Voyaging in and writing back: charting a course of action sensitive to intercultural difference

Voyaging in and writing back: charting a course of action sensitive to intercultural difference

The term 'capacity building' is often associated with the work of western consultants within non-western educational settings. From the perspective of consultants, this term is 'troubling' because when plurality and difference in such a context are encountered the consultants have few reference points to assist them move out from under how they know themselves and others premised on the lens of the culture they bring with them. There remains a real risk that, when difference is encountered, it is dismissed as having little importance or value. As a result, the consultants are likely to remain positioned and stunted within their cultural formations, blunting a capacity to reflect on the implications of difference in their work and their responses to the issues and challenges such a project entails as they seek to chart a course to serve the needs of their counterparts on their own terms.
This chapter draws on narrative research based on the accounts of two of the author's colleagues' experience in western education that pointed to directing experiences that appear to be implicated in their time in western
education in Papua New Guinea. Such insights offer multiple lenses to reveal a plurality of knowledge and understandings and to traverse this troubling terrain to make difference the grounds for intervention, premised on a more generative edge in understanding and practice - voyaging in and writing back.

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