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MEDIA LITERACY AND INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE Strategies, Debates and Good Practices The Zhaocai Mao (Maneki Neko) as my new personal amulet. Change and cultural paradox in the information society Santiago Giraldo Luque Investigador Postdoctoral Departamento de Periodismo Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona santiago.giraldo@uab.es Abstract The present text is a theoretical approach about how we can analyse and interpret the main differences between cultures that live in the same scenario. The possibility of finding in a small town anywhere in the world scenarios of evident multiculturality reveals the analytical need to understand the cultural process. With this purpose, the essay discuss –using the famous Chinese cat that every oriental bazaar sells in their stores- the assimilation of new daily rituals from different cultures present in the European cities. The text also presents the communicative dialogue of mutual recognition trying to establish origin of the intercultural communication process, where different actors develop a mutually dependent relation whose ultimate expression is staged in the exchange of symbols. Keywords: Intercultural dialogue, cultural paradox, information society, transcultural analysis 1. The situation Living in a small village in Catalonia near Barcelona, where the majority of people use Catalan as their lingua franca, and find that one of the stores which had more economic growth in the last four years is the "Bazaar Zhong Yu" whose ownership, management and customer service depend exclusively on the family that I have as a neighbour (from China), may represent one of the main paradoxes of contemporary culture. The situation -brought by a greater freedom of movement for persons, goods and information- involves a very serious analytical exercise for understanding the adaptation of an Oriental family structure to a system of regulated work under the European capitalist economy. At the same time, it presents a bigger demand for understanding the daily dialogue among symbols which exist between the coexistence of objects that, for example, catalyze powers: a Colombian immigrant woman, who lives near my house, comes out of the Eucharist celebration in the Catholic Church and goes to "Bazaar Zhong Yu”. When she leaves the store, in which you can find all kinds of products for home, she carries in her hand her new charm to attract money: a Fortune’s cat (Zhaocai Mao, in Chinese or Maneki Neko in Japanese). 59
MEDIA LITERACY AND INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE Strategies, Debates and Good Practices The study and understanding process of contemporary cultures is impossible without a high dose of transcultural analysis. The possibility of finding in a small town anywhere in the world scenarios of evident multiculturality -like in people, goods, appliances, information or food- reveals the analytical need to understand the cultural process. What is more, it becomes necessary to analyze its mixing -its paradoxical change- such as the mutability property that has a living organism which in its social life, it is constructed and transformed according to the experiences, images, representations and relationships that weaves with a network of different actors manifested in its visible structure or within its latent processes. The internalization of Zhaocai Mao within a cultural space to which it does not belong, involves the interaction between distant worldviews. Its everyday interaction, but especially the assimilation of a new charm in the daily ritual of a new culture, starts the communicative dialogue of mutual recognition (which is no less a recognition of their own contexts) under which the new symbol is accepted as if it was own: the indeterminate communication process is originated, where the actors develop a mutually dependent relation whose ultimate expression is staged in the exchange of symbols (Chen, Fang and Faure, 2011: 321). 2. Holistic approach Likewise, the cultural communication process can accept the system of family - labor structure of the "Bazaar Zhong Yu" and assimilate it, both within the rational legal system that frames the trade relations and workers in Spain, as in the traditional system of social relations whose cultural habits change. It becomes symbolic dialogue: from making purchases of certain goods in the traditional village shops to buy them in the "Bazaar Zhong Yu" recognizing that they come from different contexts, but accepting them. The process is the ability of culture in the information age to reconcile opposites and to form a dynamic of "cultural friction" (Shenkar, et al., 2008, in Fang, 2012: 5) that pops up a “new negotiated culture” (Brannen and Salk, 2000, in Fang, 2012: 6) which takes of every one of its ingredients the right dose to function in a definite context and at certain time. Thus, the process of study and cultural analysis implies a holistic approach from four complementary perspectives: a) A historical or temporary perspective of the culture that allows a longitudinal representation of changes in the living organism, like a dynamic object, going beyond the vision of culture as static and unchanging object. b) A cross-culture perspective, away from binary dimensions 1 , which contrary, would allow building a characterization of the study object as a stage in evolution, like a dynamic process that has multiple internal changes, even in the absence of addressing external factors. c) A 1 A binary dimension responds to the metaphor of the onion raised by Fang (2005-2006). The onion vision focuses on cultural difference and its unit of analysis and it is established on the traditional nations or nationalities, forgetting a deeper study of internal dynamics that, as a living organic object, has each element of nation or nationality (Fang, 2012). 60
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