Chapter 13

M u ltilit e rac i e s
a nd Trans c u lt u ra l
Educat i on

Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza

Introduction

This chapter examines the linguistic, cultural, and ideological issues relating to con-
cepts of literacy, culture, and diversity, and the relevance of these for education in the
contemporary context of unceasing flows of resources, texts, information, and people
across local and global boundaries. In spite of the fact that these flows, characteristic of
contemporary processes of globalization, seem at first sight to be unrestricted and open
to all equally, this chapter calls attention to the fact that, even though language, literacy,
and culture are multiple and heterogeneous, they are also inseparable from the epis-
temologies, knowledges, and socio-​historic conditions that produce them. Thus, when
they “flow” across boundaries of space and time, their connections with the epistemolo-
gies and contexts that engendered them may be dislocated or fractured. Thus, they may
become attached to new epistemologies and socio-​historic contexts in new, perhaps
hybrid, configurations, and as a result, acquire new meanings.
Pennycook (2007: 6), for example, suggests the term “transcultural flows” to describe
how global flows of cultural and linguistic phenomena are not merely movements, but
are significantly involved in transformations of language, culture, and behavior. Makoni
and Pennycook (2007: 2) further suggest that, rather than languages undergoing trans-
formation as a result of flows, they may in fact themselves be the products (“inventions”)
of such flows.
Canagarajah (2013: 2), following the path of Pennycook and Makoni and Pennycook,
calls attention to the fact that such cross-​lingual and cross-​cultural flows may occur not
only across global dimensions, but also within particular spaces and situations of multi-
lingual and multicultural interactions. He refers to this phenomenon as “translingual,”
262    Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza

defined as “the ability to merge different language resources in situated interactions for
new meaning construction.”
This phenomenon produces a productive tension between languages and cultures
through which emergent, new forms of both are produced. The relevance of such a phe-
nomenon, for Canagarajah, cannot be underemphasized:

The term also helps us go beyond the dichotomy mono/​multi or uni/​pluri. These
binaries may give the impression that cross-​language relations and practices matter
only to a specific group of people, i.e. those considered multilingual. However, the
term translingual enables us to treat cross-​language interactions and contact rela-
tionships as fundamental to all acts of communication and relevant for all of us. This
is not relevant just for traditionally multilingual students/​subjects alone, but also for
“native” speakers of English and “monolinguals” as well. (2013: 2)

In relation to monolinguals and bilinguals or multilinguals, García (2009) had

already developed the term translanguaging to refer to the cross-​linguistic phenomena
used by bilinguals, and had called attention to the fact that language users in such con-
texts have and use conceptions of language very different from those of monolinguals.
Translanguaging, for García, therefore, similar to Makoni and Pennycook, questioned
presuppositions of language based on monolingual and monocultural assumptions
dominant in current linguistic and educational studies. García’s work, building on and
further developing Hornberger’s (2003) previous work in multilingual educational con-
texts with a focus on literacy, called attention not only to the educational significance
of linguistic and cultural flows, but also to the ideological presuppositions of language,
culture, and learning implicit in such discussions.
Given that language, literacy, and knowledge are products of specific, situated epis-
temologies and are located (perhaps less directly) in power relationships, instead of the
current potential for, and possibilities of, flows contributing to a more equal and just
world, the risk of injustice and inequality persists and needs to be addressed—​hence the
necessity to critically examine the current notions of language, literacy, and culture and
their connections with heterogeneity, multiplicity, and plurality.

Historical Perspectives

Literacies and Logocentrism

In much of literacy studies, the focus has tended to be on social practices rather than on
the epistemological presuppositions of concepts of literacy and language on which such
practices are based. In an effort to counter this tendency, the work of de Souza (2005,
2006, 2008) has focused specifically on the epistemological presuppositions behind
the concepts mentioned earlier—​literacy and language and how these are embedded in
 Multiliteracies and Transcultural Education    263

traditions of knowledge and unequal power relations, resulting in the fact that certain
non-​alphabetic forms of literacy in small and marginalized indigenous communities are
not perceived as literacy by those from larger and so-​called dominant national commu-
nities. This adds inequality, conflict, and unequal power relationships to the dimension
of knowledges that proclaim the multiplicity or plurality of literacies.
In certain local cultural communities, for example, where knowledge is acquired
visually and not through what is considered language, the preferred cultural form of
registering knowledge tends to be visual, through non-​alphabetic drawings or markings
on ceramics, textiles, bodies, or paper. However, from the predominant Western mod-
ern perspective, and its epistemology of literacy, such non-​alphabetic visual drawings
or markings tend not to be seen as literacy, given that the preferred concept of a literate
culture is that of a culture with alphabetic writing. Following this logic, cultures without
such a form of writing are deemed illiterate, or lacking in writing (de Souza, 2005).
Such cultures may, however, have different ontologies and epistemologies about lan-
guage, literacy, and knowledge. Western alphabetic literate cultures are what Derrida
(1974) called logocentric or graphocentric. As such, it is difficult for Western cultures to
apprehend certain forms of non-​alphabetic writing (writing here defined as a registra-
tion of knowledge through conventionalized marks or symbols on a certain surface: e.g.,
paper, skin, ceramic, textiles). For Derrida, Western cultural logocentrism manifested
itself in the logic that thought occurred in the mind and was represented by speech. In
the same logic, writing was seen as a representation of speech and therefore a secondary
(twice removed) representation of thought. The consequence of such a belief in knowl-
edge as thought was the desire for and a valorization of a supposedly unmediated and
direct concept of meaning, knowledge, and reality. Logocentrism was then transformed
into graphocentrism in which writing, supposedly representing speech, took on the
image of non-​mediation and the basis of truth previously attributed solely to speech and
the mind. This generated the illusion that “the meaning is in the text,” given that writing
“truthfully” represents speech or that which was in the writer’s mind.
Western logocentrism paradoxically requires the existence of alphabetic writing to
represent speech in order to valorize speech as the representation of thought. Cultures
perceived as not possessing alphabetic writing in this logocentric-​graphocentric logic
are deemed merely “oral” or “illiterate” and are devalued. The fact that thought may be
represented by a means other than speech (such as vision and images, for example), and
that writing, as a register of thought, may take a form other than that of speech in repre-
senting thought is apparently inconceivable to a Western audience.
Mignolo (1996) described non-​alphabetic forms of writing as a register of thought and
knowledge in the pre-​colonial Americas and the conflict that ensued after the colo-
nial encounter as one between conflicting notions of literacy (alphabetic and non-​
alphabetic) and languages. Whereas alphabetic literacy and the Spanish language were
associated by the Spanish colonizers in the Americas with civilization and knowledge,
local non-​alphabetic forms of writing and local languages were associated with illiteracy
and ignorance. After the initial colonial encounter, flows occurred between alphabetic
and non-​alphabetic literacy traditions and between Spanish and the local languages,
264    Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza

producing creative cross-​cultural and cross-​linguistic texts. However, the associations

of local systems of non-​alphabetic writing and local languages with ignorance and infe-
riority persisted and resulted in the imposition of the Spanish language and alphabetic
literacy. This continued after the end of colonization and formed the basis for the con-
struction of the monolingual, monocultural, Spanish-​speaking alphabetically literate
nation in Hispanic America. Emphasizing the persistence of the belief in the evolution-
ary value of alphabetic literacy (as more advanced and the harbinger of development),
Mignolo (1996) refers to this logocentric valorization of alphabetic literacies and writ-
ten cultures (accompanied by the rejection of non-​alphabetic literacies) as “academic
colonialism.”
The epistemologies of certain cultures and communities, such as the logocentrism of
the modern “West,” may be seen to drastically inhibit their potential to perceive other
diverse forms of culture, knowledge, and writing that are not alphabetic or logocen-
tric. This restrictive role of the epistemologies of some, when in contact with the epis-
temologies of others, has not been sufficiently addressed in the literature of literacy and
transcultural education. When such difficulties are located within unequal power rela-
tionships, such as those in which the epistemologies of “the West” or “the nation” are
dominant and the epistemologies of “the local” are less so, academic colonialism tends
to proliferate.

Literacy as Local Knowledge

In his work on the politics of education in Brazil, Freire (1970) focused on the rela-
tionship between language, cultural knowledge, and social needs in order to encour-
age marginalized communities to become literate, seek access to formal education, and
actively participate in transforming their economic, linguistic, and cultural marginal-
ization. Freire saw the relationship of elements in such a situation as one between word
(language) and world (knowledge, history, politics); language, knowledge, literacy, and
education were seen to be intricately context bound. Becoming literate for Freire had
political consequences and involved acquiring the capacity to critically reflect on the
political, economic, and epistemological conditions that restrict one to one’s present
condition and to one’s context of origin, with its language and knowledges. This reflec-
tion was necessary to transition to contexts beyond one’s original local context (such
as toward the contexts of the dominant communities of the nation and the world),
thus acquiring access to, and learning, new forms of language and new knowledges.
For Freire, this was necessary to emancipate learners from the restrictions and oppres-
sion that tied them to their contexts of origin and to marginalized conditions. To be
emancipated from one’s previous conditions did not mean to leave them behind, but to
transform them.
Freire’s methodological use of keywords or generative words from the students’ com-
munity knowledge base and his emphasis on education as dialogue and co-​construction
(rather than mere transmission) of knowledge pointed directly to the connection
 Multiliteracies and Transcultural Education    265

assumed between language and literacy and between literacy and knowledge; it also
pointed to the fact that different communities (dominant and marginalized) had differ-
ent knowledges, not all of which were shared or equal. However, as an educator and not
a linguist, Freire did not spend much time theorizing different or plural forms of written
knowledge as texts.
In his own discussion of literacy, Street (1984) followed on from Freire but in a differ-
ent, more analytic, and less pedagogical direction. He persisted in questioning the then
still predominant notion of a singular and homogeneous notion of literacy, which he
called autonomous. By “autonomous” literacy, Street meant that besides positing the abil-
ity to read and write as a skill based on the knowledge of a code (the alphabet) that related
letters to sounds in a relationship of representation or substitution (wherein a given letter
or set of letters stood for a certain sound), it saw alphabetic writing as a technology that
permitted the possibility of separating or freeing language (in the form of a written text)
from a specific context of production in space or time. This supposedly autonomous char-
acter of alphabetic writing permitted the reading of texts written in the past by authors no
longer alive, and also permitted the reading of texts written by authors physically distant
from the reader. This decontextualization or freeing of writing from its context of pro-
duction supposedly contributed to the amassing of knowledge and information.
Street (1984) opposed this view of literacy to one he called ideological. In this latter
view, reading and writing involved more than simply learning a fixed and codified rela-
tionship between letters and sounds; for Street, other knowledges (in the plural) present
in the community were also necessary to complement writing in order to produce and
understand written texts. Seen thus, texts were not merely language products related to
letters and sounds, but were also related to the knowledges of those who engaged in pro-
ducing and reading them.
As in any given community, different knowledges (in the plural) circulate; each orga-
nized in its own manner. As not all of these knowledges and organizations are shared
or accessible to everyone in the community, texts are produced and read in different
manners by people in different communities: scientific, journalistic, religious, and so
on. Street thus not only brought plurality and heterogeneity to the concept of literacy,
but also, not unlike Freire, destroyed and politicized the notion that written texts were
disconnected and independent from their contexts of production. Street showed texts as
being intricately connected to specific social knowledges and contexts and to the com-
municative practices and power structures of specific communities.
Besides simply knowing language and the alphabet in order to write and read a text,
it became clear that one had to be familiar with the dominant knowledge and commu-
nicative conventions of a particular community. Hence it was not sufficient to know a
language and to know the alphabet; one had, for example, to know science and know
how people in science read and wrote scientific texts in order to be able to read and write
a scientific text, and be recognized by people in science as a reader or writer of scientific
texts. Thus arose the concept of literacy as social practice.
This initial illustration of the social, political, and plural nature of literacy by Street
was later developed and expanded as “social literacies” by others such as Prinsloo and
266    Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza

Breier (1996), as “local literacies” or “social literacies” by Barton and Hamilton (2005)
and Barton et al. (2000). These studies pursued the declared ethnographic, local, per-
spective of both Freire and Street, and further examined the intimate connection
between specific forms of literacy and the local knowledges and communicative prac-
tices of specific groups. This perspective came to be collectively known as the New
Literacy Studies (NLS) and brought multiplicity and plurality into the discussion, trans-
forming literacy in the singular into literacies.

Literacies and Epistemology

In spite of the fact that in the social perspectives of literacy of Freire and Street, literacy is
seen as intimately connected to knowledges (epistemologies) in the plural, we have seen
that the knowledges and epistemologies accepted as “normal” or “natural” tend, often
uncritically, to be those that reflect the dominant “Western” concepts of language, cul-
ture, and knowledge. The specific role of epistemologies in literacy studies has, however,
been addressed in the context of new media literacies, or “multiliteracies,” where episte-
mological differences and changes are detected and discussed from book-​or page-​based
literacies to electronic and online literacies.
The New London Group (1996) or Multiliteracies group (Cope and Kalantzis,
2000) took into account cultural and linguistic diversity and its manifestations in the
production and circulation of texts—​both alphabetic and non-​alphabetic. Though
epistemology as such was a focus for some in the group, it tended to be the epistemol-
ogy of (Western, alphabetic) written, book culture and the changes this underwent in
contact with the affordances and potentialities of the new electronic technologies and
new media.
As the great majority of work of those in this group took place in largely monolin-
gual, monocultural Western communities, their focus tended to be on the epistemol-
ogy afforded or generated by the technology, rather than an ethnographic focus on the
epistemology of one or other local communities. This was later expanded to focus more
extensively on the connection between the epistemology of the new media and how it
affected literacy, and the new pedagogical implications of this epistemology and its tech-
nological manifestations (Cope and Kalantzis, 2009).
Crucially, the Multiliteracies approach to literacy introduced (as contrasted with the
focus on local practices and local knowledges) three shifts: (1) a focus on semiosis or
meaning-​making; (2) the availability of diverse and multiple resources for meaning-​
making (alphabetic and non-​alphabetic [visual, audio, spatial, behavioral, and so on];
and (3) the agentivity of the user in accessing and selecting the available meaning-​
making resources in order to make meaning. Cazden et al. (1996: 64) envisioned that
“[t]‌he use of multiliteracies approaches to pedagogy will enable students to achieve
[two] goals for literacy learning: creating access to the evolving language of work, power,
and community, and fostering the critical engagement necessary for them to design
their social futures and achieve success.”
 Multiliteracies and Transcultural Education    267

In spite of the diversity of new media, the multiliteracies approach tends to unprob-
lematically presuppose as universal the monolingualism and monoculturalism of
Western societies in tandem with the political and economic context of neoliberalism
in which they currently find themselves. This is evident, for example, in the presuppo-
sition that the “epistemology of the new media” occurs in the singular (as opposed to
epistemologies in the plural) and has no specific cultural or linguistic origins or con-
text. Multilingualism and bi-​or multiculturalism and their role in such multiliteracies
are given little critical attention in multiliteracies discussions. Moreover, these discus-
sions significantly presuppose the unquestioned availability of new media/​new tech-
nologies in their communities. Finally, the possibility of change in knowledge and in
socio-​historic circumstances through the use of multiliteracies seems to lie in the hands
of students, though it is not clear if this possibility in the hands of “students” refers to
students as individuals (as in the liberal or neoliberal tradition) or students as a body or
community (with shared social characteristics and origins).1
Taking into account the questions of epistemology, political context, pedagogy, and
new media/​new technologies, Knobel and Lankshear (2007) call their perspective on
literacies and education New Literacies. Unlike Cazden et al. and Cope and Kalantzis,
whose explicit political focus is on the neoliberal context of globalization and its con-
sequences for new pedagogies of literacy, Knobel and Lankshear’s focus lies on the
ideological ethos implicit in the technology and practices of the new media. According
to them, the ethos of this new media permits greater horizontality, more interconnec-
tivity, and less control of authorship and meaning-​making in the midst of the cultural
and linguistic diversity involved in current forms of literacy. Though they do mention
cultural and linguistic diversity, not unlike the proponents of Multiliteracies, Knobel
and Lankshear do not problematize their presupposition of a universal monolingual,
monocultural perspective located in a neoliberal society permeated with new tech-
nologies and new media. Though they speak of ideology and ethos in meaning-​making
as inherent to new technologies, it is not clear if this ethos reflects that of a social or
cultural group that fostered the development of this technology, or if it is a reaction
of users of the technology in certain linguistic or cultural contexts. Their focus on the
“horizontality” and apparent universality afforded by the new media appears to stand in
for considerations of social inequalities related to socio-​historic power relationships in
manifestations of literacies and meaning-​making understood as the result of intercon-
nections between language(s), knowledge(s) and culture(s).

Literacies, Transculturality, and Education

In literacy studies, such as those we have considered in the preceding, which reject the
autonomous view and privilege the ideological or social view of literacy as plural, culture
is referred to indirectly as that which contextually informs various “practices”: “Literacy
practices are the general cultural ways of utilising written language which people draw
upon in their lives. [These] involve values, attitudes, feelings and social relationships”
268    Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza

(Barton and Hamilton, 2000:7). This view is present explicitly in the NLS proposals
of literacy and largely implicit (as agency and as multiple or available resources) in the
Multiliteracies and New Literacies proposals. Though “culture” here is often seen as a
complex phenomenon traversed by power relationships, often termed “dominant” and
“local” or “vernacular,” it tends to be presupposed as a totality, organized vertically in
movements of top-​down control or bottom-​up ascendancy, or horizontally as multiple
coexisting equal possibilities, acquired through education or in the normal course of
communicative practice.
Paradoxically, cultural diversity, cherished by socially based literacy studies (espe-
cially those originating in the work of Freire and/​or Street), tends to be seen in relation
to an imagined homogeneous cultural totality (nation, world, new media, moder-
nity). This homogeneity is seen to characterize knowledge, language, and culture. Thus
where diversity is seen to occur, it may manifest itself in terms of variations between
two poles, either (1) diverse surface manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon
(i.e., deviations or variations of a basic homogeneity), such as “local variations” of a sin-
gle, “central” culture or language; or (2) a plurality of separate, unconnected, equally
homogeneous phenomena, such as a series of different languages or cultures that coex-
ist, in conflict, within a single nation. Whereas in the first instance totality character-
izes and cements the parts into a whole at a higher level, in the second instance, totality
occurs at a lower level, characterizing each part of the plural conjuncture and producing
a higher level concept of totality, which holds together only loosely.
The educational projects of literacies between these two poles range from those that
begin with national affiliations presupposing a single universal, homogeneous lan-
guage, culture, and epistemology at one end, and at the other end, those that begin with
local affiliations which take the place of the national in the first pole (see, for example,
Velasco and García’s (2014) critique of some work in second language acquisition, in
which a monolingual concept of language and knowledge is the point of departure for
the acquisition of another (monolingual) language and knowledge; they contrast this
with a multilingual or bilingual concept in which such a speaker’s knowledge consists
of unseparated, coexisting interconnected languages and knowledges, none of which is
constituted separately or homogeneously as that of a monolingual speaker).
In terms of the first pole, homogeneity is the point of arrival (the acquisition of a liter-
ate culture or knowledge); in the second pole, it is the point of departure; between the
two there are varying degrees of homogenization or elimination of diversity.
Whereas some proposals (Freire, de Souza, Mignolo) emphasize structural or socio-​
historic factors as primordial in this process, others emphasize learner or individual
agency (Multiliteracies, New Literacies). The primordiality of the structure/​context on
the one hand, or the individual on the other, refers to the key element in understanding
the point of departure in the potential for change, where change is seen as the acqui-
sition of new languages and knowledges. In terms of change, though both points of
departure—​structure/​context or individual—​imply contact with diversity or difference
in preexisting linguistic, cultural, and epistemological configurations, there is another
important aspect that needs to be considered, one often confused with the point of
 Multiliteracies and Transcultural Education    269

departure for change; this aspect is that of the locus of change—​the structure/​context or
the individual learner. Herein lies the significance and ambiguity of the prefix trans-​as
indicating either (1) flows or movement between one or another element, or (2) move-
ment in heterogeneity, as opposed to stasis in homogeneity.
The logic of the trans-​(which presupposes diversity and multiplicity, either internal
or external) involves moving analytically from one separate and homogeneous form to
another separate and homogeneous form: from a local form of writing to a global form;
or from an oral or visual use of language to a written use; or from a form of knowl-
edge with purely local valence to another variant of knowledge with standardized,
global valence. If, in this perspective, trans-​involves moving from one separate form to
another one, multiplicity, then, appears as the aggregate of separate unities. This reflects
not only concepts of language and knowledge, but also concepts of culture.
In his work on transculturality, Welsch (1999: 194) critiques and warns against this
view of culture as a totality and multiplicity as a collection of smaller totalities:

The traditional description of cultures as islands or spheres is descriptively wrong,

because cultures today are characterized internally by a pluralization of identities
and externally through border-​crossing contours. Furthermore, this traditional
concept, which emphasizes homogeneity and delineation, is normatively danger-
ous in structurally suppressing differences and encouraging separatism and vio-
lent conflicts. The concepts of interculturality and multiculturalism tackle some of
these ills, but their basic flaw remains the presupposition of cultures as homoge-
neous islands or enclosed spheres. The concept of transculturality seeks conversely
to articulate today's cultural constitution, one characterized by intertwinement.

For Welsch, transculturality is a response to the complexity of the phenomenon result-

ing from the flows and proximities made possible by the turn of the millennium phe-
nomenon of globalization. Transculturality brings to the fore the fact that cultures, like
languages and epistemologies, have always been constituted by heterogeneous (“sub-​”)
cultural elements (internal interculturalism) and have always been in contact with, have
been influenced by, or have themselves influenced other cultures (external intercultural-
ism). As such, though transculturality may appear to be a product of globalization and its
cross-​border flows, it has always been a characteristic of cultures, given that cultures have
always been formed in contact with other cultures. From Welsch’s perspective, multicul-
turalism in education and social policies resulted from the alarmed perception that North
American and European national communities, self-​perceived as homogenous totalities,
had their internal homogeneity threatened by the presence of migrant members of other
cultural totalities. The potential “clash” between totalities, to be avoided, was now per-
ceived to be internal—​within the nation—​and had to be addressed with urgency. The
possibility of the concept of trans-​as mutually transformative multidirectional movement
in plurality, as suggested by Welsch (1999), appears in these cases to be reduced to move-
ments within totality. In this use of trans-​as movement within a given totality, though the
complexity of the concept trans-​may be jeopardized, the dynamism on which it is based,
in the sense of nonstatic movement within a purported totality, is preserved.
270    Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza

In Great Britain, Cantle (2014) traces a similar history in social and educational
policies dealing with cultural heterogeneity as a threat to a desired and self-​perceived
national homogeneity, prompting policymakers to address the need to avoid internal
conflict. However, unlike Welsch, Cantle criticizes previous policies of multicultural-
ism as emphasizing homogeneities and totalities to be kept apart, both from each other
and from the homogeneity of the nation. These policies, for Cantle, engendered inter-
nal separatisms and conflicts that, rather than benefiting the nation, posed a threat to
it. For Cantle, plurality (similar to Welsch’s concept of transculturality) is what consti-
tutes cultures, both at the micro-​level of an individual member of that culture and at
the macro-​level of the nation; and it is this that has to be understood by policymakers.
Cantle prefers to use the term interculturality to describe policies that address this plu-
rality in cultural constitution as positive, breaking down the traditional perception of
the nation as a homogeneous totality, in opposition to the term multiculturalism, which
sought to preserve it.
A different take on inter-​, multi-​, and trans-​culturality in social policies and edu-
cation comes from those involved in critical pedagogies (Giroux and McLaren, 1994;
May and Sleeter, 2010; McLaren, 1997; Sleeter and McLaren, 1995) whose origins lie in
Freires’s initial work (1970). While emphasizing plurality and heterogeneity in the con-
stitution of communities and cultures, they reject the liberal multicultural educational
focus of “getting along better with one’s neighbors” as being easy to implement but inef-
fective in instrumentalizing change. The research of Pittman (2009) in terms of the inef-
fectiveness of such multicultural educational policies corroborates this.
The critical multicultural theorists critique the presupposition, such as that presup-
posed by Welsch and Cantle, that the root of the conflict in trans-​, multi-​, or intercul-
tural educational policies lies in a misunderstanding of the complexity of differences
in the constitution of cultural heterogeneity. They tend to see the position that empha-
sizes heterogeneity, complexity, and plurality as one that sells the message “we are all
equal citizens,” unproblematically linking unity with diversity, the individual, and the
collective.
The critical multicultural theorists propose that analysis should focus on, and start
with, inequitable power relations: “… rather than prioritizing culture, critical multicul-
turalism gives priority to structural analysis of unequal power relationships, analyzing
the role of institutionalized inequities” (May and Sleeter 2010: 10). In other words, cul-
ture, even in its “multi-​layered, fluid, complex and encompassing multiple social catego-
ries” (2010: 10), is produced by unequal power relations, lived out in daily interactions,
rather than vice versa.
One of the common problems of cultural homogenization in liberal multicultural
education, according to Sleeter and Stillman (2005), is that, ignoring the fact that knowl-
edge is culturally bound and embedded in power relations, multicultural curricula
tend to privilege the experience and knowledges of students from dominant commu-
nities and end up marginalizing those from non-​dominant communities, even though
the objective of the curriculum is to address and eliminate this difference. In contrast,
Sleeter and Maclaren (1995: 7) propose the following definition of critical multicultural
 Multiliteracies and Transcultural Education    271

education: “a particular ethico-​political attitude or ideological stance that one constructs

in order to confront and engage the world critically and challenge power relations.”
A key issue worth calling attention to in proposals for multi-​, inter-​or transcultural
education is that in Latin America, the term intercultural education is largely used to
refer to indigenous education policies. López (2011) shows how intercultural educa-
tion historically forms an essential part of the demands of indigenous movements in
Latin America to resist the previous policies of assimilation promoted by nation-​states
founded on the basis of Western (European) liberal notions of linguistic and cultural
homogeneity. Demands for intercultural education in the region are accompanied by
demands for bilingual education and result in the conjunction intercultural-​bilingual
education. Given the long colonial history of the marginalization of the indigenous
populations of Latin America and their subjection to policies of linguistic and cultural
assimilation to the nation-​states, intercultural-​bilingual education in this region has a
strong political connotation of indigenous self-​affirmation. As López shows, in some
regions demands for intercultural education are replaced by demands for intracultural
education; here the language and culture of the indigenous community are emphasized
in the school system; the political posture is that in order to be intercultural, on an equal
footing with the non-​indigenous dominant communities of the nation, the indigenous
communities first demand equal status and the possibility of being schooled in their
own languages and knowledges. Interculturality—​as the relationship between the vari-
ous peoples of the nation, their languages, and cultures—​will then follow, it is assumed,
from such a policy of initial intraculturality. However, such a political strategy seems to
play out a confrontational posture of local, indigenous linguistic and cultural homoge-
neity against the more virulent form of state linguistic and cultural homogeneity. In any
case, as we have already seen in relation to critical multiculturalism, López also criticizes
the European form of liberal multiculturalism for not foregrounding power structures
as the source of inequities in Latin America.
Wulf (2010: 37), from a European perspective, calls attention to the need for transcul-
tural education in the contemporary context of global interconnectivity and linguistic
and cultural flows, and emphasizes the relational and heterogeneous characteristic of
cultures:

In a globalization process that not only accepts cultural diversity as a condition of glo-
balization but also promotes it, the focus is on the question of how dealing with the
other of a foreign culture can be shaped and how the skills required for this can be
taught as a part of the educational process. Two points of view must be taken into
account here. Cultures are not self-​containing entities that are clearly differentiated
from each other and precisely defined. It is rather the case that most contain influences
from other cultures, from which several elements have been assimilated in one form or
another. Hence, we must understand cultures as dynamic and changing continuously.

However, Wulf follows the normative tradition of requiring that transcultural educa-
tion must involve “the establishment of certain standards if it is to further nonviolent
learning processes” (2010: 41). In response to Wulf, and following on from the critique
272    Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza

noted earlier of the Multiliteracies and New Literacies proposals presupposing a homo-
geneous universal context, and following on from the previously mentioned indigenous
proposals for intraculturalism, the problem here would be “whose standards,” and based
on what epistemological or ethical presuppositions?

Core Issues and Topics in the Present

From the preceding discussion of the current state of multiliteracies and transcultural
education, two interrelated core issues have been recurrent: (1) conflicting epistemolo-
gies, relating to conflicting concepts of language, culture, and literacy; and (2) unequal
power relationships and their epistemological consequences.

Conflicting Epistemologies
We have seen above Mignolo’s (1996) use of the term academic colonization to refer
to the imposition, naturalization, or universalization of certain epistemological con-
cepts of language and literacies as a result of the unequal power balance in the colo-
nial encounter between the Spanish and the Amerindians in the sixteenth century. This
imposition relates to two aspects of such intercultural encounters: first, differing con-
cepts and knowledges, and second, the context of inequality of such encounters tends to
privilege the imposition of the concepts and knowledges of the stronger party over the
weaker one. In this section, our focus will be on the former aspect.
Voloshinov (1973: 23–​24) has emphasized how the linguistic sign becomes an arena
of struggle even within the same language community; in spite of the fact that various
social groups within the same community may apparently use the “same” language, signs
refract and do not reflect what exists. That is, counter to the logocentric myth critiqued
by Derrida (1974), which believed that thought through language referred directly to a
given truth or reality, Voloshinov denies this possibility and shows that each of the social
groups that intersect (without becoming a homogeneous unity) within a given speech
community produce “differently oriented accents … in every ideological sign.” The
dominant group in the speech community attempts to impose its own accent and make
the sign uni-​accentual, distorting it and producing the “refraction.” This explanation not
only destroys the logocentric myth of a direct unmediated relationship between language
and reality or truth, but also shows that homogeneity, when it appears, is the result of an
attempt, on the part of the powerful, at eliminating heterogeneity. Thus, contrary to the
popular (mis)conception of heterogeneity as a phenomenon that comes after homogene-
ity and supposedly multiplies homogeneity, it is heterogeneity that precedes homogeneity.
This debunks a myth prevalent in current proposals of literacy and multi-​/t​rans­
cultural education: this is the idea that it is due to the contemporary context of global-
ization and its increased flows of people, resources, and knowledges that heterogeneity
 Multiliteracies and Transcultural Education    273

and the “multi-​“ enter the picture as multiliteracies, multimodality, multiculturalism,

and so on. From Voloshinov’s explanation, it is clear that the multi-​was always present
but had been silenced or hidden. What then can explain the contemporary visibility and
audibility of the previously hidden or silenced multi-​?
A possible explanation may be that, given the current technologies and media that
permit greater proximity, communication, and mobility across now porous national
boundaries, the homogenizing strength of these national boundaries, which previously
isolated and protected the internal dominance of national elites, becomes reduced; as a
result, international communication, previously mediated by the national elites, is now
possible between local, subnational communities of various nations, who, because of
the homogenizing mediation ( through national languages, national cultures) were pre-
viously silenced or made invisible. So rather than heterogeneity and the multi-​being a
recent phenomenon, it is now more visible and less easily homogenized. Canagarajah
(2013a: 49) reinforces this:

We must also note that multiliteracies, much celebrated today, are not new or
unknown in pre-​colonial and pre-​modern communities. There is a need to under-
stand more the logic and rhetoric which local people adopted to encode and decode
these [multimodal] texts in order to complement contemporary engagements with
multiliteracies.

The Indian sociolinguist L. Khubchandani (1988: 31), in a similar tone, states, “The
notion of uniformity and homogeneity, even in the speech behavior of an individual,
is only a myth.” Here Khubchandani is rallying against the tendency of “Western” lin-
guistics (carried out even by Indians) to reduce the linguistic complexity of the Indian
subcontinent to “Western” categories: “Nonwestern cultures have been reduced to the
status of ‘objects’ by being observed and studied by western scholars in terms of west-
ern concepts and categories, which are treated not as culture-​bound but as universal
in character” (1991: 12). Here Khubchandani not only criticizes the homogenization
(reduction to objects) of the process, but also the fact that such “Western concepts and
categories” are those that pertain to a monolingual and monocultural “West” and may
reduce the complex multilingualism and multiculturalism of the Indian subcontinent to
the static categories of “Western” linguistics. Khubchandani illustrates his argument of
conflicting epistemologies and the resultant drastic effects with the example of kshetra,
which he claims refers to the feeling of oneness shared by the diverse people of differ-
ent languages, religions, and cultures who occupy one and the same physical space in
India. This co-​occupation of the same space apparently creates a sense of collective
reality, in spite the “wide spectrum of linguistic and cultural variation in everyday life
performance” (1991: 3–​4). In contrast, a “Western” perspective of linguistic or cultural
plurality is one in which linguistic and cultural variation occur and coexist, but each
in a given spatially defined local area. Examples of this are the nations of Belgium and
Switzerland—​bilingual or multilingual at a national level, but consisting of juxtaposed
areas of monolingualism at a local level.
274    Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza

If such epistemological conflicts exist and cause difficulties when categories are ana-
lytically transposed from one epistemology to another, analysts must have the self-​
critical awareness to counter this or to reduce the negative effects of this (an example of
such negative effects would be the imposition of a single cultural, linguistic, or literacy
norm). Historically, however, this has not been the case. Thus López-​Gopar (2007) calls
attention to how literacy education in Mexico continues to emphasize purely alphabetic
Western forms of meaning-​making and ignores the intricate visual forms of meaning-​
making and text-​construction present in local indigenous practices of weaving. This
results in the social and political process of marginalization of the communities that
use such non-​alphabetic literacies, a process that not only portrays them as illiterate
and devoid of knowledge, but also negates their capacity to participate as citizens of the
nation.
A critical meta-​awareness of the role of theories, tools, and tropes used to analyze
culture is therefore necessary in order to avoid homogenizing, not just the constitution
of the culture or knowledge analyzed, but also the cultural and epistemic constitution of
the critic or analyst. Referring to the double bind that an anthropologist runs the risk of
falling into when analyzing an other culture, Wagner (1981: 13) warns:

An anthropologist experiences, in one way or another, the subject of his study; he

does so through the world of his own meanings, and then uses this meaningful expe-
rience to communicate an understanding to those of his own culture. He can only
communicate this understanding if his account makes sense in the terms of his cul-
ture. […] An “anthropology” which never leaves the boundaries of its own conven-
tions, which disdains to invest its imagination in a world of experience, must always
remain more an ideology than a science. (italics mine)

Thus not to invest one’s efforts in being critically aware of the potentially restrictive role
of one’s values, categories, and presuppositions in the analysis that one undertakes is to
be blind to the transcultural experience through which one makes sense of the world
using the epistemological tools and assumptions that constitute one’s cultural makeup.
This results in the academic colonization previously mentioned.

Unequal Power Relations

Possible academic colonization may be the result not only of conflicting epistemologies,
but also of imbalances in power relationships, where the greater power of the analyst of
literacy, or trans-​and multicultural education, in relation to the community analyzed,
may lead to the imposition of the categories and epistemology of the analyst as superior.
Various Latin American scholars have focused on the terrible and lasting conse-
quences of epistemological conflict resulting from unequal power relations, which
began with colonization and persist to the present, five centuries later. To this effect,
 Multiliteracies and Transcultural Education    275

Maldonado-​Torres (2010: 97) and Quijano (2007) make an important distinction

between colonialism and coloniality. Whereas colonialism refers to a system of political
and economic relations of outright imposition of one nation and its values over another,
coloniality refers to patterns of power relations that emerged from and persist after the
end of colonization and which allocate unequal positions to knowledges, languages,
and peoples. Mignolo (2007) in turn refers to the “logic of coloniality” that produces
dominant knowledges and peoples seen as “natural” or “normal” and portrays subal-
tern knowledges and peoples as nonexistent, inferior, lacking, and so forth. Grosfoguel
(2012) refers to this process of discrimination as epistemic racism and Castro-​Gómez
(2007) further clarifies it by developing the concept of the zero-​point hubris.
The zero-​point hubris refers to the process by which members of the dominant com-
munity, in an unequal relationship of power with another community, attribute to their
(dominant) knowledges, languages, and values a “zero point” or absolute origin, estab-
lishing these as the fundamental or only possible forms of knowledge, language, and
values. It is this concept, coupled with that of coloniality, that helps to explain the ten-
dency for the universalization of “Western” epistemologies and science even beyond the
boundaries of Latin America.
The concept of the zero-​point hubris is not dissimilar to Voloshinov’s explanation of
the rise of homogeneity as an attempt to restrict and eliminate the heterogeneity that
precedes it; it furthermore situates the process of exclusion and homogenization within
a colonial context, marked by an encounter between peoples, languages, and epistemol-
ogies. Alcoff (2000) clarifies the fact that the colonial encounter in the Americas was
interpreted as one of conquest, that is, an encounter between not equals, thus founding
the persisting relationship of inequality of knowledges, languages, and peoples inherent
in coloniality.
Whereas Voloshinov’s explanation would appear to make sense of epistemological
conflict and power inequalities in monolingual and monocultural Western contexts, the
concepts of coloniality, epistemic racism, and zero-​point hubris make sense in the het-
erogeneous multilingual and multicultural contexts of regions previously colonized by
Europe. The issues of conflicting epistemologies and unequal power relations may thus
be seen to permeate and mark current discussions and theories of the plurality of litera-
cies/​multiliteracies and proposals of multi-​, inter-​, and transcultural education.

Perspectives for the Future

Given the two core issues discussed in the previous section—​conflicting epistemologies
and unequal power relations—​any perspective for the future in discussions of multilit-
eracies and transcultural education need to address both issues. Along these lines, vari-
ous thinkers mentioned earlier do indeed suggest a way out: the need to think otherwise.
For Mignolo (2007), this means de-​naturalizing established concepts and conceptual
fields and pushing toward an “otherwise than.” For Anzaldúa (2007), what she calls a
276    Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza

new mestiza consciousness involves overcoming dichotomies and borderlines separat-

ing homogeneities, starting from where one (a non-​Western, non-​white member of
multiple marginalized communities—​indigenous, Latino, female, Mexican, bilingual
Hispanic) is located in order to rethink, reread and rewrite a world organized otherwise.
Wulf (2010: 37) speaks of the need for heterological thinking:

If human beings were aware of the otherness in themselves and their own cultures,
this would open up new possibilities for understanding the otherness of other people
and other cultures and of developing a way of thinking from the point of view of the
other. With the increasing awareness of differences and alterity and the recognition
of cultural diversity, it is increasingly becoming possible to identify common aspects
of different cultures and to break down barriers between them. The ability to per-
ceive and accept differences is essential and can even help to prevent violent conflict.

This ability to perceive and accept differences in oneself and in others, inspired by
Anzaldúa’s proposals, leads Baca (2008: 126) to propose a transcultural, multimodal,
multiliteracy pedagogy that “thinks beyond the sentence.”
A possibility for thinking otherwise in literacy pedagogy is one that has been implicit
(though in various, often conflicting forms) in the proposals of the Multiliteracies group
(Cazden et al., 1996; Kalantzis and Cope, 2012; Knobel and Lankshear, 2007), on the one
hand, and in the transcultural pedagogy of Andreotti and Souza (2008), on the other
hand. However, the possibility for a critical transcultural literacy education lies in tak-
ing stock of the learned and inherited resources one has available (language, knowledge,
and values), understanding why these resources are there and where they came from,
appreciating the restrictions they impose on the possibility of creating and perceiving
new meaning, and finally making the necessary adjustments to these available resources
in order to make possible the appearance of new meanings, new understandings—​that
is, in order to think otherwise.

Concluding Remarks

This chapter set out to examine the linguistic, cultural, and ideological issues relating
to concepts of literacy, culture, and diversity and the relevance of these for education
in the contemporary context of unceasing global flows of resources, texts, information,
and people. It sought to emphasize the fact that though such flows seem at first sight
to be unrestricted and open to all equally, in fact this may not occur. The chapter has
emphasized the multiple and heterogeneous nature of language, literacy, culture, and
knowledges and how they are inseparable from the socio-​historic conditions that pro-
duce them; thus, when they “flow” externally across boundaries of community, space,
and time, or internally within meaning-​making subjects, the connections with the epis-
temologies and contexts that engendered them may be severed; they may then become
attached to new epistemologies and socio-​historic contexts in new configurations. In
 Multiliteracies and Transcultural Education    277

cross-​linguistic or cross-​cultural encounters or moments of contact with others from

other languages, literacies, cultures, and knowledges produced in other socio-​historic
contexts, one’s own resources may not be sufficient to make oneself understood or to
understand the languages, literacies, cultures, and knowledges one is confronted with.
This lack of shared knowledge may give rise to epistemological conflicts—​the culture,
language, knowledge of the other is unlike my own culture, language, knowledge.
Depending on the social and historical condition of such encounters, the epistemologi-
cal conflicts that arise may be resolved unthinkingly or uncritically through the imposi-
tion of the languages, literacies, cultures, and knowledges of the stronger participant
in the encounter, transforming the power relations between the participants in the
encounter into the determinant factor of mutual understanding or incomprehension.
As we have seen, the possible way out of this (even though it is a way out only in the
sense of being aware of what not to do) is to think otherwise; that is, to be aware of, and
go beyond the limitations of one’s initially available, learned, and inherited linguistic
cultural and epistemological resources.

Note
1. For a definition of neoliberalism as a form of practical rationality that emphasizes competi-
tion and individuality and an entrepreneurial logica at both the level of the state and its insi-
tutions and at the level of the individual subject, see for example Dardot and Laval (2013)
and Brown (2015).

References
Alcoff, L. (2000). “Power/​ Knowledges in the Colonial Unconscious.” In L. Alcoff and
E. Mendieta (eds.), Thinking from the Underside of History: Enrique Dussel’s Philosophy
of Liberation (pp. 249–​268). Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Andreotti, V., and L. M. de Souza. (2008) Learning to Read the World through Other Eyes.
Derby: Global Education.
Anzaldúa, G. (2007). Borderlands/​La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt
Lute Books.
Baca, D. (2008). Mestiz@ Scripts, Digital Migrations, and the Territories of Writing. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Barton, D., and M. Hamilton. (2005). “Literacy, Reification, and the Dynamics of Social
Interaction.” In D. Barton and K. Tusting (eds.), Beyond Communities of Practice (pp. 14–​35).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barton, D., M. Hamilton, and R. Ivanič (eds.). (2000). Situated Literacies: Reading and Writing
in Context. London: Routledge.
Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. New York:
Zone Books.
Canagarajah, S. (2013). Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations.
London: Routledge.
Cantle, T. (2014). “National Identity, Plurality and Interculturalism.” The Political Quarterly
85(3): 312–​319.
278    Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza

Castro-​Gómez, S. (2007). “Decolonizar la universidad: la hybris del punto ceroy el diálogo de

saberes.” In S. Castro-​Gomez and R. Grosfoguel (eds.), El giro decolonial: reflexiones para
una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global (pp. 79–​92). Bogotá, CO: Siglo del
Hombre Editores.
Cazden, C., B. Cope, J. Cook, N. Fairclough, J. Gee, M. Kalantzis, et al. (1996). “A Pedagogy of
Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures.” Harvard Educational Review 66(1): 60–​92.
Cope, B., and M. Kalantzis. (2000). Multiliteracies. London: Routledge.
Cope, B., and M. Kalantzis. (2009). “Multiliteracies: New Literacies, New Learning.”
Pedagogies: An International Journal 4(3): 162–​195.
Dardot, P., and C. Laval. (2013). The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society. London:
Verso.
de Souza, L. M. T. M. (2005). “The Ecology of Writing among the Kashinawa: Indigenous
Multimodality in Brazil.” In S. Canagarajah (ed.), Reclaiming the Local in Language Policy
and Practice (pp. 73–​94). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
de Souza, L. M. T. M. (2006). “Entering a Culture Quietly: Writing and Cultural Survival in
Indigenous Education in Brazil.” In S. Makoni and A. Pennycook, (eds.), Disinventing and
Reconstituting Languages (pp. 135–​169). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
de Souza, L. M. T. M. (2008). “Beyond ‘here’s a culture, here’s a literacy’: Vision in Amerindian
Literacies.” In M. Prinsloo and M. Baynham (eds.), Literacies, Global and Local (pp. 193–​214).
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Derrida, J. (1974). Of Grammatology. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.
García, O. (2009). Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective. Malden, MA
and Oxford, United Kingdom: Wiley/​Blackwell.
Giroux, H., and P. Mclaren. (1994). Between Borders: Pedagogy and the Politics of Cultural
Studies. London: Routledge.
Grosfoguel, R. (2012). “Decolonizing Western Uni-​versalisms: Decolonial Pluri-​versalism
from Aimé Césaire to the Zapatistas in Transmodernity.” Journal of Peripheral Cultural
Production of the Luso-​Hispanic World 1(3): 88–​104.
Kalantzis, M., and B. Cope. (2012). Literacies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Khubchandani, L. (1988). Language in a Plural Society. Shimla, India: IIAS.
Khubchandani, L. (1991). Language, Culture and Nation Building. Shimla, India: IIAS.
Knobel, M., and C. Lankshear. (2007). A New Literacies Sampler. New York: Peter Lang.
López-​Gopar, M. E. (2007). “Beyond the Alienating Alphabetic Literacy: Multiliteracies
in Indigenous Education in Mexico.” Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education
1(3):159–​174.
López, L. E. (2011). “Hacia una Mayor Relevancia, Pertinencia y Calidad en la Educacion desde
la Interculturalidad.” In L. E. Lopez and F. Sapón (eds.), Recreando la educación intercultural
bilingüe em América Latina. Guatemala: Ministerio de Educacion de Guatemala.
Maldonado-​Torres, N. (2010). “On the Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the Development
of a Concept.” In W. Mignolo and A. Escobar (eds.), Globalization and the Decolonial Option
(pp. 94–​124). New York: Routledge.
May, S., and C. Sleeter. (2010). Critical Multiculturalism: Theory and Praxis. New York:
Routledge.
McLaren, P. (1997). Revolutionary Multiculturalism: Pedagogies of Dissent for the New
Millennium. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
 Multiliteracies and Transcultural Education    279

Mignolo, W. (1996). “Afterword: Writing and Recorded Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial
Situations.” In E. H. Boone and W. Mignolo (eds.), Writing without Words: Alternative
Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes (pp. 292–​312). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Mignolo, W. (2000). Local Histories/​Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledge and
Border Thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mignolo, W. (2007). “Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the
Grammar of De-​Coloniality.” Cultural Studies 21(2): 449–​514.
Pennycook, A. (2007). Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows. London: Routledge.
Pittman, C. T. (2009). “Multicultural Education and Social Justice Actions.” Intercultural
Education 20(2): 173–​186.
Prinsloo, M., and M. Breier. (1996). The Social Uses of Literacy: Theory and Practice in
Contemporary South Africa. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Quijano, A. (2007). “Colonialidad del poder y clasificación social.” In S. Castro-​Gomez and
R. Grosfoguel (eds.), El giro decolonial: reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá
del capitalismo global (pp. 93–​126). Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre Editores.
Sleeter, C., and P. McLaren. (1995). Multicultural Education, Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of
Difference. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Sleeter, C., and J. Stillman. (2005). “Standardizing Knowledge in a Multicultural Society.”
Curriculum Inquiry 35(1): 27–​46.
Street, B. (1984). Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Velasco, P., and O. García. (2014). “Translanguaging and the Writing of Bilingual Learners.” The
Bilingual Research Journal 37(1): 6–​23.
Voloshinov, V. N. (1973). Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. L. Matejka and
I. R. Titunik. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wagner, R. (1981). The Invention of Culture. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Welsch, W. (1999). “Transculturality—​ the Puzzling Form of Cultures Today.” In
M. Featherstone and S. Lash (eds.), Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World (pp. 194–​213).
London: Sage.
Wulf, C. (2010). “Education as Transcultural Education: A Global Challenge in Educational
Studies in Japan.” International Yearbook 5: 33–​47.