Intercultural dialogue study
There is practically no other term or concept currently experiencing such a boom as "intercultural dialogue". Propagated at all political levels and by a wide variety of political and societal institutions, used in a multitude of projects, it was after 11th September 2001 that "intercultural dialogue" particularly began to develop into a political instrument raising high expectations. Political and civic leaders consciously set this instrument against the "clash of civilisation" theory posited by Samuel Huntington and attribute great political importance to it in a wide variety of contexts, for example migration/integration, the Barcelona process, EU (eastern) expansion, terrorism and conflict prevention or reconciliation.
However, there has not yet been any critical collection and analysis of the extensive material produced under this keyword. This work was undertaken in 2009-2010 by political scientist and Islamic scholar Dr. Jürgen En-dres through a study on behalf of the Federal Department of Home Affairs (State Secretariat for Education and Research) at the Department for the Study of Religions and the Center for Research on Religion. The aim of the project was to take stock of the concept of interreligious and intercultural dialogue at the levels of the Council of Europe, the European Union and UNESCO. The primary analytical focus was a comparative study of the particular conceptual understanding, the concept history and the political expectations of intercultural dialogue, in particular projects carried out under the heading of intercultural dialogue.
In September 2010, the State Secretariat for Education and Research published the study in German and French:
Intercultural dialogue study (German)
Intercultural dialogue study (French)
Presentation given by Dr. Jürgen Endres at a workshop in Lucerne on 22/11/2010 (German)
