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Concept interrogation: "A Clash of Cultures"

All Acting Regiment

11:25 / 17.07.06

I've had an idea that might blossom into a series of threads. Basically, we take some sort phrase or concept (it could be from anywhere) and criticise it, and those with relevant experience or knowledge help us to decide whether it is legitmate/bankrupt.

Dragon provides us with the particular subject of this thread:

Suppose you add to that equation the instability factor such as that added by certain Islamic figures? With a clash of cultures in the making, with the idea of appeasement as their way of dealing with threats, and with a serious decline in population growth, it will be a matter of time before Europe, as we know it, is gone.

So, what is a culture clash then? What current or historical examples are there to draw on? What ideologies are hidden in the phrase?

All Acting Regiment

11:31 / 17.07.06

I'll start by saying that implicit in the idea of a "clash of cultures", if we take "clash" to mean what you do with cymbals, i.e. connect them, and thus a culture clash is a point in time and space where two cultures touch each other, is the idea that this is unique enough of an ocurrence to warrant a special name.

However, surely, this "connecting" (on several fronts) is something that happens all the time, and from the micro to the macro? For example, different families do things differently yet go for a meal together.

11:43 / 17.07.06

Good idea, Legba.

Well, firstly, I don't think there is a clash of cultures - I think it's an absurd terms. The conflicts current in the middle east have nothing to do with culture, and are really about geo-politics - the United States securing the future of it's resources with us and Israel as it's allies. The exercise of power comes first, for gain in terms of territory, finaces or resources, and ideology and culture follows. I don't know much about the history of the original Crusades, but I suspect they were fought much for the same reasons. Anyone care to comment?

Phex: Dorset Doom

13:37 / 17.07.06

...if we take "clash" to mean what you do with cymbals, i.e. connect them...

Usually I see 'a clash of cultures' (and its big brother, 'Clash of Civilizations') used to refer to a much more violent, mutually destructive event. Implicit in this is the idea that when they come into contact cultures (be they big like the world's major religions and nations or small like the mods and rockers on Brighton beach) will instinctively attack each other like two Siamese fighting fish placed in the same tank (see Howard Bloom's book 'The Lucifer Principle' for this pessimistic view, the sequel 'Global Brain' for a slightly more optimistic viewpoint). I can't, with my somewhat limited historical knowledge, think of a time when two cultures have come into contact when some form of 'violence' didn't take place, whether actual violence (war, genoicide) or political/social violence (ghettoisation, enslavement, discrimination).

14:01 / 17.07.06

The conflicts current in the middle east have nothing to do with culture, and are really about geo-politics

I think that's an important point about the phrase 'A Clash of Cultures'. Any apparent conflict is placed firmly in the realm of ideas and ideology, without reference to material realities such as land, resources, national ambition or political and economic power. If we're going to interrogate the phrase then it might be worth asking whether this is ever a legitimate move - if conflict does arise simply from opposing world-views. If not (and a case needs to be made either way), then perhaps the phrase serves to frame any debate with certain assumptions about the basic reasons for conflict.

*

02:30 / 18.07.06

"Culture" itself is not a "thing". Culture is much more like a basket into which we put a bunch of different processes. They can't really "clash." People clash. It goes against all I know about people from the discipline of anthropology to assert that two groups of people, due to being possessed of/by different "cultures," are inevitably destined for violence. Muslim people and Jewish people are often said to belong to such radically different cultures that they can never get along. To say that is to be lamentably unaware of or to dogmatically ignore their fundamental commonalities, their history which includes many periods of peace and cooperation, and the number of highly successful mixed marriages that exist today and that have existed throughout history. That's like saying that people from Buffalo, New York and people from Toronto, Ontario are from such fundamentally different cultures that they could never get along.

05:00 / 18.07.06

I suggest that the few differences between Israel and Palestine far outweigh the commonalities.

05:20 / 18.07.06

Did you read this bit, Dragon? Note id said "Muslim" & "Jewish":

To say that is to be lamentably unaware of or to dogmatically ignore their fundamental commonalities, their history which includes many periods of peace and cooperation, and the number of highly successful mixed marriages that exist today and that have existed throughout history

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:37 / 18.07.06

I suggest that the few differences between Israel and Palestine far outweigh the commonalities.

Yah. Dragon, we find it tedious when you don't read what anyone else writes. If you can't manage to read what you yourself have written, then we're back to the idea that you are just randomly hitting keys with your feet. To quote:

With a clash of cultures in the making, with the idea of appeasement as their way of dealing with threats, and with a serious decline in population growth, it will be a matter of time before Europe, as we know it, is gone.

Here's a map of Europe. I believe that it was produced by the CIA, so should be trustworthy. I realise that you, like many of your people, might be a big fan of Eurovision, which does feature Israel as a contestant, but that in itself does not make Israel or Palestine members of the set "Europe". I don't think that Israel really counts as Europe here - nor, for that matter, does Israel have a huge amount of immigration from Muslim countries, which I believe was what you were concerned about here.

Now, if you want to talk about Israel and Palestine, we can certainly do that. Are the differences causing problems there primarily cultural? Or, and I don't want to prejudice your opinion here, are they geopolitical? Are they, not to put too fine a point on it, about land rather than culture?

Not in the Face

09:16 / 18.07.06

The exercise of power comes first, for gain in terms of territory, finaces or resources, and ideology and culture follows. I don't know much about the history of the original Crusades, but I suspect they were fought much for the same reasons. Anyone care to comment?

There is an argument that the crusades were as much about providing a release for 2nd, 3rd etc sons of the nobility who were unable to inheirit land at home due to the widespread use of primogeniture (1st son takes all). Certainly the Viking expansion was due to the population exceeding the ability of its homeland to support it and the relative attraction of raiding and settling over competing for smaller pieces of fjord farmland.

One possible comparison with history is to see how far imperial/colonial ambitions - the main expression of culture clash in recent history - has been framed as a clash of cultures. From what I know I don't think so, due probably to racism on the side of Europeans. Does the use of the phrase now imply that even amongst its more racist users, there is a wider understanding that culture is not a single value?

12:24 / 18.07.06

I'm not concerned with history as much as I am with the here and now. Is it not now a fact that Palestinians (and others) refuse to accept the very existence of Israel?

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:45 / 18.07.06

And in what sense exactly is that a cultural issue? It's not because they really dislike Amos Oz, you know.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:57 / 18.07.06

One might also ask why Dragon has phrased the question that way, given that the Palestinians are the ones who currently lack their own nation state...

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:13 / 18.07.06

In or outwith Europe.

So, to get back on track: how _does_ a clash of cultures manifest itself? Let's try starting with a nice, simple example - one where there is no argument over land, no immediate resource issues, no vast disparities in wealth or armament. Let's take, for example, the threat by Mayor Rudi Giuliani to close down the Brooklyn Arts Museum in response to its hosting of pictures featuring the Virgin Mary as subject matter and elephant dung as material, painted by Chris Offili. That seems to represent a clash between two cultures, yes? Or, to keep it all in one nation, what about Serrano and Helms?

14:53 / 18.07.06

Haus - to clarify, are you proposing Mayor Giuliani's objections to Offili's work as a clash between two cultures/ nations? Or something else?

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:12 / 18.07.06

Jub - Yeah, pretty much - in this case a metropolitan, artistic, African-influenced British attitude coming into contact with a metropolitan, conservative, Catholic Italian-American culture, but also the clash of cultures between the Museum authorities and Giulliani's City Hall, and the values they were both standing by.

15:16 / 18.07.06

One might ask if it makes a difference whether or not Palestine is a nation state insofar as the 'clash of cultures' is concerned. It's my understanding that Israel is willing to accept Palestine as a state as long as they recognize Israel's right to exist. Thus far, Palestine has not been willing to recognize Israel. I see no reason why Hamas, the recognized terrorist group currently in power there, will ever do so.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:19 / 18.07.06

One might ask if it makes a difference whether or not Palestine is a nation state insofar as the 'clash of cultures' is concerned.

One might. One might reply that there are clearly lots of factors feeding into the difficulties between Israel and Palestine, and that you have yet actually to demonstrate satsfactorily that the issues are cultural rather than, for example, about land ownership or statehood, which is where the status of Palestine as a nation state becomes significant. Likewise the refusal to accept the existence of Israel, which also seems to me - as I have already said, this is perhaps a political issue rather than a cultural one.

Unconditional Love

15:52 / 18.07.06

The idea of things clashing suggests to me conflict, cymbals put me in mind of a military band, then an association of clashing swords and somehow i ended up at there outfits with clashing colours.

The idea of of cultures clashing presupposes conflict, it starts from a basis that cultures dont compliment but clash, must come to blows, wether that be over religion, land or resources.

The supposition of cultures clashing is based on the false premise that cultures will by definition of difference come to blows as two opposed forces. This may be true of some circumstance but is not true of all circumstances.

For what i can see in my environment is a clustered culture fuck that i am quite happy to enjoy the throbbing pace of.

*

16:22 / 18.07.06

Sorry for bringing up extra-European examples. I hadn't read the thread very closely myself. My point is that when we look at people, all people everywhere all over the world, we see different cultural groups in much the same way we see bands of distinct colors when we look at rainbows— but what we see as hard and fast distinctions are largely illusions. This doesn't mean that yellow is like blue or that Sicilians and Finns are the same, but we all have more in common with one another than differences, and throughout history we've all been moving and sharing traditions in complex ways.

If I could return to my extra-European example, for a moment, I'd like to point out the Hamsa or Hamesh, a symbol commonly worn by Semites of all religious persuasions, whether Muslim, Jew, Druze, or Christian. Arab Jews and Arab Muslims are more alike than they are different; they worship the same God, they follow the same beliefs except that Muslims accept Mohammed as the Prophet and Jews don't, they have many of the same traditions, Halal laws are very similar to Kosher laws. This doesn't erase the violence and strife right now and in the recent past, but it does point, I believe, to economic and political reasons for it and not imaginary vast cultural differences.

To bring this back on topic, I think the same holds true for European groups of people as well. I was astonished when I was a kid to learn that a very Nordic-looking friend of mine was Italian, and that all her family had been from Italy back since the Renaissance; I hadn't realized yet that people have been moving around for thousands of years and that assuming that someone from Italy will have dark hair and eyes is as nonsensical as assuming someone from the US will have white skin.

Phex: Dorset Doom

16:25 / 18.07.06

If I may play Devil's/Dragon's advocate for a minute: With regards to the Israel/Palestine 'clash of the cultures!', it seems like leaders throughout history are never content with framing their conflicts as 'simply' about nationhood, land etc. Take the World Wars as an example- there were perfectly acceptable political reasons for going to war in both cases, and yet propagandists on both sides still did their best to present the other side as Eeevil barbarians and themselves as sole defenders of civilization- a clash of cultures. THEIR culture involves crucifying captured soldiers and raping nurses, OURS respects the Geneva convention etc.
When it comes to Israel/Palestine, there are myths that both sides believe about the other that are firmly parts of their respective cultures (belief in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Holocaust Denial on the Palestinian side, the belief that Palestinians, or all Muslims, are inherently violent on the Israeli side). If you imagine cultures as organisms, both have adapted to kill the other. Once these 'adaptations' take place in cultures it is difficult to imagine how the conflict could resolve itself even if a two-state solution was found when Palestinians believe Israelis are out to rule the world and Israelis believe Palestinians are too barbaric to live with them as equals.
Essentially- 'Clashes of Culture' do take place, but they do so during and after clashes over land, resources etc. However, this model is difficult to apply to Haus's example, or Dragon's example of Muslims in Europe since there's no apparent material cause to start the material war>propaganda>cultural change>cultural war process.

*

16:52 / 18.07.06

Using evolutionary arguments with regards to culture is always very difficult; the natural extension of cultural evolutionism is that colonialism is the superior culture because it overtakes all the others. Conscientious anthropologists these days avoid it, but in the past it was popular in anthropology which is, I believe unfortunately, why it is in common discourse.

When it comes to Israel/Palestine, there are myths that both sides believe about the other that are firmly parts of their respective cultures (belief in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Holocaust Denial on the Palestinian side, the belief that Palestinians, or all Muslims, are inherently violent on the Israeli side).

You really can't call these "firmly parts of their respective cultures" unless you can show that most Palestinians believe in the PEZ and disbelieve in the Holocaust, which has not been my experience, or that most Israelis believe that Palestinians are inherently violent, which has not been my experience. Even to say these pieces of propaganda are "firmly part of their respective cultures" is to once again reify "culture" as something essential, monolithic, and inherent, instead of a convenient way of talking about a lot of different human practices at once.

ONLY NICE THINGS

18:07 / 18.07.06

Yeah - it's also factually dubious, as are Dragon's claims about what "Israel" does and what "Palestine" does. From Ha'aretz:

opinion polls show that most Israelis and Palestinians today favor a two-state solution

The two-state solution is consistently the most popular one in opinion polls. Also, Hamas, before all this nonsense kicked off, was as close to acknowledging Israel as it has ever been - from the Guardian, June 28:

Despite face-saving denials from Hamas over the extent of its political concessions, Mr Abbas yesterday secured an agreement that commits all parties in government to recognise Israel and authorises him to negotiate a final agreement to establish an independent Palestinian state on territories occupied in 1967.

The agreement signed recognised UN resolutions which in turn recognised the statehood of Israel, even though Hamas did not officially recognise Israel. Obviously, all bets are now off again. Like Dragon, Phex, I think you may be confusing politics with culture - politics demands certain things, and then tries to sell them as cultural. We are a peace-loving people, they have a militaristic culture. The Prussians have no culture. The Jews are culturally decadent - and so on.

18:16 / 18.07.06

Haus,I agree with you thqat this is a political issue, but I wonder if it's also a religious one? I was just reading some arguments of past Islamic thinkers which made me wonder if (or how) things would be different if their arguments had been more successful.

ONLY NICE THINGS

18:37 / 18.07.06

Well, how would it be different, Dragon? Here's your chance to think it through, and I recommend that you take it. The modern world has secular dictatorships and Islamic democracies, and secular democracies and Islamic dictatorships. Mix it up a little. What changes? And what implications do those changes have for the idea of a "clash of cultures". Note in particular that many of the thinkers in that article were memebers of well-to-do families educated in Europe at a time when the Arab world was largely parts of European empires. What implications, culturally, does that have?

19:31 / 18.07.06

I don't know that it can be thought through that way. It can only be surmised. After all, there is still the historical political disagreement with the land issue.

22:20 / 18.07.06

I would argue that it isn't that easy to seperate culture from politics in that way, since land disputes will be governed by relative cultural conceptions of ownership etc.

i suppose in this way a "cultural clash" is a problematic way of describing such an interaction, since it seems to suppose that it takes between two distinct cultural objects that are totally seperated, whereas, for such a dispute, both cultures should have similar conceptions that land can be owned and goverened i.e. a common immersion in a wider global cultural framework of territorial policy.

22:29 / 18.07.06

I would argue that it isn't that easy to seperate culture from politics in that way, since land disputes will be governed by relative cultural conceptions of ownership etc.

Could you expand on that a little? I mean to take the Israel/Palestine example, its fairly obvious who legally 'owns' the land - one nation state exists, the other does not. The claim each group makes on the land might perhaps be described as cultural, but I can't see how that has anything to do with 'relative cultural conceptions of ownership'.

22:34 / 18.07.06

Sorry, to expand a little more. I can see how that might apply to e.g. Native Americans who had no concept of a 'nation state'. But that hardly applies to peoples who seek the establishment of a nation state. I don't see how the source of conflict in these cases is 'cultural'.

23:35 / 18.07.06

I think its a problem in relative definitions of the word culture. I should probably warn you that I'm coming at this from a theoretical standpoint where the word culture is a convenient way of talking about a lot of different human practices at once. as id's an entity thing says above.
The way i see it is that in a case like that, one group has "legal" ownership over a territory according to a cultural structure which authorises the categorisation of land area into a "territory" and furthermore authorises the ownership of such categorised land areas to recognised states through the practice of international law.

I wasn't necessarily applying these ideas speciffically to the palestine example when i used the phrase "cultural conceptions of ownership". I was trying to illustrate the idea that different groups of people might concieve ownership in different ways due to differening cultures of ownership being present in different areas, as a sympton of a greater difference in relative ideological positioning between different groups.

In regard to the palestine example I was trying to point out that "clash of cultures" is a problematic way of describing the situation because both parties involved are trying to gain or retain ownership of the land through the same (dominant) cultural arena, i.e. international law. Since both are already recognised as a governed state or seek to be and are therefore engaging in a dispute through a common cultural apparatus, they are not strictly "clashing" as seperated political objects, but engaged in a violent dispute as a result of their relative positioning within the context of history and the arena of a wider global culture.

01:59 / 19.07.06

Nighthawk, your Indian example reminded me of something -- about how different languages may be a factor. I had recently asked a "dumb science question" about rainbows. I believed I 'saw' bands of color, instead of a continuous change from one frequency to another. Grant gave me a link to "linguistic determinism." What words and concepts we have, determines how we perceive things. As everyone probably knows, not all languages have words for certain concepts. Accurate translation can be a big problem. Depending one what ideas are trying to be conveyed, could it be possible in a given circumstance that it is possible there could never be a meeting of the minds between two different groups of people?

*

03:48 / 19.07.06

What words and concepts we have, determines how we perceive things.

What you've just expressed constitutes the "strong" interpretation of linguistic determinism, which is pretty strongly criticised. Here's some discussion of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which was I believe the first widespread formalization of this idea.

That is an interesting line of reasoning, however— Arabic and Hebrew languages are themselves very close relatives. "Salaam alaikum" means the same as "sholom aleichim." Noticeable differences in perception and thought processing caused by language— such as those found in certain groups' classifications of colors and understanding of number theory— occur between groups with very different languages, since the entire structure must differ significantly to bring about these changes.

This doesn't mean that people can't have misunderstandings because of poor translation, but that's quite a different thing from being fundamentally unable to understand a concept which is not well encoded in your own language.

11:31 / 19.07.06

That is an interesting line of reasoning, however— Arabic and Hebrew languages are themselves very close relatives. "Salaam alaikum" means the same as "sholom aleichim." Noticeable differences in perception and thought processing caused by language— such as those found in certain groups' classifications of colors and understanding of number theory— occur between groups with very different languages, since the entire structure must differ significantly to bring about these changes.

In the example of Hebrew and Arabic, I'm pretty sure there are differences in the way Israelis and Palestinians use language (even the same words). But historically, it's also important to realize that until the foundation of the modern state of Israel, Hebrew was considered a dead language. It was only used in religious rites as a secondary, sacred language of the believers. Hebrew-as-she-is-now-spoke has borrowed words from other languages, including Arabic, which was what most people living in the area spoke. (I know this is true of swear words -- not much room for profane expletives in a liturgical language -- but is probably true for quite a few other things as well.)

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:48 / 19.07.06

Close, Grant - Hebrew became a spoken language again in the 19th century. It was revived as part of the nationalist movement originally when Israel was still part of the Ottoman empire, and was one of the official languages of British Palestine after the Treaty of... oh, carks... Sèvres, I think. By the time the modern state of Israel came into being, it was being spoken at least by the resident Jews and also by zionists in Europe. That doesn't affect your point, though - it had to pick up a lot of new words very quickly. Which actually helps to support my thesis that there has been a ghastly mistranslation, and the Bible stories actually took place in Wales...