Wolfgang Welsch’s concept of transculturality: towards a transversal paradigm of social pedagogy

Abstract

The article is an attempt to answer the following questions: how, in the context of Wolfgang Welsch’s concept of transculturality (1998a,b,c,d;2004), together with its transformations towards transversality, a new interpretation of the categories of interculturalism and multiculturalism is possible? This proposal helps to find justifications for Helena Radlinska’s thesis that social pedagogy is at the crossroads of sciences and also allows us to think about the epistemological consequences of this view. As a result of the analysis of the values of the concept of transculturality/tranversality, the assumption was formulated that it can be a reference for constructing a transversal paradigm of social pedagogy and a basis for its ontological framework. As a result of adopting such a view, a transversal paradigm of social pedagogy was proposed, which is formed by three frameworks: ontological – transversal reason, methodological – long duration plus breaks and discontinuities, and epistemological – complexity of processes and phenomena occurring in the field of practice.