“As a Muslim…”: on the importance of intercultural responsibility in transnational cultural exchanges

Cultural exchange is increasingly becoming an essential activity of higher education as the world continues to experience widespread ethnocentrism because of war, migration, political provocation, and nationalism. Research in areas related to cultural exchange have also increased with the rise of teacher and student mobility, leading to an exciting body of scholarship. Several aspects of intercultural communication, however, remain under-researched in the study of cultural exchange. One such example is intercultural responsibility. The current study adds to this body of work by investigating how Muslim students that were part of a cultural exchange program in Thailand used notions of intercultural responsibility to make sense of their encounters and identities. The findings show that national and religious identities are both barriers to, and resources for, intercultural communication in general, and the social practices of Muslim students in particular. Intercultural responsibility is important to scholars and educators, as it can empower students to become agentive in their participation in intercultural communication, allowing them to reflect on and utilize their linguistic, cultural, and historical repertoire when interacting with individuals and communities that do not share their same cultural traditions and practices.