Re-examining Intercultural Competence in Mainland China through Actor-Network Theory
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12634145 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yingying Ye (0000-0001-5149-4184, Guangzhou Huashang College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 61-72 |
| Publication date | 2025-08-07 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Intercultural Communication (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1404-1634 • E-ISSN: 1404-1634 |
| Publisher | International Collaboration for Research and Publications (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.36923/jicc.v25i3.1194 |
| OpenAlex | W4413041109 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 40 |
This study advances a re-conceptualization of intercultural competence as an emergent, relational practice constituted within dynamic networks of interaction. Employing a conceptual methodology informed by Actor-Network Theory (ANT), it proposes a perspective that considers both human and non-human actors/actants, including technological artifacts, semiotic and linguistic resources, institutional structures, and spatial-material configurations- as integral to the production of intercultural agency and meaning. This perspective highlights how intercultural competence is enacted through networks and assemblages, emphasizing its distributed, performative, and contextually contingent nature. Rather than relying on essentialist, individual-centered paradigms that conceptualize competence as a stable attribute rooted in the accumulation of cultural knowledge and personal experience, which often reinforce static cultural categories and perpetuate stereotypes, this study employs ANT to shift emphasis from the autonomous individual to the assemblages through which communicative agency is enacted. By destabilizing subject-centered assumptions, the proposed framework offers a more nuanced theoretical account attuned to the complexities of intercultural communication in increasingly hybrid, technologized, and interconnected environments
Actor–network theory · Affordance · Competence (human resources · Conceptualization · Epistemology · Intercultural communication · Linguistics · Pedagogy · Performative utterance · Social science · Sociology · International Student and Expatriate Challenges · Psychology · Social Psychology · Social Representations and Identity · University-Industry-Government Innovation Models
Culture and Actor Network Theory
Interculturality in Education
Becoming Intercultural
What Does It Mean to Be Globally Competent?
Intercultural Communication Systems and Discourses of Cultural Identity
Ideology, Identity, and Intercultural Communication
Code Restrictedness and Opportunities for Change in Developing Countries
The Sociology of an Actor-Network
Notes on the theory of the actor-network
Reassembling the Social
Intercultural Competence
Intercultural Competence
On reflection
Rethinking interculturalism
Cultural sensitivity or cultural stereotyping? Positive and negative effects of a cultural psychology class
Measuring intercultural sensitivity
Does context count? Developing and assessing intercultural competence through an interview- and model-based domestic course design in China
Applying anxiety\uncertainty management (AUM) Theory to intercultural adjustment training
China's Search for Cultural and National Identity from the Nineteenth Century to the Present
Myths and Memories of the Easter Rising
Identification and Assessment of Intercultural Competence as a Student Outcome of Internationalization
After ANT
Cultivating national identity with traditional culture
Behind the scenes of music education in China
Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation
On Actor-Network Theory. A Few Clarifications, Plus More Than a Few Complications
An Essay on the Growing Contribution of Economic Markets to the Proliferation of the Social
Nonhumans in Social Interaction
Ontological Politics. A Word and Some Questions
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |