The International TRANSCULTURA Institute is structured by an international network which is more than 20 years old. This institute was created by Umberto Eco and Alain le Pichon in 1988, on the occasion of the 9th centenary of the University of Bologna.
Its main objective is to promote reciprocal anthropology to renew the conceptual field of the human sciences, limited by the context of Western cultures where it has developed to this day. For this, the institute develops methodologies and methods of transcultural communication; allowing reciprocal knowledge of civilizations, organizes debates confronting the meanings of keywords and concepts in international relations, offers training in transcultural methodologies recognized by international university degrees.
Its originality is twofold:
– in a reciprocal anthropological approach, Transcultura takes into account the knowledge models and the respective perception of the world that its partners of non-European culture have in Asia (China, India, Iran), in Africa (Maghreb, South Africa) in West, and America, and the reciprocal result.
– To this end, Transcultura develops cross-cultural methodologies of analysis applicable to different situations and intercultural contexts, in cultural, scientific, or economic exchanges.
“The company to which we are confronted today, refounding the knowledge of man, goes through this work of balancing act renewing, the boat of language, the boat of cultures: We have to go over, identify the words and the concepts, go back to the words and get down to the task of recognizing the diversity of our language games. It is this task that we propose to undertake by gradually launching the project of a Transcultural Encyclopedia of keywords and concepts. “
Alain the Pichon
“The concept of Transcultura is new, but the fact of Transcultura is rather old. It was, if I am right, the universal tradition of ancient times. Before a culture or a system of knowledge becomes closed, it must be open to any new ideas and new things. In this sense, the very effort of Transcultura is a return to the great tradition of every culture in its originality, so as to renew the cultures and knowledge. It is a way to re-culturing as I call it. Transcultura could be also found a revival of the Greek agora in a new form, an agora of cultures, which is a greater public sphere for bigger questions than an agora of citizens. From this point of view, Transcultura is thus of great importance as a political forum of cultures and minds”.
Zhao Tingyang