Cultural travel and cultural prejudice

I will explore the argument that we are able to carry our cultural identities with us and build on them as powerful resources to engage with new cultural environments. There are however problems to be faced, in the form of prejudice and power structures, some of which operate at a global level of inequality. In looking at this, I will consider competing discourses of culture, which, in different ways, either contribute to or oppose a perceived and branded ‘Western’ failure to recognise the proficiency of perceived and branded ‘non-Western’ cultural realities. Deep prejudice remains hidden between the lines of apparent praise and recognition; and common statements about culture are too easily used as literal evidence for the essentialist theories of culture that feed these prejudices. At the same time there is evidence of unexpected movements of bottom-up globalisation, where marginalised communities claim the world with an alternative modernity. Furthermore, once we begin to understand these deeper cultural realities it becomes evident that we all have the potential for immense creativity in engaging with culture. Throughout, I will locate these discourses, prejudices and movements within the everyday manner in which we all go about our lives.