Abstract
This paper discusses research being conducted on the formation of human identity and how that research can be utilized to design courses that will develop students' abilities in intercultural interaction. The first section of the paper analyzes Jacques Lacan's notions on the formation of identity and presents the authors' further development of these theories in their concept of Identity Matrixing. This is followed by a section that examines Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's position that the current global economic system is in the 3^<rd> Paradigm of development, the stage which they term informatization. Here the socio-economic ideologies that are transmitted by Advanced Information and Communications Systems are discussed. In the next section, the authors' theory of the Meta-Symbolic Order is explained. In this section, the effects of the aforementioned ideologies on regional cultural systems and on regional identities are considered. Finally, the paper provides the details on two courses of study designed to address current and future concerns regarding intercultural communication.
