they connect to the wider debate on topics such as information disorder in the Global South.

In demonstrating the value of somatechnics as a conceptual tool for thinking about (embodied) transculturality, Dennis Bruining and Mingming Diao engage in a critical discussion between somatechnics and transcultural communication studies and push the latter field beyond existing paradigms. By analyzing Hao Wu’s (2019) short documentary All in My Family and Lulu Wang’s (2019) feature film The Farewell through the lens of somatechnics, they argue that these films offer a valuable opportunity to consider their protagonists’ contextually specific lived experiences in relation to both Western and Chinese idea(l)s of the family, parenthood, and sexuality. Furthermore, they show how the films under discussion exemplify a range of somatechnologies; that is, bodies, which in the process of transcultural (un) becoming-with, materialize in a glocalized space where the global and local, West and East mutually (in) form each other and have become inextricable. In analyzing these films, Bruining and Diao show how somatechnics may provide a novel way to think through the varied ways in which transculturality is both embodied and bodied forth.

The COVID-19 pandemic has left a lasting impact on the world and has amplified and reinforced racism and prejudice toward Asians, accompanied by increased conflicts such as discrimination towards ethnic Chinese. Yao Yuan’s study explores the reasons behind the discrimination and conflicts faced by ethnic Chinese in Spain, empirically demonstrating the causality behind these conflicts. In this research, Yuan examines cross-cultural conflict and proposes the hypothesis that discrimination directed toward ethnic Chinese in Spain during the pandemic can be attri-buted to cultural differences. Based on a quantitative analysis of the relationship between gender, age, and length of residence, Yuan investigates the relationship between perceived discrimination and cultural differences among Chinese in Spain by applying cultural identity theory and cross-cultural conflict theory. Yuan points out that racism during the pandemic was likely to have cultural differences associated with it. The study by Yuan emphasizes the link between bicultural background, degree of multicultural integration, and intercultural conflict, as these factors may affect the exposure to intercultural conflict for those living abroad as minorities.

Misperceptions and misreading in political discourse also pose challenges to successful transcultural communication. Kun He’s contribution focuses on the misreading of political discourse during transcultural communication. Leveraging the critical discourse analysis method, he analyzes the China-US Talks in Alaska and the Belt and Road Initiative discourse based on Hall’s (2003) “encoding-decoding” model. He identifies three types of misreading in transcultural communication, namely (a): cultural misreading, which refers to interpreting another culture in light of its cultural presuppositions, cultural traditions, and ways of thinking; (b) oppositional misreading, which consciously decodes messages by adopting an opposed logic and antagonistic interpretation as a result of differentiated political, economic, and cultural stances; (c) accidental misreading, which refers to unconsciously misinterpreting political discourse by accident. By providing a new theoretical framework for understanding the misreading of political discourse, his research contributes to our understanding of political discourse by revealing its misreading mechanisms as well as offering new insights for future interdisciplinary research in political communication, transcultural studies, and applied linguistics.

The globalization of Western media has been a major influence in shaping the global media landscape. Nevertheless, the traditional dominance of Western media is also being challenged by the advent and availability of non-Western media, resulting in a flow of media products that is not merely “vertically” from the West to the Rest (Thussu, 2021). An interesting example is AI Jazeera, which positions itself as an influential non-Western news organization on the international stage. Drawing on the transcultural journalistic practices of Al Jazeera, Yao Guo explores the power of transcultural communication and its impact on international politics. According to her, Al Jazeera transformed the political and strategic environment by offering graphic footage and opinions to break stereotypes, change the narrative, and connect people across cultures.

A review article (written by Xiaoying Zhang, Yang Sheng, Duo Jiang) is also featured in this Special Issue, which explores important questions such as how transculturalism can be better understood in different academic settings. By analyzing the concept of “transculturalism” from a genealogical perspective, they argue that the concept not only represents the intertwined dialogue of social context and academic trends, but also reflects the interaction of different scholarly concepts and theoretical paths. The authors remind us that the Chinese translation of transculturalism should accordingly vary in different academic discourses. According to them, deeper insights into the knowledge structure and value orientation of “transculturalism” are needed if it is to be considered the appropriate Chinese localization of a global concept.

The above-mentioned articles remind us that transcultural communication experiences are fluid, dynamic and complex in the context of the Global South, characterized by differential economic and social change, alternative modernities, and postcolonial histories, which offer scholars new theoretical, empirical and methodological horizons. Through this special issue, we hope to encourage and inspire more comprehensive and robust research on transcultural communication concepts and approaches in studying the Global South, a concept that also needs to be critically reflected on the way we have been constructing and imaging it (Willems, 2014). As Wasserman emphasizes in this special issue, more vantage points from the Global South in communication scholarship will ultimately enrich the field and make for better science.