Book-chapter on “Media and Cultural Education” published

It has been a little while that I had the pleasure to attend the conference „Education is Relation not Output? – Scenes of Knowledge and Knowledge Acquisition“ (May 17th-19th 2016) at Linnaeus University in Växjö, Sweden.

The talk and workshop that I gave within the panel „Art, Visual Culture and Media” has now been published as a book chapter:

Waltinger, Michael (2017): Media and Cultural Education – A Means to Social Cohesion in a Multicultural (Media) World. In: Rodríguez Sieweke, Lara (ed.): Learning Scenarios for Social and Cultural Change. Bildung through Academic Teaching. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Edition, pp. 171 – 183.

Here is the abstract:

In an increasingly mediatized world (Lundby; Hepp & Krotz)media usage is as much entangled in everyday life as everyday life is mediated (Röser; Paus-Hasebrink). The media are important agents of socialization (Hoffmann & Mikos)and are involved in the social construction of the world, as they carry social meaning and reproduce dominant social norms and ideologies (Devereux). In doing so, the media contribute to audiences forms of knowledge, not only about their immediate social surroundings but also about more distant contexts, places and cultures (ibid.).

As the world also becomes an increasingly globalized place, the flow of media images generally follows this trend. It does so, however, in a quite unequal fashion, creating what might be called a divided global village, whereas uneven flows of media images in their „re-presentation“ (ibid.) often reproduce the inequalities of the social world (Waltinger; Hall, Evans & Nixon).⁠ Additionally, both immigration countries where good parts of the population are foreign-born and the current refugee situation testify that it is also the flow of people that tends to become more global, making the world a smaller and denser place.

When globalized media worlds increasingly become intercultural life worlds, media education has to become part of essential education, because it is desirable that people are able to competently navigate through and participate in those media-life-worlds (Süss, Lampert & Wijnen).  Cultural education needs to become integral, since the concepts of cultural relativism and cultural sensitivity (Jandt) allow to appreciate different cultures without measuring them against own standards. The university as a place for social development could and should be a forum in which such knowledge is actively formed.

Talk and Workshop on “Media and Cultural Education” @Education is Relation not Output?-Conference (Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden)

Education is Relation not Output

The conference

It has been a great pleasure to attend the recent conference “Education is Relation not Output? – Scenes of Knowledge and Knowledge Acquisition” (May 17th-19th 2016) at Linnaeus University in Växjö, Sweden.

The conference was held in cooperation with the international scientific network Tacit Dimensions of Pedagogy. The conference’s purpose was as follows:

Re-thinking the idea of university and scholarly life means to critically examine the conditions for teaching in terms of the current policy discourses and freely develop an idea of university out of an international perspectiveUniversity does not exist simply to convey information or expertise. It is a society in which everyone is responsible for in a reflected way participating in diverse relationships to him-/herself, to others and to the world, and, based on diverse forms of knowledge and representation, actively forming them. In this conference combined with other spaces for discussion perspective on university as a place for social development will be opened up by academic scholars as well as by professionals in the fields of school as well as of art.

My contribution on “Media and Cultural Education”

My own contribution was a talk and workshop that was held within the panel “Art, Visual Culture and Media“.

In my opening talk, I was aiming for tapping into the idea of shaping a perspective on university as a place for social development from an international perspective beyond simply conveying expertise, but to see the university as responsible in helping people to advance in a direction of reflectively participating in diverse relationships to oneself, others and the world.

Especially since contemporary life is happening in spaces of intense proximity, where the interdependence of the diverse nations and cultures becomes more and more obvious, it is important to empower people to competently navigate those spaces. Hence, I proposed an increased emphasis on and discussion of media and cultural education as a means to social cohesion within the university as a place of public education.

The conference paper of the talk (ca. 10 pages) can be downloaded here (pdf-file). A book publication as a conference outcome is forthcoming. My paper will be found there as an official publication then, too.

Media and Development – More Questions Than Answers