NÅR KULTUR KOMMER I VEJEN: Kapitalmøder og kulturforståelser på en international uddannelse i Danmark

Resumé

Over the past 10-15 years internationalisation has become a buzz word in university

education. International institutions as well as national and regional governments

promote international exchange of students and teachers, and universities compete

to attract foreign students. Internationalisation is generally based on the idea of

intercultural compatibility, which implies that ‘scholastic capital’ fairly easily can

be transferred from one university context to another and that educational settings

can promote and benefit from cultural diversity. With reference to a study of one

internationalised educational setting in Denmark, this article explores some of the

less recognised challenges in relation to internationalisation of university education.

Inspired by Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital and Gregory Bateson’s

concept of framing, the article argues that the combination of differences in cultural

capital and differences in locally embedded ‘context knowledge’ may produce

obstacles to fruitful intercultural interaction. It argues, moreover, that the interactions

between students are to a large extent based on an unequal relationship

between a home-team and a foreign team rather than on an equal relationship

between different nationalities. The obstacles this creates are, to a large extent,

unacknowledged, because individuals tend to interpret differences as ‘national

differences’.