Ethnography with Intercultural Competence and Visual Thinking for Real Life Problem Solving

Sukjin Kang, Seungryul Lee

This paper studies the positive effect of ethnographic methods in natural environments, and the significance of symbolic interpretation of research by adopting Viktor Chklovski’s conception, defamiliarization. This literary term is reoriented here to overcoming learned helplessness through direct contact and intensive face-to-face involvement with research subjects as a way to reach self-actualization.

This paper explores the influence of culture and the necessity of fostering intercultural competence in face-to-face interpersonal encounters. Contextual intelligence, the ability to understand the limits of knowledge and to adapt knowledge to an environment different from the one in which it was developed, must all be considered to establish richer heuristics based upon ethnographic research.

Additionally, it studies the power of visual thinking in an inspiration space and an ideation space in which every possible source of idea is explored. By merging visual thinking with ethnography, we can effectively capture the hidden nature of the research subjects and realize our utmost potentials.

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