Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-25wd4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T01:03:08.688Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Wearing the Ḥijāb: Cultural Awareness, Cross-Cultural Competence, and Interactions in an Unfamiliar Cultural Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2021

Get access

Summary

Abstract

This chapter aims to analyze the relevance of cultural awareness, cross-cultural competence, and the emerging concept of cultural humility in fostering the integration of immigrants in contexts perceived as unfamiliar. The authors adopt positive organizational scholarship as their theoretical framework to highlight the conditions under which positive results are likely to emerge. The empirical research considers the experiences and perceptions of 216 veiled women in their daily interactions in the south of Italy. The general purpose is to understand if wearing the ḥijāb in a cultural context different from one's own affects the way of interacting with people in the community belonging to the dominant culture, the freedom to express their religious beliefs, and the meaning of the veil, the ḥijāb. The specific purpose is to analyze whether improvements in cross-cultural competence create positive conditions for the integration of immigrants (and their families) in their daily and work lives. Overall, this study offers a cross-cultural perspective and a dialogue on education to reinforce the notion that the efforts to integrate people with different cultural backgrounds can be effective when they learn from each other in the context in which they live.

Introduction

Skills and knowledge are crucial to interacting with different cultures, interpreting and analyzing one's own and others’ behavior, and adapting to different contexts in today's multicultural society. Such skills and knowledge are even more relevant when considering the integration of people from different cultural backgrounds living and working in the same community. Cross-culturally educated people, whether immigrants, residents, civil servants, health professionals, or entrepreneurs, can play a valuable role in creating positive conditions for integration, and embracing “cultural humility” is a critical first step. Aiming to highlight the “positive approach to studying diversity” and not just the “positive findings of diversity research,” this chapter adopts positive organizational scholarship as the theoretical approach previously used in studies of positives cases of organizations (and their members), and the processes, outcomes, attributes, and drivers of positive behaviors in the workplace that in turn contribute to exceptional individual and organizational performance.

Type
Chapter
Information
Law, Cultural Studies and the 'Burqa Ban' Trend
An Interdisciplinary Handbook
, pp. 393 - 410
Publisher: Intersentia
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×