Does Intercultural Dialogue matter?

Writing up the chapter 4, i consider again the analysis on Rayzani. The Iranian foreign cultural policy is a fragmented system. the good example is the pattern of cultural working towards Germany. in Berlin there are two type of cultural section under the supervision of the Iranian embassy. One is an office inside the Iranian embassy and the second one a branch office of the organization of Islamic Culture and Relations. Interestingly both call themselves: “ Kulturabteilung der iranischen Botschaft ”.  i am page 107 of 370 pages! still a lot to do :D

I have 74 days time to send the book off to the publisher. I received a good news two nights ago. A German Professor who also has executive experiences in field of German foreign cultural policy has accepted to write a forward for my book. I am still waiting for an answer from an Iranian figure to accept to write the second forward. I am writing the first section of chapter 4, which is on Iranian intercultural dialogue discourses and actors. I have just checked the content regarding to the Iranian discourses. I deleted some parts. Too many words ..blah blah..   During reading the text I can not resist thinking about the interviews with the Iranian participates of the study, in hot summers of 2013 and 2015. Sweet and bitter memories. I feel that, meanwhile, I grew up. If I have had the experiences of today, I would have asked different questions in the interviews, I would been sharper, quicker, I would have spent less time for each appointment…. Hopefully next time, next proj

I finished chapter 3 and started the next chapter. It is strange. Turning my dissertation to a book is full of surprises to me. For instance I realized that how much nonsense I have written in the thesis! Too long, too details, too blah blah! Is that just me or anybody else has the same experience! I mean why I used so many facts and info for simple points. This chapter, 4, is on actors of intercultural dialogue in Iran and Germany and specific discourses.  I have specifically worked on “interfaith dialogue” and “dialogue among civilizations” in Iranian side. In Germany the discourse of “European-Islamic cultural dialogue” has been prominent. The chapter besides presenting details on these discourses discusses the actors. For instance DAAD has been one of the German actors. In foreign cultural policy of Germany academic exchanges have attracted a high attention of elites and policy makers. And it has a loooooooooooong history. It goes back to even time before the Weimar Repub