SPACES OF

INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Rico Lie

Research Centre Communication for Social Change (CSC)

Catholic University of Brussels (K.U. Brussel)
Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Department of Communication
Vrijheidslaan 17, B-1081 Brussels, Belgium
tel. +32-2-4124247, fax +32-2-4124200, eml. [email protected]
http://home.pi.be/rl

This paper is an adapted version of Chapter 6 of the book Spaces of Intercultural

Communication. An Interdisciplinary Introduction to Communication, Culture and
Globalizing/Localizing Identities (in press, IAMCR book series, Hampton Press)

23rd Conference IAMCR, Barcelona, 21 - 26 July 2002

 SPACES OF
INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

ABSTRACT

This paper is concerned with a theoretical and practical exploration of so-called

'liminal and liminoid spaces of intercultural communication'. These kinds of
spaces of communication are zones where intercultural contact in-between the
global and the local can be found. The paper more specifically looks at these
zones as (a) spaces in a state of cultural coexistence, (b) spaces in a state of
intercultural negotiation, and (c) spaces in a state of intercultural
transformation (hybridized transculturality). Building on Victor Turner's theory
of liminality, it explores the liminal and liminoid aspects of globalizing and
localizing cultural identities, especially in so-called 'global cities'. As an
example, some spaces of intercultural communication in Brussels are analyzed
in a descriptive way. In approaching these public ànd private spaces, the paper
uses interdisciplinary theoretical orientations in social anthropology,
communication studies, cultural studies and cultural geography.

KEY WORDS

Brussels, globalization, hybridity, identity, liminality, localization, intercultural

communication, space

2
Introduction

"Everyone more or less permanently in transit... Not so much 'where are you from?'
but 'where are you between?' (The intercultural identity question.)"

James Clifford, 1992:109

The communication between cultures—in all its different forms—is increasing.

This statement brings joy as we learn and grow in contact with other cultures.
We learn about what was previously unknown to us. We learn to tolerate,
accept, respect and enjoy difference. We learn about others, but also about
ourselves. We see how things can be done in a totally different manner, and,
how those manners are as normal to others as ours are to us. It opens the eyes
and this brings joy. But, the increased and accelerated cultural flows between
locales also brings worry. There is a fear of the loss of this rich diversity. There
is a fear that the global will overtake the local and that culture will homogenize
and look the same, just about everywhere. This is a real fear, but we also hear
the same people say things like: "My homeland—although it will of course look
different when I return. It will have modernized...—will always be homeland. It
is the place where I grew up and where my roots are. It is the place where I can
be myself. It is where I'm from and where we belong. It's the place of our
culture." Or, as one can read in a similar, but reversed global-local scope in the
Constitution of the Federated States of Micronesia:

"Our islands sustain us, our island nation enlarges us and makes us stronger. Our
ancestors, who made their homes on these islands displaced no other people. We,
who remain, whish no other home than this... Micronesia began in the days when
man explored the seas in rafts and canoes. The Micronesian nation is born in an
age when man voyage among stars; our world itself is an island..." (excerpt from
the Preamble to the Constitution of the Federated States of Micronesia)

This paradoxical journey from the local to the global and back to the local is the
topic of this paper. The paper is situated in-between the joy and the worry. It
tries to explore the theory of specific spaces where the increased communication
of cultures actually takes place. The study situates culture between the local-
global-local triangle. As such, the paper is concerned with 'spaces of
intercultural communication' as far as they touch upon globalizing and
localizing identities. Starting from Victor Turner's theory on the 'liminal' and the
'liminoid' in so-called 'tribal' and 'modern' societies, the paper continues
discussing 'postmodern' spaces where the local meets the global, and, the global
meets the local in play and liminality. It tries to explore the postmodern
particularities of these spaces in processes of globalization and localization in
culture and communication. 'Liminal and liminoid spaces of intercultural

3
communication' in and around Brussels are taken as examples of "'lived
experiences' of global modernity" as Tomlinson (1999:113) calls them.1

(Non)-Place and communication space in globality and locality

"(...) space is a practised place."

Michel de Certeau, 1984:117

This is a much cited quote from Michel de Certeau (originally published in

French in 1974). The quote continues with "Thus the street geometrically
defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers" (De Certeau,
1984:117). In an interpretative sense, this summarizes the difference between
space (ruimte [in Dutch] / espace [in French]) and place (plaats [in Dutch] / lieu
[in French]). It means that space is lived place, thus, through (inter)action and
communication, places transform into spaces and become spaces of
communication. Building on De Certeau, places are fixed and stable. Borders of
places are set and can precisely be determined. Borders of spaces are flexible
and are constructed in a symbolic, interpretative way (see e.g. Cohen, 1985).
Thus, 'walking in the city' (De Certeau, 1984:91-110) transforms the place into
space. Moreover, 'watching television in the home' can for instance also be seen
as practised or lived place. This is not only the case because the home is a
geographical defined setting, but also because the television text itself—in De
Certeau's words (in the context of a written text) "a place constituted by a
system of signs (De Certeau, 1984:117)"— is by the act of watching
transformed into space. Such, by the act of consumption and interpretation,
created spaces of communication can be geographical and physical, as well as
non-physical and non-geographical. In this process, and in the context of
societies moving from modernity toward postmodernity, 'human and cultural
geography'-scholars seem to be moving toward the study of these practised or
lived places. In doing so, they come to the issue of 'spaces' and find common
ground with other disciplinary fields, such as anthropology, communication and
cultural studies (see for related discussion e.g. Harvey, 1989; Massey & Jess,
1995; Morley & Robins, 1995; Tomlinson, 1999; Urry, 1995).

Globalization and localization are linked to these spaces of communication in

several ways. It is in these kinds of spaces that the global meets the local in
intercultural contact. Marc Augé's idea of 'non-place', as a total concept and if

1Brusselsis officially a bilingual city. This means that all the public places, streets, public transport etc. have a
French name and a Dutch (Flemish) name. Where reference is made to these places, only the Dutch (Flemish)
names are given.

4
applied to the global-local cultural context, comes close to what I want to
pursue with the idea of 'liminal and liminoid spaces of communication'. Augé
defines 'non-places' as follows:

"If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then
a space which cannot be defined as relational or historical, or concerned with
identity will be a non-place. (...) A world where people are born in the clinic and
die in hospital, where transit points and temporary abodes are proliferating under
luxurious or inhuman conditions (hotel chains and squats, holiday clubs and
refugee camps, shantytowns...); where a dense network of means of transport
which are also inhabited spaces is developing; where the habitué of supermarkets,
slot machines and credit cards communicates wordlessly, through gestures, with
an abstract, unmediated commerce; a world thus surrendered to solitary
individuality, to the fleeting, the temporary and ephemeral, offers the
anthropologist (and others) a new object" (Augé, 1995:78; also quoted in
Tomlinson, 1999:109).

The examples of such 'supermodern' 'non-places' that Augé provides, are:

airport departure lounges, supermarkets, motorways and service stations,
streetcorner cash dispensers and high-speed trains (see also Tomlinson,
1999:108-113). It is exactly in these kinds of spaces that the global meets the
local in travel and transit. De- and reterritorialized cultural elements co-exist
and negotiate towards new hybrid cultural forms. Authentic cultural history—if
existing—seems to have little relevance in these practised places. The places
seem to be lived in a transitory way. The adding of this paper to the idea of
'non-place' is therefore at the level of theory and at the way of analysis. At the
practical level, it more or less points to the same kind of spaces as Augé does.
With the liminal/oid, I am emphasizing the in-between status of the spaces.
They are in-between the global and the local, which guides the observations of
the cultural analyst towards relevant cultural elements/forms in these specific
spaces. The spaces are called spaces of intercultural communication because the
focus is on the interaction (coexistence, negotiation and transformation)
between the cultural elements/forms. Perceived in this way, these non-places
can be studied as 'meeting zones of global and local elements'. They seem to be
spaces/spheres where the global and the local are to be transformed in
interaction.

Related ideas are developed by Rob Shields in his book 'Places on the Margin'
(1991). An example of such a 'non-place' or 'liminal zone', as Shields calls it, in
a global/local context, is 'Rodeo Street' in Seoul (see Shields, 1997). In this
short ethnography, Shields describes how global and local cultural elements are
lived in an integrated way in the specific setting in Seoul. One can find a lot of
these kinds of spaces spaces around the world. Though, often, specific
ethnographies of these spaces are missing. Moreover, Bhabha (1994) also

5
addresses 'liminal space' in relation to 'interculturality'. Unlike Shields, he does
not build on Victor Turner's theory of liminality, but does embrace the idea of
in-betweenness. Bhabha uses the stairwell as a metaphor for liminality:

"The stairwell as liminal space, in-between the designations of identity, becomes

the process of symbolic interaction, the connective tissue that constructs the
difference between upper and lower, black and white. The hither and thither of the
stairwell, the temporal movement and passage that it allows, prevents identities at
either end of it from settling into primordial polarities. This interstitial passage
between fixed identifications opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that
entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy" (Bhabha, 1994:4).
"...the theoretical recognition of the split-space of enunciation may open the way
to conceptualizing an international culture, based not on the exoticism of
multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation
of culture's hybridity. To that end we should remember that it is the 'inter'—the
cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the in-between space—that carries the
burden of the meaning of culture" (Bhabha, 1994:38).

Before we go deeper into discussing the relation between 'interculturality',

communication and space, let us first consider Turner's theory of the 'liminal'
and the 'liminoid' more thoroughly.

What are liminal and liminoid spaces?

In several disciplines, the issue of 'liminality' has again found to be a concept of

interest in the study of contacting cultures and changing cultures. The concept
was formerly is use in the more strict study of rituals, mainly rituals of
transition, and introduced, almost a century ago, by the Belgian scholar Arnold
Van Gennep (1909) in his classic book 'Les Rites de Passages'. 'Liminality'
refers to the middle phase of the three phases Van Gennep distinguishes in all
'rites de passage'. The actual three phases are: (1) separation, (2) margin (or
limen, signifying 'threshold' in Latin) (transition), and, (3) reaggregation
(reintegration). In particular with initiation (transition) rites (e.g., initiation from
boy to man, marriage or dying) these phases can be distinguished quite clearly.
In the phase of transformation, one does not belong to society and one is not a
member of normal daily structure. One is located in a time and space that has no
social definition. The identity of the person or group is unclear. Such a liminal
position offers a possibility for reflection and critique, but also for idealising,
equality and intense comradeship. This 'state of being' or 'quality of relation' is
what Victor Turner calls 'communitas' (Turner, 1969). It is in liminality that
communitas emerges. Turner sees social structure as the opposite of
communitas (Turner, 1974a:231), as communitas exists outside structured time.

6
Turner addresses 'liminality' as being:

"potentially and in principle a free and experimental region of culture, a region

where not only new elements but also new combinatory rules may be introduced"
(Turner: 1982:28). "In liminality, new ways of acting, new combinations of
symbols, are tried out, to be discarded or accepted. ... The essence of ritual is its
multidimensionality, of its symbols their multivocality" (Turner, 1977:40). "...in
liminality people 'play' with the elements of the familiar and defamiliarize them"
(Turner, 1974b:60).

Turner's comparative symbolic theory of ritual, liminality and liminal/liminoid

phenomena in 'modern' societies (as derived from his theory on tribal societies)
is associated with five concepts: work, leisure, play, flow, and communitas. In
this paper, these concepts will not be addressed in a systematic way and to an
in-depth extent (see for a systematic and in-depth treatment of these concepts
for instance Turner, 1974b; 1977), though a few words on these concepts are
needed. 'Work' and 'leisure', although complex, can be seen here as straight
forward terms and need no further explanation for the sake of the arguments I
want to make in this paper. Though, it is worth mentioning that Turner states,
more than once, that it is within leisure in 'modern' societies, that one can find
liminality (Turner, 1977:42). The third concept of 'play' is a central concept
here, and can be defined as the capacity to deal simultaneously and
subjunctively with more than one classification of reality (see Droogers,
1994:31). In Turner's later work, he sees play as the essence of liminality (see
Droogers, 1994:31-32). One could say that liminal/liminoid play can also be
defined as the interaction that takes place within a space of transformation.
Thus, 'play' is the actual communication that cumulates socio-cultural and other
change and movement. The fourth concept, the concept of 'flow', completely
differs from its use in international communication studies (see e.g. Mowlana,
1997) or contemporary transcultural anthropological studies (e.g. Appadurai,
1996; Hannerz, 1992, 1996). In these fields of study, the concept refers to a
flow of capital, goods, people or ideas. Instead, Turner uses the concept of flow,
following his colleague Mihali Csikszentmihalyi, as 'a state of experience'. This
'flow experience' has the following qualities: (1) the merging of action and
awareness; (2) centering the attention on a limited stimulus field; (3) a loss of
ego; (4) being in control of actions and of the environment; (5) contains
coherent and non-contradictory demands for action, and, (6) it is autolectic,
meaning it needs no goals outside itself. It is in liminality that one can find these
flow qualities. 'Communitas', the final concept, has already been discussed and
is more strictly related to ritual, and, as such, one of Turner's earlier central
concepts in his study of liminality (see especially Turner, 1969). It can be found
in the temporary situation without social structure and is characterized by
individual relations of equality. One of his central arguments with regard to

7
these five concepts is that in 'modern' societies, 'work' and 'play' have become
separated, whereas is 'tribal' societies they were mixed. His later work on
performance builds in line with the above. Theatre (as a form of play) for
instance is seen by Turner as a reflexive moment in the flow of daily life (see
e.g. Boudewijnse, 1994).

Instead of focusing on Turner's complex and multi-interpretable general theory,

the focus here will be on my interpretations of the specific issues of liminal and
liminoid phenomena and the so-called liminal and liminoid zones of culture.
Turner (1977) uses the concept of 'liminoid' in stead of 'liminal' when referring
to what he calls 'post-tribal' societies. In our current jargon we would call these
societies 'modern'. In my opinion, 'liminoid' can also be a term applicable to
'post-modern' societies. In fact, one can criticize and doubt the whole
evolutionary distinction between 'tribal', 'modern' and 'post-modern' societies.
Anyway, according to Turner, the concept of liminoid is more up-to-date than
the concept of liminal. Turner used the liminoid by analogy with ovoid, 'egg-
like' and asteroid, "star-like" (see for instance Turner 1977:43). So, liminoid
means limen-like, and limen is Latin for threshold. It is akin to, or like the
ritually liminal, but not identical with it. Among other differences between
liminal phenomena and liminoid phenomena, Turner describes one of the main
differences as follows:

(...) liminal phenomena tend to be collective, concerned with calendrical,

meteorological, biological, or social-structural cycles and rhythms, or with crises
in social processes whether these result from internal adjustments, external
adaptations, or unexpected disasters (earthquakes, invasions, plagues, and the
like). Thus they appear at what may perhaps be called 'natural breaks' in the flow
of natural sociocultural processes. Liminoid phenomena, on the other hand, may
be collective (carnivals, spectacles, major sport events, folk drama, national
theatre, and so on), and when they are so, are often directly derived from tribal
liminal antecedents, but are more characteristically produced and consumed by
known named individuals, though they may of course, have collective or 'mass'
effects. They are not cyclical, but continuously generated, though in times and
places sequestered from work settings in the 'leisure' sphere.
Liminal phenomena are also centrally integrated into the total social process,
forming with all its other aspects a complete whole (...) On the other hand,
liminoid phenomena develop most characteristically outside the central economic
and political processes, along their margins, on their interfaces, in their 'tacit
dimensions' (though, later, liminoid ideas and images may seep from these
peripheries and cornices into the center). They are also, in contrast to liminal
phenomena, plural, fragmentary and experimental" (Turner, 1977:44).

Furthermore, according to Turner, liminoid phenomena tend to be more

idiosyncratic and quirky, while liminal phenomena tend to have a common
intellectual and emotional meaning for all the members of the widest effective

8
community" (Turner, 1977:45). In Figure 1, you can find my interpretation of
the main differences between the liminal and the liminoid (mainly based on
Turner, 1974b [reprinted in Turner, 1979:11-59] and Turner, 1977):

Figure 1. The main differences between liminal (phenomena) and liminoid (phenomena)

LIMINAL (PHENOMENA) LIMINOID (PHENOMENA)

What are the central characteristics?

• production and consumption is calendrical, cyclic • production and consumption is characteristic and
and rhythmic continuously generated

• centrally integrated into the total social processes • developed along the margins of total social
processes

• common intellectual and emotional meaning • idiosyncratic and quirky meaning

• relatively stable and repetitive [reversive • movement and change [subversive (radical
(critiques)] critiques)]

• singular, united (complete whole), mainstream • plural, fragmented and experimental

• obligation • optation

What are some derived or related characteristics?

• mix of work and play • (strict) separation of work and play

Where can they be found? (strict interpretation of Turner's writings)

• can be found in traditional, tribal societies (not • can be found in post-tribal, modern and post-
exclusively) modern societies (not exclusively)

• can be found in tribal ritual (not exclusively) • can be found in modern leisure (not exclusively)

Turner also refers to 'liminal and liminoid zones of culture' (1977:45). One can
indeed, as referred to earlier, question Turner's evolutionary scheme on the
development of societies from 'tribal' to 'modern', and indeed, Turner recognizes
that liminal phenomena and liminoid phenomena can co-exist in all societies.
He stresses that we can witness a evolutionary process in today's complex
societies from the liminal to the liminoid, but examples of liminal zones of
culture can still be found in our contemporary post-modern society. Examples
of liminal zones can for instance be found in: initiation rites for first year
students, funeral ceremonies, marriages, child births, but also in more quotidian
phenomena like daily life rites, such as going to the supermarket, watching

9
television, taking public transport... These rites are of course no 'rites de
passage' in the original meaning, but they do contain liminal elements. Although
they belong to the (post)modern, they are for instance cyclic and rhythmic. They
are centrally integrated into total social processes. They are straightforward,
mainstream, and refer to common emotional and intellectual meaning. One
could call these phenomena 'daily life rituals' or refer to them as 'daily life
liminality'. In addition to these liminal zones, examples of liminoid zones of
culture in contemporary society can be found in the 'out of daily life'-sphere.
Concrete examples of liminoid zones and phenomena are for instance: (visiting)
touristic sites, (being in) airports, (being in) theme parks, (being at) music
festivals, (being at) a movie theatre, (being on) a holiday... These zones can be
found outside 'regular' social processes and are for a great deal to be found in
leisure-time.

Turner's concept of liminality can be applied to all kinds of (public) spaces.

Turner himself distinguishes between everyday social space and liminal space,
but only addresses the distinction briefly without clearly defining what he
includes or excludes in the two spaces (Turner, 1979:96). My interpretation of
the distinction he makes, is that everyday social space by definition has no
liminal/oid qualities. This means that everyday social space in Turner's
perception does not completely overlap with the common sense definition of
daily or everyday life. Daily life does include being in liminal/oid spaces. This
is what we have seen above. Everyday social space, perceived in this way,
includes 'work'. Liminal/oid space, on the other hand, includes 'play' and
'leisure'. In fact, my interpretation would be that liminal spaces in our current
postmodern society are to be found in doing routine daily life activities (daily
life rituals). Liminoid spaces, on the other hand, can be found in 'out of daily
life'-liminality. They are continuously generated, meaning, they are 'always'
there and available and therefore optional.

Liminal/oid spaces of intercultural communication and related concepts

Setting aside the liminal spaces for just a moment—I will return to them later—,
the focus will now be on the specific intercultural liminoid spaces, addressing
them in a global-local context. Turner's conceptual framework can become an
interesting analytic tool for the study of all kinds of spaces of communication,
especially for spaces where cultures meet (spaces of intercultural
communication). These spaces of intercultural contact are characterized by a
state of liminality. In these spaces (liminal as well as liminoid), one is in-
between cultures, one is in-between social levels ranging from the global to the
local. One is in-between times, and in-between other places, spaces, spheres and

10
zones. These spaces of liminality are themselves the settings for cultural
interactions between images, symbols, architecture, designs, clothes, people,
ideas, ideologies, powers... They are 'spaces of intercultural communication' or
'zones of transcultures'. In these zones one can find both; here and there, past
and present, global and local. These intercultural liminal and liminoid spaces of
communication indeed incorporate aspects of more than one single identity.
This is what makes identities fragmented (see Servaes, 1997) in an intercultural
way and in a global-local sense. An intercultural identity, then, is built on the
communication between the fragments (cultural forms/elements) to be found
within these zones of liminality. Lived diversity ís intercultural communication.
In relation to 'communitas', the liminal features of being in these kind of spaces
of intercultural communication do not necessarily need to strengthen the issues
of coherence, solidarity and community ties as was originally the case in
Turner's conception of tribal liminality. However, it does provide a space for
dialogue and critique, which is characteristic of the liminoid more than the
liminal. The fragmented (global and local) cultural forms/elements of liminal
and liminoid spaces relate to individual and collective localizing and
globalizing identities. Intercultural communication forms a base of globalizing
and localizing identities (see Lie & Servaes, 2000).

Theory presumes that people are in search of (social) stability and in search of a
balance in the binary opposition of 'strangeness' versus 'familiarity'. Liminoid
zones, characterized by cultural coexistence, cultural negotiation and cultural
transformation in-between the global and the local, provide a feeling of
'alienation'. This idea of alienation is addressed by many authors, using many
different concepts. Therefore, let us first take a look at some of these associated
concepts and try to relate them to the concept of 'liminal/oid spaces of
intercultural communication'. The concepts themselves will only be briefly
discussed. Others have done this more in-depth (e.g. Tomlinson, 1999). In a
sense, these 'new' concepts replace 'old' concepts, such as acculturation
(imitation of dominant cultural patterns), assimilation, integration, adaptation
and interculturation.

Contact zones in travel and tourism

First, there is the idea of 'contact zones' as developed within the study of travel
and tourism (e.g. Clifford, 1992, 1997; Dahles, 1996). The essence of travel and
tourism is that it de-locates people for a framed period of time. The de-location
is of a temporary nature. Clifford also suggests to use the concept of
'pilgrimage'—also used and studied by Victor Turner—to connote 'travelling
cultures'. He prefers pilgrimage, because it is less class and gender-biased than
travel. Furthermore, the term has a nice way of subverting the constitutive
opposition: traveller/tourist. On the cons-side he adds that its 'sacred' meanings

11
tend to predominate (1992:110). Further on travel and contact zones, Mary
Louise Pratt, in her book on travel writing and European expansion, defines
'contact zones' in the context of colonial encounters as follows:

"...the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into
contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving
conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict. I borrow the
term 'contact' here from its use in linguistics, where the term contact language
refers to improvised languages that develop among speakers of different native
languages who need to communicate with each other consistently, usually in
contact of trade. Such languages begin as pidgins, and are called creoles when
they come to have native speakers of their own. (...) 'contact zone' is an attempt to
invoke the spatial and temporal copresence of subjects previously separated by
geographic and historical disjunctures, and whose trajectories now intersect"
(Pratt, 1992:6-7).

The ideas of 'contact zones' as developed by Pratt concern spaces which are not
geographically fixed. They do not have a bounded relation to place.
Characteristic for Clifford's concern with travel is that he emphasizes the
movement within anthropological studies from geographically bounded
ethnographic fieldwork towards 'field'work of non-places and travelling
cultures. The fact that cultures travel means that they are no longer to be found
as 'isolated primitive entities'. "Anthropological 'culture' is not what it used to
be. ...one needs to focus on hybrid, cosmopolitan experiences as much as on
rooted, native ones" (Clifford, 1992:101). Clifford continues by stating that the
'chronotope' of culture comes to resemble as much a site of travel encounters as
of residence. 'Roots and routes' always co-exist. The liminoid spaces here, are
indeed approached as 'sites of travel encounters', but not as sites of residence.
Furthermore, although I agree with the movement from place to space, the
liminoid spaces, as studied in this paper here, also have geographical defined
boundaries. Though, one can find the idea of travel within these spaces. As far
as the idea of transculturation is concerned, liminoid spaces are not approached
as local spaces adopting foreign elements from alien cultures. The majority of
these local liminoid spaces themselves consist of these so-called foreign
(global) elements. They are a cultural mélange and a mix of intercultural forms
in their roots. An authentic cultural locality does not, and did not exist. The sites
are often constructed in an intercultural way, without historical recognition and
consideration of specific locations (e.g. airports, theme parks, shopping malls,
cinema complexes, hotels, service stations, industrial zones, harbors...). These
spaces are not static and they do develop. From the founding intercultural basis,
the cultural forms/elements do negotiate towards a mutual accepted hybrid form
(see later on).

12
Migration, diaspora, displacement and multiculturalism
Another field of study that is concerned with intercultural contact and the
mixing of cultures is the field of migration. Migration applies to a longer period
of time than the concepts of travel and tourism as discussed above. Migration
also concerns a more permanent settlement of people in another cultural space.
One can speak here of changed residence. Many terms are associated with
migration, like; refugees, expatriates, guest-workers, exile and overseas
communities, etc. Moreover, one of the main concepts that has increasingly
been associated with migration over the past couple of years is diaspora. The
concept has received considerable attention in various disciplines as the turn
towards the study of ethnicity has set through. William Safran (1991:83-84;
quoted in Clifford, 1997:284) defines diasporas as follows:

"'expatriate minority communities' (1) that are dispersed from an original 'centre'
to at least two 'peripheral' places; (2) that maintain a 'memory, vision, or myth
about their original homeland'; (3) that 'believe they are not—and perhaps cannot
be—fully accepted by their host country'; (4) that see the ancestral home as a place
of eventual return, when the time is right; (5) that are committed to the
maintenance or restoration of this homeland; and (6) whose consciousness and
solidarity as a group are 'importantly defined' by this continuing relationship with
the homeland" (Safran, 1991:83-84; quoted in Clifford, 1997:284).

What seems to be missing from Safran's definition (also noted by Clifford,

1997:285) is that diasporas are not always oriented to their roots in a specific
place. They more and more re-create a culture in new diverse locations. "Thus,
the term diaspora is a signifier, not simply of transnationality and movement,
but of political struggles to define the local, as distinctive community, in
historical contexts of displacements" (Clifford, 1997:287). The concept of
displacement itself then (and also delocation), is intrinsically linked to
migration and diaspora. Clifford himself had already explored aspects of the
concept in his book 'The Predicament of Culture' (1988). Displacement is
denoting the loss of rootedness in the land and the delocation of place-based-
culture. It refers to a separation of place and culture. Finally, in the above
discussed context, the concept of multiculturalism should be mentioned too.
Multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism (Giddens, 1998:129 et seq) and the related
ideal multicultural society or cosmopolitan nation, are pragmatic, social goals
resulting from the discourses of displacements. Multiculturalism is mainly used
within a national discourse.

The relation of these pragmatic social concepts to the ideas developed in

liminal/oid spaces is marginal, though, certainly not completely irrelevant. The
concepts discussed, seem to be people-centered terms, not space-centered terms,
which explains their marginality to the discussion here. In stead of

13
'displacement', I would therefore prefer terms such as disembedding or
delocation. These concepts are less entangled with the discourse of migration,
diaspora and 'people on the move'. Giddens (1990:53) defines disembedding as
the 'lifting out' of social activity from localized contexts, reorganising social
relations across large time-space distances. Another point to note results from
the non-residence aspect of liminal/oid spaces. Although, the liminal/oid spaces
can be geographically defined and bordered, they are mainly constituted by
communication and interactions, not by residence. Nobody lives in a themepark
or at an airport. But, the places do relate to the discourse of displacement and
multiculturalism along the topic of intercultural communication. What is for
instance important in discussing liminal/oid spaces of communication is the
notion of equality (in multiculturalism) and the social permission and
acceptance of diversity.

Territorialization, deterritorialization and reterritorialization

The concepts of territorialization, deterritorialization and reterritorialization
concern the relationship between 'lands', 'places', 'zones', 'spaces', in short
'locations', and cultural lived experiences, in short 'culture'. The use of these
concepts divers. The terms are used for phenomena (ideas, objects...) as well as
for 'displaced' ethnic groups (people), like Turks in Berlin, Greeks in
Melbourne... Territorialization stands for a bounded connection between land
and culture. A very striking example is the case of the Australian Aborigines,
who have an intrinsic (historical) connection with their land. In general, the
concept relates to 'territorialized culture', meaning that there exists a bond
between culture and location. When this culture gets separated from it 'original'
location, it is common to talk about deterritorialization. Examples of such
processes of deterritorialization are plenty and can be found in every corner of
the world. A prototype example is the McDonald's in Moscow, which can,
according to Short and Kim, be understood as a deterritorialized piece of
American culture in a post-socialist city (see Short & Kim, 1999:78). Tomlinson
(1999:106-149) also explores aspects of deterritorialization. Among other
things, he notes that one of the issues of a mundane experience of
deterritorialization is "the lifting out of locality" (Tomlinson, 1999:119), and
states that "a central defining characteristic of deterritorialization is the
weakening or dissolution of the connection between everyday lived culture and
territorial location" (Tomlinson, 1999:128).

Finally, reterritorialization must be understood in relation to territorialization

and deterritorialization. The concept has only recently been introduced.
Reterritorialization relates to what Clifford described—when discussing
diaspora—as: a process of recreating a culture in new diverse locations. But the
concept not only includes people's cultures, but also material cultures and

14
informational or representational cultures. Short and Kim (1999) describe the
concept as follows:

"We propose a new concept of reterritorialization to describe the process in which

deterritorialized cultures take roots in places away from their traditional locations
and origins. The reterritorialization of a culture embraces a series of processes
ranging from diffusion from their origin across borders (spatial, temporal and
cultural) to establishment in a new place in a new form. Reterritorialized cultures
are not simply transposed, they are transformed. McDonald's restaurants in Japan
are selling the Teriyaki McBurger that is a sausage patty on a bun with teriyaki
sauce (McDonald's Corporation, 1998)" (Short & Kim, 1999:78).

Cultural elements/forms in liminal/oid spaces can indeed be seen as

deterritorialized cultural forms. But, in the study of the process of the
reterritorialization of these forms, we have to keep in mind, that the fact that the
cultural forms are originally deterritorialized is not always of relevance to the
lived experiences of the space elements and the space in totality. We need to be
careful not to overemphasize this aspect of the reterritorialization of cultural
forms. People do not always know or simply don't care. They just live it. For
instance, not everybody knows that Ikea products do not originate from Sweden,
that Irish coffee is an invention from a New York barkeeper, that Heineken is a
brand name, not just another name for lager beer and that it is a Dutch brand,
not a German brand. The territorialized link between the 'new', transformed
forms and their 'original' (national) cultural breeding grounds is not always
given information. In cases of places like 'The Irish Pub', 'The Italian ice-cream
bar', 'The Greek restaurant' and 'The Cuban Café', it might be clear, but, in the
above examples and in other cases the link is not always as straight forward. Is
McDonald's for instance still solely, or even primarily associated with American
culture? What is in the center of relevance, is that the 'new' cultural form, the
'new' cultural space itself is important. The space is here and now. This of
course does not mean that these forms of culture are anti-historical or without
roots. But they do exist in the here and now, in their lived postmodern form. To
conclude, the concept offers many possibilities for the cultural analyst and
seems to be a powerful conceptual tool in the study of intercultural
communication.

Conceptual variations on the border and Latin American concepts

Apart from their general use in migration theory, studies using concepts such as
borders, boundaries, borderlands, border zones and also cultural fronts and
frontiers are often associated with Latin-American work (see for the use of
'cultural fronts': Lull (1998) on the work of the Mexican scholar Jorge
González). Furthermore, the Mexico-U.S.A. border and the border cities Juárez-
El Paso (Vila, 1999) and especially Tijuana are often referred to when

15
discussing the blurring aspects within borderlands (see García Canclini, 1995;
Hannerz, 1997; Lull, 1998; Vila, 1999). It is especially the idea of lands, zones
or fronts that is of interest. "...'borderland', it has suggested something in-
between, a contact zone, an area where discontinuities become a bit blurred"
(Hannerz, 1997:540), and "What are these zones? They begin with the body
(health, food). They include areas of socialization (education, religion),
consumption (leisure time, cultural commodities), expression (the arts), and
communication (media). Basic sociological concerns such as ethnicity, race,
gender, and sexuality are then analyzed in terms of the zones" (Lull, 1998:414).
It is also is this context that the comparison with Turner's theory of liminality
has sometimes been made (e.g. Hannerz, 1997:541; Henderson, 1995:5).

Mestizaje, creolization, transculturation and 'hybrid cultures' (hybridity /

hybridization) are four other concepts which are of relevance and originate from
Latin-America (including the Carribean). Mestizaje is a widely used Latin-
American concept. Originally, it referred to the mixed Spanish and Indian
heritage, but has now broadened its reach. "The recognization of mestizaje that
constitutes Latin America does not refer to something that happened in the past,
but what we are today. Mestizaje is not simply a racial fact, but the explanation
of our existence, the web of times and places, memories and imagination which,
until now, have been adequately expressed only at a literary level" (Martín-
Barbero, 1993:188). So, although it has broadened its reach within Latin-
America, it has not become a Anglo-American or even a global term. It has
remained within the Latin-American borders.

Creolization, transculturation and hybridity do reach beyond the Latin-

American borders as we will see in the next section. Though, originally, these
terms can also be traced back to the 'other' America. Creolization originated in
the Caribbean and is described by Sabine Hofmann (1997) as follows:

"Having initially designated the people—whites as well as blacks—born in the

American colonies, the term 'Creole' was subsequently used to denote the
languages that emerged in the contact between Europeans and Africans in the
sociocultural context of the plantations. Later, the term was extended from a
purely linguistic realm to the cultural domain, referring, as the Jamaican author
Brathwaite puts it, to a "cultural process perceived as taking place within a
continuum of space and time" (Brathwaite, 1974:4). (...) Initially, creolization took
place between English settlers and African slaves and was soon followed by
'lateral creolizations', when indentured workers from Asia began to take part in
processes of cultural crossing" (Hofmann, 1997:74).

Transculturation also has a Caribbean (Cuban) origin. The term was coined by
the Cuban Sociologist Fernando Ortiz in the 1940s. "Ethnographers have used
this term to describe how subordinated or marginal groups select and invent

16
from materials transmitted to them by a dominant or metropolitan culture"
(Pratt, 1992:6). Finally, 'Hybrid culture' is the title of the well known book by
Néstor García Canclini (1995). Interesting in García Canclini's work—as in
Martín-Barbero's work—is that he not so much singles out the mixing of people
(e.g. the border identities in Tijuana), but centers the mixing of all kinds of
cultural forms, like: street culture, art, television... In his search for
understanding hybrid cultural forms, García Canclini also links back to the
already mentioned concepts of de- and reterritorialization. (For reviews and
comments on García Canclini's 'hybrid cultures' see for instance: Lull, 1998;
Schlesinger & Morris, 1997; Tomlinson, 1999.)

To conclude for now, many of the Latin-American concepts seem to have

originated from a racial mixing, and have altered into a cultural mixing. The
relevance of these concepts to our discussion here will be addressed after the
next section.

Hybridization, creolization, scapes, cosmopolitanism, 'blurred genres',

cultural interplay...
There are two basic articles which account for the globalization (global use) of
the concepts of hybridization and creolizaton. The first is the article written by
Jan Nederveen Pieterse and is entitled 'Globalisation as Hybridisation' (1994)
and the second is Ulf Hannerz' article 'The World in Creolization' (1987).
Hybridization refers to a similar process as creolization. Building on Rowe and
Schelling's definition of hybridization, who defined it as "the ways in which
forms become separated from existing practices and recombine with new forms
in new practices" (Rowe & Schelling, 1991:231), Nederveen Pieterse uses the
concept in the sense that there is a global process in which cultural elements are
mixed into a global mélange of cultures. Hannerz (1987) and in his later work
(1992, 1996) addresses a similar process of cultural mixing, resulting form "...an
intercontinental traffic in meaning" (Hannerz, 1987:547). Creolization has
Latin-American (Carribean) roots (see earlier), but has been taken out of that
context so many times that is has begun to live an unrooted life. A central issue
of study within the constitution of these concepts is the flow of people, ideas
and products across cultural borders. Especially the study of the transnational
flow of information relates to the field of international communication. I have
addressed these flows and these processes of hybridization and creolization
elsewhere (Lie, 1997a, b).

Further on the idea of global flows, Arjun Appadurai emphasizes the

disjunctures between different flows of cultural influence. The five different
dimension of the global cultural flow he articulates, are: (a) ethnoscapes, (b)
mediascapes, (c) technoscapes, (d) financescapes, and (e) ideoscapes. "The

17
suffix -scape allows us to point to the fluid, irregular shapes of these
landscapes, shapes that characterize international capital as deeply as they do
international clothing styles. (...) These landscapes thus are the building block
of what (extending Benedict Anderson) I would like to call imagined worlds,
that is, the multiple worlds that are constituted by the historically situated
imaginations of persons and groups spread around the globe" (Appadurai,
1996:33). Thus, although the central object of study is the international cultural
flow, Appadurai's (land)scapes also seem to ventilate the idea of zones, spaces
or spheres.

Finally, cosmopolitanism seems to be a quality of individual human beings, far

more than a group process or a group quality. Hannerz (1992:252-255)
addresses this concept with the qualities: (1) having a willingness to engage
with the Other, and, (2) having intercultural competence to communicate with
the Other. It concerns an openness towards the world. It also seems to be a
rather elite concept and can be found in reference to the higher social classes
who can afford it to travel a lot. Diplomats and international businessman are
for instance often prototypes of cosmopolitan people. They are seen as world
citizens. Tomlinson, trying to go beyond the elite aura of the concept, employs
the possibilities of the concept of cosmopolitanism in his concluding chapter of
'Globalization and Culture' (1999:181-207). Within the concept of
cosmopolitanism, he stresses the possibilities towards "various forms and
sources of global consciousness, of openness to the world, of mobility, of
hybridity... (Tomlinson, 1999:205), but also warns us that "Nothing guarantees
the building of cosmopolitan solidarity in the uncertainties of global modernity"
(Tomlinson, 1999:207).

Blurred genres (Geertz, 1973), cultural interplay, cultural mélange, cultural

bricolage, métisse, mulatto, glocalization (Robertson, 1995), pluralism,
syncretism, universalism... We seem to be running out of concepts to address
the same. But, as with the Latin-American concepts, what is of interest to our
discussion here is the idea of cultural mixing through a process of encounter
and negotiation. The mix is not only in-between cultures, but also in-between
what we now have termed the global and the local, or the processes cultural
globalization and cultural localization. Furthermore, this cultural mixing often
takes place, as we have seen, in bordered spheres, zones characterized by in-
betweenness, borderlands or, based on Turner's theory of liminality and situated
within the field of anthropological communication studies: 'liminal/oid spaces
of intercultural communication'. The question that remains is: "What exactly
happens within these spaces of communication?"

18
Spaces of communication and states of intercultural liminality

Most of these concepts that grasp cultural contact and mixing within specific
spaces are (1) individual approaches, and, (2) focus on people-people relations
and only marginally address people-products and people-information
relationships. I assume the second point needs no further explanation. It is clear
that most of the concepts primarily theorize about people, not commodities, not
foods, not information, not ideologies, etc.. With regard to the first point, most
theories/concepts dealing with the intercultural reality of displacement,
deterritorialization, etc., also start from an individual perspective. They theorize
about how individual human beings—as belonging to a cultural/ethnic group—
are displaced or deterritorialized mainly through migration and travel. Such an
individual approach is of course legitimate, but excludes de surplus value of the
whole. In a more collective or maybe better, a more complete approach—to
avoid the opposition of individual versus collective—to the study of space and
intercultural contact, the liminal/oid space itself becomes the subject of study
too, not only people's perception of the space. Therefore, there are two areas of
study to be addressed: (a) the liminal/oid spaces of communication themselves
(the complete approach), and, (b) being in such liminal/oid spaces of
communication (the individual or people centered approach). In essence, the
complete study of a space concerns its spatial formation. What cultural elements
can be distinguished? How do they negotiate within the space and transform the
space itself? People in this approach are just one of the cultural elements present
at the site. The individual study concerns one element in relation to the others,
in this case people. The people centered approach is concerned with the
problematic of 'being in such spaces'. In this sense it is an interpreted study of
space.

Within both kinds of studies of the lininal/oid spaces of communication, but

especially within the complete study of cultural elements, I would like to
distinguish between different states in liminality. For analytical purposes the
distinction is made between: (1) the state of cultural coexistence, (2) the state of
intercultural negotiation, and, (3) the state of intercultural transformation
towards hybridized transculturality.

(1) In the first state, the state of cultural coexistence, the liminal/oid space
simply demonstrates elements from different cultures. These elements are
presented alongside one another. The state is marked by co-presence of rather
isolated cultural islands. One can indicate a passive form of communication
between global, local and in-between elements, but there is no significant
change oriented interaction, nor negotiation. The question to ask here for the
cultural analyst would be: "What cultural elements/forms can be distinguished

19
within the liminal/oid space of communication?" Thus, one is in search of
communicating actors/elements; be these actors people, street furniture, outdoor
advertising, shops, foods, commodities, media messages, images or any other
element that is present. The idea here is one of basic deterritorialization or
displacement. Little interaction is taking place between the distinct
deterritorialized cultural elements. There might be individual reterritorialization
of the separate elements, but there is little negotiation between the elements.
There is a static form of hybridity.

(2) In the state of intercultural negotiation, there does exist some active form of
interaction between the space elements. This interaction can be defined as a
negotiation towards a dynamic and participatory form of hybridity. There is
movement within the space of communication towards dialogue, acceptance and
mutual respect and thus, aspects of this movement can be identified. The
question to ask here for the cultural analyst is: "How do the distinguished
cultural elements/forms negotiate with one another in order to establish a
dynamic and participatory form of hybridity?" Reterritorialization in this state is
no longer individual, but becomes negotiable, ís negotiable or already in a state
of negotiation.

(3) In the third state, the state of intercultural transformation, the space itself is
transforming into a state of 'hybridized transculturality'.2 The space transforms
into a participatory negotiated hybrid space of cultural forms and elements. It is
a state of equality, maybe even a state of 'communitas'. However, this kind of
hybridized transcultural communitas is characterized by lived and integrated
differences. Instead of emphasizing similarities—which was the case in Turner's
original conceptualization of communitas, and which was the case in the
traditional views on the concept of culture (see Welsch, 1999)—, in the state of
hybridized transculturality, the different cultural elements have come to be
know, accepted, shared and lived by the different cultural groups. The
entanglement has formed a new culture.

At the other extreme, a state of 'homogenized transculturality' is unnegotiable

and therefore, non-existing. Such a state would imply that all liminal/oid spaces
of communication would develop towards a similar cultural end space. In this

2The prefix 'trans' in 'transculturality' is used here in the sense as it is used in 'transformation'. It refers to a change
in formation. It is not used in the sense of 'transmission', as it was applied by Marie Louise Pratt (see earlier when
discussing the concept of 'transculturation' where she referred to an adoption of foreign cultural elements). For
more information on the concept of 'transculturality', I refer to Welsch (1999), where the concept is discussed in
contrast to 'interculturality' and 'multiculturality'. 'Hybridized' is of course used in its 'new' global meaning.
Furthermore, it could as well be termed 'creolized transculturality'. 'Creolization' and 'hybridization' are seen as
being interchangeble, but 'creolization' has generally received more historically specific discussion than
'hybridization' (see: Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin, 1998).

20
extreme case of homogenized transculturality, the lived experience of shopping
malls, theme parks, supermarkets, etcetera, will be the same everywhere around
the world. Television programs will be interpreted along the same patterns
everywhere. Being in China town in Sydney would not differ from being in
China town in London, Brussels or Singapore. Taking a train in Australia,
Indonesia or Sweden would be a homogenized experience. Such extreme cases
of 'homogenized transculturality' do not exist. People belong to different
cultures everywhere. In this context of the difference between spatial formation
itself and being in, interpreting or living the spatial formations, it might be clear
that production elements can look the same (spatial formations around the world
show similar characteristics), but the consumption elements do not look the
same. Consumption differs according to cultural difference.

In the state of hybridized transculturality it is difficult to formulate the relevant

question(s) for the cultural analyst. The idea is not only that we have a 'new'
reterritorialized cultural space. We also have a 'new' widely known, shared and
accepted cultural space. Intercultural dialogue is no longer felt as being 'inter' or
between cultures. There is no longer 'our' culture and 'their' culture. Especially
in the intercultural spatial formations of foods, many examples can be found; for
instance the Northern European hybridized transculturality of the use of
potatoes (orginally from Latin America), the use of rice (historically associated
with Asia) and pasta/noodles (historically associated with Italy/China). Another
example is the use of black pepper in many dishes (originally from Asia) (See
for more examples: http://www.nmnh.si.edu/garden/history/welcome.html).
Representations of these food examples can be found in the geographical spatial
formations of markets and supermarkets. Still another example of hybridized
transculturality can be found in the intercultural space of languages. Creole and
Pidgin are obvious examples, but also in the use of many other languages,
people do not trace the words back to their original foreign descent. They just
use them for communication. Many words in many different languages have
become common cultural knowledge, without the burden of historical cultural
connotations.

These discussed states in cultural liminality (coexistence, negotiation and

transformation) can be phases in a chronological sense, but do not necessarily
have to be. One can enter a state of negotiation without going through a
significant phase of coexistence. In fact, many liminoid spaces are constructed
in a state of negotiation. The three states, can also be seen on a continuum,
ranging from non-negotiation (coexistence) to ideal-negotiation (hybridized
transculturality).

21
Spaces of intercultural communication in so-called 'global cities'

Different kinds of these spaces of intercultural communication in the different

states of liminality can be found in so-called 'global cities'. In the field of urban
studies the debate on so-called 'global cities' has been lively. In 1997 Smith
restated his definition of 10 years earlier: "Global cities are characterised as
locations of networks of flows of capital, people, and culture that connect
disparate places across the globe" (Smith, 1997:55). He continues with the
observation that since his original definition the concept has evolved into a kind
of economic description of three places: New York, London and Tokyo, with
Los Angeles sometimes thrown in for good measure. These discussions on
defining 'global cities' are mainly fuelled by economic considerations. Although
one cannot exclude economic determination, one can also opt for a more
cultural approach in defining 'global cities'. Smith's original open-ended
definition, especially with regard to the flow of people and culture, seems of
more relevance in a cultural approach than the economic closed list approach. In
a cultural approach, we have to keep in mind that the globality of a city is not
only dependent on the top-down flow of people and cultural products, but it also
depends on the interpretations of the globality by people who live the so-called
'global city'. A global city can thus be defined by the following elements: (a) the
presence of a considerable amount of so-called 'foreigners' (migrants, tourists,
international businessmen, international exchange students...). In this sense it
equals the concept of 'multicultural city'; (b) the existing day-to-day cross-
cultural flow of cultural products and advertising, and; (c) the outward looking
tendencies of the 'local' people.

Having briefly addressed the idea of the 'global city', let me now illustrate the
coexistence-negotiation-transformation divide by providing two geographical
examples of spaces of intercultural communication in the 'global city' of
Brussels. The first example is concerned with a situation of coexistence and the
second example with a situation of negotiation.

EXAMPLE 1
Space of intercultural communication in a state of coexistence

Identities are shaped within 'locales', but within these 'locales', or from within
these 'locales', they are as much shaped by local (direct, near) phenomena as
they are shaped by (indirect, 'at distance') phenomena (see Giddens, 1990). An
example of such a space of intercultural communication in Brussels where you
can find this articulation of 'mixed' identities is the Beurs-area where the actual

22
Beurs-building faces the Anspachlaan (Het Beursplein). At the site one can find
the following primary cultural elements:

• Le Cirio (Café)
• Hotel-café "Matignon"
• The Indian restaurant "Maharani"
• Grand Café
• Pizza Hut
• McDonald's
• Hotel Central (not in use anymore; has become the symbol of all the 'city cancers' and the
general deterioration in Brussels; located above McDonald's)
• China Town (the head of China Town)
• ASLK (bank)
• The Irish Pub "O'Reilly's"
• Ici Paris XL (tax free perfumes)
• The Chinese restaurant "Cité de l'Empereur"
• Fallstaff (an Art Nouveau café)
• a newspaper stand (newspapers and magazines)
• a ticket office MIVB (public transport)

Map 1. Het Beursplein

LE CIRIO
____________________________
FALLSTAFF
HOTEL-CAFÉ
____________________________ BEURS ____________________________
(stock exchange)
INDIAN RESTAURANT CHINESE RESTAURANT
____________________________ ____________________________

GRAND CAFÉ ICI PARIS XL

newspaper stand | ticket office MIVB

M A
PIZZA HUT c S IRISH PUB
D L
O K
N
A
L
D
s

Each of these cultural elements deserves a study of its own. It would be

interesting to study the individual reterritorialization of the elements in this
specific setting. Some elements can for instance be traced back to national
origins. McDonald's and Pizza Hut can be seen as reterritorialized American(-
Italian) cultural forms. The territorialization of the Chinese restaurant and China

23
Town can be traced back to China, the Irish Pub to Ireland, the Indian restaurant
to India, Ici Paris XL and the Grand Café to France/Belgium. Fallstaff and Le
Cirio can be traced back to Brussels itself. As interesting as these individual
studies would be, fact is that these forms are indeed distinguished forms and
interaction between the forms is limited. Ici Paris XL is simply located next to
the Chinese restaurant and Pizza Hut next to McDonald's. There is very little
negotiation between the different elements within the space itself. Of course the
totality of the space is multi-cultural or multi-reterritorial. Therefore, being in
this space is a global-local experience, but the elements themselves remain
rather static towards each other. This is exactly what is meant by the state of
cultural coexistence. The space itself is located at a strategic site in the centre of
the city and that is what attracts the elements to this space. Therefore, this
liminoid space can be characterized as being in a state of cultural coexistence.

If we would consider a people centered study of the space, that is, if we would
center the interpretations of people living the space, negotiation can be found.
As people move from one element to another or simply walk past the elements
they—as De Certeau called it—transform the place into a space. As such, it is
indeed a place of transit. Not only because the Anspachlaan (the north-south
axis of the city) is crossing right through it, but also in a global-local
interpretative sense. The global and the local is negotiated in the sense that
people meet and live global and local elements. One can watch a UK soccer
game on television in the Irish Pub, buy France perfume, eat a Big Mac, a pan
pizza, Indian or Chinese food or eat so-called local (Flemish) food such as
waterzooi (chicken, now also fish, cooked in a soup-like cream sauce) and
Vlaamse karbonades (braised beef with onions, usually cooked in beer) at
Fallstaff and have a local (Brussels) drink, like a half half (half white wine and
half champagne) or a kriek (cherry-flavoured beer) at Le Cirio. Exactly because
of these aspects of travel and transit, the space has not only liminoid qualities,
but can have liminal qualities as well. As the site is used as a space of transit on
a daily life basis, it is not only situated at the margins of society, but can also be
centrally integrated.

One could say a whole lot more about this space, like: What about the local
lives of the employees? What about the language of communication in The Irish
Pub? and in the other places? Or what about outdoor advertising, street
furniture, etc...

24
 EXAMPLE 2
Space of intercultural communication in a state of negotiation

The example of non-domestic, non-place that Tomlinson uses to illustrate

aspects of 'deterritorialization' is "going to an 'out of town' cinema complex"
(Tomlinson, 1999:118-119). Brussels also has a space like this. It is called
'Kinepolis', which brings together, at the site, an even more odd de- and
reterritorialized experience than the one Tomlinson provides. At the site one not
only finds 'Kinepolis', but also 'Mini Europe' (a park with 300 models and sites
on a scale of 1:25), 'Océande' (a sub-tropical in- and outdoor leisure pool; 6,500
square meters) and the surrounding commercial area of the 'Village of
Bruparck'. In the direct surroundings of the so-called 'Village' one can also find
the 'Atomium' (built for the 1958 World Fair), the 'Heizel soccer stadium' and
the large exhibition halls. The 'Kinepolis' itself provides an airport flow
experience. It has a central hall way with side-exits to the separate cinemas. In
total, it has 25 screens and 7,584 seats. 'Business class' can be found in I-max,
which has—according to its own saying—the largest screen in Europe (20m x
30m).

It is especially in the 'Village' that one can speak of a state of negotiation. The
whole setting is indeed set up like a village. It has a main square and a main
street. It is this architectual formation that wants to create Tönnies'
Gemeinschaft or Redfield's folk society (the rural or non-urban ideal type of
locality and community). Although the place (architectural formation) can be
associated with Gemeinschaft, the space (practiced place) seems to show aspects
of Gesellschaft such as the centrality of commerce and the isolated actions and
the condition of tension against all others. In the 'Village' they re-builded
aspects of the old city center of Brussels, but it is also meant—as the name
already suggests—to provide a flow experience of an old 'authentic'
(Flemish/Brussels) rural town center, with 'traditional' red-brick gabled houses.
What one actually does find in this so-called village is a global variety of
restaurants and pubs, serving Italian food, Asian food, Mexican food, Belgian
food, etc. Pizza Hut and Quick are also present. At a time of my presence (July
25, 1999), there was also a Wild West Cowboy event at the main square. It
included, bull riding, cow milking, pony riding, cowboy heads and jeans, a rifle
gallery and horseshoe pitching.

Why is this site in a state of negotiation?

1. It is a new, constructed space (it opened in 1988). Like Disneyland (see
Gottdiener, 1995:99-118; Zukin, 1995:49-78) the space is designed for a
specific purpose. The whole space as such is constructed in negotiation to
provide a specific sphere of amusement. It is in fact a space especially made

25
 for consumption, visual, but also oral. Besides, but to a minor extent, one
can also purchase jewelry and small (global) souvernirs at mobile stands.
Unlike shopping malls, the site is primarily designed for visual and oral
consumption and general amusement. The total space is like a busy market
place where one can consume the space, the people, the food and the
drinks. This concludes that culture in general and the global and the local in
particular are also designed in negotiation.
2. Resulting from the fact that the site is constructed, the site also has far less
local cultural history than the site in example 1. It is a new space and as
such provides a more neutral ground for cultural negotiation. The history
that is found in this space is re-invented.
3. The cultural elements which are present interact with one another in a
more active way than is the case in example 1. For instance, the outdoor
advertising for local beers on the red-brick buildings do not have their
original forms, but are more or less similar in typeface and color. You can
have a cocktail in an authentic coach of the Orient Express or sing karaoke
in an authentic Brussels building. Next to the main entrance gate to the
village, kids ride the "Western Train" with the Belgian flag in top and you
can have pittas and hot dogs in another 'authentic' Brussels building. The
building itself has the European flag up and the sign welcomes you with
"Aloha".

The idea of the space being in negotiation does not necessarily mean that the
cultural elements change and develop as a result of this negotiation. They can
stay the same and they can remain rather static for long periods of time. Though
at some point in time, the total space will be regarded as being past, old and not
of this time. You can compare it with movies and television series of some 20
years ago. If you (re-)watch them now, everything, from conversations to
furniture and clothes looks very outdated. When this happens to a space of
communication, the space needs to find a new state of negotiation. The thing
that has changed is the interpretations of people of the particular space. It is the
lived experience of the space that has changed, not the space itself. So, when the
space itself is in a state of negotiation, this means that many of the cultural
elements presented at the site communicate in an active, but static way. The fact
that the space is in a state of negotiation offers the possibility for different kinds
of interpretations. If the space would be in the state of coexistence, there would
be fewer possibilities for hybrid interpretations. Thus, these kind of constructed
liminal/oid spaces of communication reach a higher level of negotiation than the
space discussed in the first example.

Also in this example, a lot more could be said about the specific space.
Negotiation can for instance also be found within Mini Europe itself, where one

26
can find the Eifel tower and the tower of Pisa at the same site. In example 1, one
could also find the elements next to each other, though here, through their
height reduction, the elements are made equal, which is a form of negotiation.

*****

When negotiation actually results in real transformation, one can talk about
entering the state of hybridized transculturality. A supermarket comes close to a
space of hybridized transculturality, as we will see later when I discuss the
supermarket as a 'daily life' liminal space of intercultural communication. For
now, it will do to say that hybridized transculturality is more an ideal state, than
it is an actual state of lived interculturality.

Besides having addresed the different states in liminality, the above presented
examples also display the diversity of cultural forms that liminoid spaces can
have. In its diversity it also presumes a diversified lived experience of hybridity.
Such hybrid experienced situations mean that the situations themselves are
temporarily, and in a singular, linear and mono-vocal way, undefined. They
change through the lived experiences and are therefore hybrid in both, time and
space. They are not global, not local, but in-between. This state of in-
betweenness is not primarily a national related state. I am pursuing another in-
between state than the state based on societal levels, ranging from the global to
the local, with the national in the middle (see Lie, 1997b). The search here
concerns a diagonal state, not referring to vertical flows (top-down and bottom-
up) of power, people, goods, ideas and interpretations, and not referring to
horizontal levels of society, but, in stead referring to diagonal processes of
globalizing and localizing identities. These processes are diagonal, because they
cross the processes of vertical top-down and bottom-up flows, and the
horizontal societal levels like the global level, the national level and the local
level.

In the long run these liminoid situations can, as Turner already suggested,
become integrated in the total social system and thus become accepted as
belonging to the mainstream, which in this case translates into the non-liminoid.
This would then also mean that we would have accomplished elements of the
ideal multicultural society. But, different from the current situation, we would
not define it as such. This is because the situation has become a publicly
accepted space of communication. It has become coherent in stead of
fragmented. Maybe in some cases we can already speak of such a new state.
Maybe some would already do so in the above examples. However, the main
thing is that, conscious or unconscious, through communication, (cultural)
identities do change in these liminoid spaces.

27
Liminal/oid spaces of intercultural communication and times

Till now, this paper has primarily been concerned with the complete approach to
the study of spaces of intercultural communication. Only second, it has been
concerned with the individual, people centered approach of the study of being in
such spaces of intercultural communication. In order to be able to focus more on
such a people centered approach, it seems necessary to introduce the dichotomy
of 'dialy life' vs. 'out-of-daily life' and explore the concept of time in relation to
liminal/oid space. In the context of life in the 'global city', one could make a
distinction between 'daily life' liminal experiences and 'out-of-daily life'
liminoid experiences. 'Daily life' experiences are rather quotidian experiences
with a certain repeatable or even ritual character. 'Out-of-daily life' experiences
have a far less repetitive character and are situated in the non-routine world of
living.

In a people centered approach, liminal/oid spaces are also (anonymous) spaces

of consumption. Spaces where almost nobody lives, but where people do
communicate and, thus consume. What people actually do in these zones is
consume representations, and this consumption is for a great deal visual
consumption. Consumption seems to be a key issue in a people centered study
of these kind of spaces (see e.g. Corrigan, 1997; Miller, 1995; Urry, 1995).

This consumption of space and the space elements can also be related to time.
For analytical purposes, I want to distinguish between three kinds of times: (1)
leisure-time; (2) working-time, and; (3) 'in-between'-time. Not underestimating
the work done by scholars on the relation between work and leisure, and not
underestimating the cultural differences in regard to work and leisure, the two
terms of leisure-time and working-time, are used here as rather straightforward
times. They refer to the common way people define times of work and leisure.
'In-between'-time can be the time in-between work and leisure, but is not so by
definition. It is the time in-between two activities, experiences, feelings or
moods. Characteristic of these activities and experiences is that they are center-
life activities. One could compare this center-life and out-of-center-life
distinction to the distinction between 'issues' (primary, core or center relevance)
vs. 'side issues' (secondary relevance, irrelevance, trivialities). For instance, 'in-
between'-time refers to the time needed to get from the space called 'home' to
the space called 'work'. Even within the travel-time itself, one could point out an
'in-between'-time. Often, the travel-time is referred to as the actual travel-time,
and the 'in-between'-time that is needed to get from work to the train station and
getting from the train station to your home is not included. It is stressed here

28
that this kind of 'in-between'-time is very important in the process of globalizing
and localizing identities. It is in this 'public space'-time that one is confronted
with outdoor-advertising, street furniture and other infra-structural aspects,
global and local architecture, people from other cultures and what ever else you
meet along the way.

'In-between'-time can not only be found in the routine travel in daily life. It can
also be found in other areas. 'Waiting' and 'preparing' are for instance often
associated with 'in-between'-time. Furthermore, 'in-between'-time can be found
everywhere, in 'work' as well as in 'leisure' and, in what Turner called 'play'. It
might be clear by now that 'being in liminal/oid spaces of intercultural
communication' is often directly associated with 'in-between'-time. Though,
again, this is not the case by definition. 'Being in liminoid space' can also
occupy leisure-time.

To illustrate the complex relations between 'daily life', 'out-of-daily life',

working-time, leisure-time, 'in-between'-time and liminal/oid spaces of
intercultural communication, I have selected six spaces for further illustration:
Three are situated out-of-daily life and the other three are situated in daily life.
The three 'out-of-daily life' spaces of intercultural communication are: (i)
touristic sites, (ii) airports, and, (iii) (shopping) streets in the city centres of so-
called 'global cities'. The three daily life spaces of intercultural communication
are: (iv) public transport, (v) supermarkets; (vi) watching television programs in
the home. These examples are not exhaustive, but are meant to illustrate the
basic ideas behind liminal/oid spaces of intercultural communication and times.

29
Figure 2. Times and liminal/oid spaces (of intercultural communication)

BEING IN LIMINOID AND LIMINAL

(INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION) SPACES
TIMES OUT OF DAILY LIFE IN DAILY LIFE
(primarily liminoid) (primarily liminal)

touristic sites airports centre streets public supermarkets watching

transport television

working-time

leisure-time A C G

'in-between'- B D E F H
time

For most people, tourism is leisure. So visiting touristic sites (A) is a leisure-
time activity and experience. Being in airports (B) can relate to tourism, but not
solely. Business men, conference attendees in the public sphere, and in the
private sphere for instance people who visit family, also spend time and
consume space in airports. Being in airports can thus be situated in the leisure-
sphere or in the work-sphere. But, the time spent at the airport is 'in-between'-
time. Even more than being in touristic sites, being at airports is a liminoid
experience. It is being in a transition space and being in a transit time at the
same moment. You are in-between one geographical area and another, but more,
you are in-between different cultures.

Being in streets in city centres of so-called 'global cities' can be a leisure-time

activity (C) as well as an 'in-between'-time activity (D). When locals experience
the space as a transit space on the way to or from lunch (in-between working-
time), when they 'live' it as a shopping area, or use it simply as a space for
getting from one space (home) to another space (that of a friend), than, being in
the liminoid space itself occupies 'in-between'-time. The space is locally
experienced by locals in a rooted local way. The same area can however also
occupy leisure-time. This becomes clear when the liminoid space is regarded to
be a touristic site by non-locals. For non-locals, the experienced locality is
foreign. It is different. This is mainly experienced through the local street signs,
the local street furniture, the local shops, the local food stands, the way people
dress, walk, watch their children, etc. In this non-local case one might speak of

30
a 'global experience of the local'. Though, at the same site, the same could be
the case for the locals. Here we could speak of 'local leisure' and of 'local
experience of the global'. The emphasis on site-elements differs. In this case,
this local experience is mainly fuelled by the presence of global signs, global
advertising, and maybe even the cosmopolitan feeling of being in the centre
streets of a global city. So, here too, it is the unfamiliar, the foreign, the
internationality, the displaced, the de-localized or the deterritorialization that
fills up globalizing aspects of identities. One man's locality is another man's
globality. Still another thing to note is that this local experience of the global
can also be lived in 'in-between'-time activities as described above.

Being in the liminal situation of taking public transport (E), relates, like being in
airports, to travel. The difference between being in an airplane and being in a
subway or on a train is a difference of an 'in daily life' experience vs. an 'out-of-
daily life' experience. Being at airports is thus a more liminoid experience,
whereas being in public transport is a more liminal experience. When
businessman travel by airplanes on a more regular, ritual basis, it becomes a
liminal experience. For many people, being in supermarkets (F) is also a daily
life ritual. Finally, watching television as a daily life ritual can be both, a
leisure-time activity (G), as well as an 'in-between'-time activity (H). Fact is that
it is a daily life experience.

What follows is a brief descriptive analysis of examples of the above six spaces
of communication in the global city of Brussels. The three liminal and the three
liminoid spaces of intercultural communication and how they are situated in-
between the global and the local are meant to illustrate possible cultural fields
of study and identify topics for study. It is not my intention to present an in-
depth study of these spaces. The analysis will discuss elements of both kinds of
studies mentioned above: (a) a complete study, emphasizing the spatial
formation in relation to the global and the local, and, (b) a people centered
study, emphasizing people's interpretations and lived experiences of these
intercultural spaces.

31
'Out of daily life' liminoid spaces of intercultural communication in
Brussels

1. TOURISTIC SITES
'The Grote Markt', 'The Manneken Pis crossing', and
'the in-between area' (de Stoofstraat)

Tourism as an industry and as a phenomena has only recently attracted the

attention of social and cultural scientists. Tourism as a human liminoid
experience has also gained interest in the areas of cultural studies, cultural
geography and cultural anthropology. Being a tourist at touristic sites or at
touristic performances means looking at 'culture on display'. It is neither
familiar nor distant. Even if so-called 'traditional' or 'authentic' cultural aspects
are on display, it is not distant, because a.) one's own culture is used as a
reference frame for interpreting the Other, and, b.) often the so-called
'traditional' or 'authentic' cultural aspects already include a cultural translation
and are therefore not to be called 'traditional' or 'authentic' in the first place.
Travel itself is also a liminoid experience and in addition to Appadurai's
distinction between 'ethnoscapes', 'finanscapes', 'mediascapes', 'technoscapes'
and 'ideoscapes', Tilley (1997) would even like to add a 'travelscape'. Tourism
as the planet's single biggest industry, generating the largest movement of
peoples, produces a global travelscape in which the world becomes an array of
localities which might be experienced (Tilley, 1997:74).

The area of "De Grote Markt", "De Stoofstraat" en "Manneken Pis" in the centre
of Brussels is such a touristic site betwixt and between the global and the local.
It is a space where many cultures meet. Emphasis is this space lies on the
liminoid aspects and on the 'in-between'-time in the 'out of daily life' non-ritual.
The tourists are the main actors at the site. They are de-located for a short
period of time. Important to note is that they use local (national) frames of
reference to identify and understand the touristic site. One culture is used to
frame an other. This interpretation is what makes the site global and local at the
same time. It is global to the tourist, because the space itself has cosmopolitan
qualities. With cosmopolitan qualities I mean the site is overwhelming in the
sense that it is a unique place and well known in the world. Furthermore, it is
accompanied by the myth that the square is the centre of Europe. Moreover,
'Manneken Pis' is, as the Brussels/Belgium icon, also known around the world.
However, this globality is also local. It is local because the tourists use local
(national) frames of interpretation and recognition. The tourist is de-located in
global space and uses its own cultural locality to read the space and to orientate

32
him/herself. Interviews3 have shown for instance that foreign tourists have very
little knowledge about the specific site and about Brussels and Belgium in
general. Some do not even know what the official languages are and have no
knowledge about the history of the site. Many tourists seem to live the historical
site in a non-historical way.

2. AIRPORTS
'Zaventum International Airport' (Brussels airport)

Airports are constructed liminoid spaces of intercultural communication and can

thus be found in a state of intercultural negotiation. They are like the 'Village of
Bruparck' and other themeparks 'newly' constructed and without local cultural
history. They are even almost anti-historical. The elements seem to be
interacting in a 'new' hybridized transcultural way. Morris & Morton (1998),
building on Dejan Sudjic's work on the airport as a modern city (1992),
conclude their book on locality, community and nation as follows:

"The international airport is symbolic of a number of our key themes in this book:

• It is a new locality in the twentieth century, a new form of service centre, creating new
sets of social relationships.
• It is a new form of 'city' planted in the countryside. Most international airports are on the
outskirts of cities. They atract communication routes, service providers, hotels and
housing. If the urban and the rural world are at two poles on the continuum, the airport
is blurring their boundaries.
• It has become a community in its own right through the people that work there,
continually fly from there, stop there, commute from there.
• It is a good example of an urban community in the age of globalisation: its social
relationships are deepened and stretched by the imperatives of international
communication" (Morris & Morton, 1998:127).

The airport is of course not a new phenomenon. What is new at the site is the
changed design and the general architecture, the changed interpretations of the
space, the increased use because of the increased travel, the increased
intercultural communication and the increased encounters of what we have now
termed the global and the local.

The international airport at Zaventum, and likely all international airports seem
to have three separate spaces of intercultural communication where the global
meets the local: (1) the land side departure zone (open to every one); (2) the

3Overthe past years the students of a course in communication research methods at the Department of
Communication at the Katholieke Universiteit Brussel have done participant observation trainings and have
conducted interviews at the site.

33
land side arrival zone (open to every one); and (3) the air side zone (passengers
only). All three zones seem to have their own characteristics. How one lives the
departure zone and arrival zone depends on one's origin. So does globality and
locality. What is perceived as global and what is perceived as local depends for
a great deal on if one is arriving or departing from or to its place of residence.
The third zone is interesting in the sense that there is little local, little national
and little territorial culture. The shops mainly display global brands, the
restaurants and café's serve so-called global foods and drinks, the newsstands
provide you with global news. It would be interesting to study the intervention
of the local here. In this context Eriksen and Døving (1992) write for instance
that "The 'local' flavour at international airports is less striking than the
uniformity." This might be true for the spatial formation in general, but does not
seem to be true for cultural issues as local or macro-regional cultures do seem to
be present. At the international airport of Zaventum for instance, one can—
besides the global elements—still pay with the local currency, one can still
drink the special Belgian beers, eat local Belgian food, buy Belgian souvenirs
and get hold of a local newspaper. One can still find local advertising and speak
the local languages, as the people who work there are Belgians.

3. CITY CENTRE STREETS IN SO-CALLED 'GLOBAL CITIES'

'De Nieuwstraat'

For tourists, walking through 'De Nieuwstraat' is also a liminoid touristic

activity. However, the site is not a touristic site 'an sich'. It is a space where so-
called 'locals' and 'non-locals' (tourists and other foreigns) are walking side by
side. For the locals, as already mentioned when discussing times, the same
space can also be a liminal space. In the liminal situation, the experience is
more directly to be found in daily life. The same could also be said for the
'Grote Markt' (discussed as a touristic site), but to a lesser extent. Simply
walking through street scenes in the centres of global cities is—like all the other
spaces of intercultural communication—one of the domains of origin to the
world-wide processes of blurring cultures. The act of walking, looking and
interpretating articulates the central issue of consumption through decoding
forms of representation (ads, shopping windows, people, street furniture,
buildings, etc.). As such it articulates the interpretative cultural process of
globalization and localization. This particular domain of origin to the process of
cultural globalization and localization is rarely studied.

Within the street scene of 'De Nieuwstraat' one can identify many different
forms of representation. However, the pressing cultural form in relation to the
globalizing and localizing identities in this space, besides people, seems to be

34
outdoor advertising. Therefore, a study of street scenes would not only be
concerned with consumption, but also with representation. 'Outdoor advertising
in street scenes' is a rarely studied phenomenon, although it is present almost
everywhere and a major source of information on cultural life. Because it is
rarely studied, it is also one of those fields that is not burdened with
conventional, traditional, mono-disciplinary theories and methodologies. There
are few precedentials. The field touches upon consumption studies,
anthropological studies, social studies, human geography studies,
communication studies, cultural studies and can make use of their specific
disciplinary related methodologies (participant observation, content analysis,
visual analysis, discourse and semiotic/symbolic analysis).

Outdoor advertising is all the commercial and public interest representational

material found outdoors. It not only refers to the most common forms of
'distance outdoor advertising', such as public transport and airport advertising,
street (city) furniture (everything situated on pavements), billboards (incl.
'prismavision' advertising), pillars advertising and roof top advertising, but also
sign boards for shops which are present in a geographical sense. Advertising in
general, and outdoor advertising in particular, is not meant to be approached
here as an aid to marketing. It is first of all approached as a cultural
phenomenon; a carrier of socio-cultural information. Advertising consists of
symbols. These symbols are seen as being culture bound. Advertising in general
and outdoor advertising in particular can be studied in a global-local context. If
doing so, in advertising studies, it is common to distinguish between three
approaches in such a global-local context: 1. the standardized approach, 2. the
localized approach, and, 3. 'the middle of the road' approach (see for instance
Dibb, Simkin & Yuen, 1994; Tai, 1997). The first can be related to cultural
globalization, the second to cultural localization and the third to, what some
have termed, glocalization. These approaches are general to advertising, but can
be specifically applied to outdoor advertising.

'Daily life' liminal spaces of intercultural communication in Brussels

4. PUBLIC TRANSPORT
'MIVB' (metro Brussels)

Taking the metro in Brussels is for many locals and commuters a daily life
liminal activity. It is liminal because it has a center society ritual character and
occupies 'in-between'-time. Its consumption is for many people calendrical,
cyclic and rhythmic and is often more an obligation than it is an optation.
Taking the metro in Brussels also means being in a space of intercultural

35
communication. The metro space is always rich in hybrid cultures. Especially
the diaspora and the tourists, but also the commuters provide a space of lived
multiculturalism. The metro space seems to be a hotch-potch, a Dutch 'hutspot'
or a Brussels/Flemish 'stoemp' or in a similar connotative meaning a French
'ratatouille' and a Dutch 'ratatouille'-derivative 'ratjetoe', which means in
English something like 'a little bit of everything', but if you translate it directly
into English 'to have a rat for dessert'. This additionally expresses the idea of
eating everything. The last two, especially the Dutch derivative 'ratjetoe', is
often used to express a negative attitude toward the mixing.

Taking the metro in Brussels is a multi-cultural, diasporic experience in more

than one way. First of all, it is a public space where two European cultures
meet: the Anglo-German culture and the Roman culture. Brussels is exactly
situated on the fault line of the Northern-European culture and the Southern-
European culture. Second, mainly as a result of the Belgian colonial history,
many African people are present in the metro. Third, migrants from Italy,
Turkey, Morocco and elsewhere can be found in the metro space. Fourth, being
the result of the presence of the European Union, people from all European
member states can be found, especially in-between the centre ('Centraal Station'
and 'De Brouckere') and the metro station 'Schuman', where the buildings of the
European Union are located. Fifth, one can find tourists for all over the world,
especially on the line between the centre of the city and the Heizel, the
Atomium and Bruparck (see example 2). Asian people are only to a minor
extent present in the metro space. Belgium has no colonial history in Asia and
the Asian tourists often travel in groups by bus, not by metro. Although, there is
little interaction between the cultures (state of coexistence), there is interaction
within the cultures. Being present in the space of intercultural communication of
the metro means being in-between the global and the local.

Especially in reference to being in this 'daily life' liminal space, one could
indeed state that globalization is an uneven process. The gap between the rich
and the poor in Belgium and Brussels is widening at an accelerated speed.
Especially the neighborhood of the city center of Brussels is one of the poorest
areas in the whole of Belgium. The center is a working area, a touristic area, a
shopping area and a leisure-time area (theatres, cinemas...). Only second, it is a
living area. This is reflected in the metro space and would be worth a study of
its own.

Not only can the metro space be seen as a space of intercultural communication,
but one could indeed say that for many Belgians the capital city of Brussels and
its city centre in particular, is a liminal and liminoid space in itself. For the
people who work in Brussels but live elsewhere, Brussels is a liminal space. For

36
the people who not frequently visit Brussels it is a liminoid space. In both cases,
the global meets the local in many different forms in the global city of Brussels.
Not only because for many Belgians being in Brussels is not a daily life lived
experience and not only because of the diaspora present, but also because the
center neighborhood is the center of a global city, with all the 'global' variables
present, such as: a mix of international and domestic shops and outdoor
advertising, malls, touristic sites, street furniture, foreign and domestic
restaurants, an Irish pub, a Mexican bar, a Cuban café..., but also pool centers,
horse race gambling places, a chess café...

5. SUPERMARKETS
'De Colruyt, De Delhaize, De GB and De Cora'

Much has been written about shopping malls (e.g. Backes, 1997; Gottdiener,
1995:81-98), but little about supermarkets. The shopping mall is sometimes
referred to as 'a tourist destination' or 'a theme park' (see Backes, 1997:3). These
metaphors of the shopping mall connote the tendency toward 'out-of-daily life'-
spaces, whereas the supermarket is more a regulatory 'daily life'-activity and
encompasses everyday consumption. The shopping mall is more situated in the
leisure time. The supermarket more in the 'in-between'-time. Furthermore, in
supermarkets, there is the intention to buy, whereas this intention is often not
present with the shopping malls visitors (see e.g. Fiske, 1989). Backes observes
in this respect: "Thus it seems appropriate to read the mall not in terms of
consumer necessity, but rather in terms of leisure and pleasure" (Backes,
1997:3).

The supermarket is an even more local space than the metro is; at least in regard
to people. People normally go to the supermarket in the direct surroundings of
their homes. The range of products differs along with the local population's
needs and desires. Especially in Brussels where the population is very divers,
the range of products differs according to the neigborhood where the
supermarket is located. This is how the supermarket is connected to the global
and the local. The global seems to be the offer of diversity. In every
supermarket two major kinds of products can be identified: non-food and food.
With regard to the non-food, the more south one gets in Europe, the
supermarket changes from a 'food store only' to a 'food and multi-commodities
store', including the sale of clothes, media (hardware and software), toys,
gardens equipment, etc... As such it seeks integration with the middle-class
department store. In Brussels one can find all types of supermarkets.

37
In studying globalizing and localizing identities, studying food is probably more
interesting than studying non-food. For instance, many supermarkets in Brussels
have 'foreign' foods section, like: an Asian section, an Italian section and an
American section. But for a study into hybridized transculturality it would be
more interesting to look at the regular sections, and see what kinds of foods are
to be found there. For instance: pastas, pizzas, Italian bread, Mexican tacos,
knäckebröd, Frankfurter sausages (hot dogs), rice, couscous, etc. can be found
in the regular sections (see also Tomlinson, 1999:120-128). The global-local
situation in supermarkets seems to be far more complex than only having
foreign foods on the shelves of the supermarket. For instance the same kinds of
foods also differ according to locality. Supermarkets in different nations not
only sell different kinds of food, but also adjust the food to the local tastes, to
local names and to local forms of design.

6. TELEVISION IN THE HOME

'Television in the home' is situated in the private, domestic sphere. It differs

from all the other discussed practised places as they are situated in the public
sphere. Following De Certeau, spaces of communication are created by the act
of interpretative consumption of television programs. Such an interpretative
study of television can be related to interpretative approaches and the general
'interpretative turn' in media studies in the beginning of the 90s (Carragee,
1990; Evans, 1990; Servaes & Frissen, 1997). I have discussed this and related
issues like 'audience ethnography' and 'anthropological studies on television'
elsewhere (Lie, 1997c).

In a specific intercultural and global-local context, the study of 'television' and

the study of 'home' are important for the following reasons. First of all,
watching television is often said to be one of the main domains of origin to the
globalizing and localizing identities. Television is a powerful technology
primarily consumed at home. It is powerful, especially because of its audio and
visual communication. It shows us distant places as well as local places. It is
time-compressing and keeps us informed about world and local affairs. Many
global-local studies have been conducted on television and other mass media
and on the global information society in general. There main focus is on the
political-economy of the global media industry (e.g. Golding & Harris, 1997;
Martin, 1995; Mowlana, 1997). Studies on alternative media, interpretative
(ethnographic) television studies and studies on local perceptions of 'global'
television are available to a much lesser extent (e.g. Gillespie, 1995; Lie, 1998;
Lewis, 1993; Lull, 1988; Moores, 1996 and others). Television still remains the
global window.

38
'Home' on the other hand is the most local space one can image. Returning to
the beginning of this paper, 'home' will always be there as it belongs primarily
to an individual identity. Unlike the concept of 'homeland', it does not, at least
not in the first place, belong to a collective identity. Most of the time 'home' is
defined as related to one particular person. "Is it wherever your family is, where
you have been brought up? Is it where your parents are buried? Is home the
place where you have been displaced, or where you are now? Is home where
your mother lives?" (Sarup, 1996). Different people can have the same ideas
about their homes. They can even have the same home, but this does not always
imply that 'home' is something collectively shared among those people. If you
can define a group of people by referring to their cultural identity, it is
uncommon to define them by their same perception of 'home'. 'Home' is the
local space from where the global is explored and brought back to.

Conclusion

Many studies have shown that we can no longer continue speaking of 'the
national' as being the most important level of framing in the construction of
identities. Identities are localizing and globalizing at the same time. They seem
to be more and more constituted by overlapping cultural fragments, in stead of
giving reference to single national frames. This paper has attempted to illustrate
some of these changes in identities by focussing on so-called 'liminal and
liminoid spaces of intercultural communication'. Having built on Augé's idea of
'non-place', Shields' 'places on the margin' and 'liminal zones', and even more
basic, Turner's theory of liminality, attention is drawn to the intercultural
communication aspects of these spaces and to how these spaces are situated in-
between the global and the local. The idea of liminal/oid spaces of intercultural
communication in-between the global and the local has also been related to
concepts such as: contact zones, border zones, displacements, mestizaje,
reterritorialization, hybridization, creolization and other concepts.

The study has, for analytical purposes, divided spaces of intercultural

communication in three states of liminal/oid (inter)culturality: (a) a state of
cultural coexistence, (b) a state of intercultural negotiation, and (c) a state of
intercultural transformation towards hybridized transculturality. It explored the
liminal/oid aspects of globalizing and localizing cultural identities of, and in,
these spaces in so-called 'global cities', more particularly in Brussels. It has been
suggested to approach the study of the different states in two different studies:
(1) emphasizing the formation of the space, and, (2) emphasing the people's
perceptions and lived experiences of the space. The states of cultural liminality

39
mainly refer to the spatial formations, which includes people as one of the
cultural space elements. Characteristic for the state of coexistence is the
copresence of separate and distinct cultural elements. The total space is
multicultural only by the fact that different cultural elements are present. In the
state of negotiation, the different elements seem to interact with each other in a
negotiable form. The interaction (intercultural communication), can thus be
defined as a negotiation towards a dynamic and participatory form of hybridity.
These spaces are often 'newly' constructed spaces for specific purposes in the
fields of play and leisure. The spaces are (re-)invented and have a reconstructed
(re-invented) local history or no history at all. Finally, the state of hybridized
transculturality seems to be an ideal state of cultural mixing. In this case,
difference is celebrated in equality.

As an illustration, some of these spaces of intercultural contact in Brussels were

discussed, and elements for further study were identified. The concepts of 'daily
life' versus 'out-of-daily life', and the 'in-between'-time (the time spent in-
between two center-life activities, experiences, feelings or moods) have been
introduced in order to be able to further analyse the spaces of intercultural
communication in a people centered way. It has been found that being in
liminal/oid spaces mainly occupies leisure-time and 'in-between'-time. The three
'out-of-daily life' spaces that were used to illustrate, were: (i) touristic sites, (ii)
airports, and, (iii) streets in the city centres of so-called 'global cities'. The three
'daily life' spaces of intercultural communication were: (iv) public transport, (v)
supermarkets; (vi) watching television in the home. The most striking topics to
be studied within a global-local context in the respective distinct zones were: (i)
delocated tourists; (ii) spatial zones; (iii) outdoor advertising; (iv) people; (v)
foods, and; (vi) home based perceptions. A focus on these specific topics could
further direct us to understanding the changed and changing globalizing and
localizing identities. In the liminal/oid spaces of intercultural communication
in-between the global and the local, 'elsewhereness' (Shields, 1997) and
'closeness' (Tomlinson, 1999) seem to be connected in complex ways and
therefore need further study.

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