Intercultural Communication?

My course is Intercultural Communication and European Studies and, as the title would suggest, a large part of it deals with communication between cultures. I find it quite an unacademic academic subject really - surely the best way to learn about intercultural communication is to do it. Well, I am certainly learning to communicate interculturally - I am the only British person at the Fachhochschule in Fulda, so whoever I talk to, wave to, smile at, is someone from a different culture, whether they be from somewhere as close to home as Germany, or as far away as Indonesia or Uzbekistan.

I'm actually in two minds about all this talk of intercultural communication. I think it places too much emphasis on cultures. It is almost highlighting the differences between different people. Is it possible to draw any real lines between different cultures? Can we generalise to enough of a degree to actually get anywhere? I mean, say I am talking to Ragil, a guy in my class from Indonesia. Does it make any sense at all to describe the situation as the interaction of two different cultures? British culture communicating with Indonesian culture or Western with Far Eastern culture or non-Muslim with Muslim? I find it quite artificial to put people into 'cultural' boxes. I am British, European, non-religious, Western etc. etc. Are the defining factors of these different cultures not similar to the defining factors of being Indonesian, Muslim, etc.? Cultures, if possible to define at all, overlap and people who originate from different cultures are individuals with common ground that I feel is almost ignored as soon as this talk of culture starts. When I talk to Ragil it is one ICEUS student talking to another, two people with similar interests, studying the same subject. As far as I can see, focusing on the differences between different cultures is a divisive way of viewing communication.