Cultural Hegemony or Cultural Encounters
Cultural Hegemony or Cultural Encounters

Summary/Abstract: According to Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, encounter, n. means: (1) a meeting with a person or thing, esp. a casual, unexpected, or brief meeting, (2) a meeting of persons or groups that are in conflict or opposition; combat; battle, and (3) Psycol. a meeting of two or more people, as the members of the encounter group or a number of married couples, conducted to promote direct emotional confrontations among the participants, esp. as a form of therapy. I suppose that the organizing committee had the first meaning in mind when they proposed the topic of the conference, although it is to be expected that they used the word with all the nuances of additional meaning that it acquired under the changing circumstances of the ‘New World Order’, i.e. globalization and internationalization. I have begun my paper with the discussion on the meaning of the word encounter because what I want to emphasize is the fact that what is going on in the world today cannot be described with the word encounter, since encounter, as I understand it, presupposes two or more parties on an equal footing, giving and taking their respective values (in the case of cultures these values may include language, art, technology know-how, relationship to nature, religion, etc.), and hoping that some day they will manage to improve their way of living thanks to the encounter.

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