Staff Blog

Xenophilia:  An Interview With Ethan Zuckerman on CBC Radio

According to Ethan Zuckerman, a a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, “Xenophilia is about connecting with people, not with cultural artifacts or other things. Liking Japanese food or Senegalese hiphop doesn’t make you a xenophile - xenophilia is about making connections across language and cultural barriers… Xenophilia is broader than the love for a specific culture or an aspect of that culture - it’s a broader fascination with the complexity and diversity of the world. Xenophilia changes your behavior, especially your behavior in seeking for information, leading you to pay attention not just to the parts of the world that have caught your attention, but to others that you know little about.” 

Zucherman leads a team that’s building , Global Voices a group of bloggers from around the world who are bridging cultural and linguistic differences through their weblogs.  You can listen to an interview done by Nora Young on CBC Radio’s show Spark , with Zuckerman on the role of technology in building bridges between cultures at CBC Spark.