August 17, 2002

6:08 PM

Is The Cult Of Designer Cultures And Cute Primitivism Keeping The Third World Back?In a brief but pointed book review, Raymond Tallis asks whether "the ideology of culture [has] replaced patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel". Can excessive cultural relativism and respect for pre-industrial cultures have the perverse effect of maintaining and indeed reinforcing the conservative, National Geographic/Discovery Channel/geopolitical statu quo?
posted by MiguelCardoso (46 comments total)

Not sure this is completely true. For example the cultural appreciation for sushi and Japanese comics has not really kept the Japanese companies back. Perhaps if the third world countries weren't run like socialist state-controlled fiefdoms they'd get out of the mess they are in.
posted by metaforth at 6:37 PM on August 17, 2002

The ideology of culture has, one could add, replaced patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel.

What the hell happened in his last sentence?

Mostly I agree. Primitive 'societies' are primitive because they are not civilized. That's the nature of the beast. This cultural relativism thing really does get up my pants leg, though.
posted by hama7 at 6:53 PM on August 17, 2002

it seems like the eurocentric culture is slowly gaining the mental tools to say it is better than other cultures. until now, i think the only other cultures it faced were not a threat to it, so an ideal of them being just as good was fine. but now europe is facing so much race-tension, the politics are changing with people not liking immigrants, the wtc-attacks etc. i think, while we otherwise might say another culture is just as good, in our current cultural ecosystem the eurocentric culture (US included) is gearing up for a fight (cultural not physical). if it is going to fight, one of the first things it needs is the ability to criticize other cultures, which is something that it has lacked.

that's what i think the big picture is anyway, on a smaller scale i think a lot of this new acceptance of comparing cultures comes from the same liberal groups that previously helped make the act so taboo. within the us it's a useful tool for feminist groups and gay groups to say they want tolerance and acceptance of differences, and that helps promote their goals. when confronted with something [outside the system] that tool says it should be tolerated also. this toleration of [things outside the system] though is just a byproduct. sure, gay people would say you need to tolerate atheists, but that is not the main goal, it is only a side effect of the best tool (tolerance) gay people have.

when these liberal groups run into women forced to wear burqas and being denied medical care, and gay men being arrested and sent to labor-camps in other groups that previously fell into the "tolerate" category a reworking of the tools will have to occur. the liberal groups are, of course, not the only groups that are important, but until now they were the check on the cultural-supremacy trait. conservative christians, say, never had doubt they were culturally superior. so, when this liberal check alters the entire culture starts to move. it's interesting to watch, but i think it may cause a lot of conflict. wow, that was a long comment.
posted by rhyax at 7:36 PM on August 17, 2002

if it is going to fight, one of the first things it needs is the ability to criticize other cultures, which is something that it has lacked.

Yes, but this overlooks the fact that Sandall thinks that other cultures are objectively bad; he doesn't need new mental tools to make the claim, nor does he fashion his argument as a mere instrument of anti-terrorism. He really believes it.

I would question rhyax's (and Sandall's, by the way) assumption that Euro-american society is awash in "relativism" and "cultural sensitivity" and that we must resist the tidal wave of people's acceptance of difference. I've seen this book, and the evidence for this shared sentiment is just not there. For the most part, I think most people think that Papua New Guinea is in the "stone age" and the "rituals" are "backward," etc. Yes, there is the other side to this in the form of romantic exoticism. But these work hand in hand, they aren't opposed!

Primitive 'societies' are primitive because they are not civilized.

Hard to tell from your tone in the all too short post, hama7, but I think we can all agree that if this is Sandall's big point, it's a tautology. We shouldn't accept it as common sense. Certainly people have watched enough National Geographic to know that the average indigenous subsistence farmer or hunter-gatherer isn't stupid. So that can't be what primitive means. I would argue that all societies have something in common. The cultural diversity (which is undeniable, and not reducible to evolutionary progress) thus is of great scientific and philosophical interest because of that continuity. Sandall would have one believe that because humans are all of one kind in some ways, that appeals to difference in other ways is a way to avoid applying objective criteria to human behavior. Its just not that simple.
posted by rschram at 8:01 PM on August 17, 2002

"Behold the noble savage!"
"er...the noble savage is performing a clitorectomy on his noble, screaming, unanesthesized daughter."

Cultural relativism my metallic ass. And, hey, cultures live and die just as species do, just as people do. We are just more sensitive now. We mourn nearly as much as we masturbate, which is saying quite a lot.

Also, not to tie this to another thread or anything, but it seems to me the United States worked a little better when the melting pot actually melted, as opposed to remaining fractious, quarrelling, cultural lumps gathered together in the same noisome media broth.

Or maybe not. When we were strong and growing, we were even more evil bastards. We just didn't have a surly contingent of touchy Canadians picking on us.

...oops...sorry, wandered off-topic, sort of.
posted by umberto at 8:21 PM on August 17, 2002

I would disagree that this characteristic of "cultural relatavism" is limited to liberals. For instance, when a CEO says that child labor is part of a third world country's culture, and that we can't impose Western standards for how old someone should be to work in a factory.

I was also fascinated by the mention of other cultures complicity in the slave trade, this was a main theme of the film "Cobra Verde", that African kings were rounding up Africans to trade to the Europeans. Most of what I've seen in media on the slave trade tends to overlook this.
posted by bobo123 at 8:35 PM on August 17, 2002

Its just not that simple.

I don't necessarily think of primitivism as an absolute. And I don't want to get into the ills of western culture compared to the noble savage's natural ways. But there is, undoubtedly, civilisation, and there is undoubtedly barbarism. And they're not the same. Here's something about cultures by Jonah Goldberg.

I'm not sure if this is a good example but I love Chinese culture, the most wonderful and advanced of which was developed under an Imperial system thousands of years ago. The imperial system is inherently brutal, with vast serf and slave classes to do the hard work, so the scribes can have time to develop writing, thinkers have time to think, poets and so forth. Nowadays, one would have a hard time finding what most of us would consider advanced civilization in much of mainland China thanks to a variety of factors. Much of the blame can be placed upon the brutal government. Sound familiar? Is it really so different from the Imperial days (except that nowadays there is no empire)?
posted by hama7 at 8:41 PM on August 17, 2002

I wandered off topic, too. Back on topic.

The human trafficking (or the young female prostitute persuasion) in Asia is rampant and has been so for quite possibly thousands of years, with few laws in place to punish dealers and slavetraders, actually. In Korea, there are untold hundreds of thousands of women enslaved in prostitution, who are bought and sold like so much cattle. Some enter the profession by choice.

I don't think that's civilization.
posted by hama7 at 9:18 PM on August 17, 2002

I think that rejecting simplistic cultural relativism is right. But that doesn't mean and declaring "Our culture is better than yours." It's that equally simplistic attitude of cultural superiority that leads to cultural relativism, because it a) sounds hollow when the problems of the supposedly superior culture are revealed and b) encourages the kind of abuses practised by colonialists who thought they knew what was wright for everyone.

If someone says to you "It's our culture to practise female genital mutilation," you say, "well, I think it's wrong no matter whose culture it is, and here's why." If they keep arguing with you, you listen to their reasons, and respond to them. You debate the particulars; you maintain an opinion about what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad. You refuse to say "oh, well, slavery is OK if that's your culture"; but you also refuse to say "wow, we're so great and you people suck." Neither approach gets you very far.

Why exactly are we so keen to rank whole cultures on a scale of good and bad? (At least, assuming it's not just a sublimated desire for more colonial power?) Why can't we keep our evaluations to specific actions, patterns of action and character traits?
posted by ramakrishna at 9:28 PM on August 17, 2002

Thank you Rama.‡
posted by Slimemonster at 10:25 PM on August 17, 2002

Nix the ?'
posted by Slimemonster at 10:27 PM on August 17, 2002

Why do we tend to denigrate cultures on our way to subsuming thing? Or crushing them? Well, over the millennia we have grown intellects and consciences that must be self-bamboozled in order to let the old reptilian brain, still suffused with territorial imperative, have its way.
posted by umberto at 10:32 PM on August 17, 2002

Wasn't it Napier who said, "Let us each act according to his customs?"
posted by hob at 11:13 PM on August 17, 2002

The danger point is reached, I think, when a strange complicity arises between the mainstream liberal ethos (celebrating cultural diversity well beyond its own core values) and the overall conservative attitude (leaving societies as they are). The impulse towards progress and basic improvements is somehow put on the back burner and societies may indeed be artificially preserved as exotica, stifling the broad, international defense of basic human rights. Rights are sacrificed to rites, as it were.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 12:30 AM on August 18, 2002

On another point, Sandall implicates anthropology as a discipline in the making of the "culture cult." I reject wholeheartedly his portrayal of anthropology. It is exaggerated to fit his polemic at best; most of what he says is (as above) fabricated. However, I think most people must share Sandall's view of anthropology. Too bad.
posted by rschram at 1:17 AM on August 18, 2002

I think its fair to say a culture C, is at least composed of moral beliefs (M), Aesthetics (A) (i.e. food, clothes, etc..), Practices (P) (dances, sports, etc.), and styles of living (S).

What most people on this board are saying is that cultural relativism is only ok if whatever we appreciate from A, P, and S conforms to our cultures moral beliefs.

If our two cultures disagree on moral beliefs, then our culture is inherently superior (because our moral beliefs are better). If something from A,S,P don't conform to our moral beliefs, they are bad. Of course 5 minutes of thought will reveal this to be self-assuring bullshit.

growing up in NJ, diversity in A,P, and S given that they conform to our moral beliefs is something that was and still is taken for granted. So obvious, that everyone agrees with it (see chinese restaurants and anime if you need some evidence of that).

The harder thing to swallow is the fact that our moral beliefs are really just random. Yes, I'm well aware of what they've allowed me to do and what they foster, but it doesn't really matter, because their is an implicit belief in relying on that.
posted by nads at 1:21 AM on August 18, 2002

One last thing, celebrating a diversity in A,P, and S is like going to Macy's and celebrating all the different types of clothes. I would think a diversity in ideas and beliefs is more important than a diversity in what we wear or eat. But apparently diversity means food and clothes not thought. We are all suppose to think the same (or at least share a core). Some diversity.
posted by nads at 1:24 AM on August 18, 2002

The harder thing to swallow is the fact that our moral beliefs are really just random.

On the one hand, there's a lot to suggest that people's patterns of action and thought just seem to fit together but have no external cause. But people want causes for things; they want to explain things. Can you blame them?

By way of explanation, the strongest anti-relativist stance one can take against this insight is that "morals" are replicated because they have adaptive value to a specific ecological and social environmental complex in which the individual must survive. I don't think Sandall had that in mind at all. In fact, its quite relativistic, isn't it!
posted by rschram at 1:34 AM on August 18, 2002

I agree that morals based on ecological or social advantage would result in relativism.

However, implicit in this statement is that the morals that are optimal to us are the best. This is just as pointless as everything else. Just because natural selection thought they'd help, really doesn't mean much.
posted by nads at 2:17 AM on August 18, 2002

This all boils down to elbow room.

Perhaps people outside America would see this as a very culturally relative yardstick to use, but I don't see it that way. I strongly believe that when Jefferson spoke of inalienable rights, he might have meant to restrict that to male landowners, but inalienable rights belong to all people regardless of color, creed, gender, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, preference of ice cream flavor, or the culture from which each individual was forged. Inalienable rights -- freedoms -- are not just some vague concepts. They are imperative truths. They are absolutes. Whether you acknowledge freedom or not, it is there. Even when it is suppressed.

One cannot suppress something that does not exist.

I'm a constitutionalist, and sometimes this gets me in trouble because I'm also a pacifist so I sometimes wrangle with the second ammendment, but America was founded on the concept detailed in the Declaration of Independence. God or Fate or just Random Existence has bestowed upon each and every human individual the inalienable rights of life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness. Notice we don't have the right to BE happy, but we each have the right to TRY to be happy.

These rights are not limited to Americans. It's something inalienable in all human beings whether they believe in it or not -- but only if they don't deny themselves, and don't deny each other, these most basic freedoms. If you violently take someone else's rights away, you immediately relinquish the right to claim your own. You lose your rights so you have to keep suppressing the rights of others in order to retain that perception of freedom which you have lost.

The terrorists have been supressed by other external factors. Their inalienable rights to live and be free and be happy in their own way were taken by others, so now they exist behind the barrell of a gun, trying to push away from them anything they percieve to be an enemy to their selfish desires to retain the freedoms they have lost. This is true whether the terrorist is from Ireland or Afghanistan. The details may differ, but the basic thrust is the same. I will do to you what has been done to me. I will enact revenge.

To them, the freedoms of others have no relevence any longer, since it has been shown them that their own freedom's cost was negligible. So now they violently force the right to live at liberty from others, be it with a gun, a bomb, or an airplane. We retaliate by pushing back, because our own freedoms are being threatened by them. It's a vicious cycle that will continue so long as any one individual believes their inalienable rights are more valid or deserve to be more valuable than that of those around them.

It will continue so long as the perception is US vs THEM, instead of it being all of us stuck together on this same damn spinning rock flying through space.

Freedom always exists even in places where it appears not to be. It is something almost tangible that can be taken away, or given away, or ignored. When a culture demeans and disrespects women, the men of that culture are forcibly taking from women basic freedoms. Even if the women are convinced to believe it's acceptable to restrict their own movements and restrict their outward appearance by wearing fashions of uniformity and not educate themselves because they've been told it's what their god wants, they are allowing their freedoms to be suppressed.

When African kings of the 18th century were literally selling their own subjects to the white men for slavery in return for baubles, they treated the freedoms of others like a commodity that could be bartered and stolen. Two centuries have not changed that. When people buy or sell other human beings - fellow travellers on this spinning rock in space - they use the freedoms of others as collateral on their own temporary higher status on the social ladder. Freedom is something that can be shared or it can be forced away, but it never disappears. Those who take freedom from others are like cultural vampires who for whatever reason at one time lost their own freedom and take freedom from others so that they can regain that perception of freedom which they have lost.

Freedom always exists. Whether one believes in it or not. Whether a culture allows freedom to fluorish, or suppresses it, it's a force that has to somehow be acknowledged and reckoned with. When those cultures which embrace and cultivate freedom interact with those cultures which supress freedom in some or all of its peoples, we lower ourselves to their level of cultural relativism. We appear to be hypocrites, because that is what we have become.

Culture can be used as a rationalization of supressing the freedoms of others in order to ship them off to slavery. A culture that coerces freedom in such a way where some get more freedom at the expense of others, that 'culture' becomes a rationalization of the alleged strong suppressing the alleged weak. Whether we speak of a communist regime or a corporate oligarchy, the end results are similar. It happens here in America too, and as technologies and communications continue to make this planet culturally smaller, the more different cultures interact and integrate, the more we're going to feel the pinch of all inalienable rights.

Over two hundred years ago, some people flocked to America because they needed elbow room. They needed to distance themselves from their oppressors. Others were shipped to these shores because their oppressors robbed them of their freedoms for their own selfish agendas, selling them into indentured servitude. Either way you slice it, freedom was a culturally tangible variable in the equation. It still is today. It always will be.

Today, there are over seven billion people on this planet.

We're running out of elbow room.
posted by ZachsMind at 2:25 AM on August 18, 2002

Zach, Why are the rights inalienable? You keep asserting they are and never state why. You say its a natural force to be reckoned with, but history shows you are wrong.
posted by nads at 2:47 AM on August 18, 2002

Isn't it Rousseau's old paradox, though, that man must be forced to be free? By repressing, say, female circumcision or slavery, you must disrespect the culture that validates them. So there's always a cultural superiority affirmed, of the most paternalistic "it's for your own good" variety. Deal with it, you feel like telling those who want to have their cultural relativity and liberal values too.

You can't reduce freedom to the freedom to do this and that - freedom from cruel and inhuman constraints must also be considered. So there clearly needs to be some moral courage to impose what we take to be more enlightened rules and values on those (we think) will eventually come to prize them.

Cultural relativism - specially in the form touched upon by Tallis, which actually romanticizes the more undeveloped culture as "purer" or "better" - is dangerous because it's so easy. It's actually more paternalistic and patronizing: "Oh, never mind those child slaves; that's the way those wacky guys organize their society."

It's too pat, too accommodating and too hypocritical. Ours is a human rights-based culture and no amount of epistemological shilly-shallying will ever be able to square those values with a simple, unfettered form of "diversity".
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:47 AM on August 18, 2002

I think that Ramakrishna comes the closest on this. We don't need to be able to choose between cultures: we need to be able to choose between beliefs and actions that arise within those cultures. When we make that choice, we don't necessarily use some benchmark of 'culture' as our comparison, we believe that things are right or wrong.

I'm struggling to express this, but the thing to aim for is to be able to make consistent judgements on actions no matter who the actions are taken by, nor their background. I'm not sure that I believe in a universal moral standard, but neither do I believe that all moral beliefs are equally valid. I've spent a few years half-heartedly mulling this over, and how it conflicts with my views on law, and I'm afraid I still haven't come to any conclusions.

Zachsmind, you argue eloquently, but I think you're wrong. Rights mean nothing except for in their implementation, and I think you half-recognise this when you say that rights are "almost tangible." Almost, yes, but not. Rights are an abstract concept: the right to pursue happiness means nothing by itself.

If you violently take someone else's rights away, you immediately relinquish the right to claim your own
Says who? Isn't it the state's job to guarantee your rights? If I stop you from peacefully assembling somewhere am I not allowed to pursue happiness?
posted by calico at 3:39 AM on August 18, 2002

The impulse towards progress and basic improvements is somehow put on the back burner and societies may indeed be artificially preserved as exotica, stifling the broad, international defense of basic human rights.

True, Miguel, but you're on record as expressing a preference for certain 'olde worlde' Lisbon cafés over, for instance, the delights of worshipping at St. Arbucks. You're precious about your cocktails, rather than knocking back the latest alcopops. Many of your consumer tastes seem to cater towards to preservation of an old order that, without a nostalgic, conservative clientele, would have succumbed to the homogenisation of global branding. When you say that 'Rights are sacrificed to rites', it seems to overlook the way many of your posts deal with the cherished rituals of your own life. Yes, there's a vast difference between female genital mutilation and being a fastidious bon viveur, but its emphasis on ritual makes it seem like one of degree, rather than of kind: between the two, the Pamplona bull-run is a ritual, and the Palio is a ritual, and the fact that hacks from a particular newspaper have drunk in the same bloody pub for nearly a century is a ritual, which makes no sense when the offices have moved a few miles east.

I mean, it's funny that you talk of Rousseau, and fall into the trap of anchoring yourself to a past culture. And Rousseau celebrated the noble savage. But I'll join you and do the same, since David Hume (and the Marquis de Sade) seemed to get it right about the way force of habit establishes our sense of what is 'good'. Damn those political philosophers.
posted by riviera at 4:36 AM on August 18, 2002

That was sobering and fair, Riviera. I was shaken a few years back when a socialist friend and colleague of mine suddenly launched into me about precisely that same contradiction. I'd been waffling on about how traditional architecture in the Algarve was being destroyed by anodyne high-rise buildings and she suddenly went morally berserk.

"Yes", she said in essence, "you'd prefer the nice little fishermen to live in their nice little white houses and forego all mod cons so that, once a year, when you motor down in your Range Rover, your view is unblemished and cosy."

I still haven't got over it. She was absolutely right, of course, and to this day I believe there is a sort of supposedly aesthetic but politically effective conspiracy between Oakeshottian conservatives and Orwellian socialists which works against the unprivileged masses actually getting what they want. A lot of downright reactionarism travels under the alias of condemnation of bad taste, defending local culture, etc. It's all seemingly anticapitalistic but it suits the statu quo just fine.

In Britain it may take the form of the romanticisation of the working class. I know what sort of pubs I and my mostly left wing student friends went to around Manchester and how easy it was to agree on what was worth preserving, with little or no regard for those stuck with living in the bloody things to be preserved.

I agree with you it's only a question of degree. My guilty point is that cultural relativism is a convenient way of leaving things as they are. This mainly - vastly! - benefits the privileged, the tourists, the curious would-be anthropologists. Salazar kept Portugal uneducated, poor and pretty, which was nice for us relatively rich people. It seems absurd now, but until the 1974 revolution we had three maids, a cook, a housekeeper, a nanny and a chauffeur, although my father worked for a living...

Now I find that my left wing friends - some very left wing - are essentially following that same conservative agenda. Specially the architects. They go out of their way to keep the few remaining peasants who surround their holiday homes living in the traditional way. They look up to them and have them over for lunch and proudly give them peasant meals, when their guests would love to be taken out for a pizza...

With other cultures - and given the British social anthropology tradition - preservation and respect seem to have the same effect of keeping the unprivileged in their place. It's confusing, to say the least. Not that it stopped me from going on for far too long...
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:23 AM on August 18, 2002

Can we at least agree that the misappropriation of the term "culture" by slave traders and corporate exploiters is as irrelevant to the issue of cultural diversity as the misappropriation of the term "democracy" by the "people's democracies" is to the issue of democracy?

Ramakrishna: Thanks for making sense. And it gives me hope to know that West African villages where female genital mutilation has been practiced for centuries have come to the conclusion that it's wrong and abandoned it -- not forced by coercion from outside, but convinced by discussion. The more aware we are of other possibilities and opposing ideas, the more we can change our lives -- without abandoning our own culture. Cultures, like languages, are always changing.
posted by languagehat at 6:46 AM on August 18, 2002

I don't know about that Miguel. You mentioned Orwell above. If I remember right, he commented in the 50s in one of his essays that the new tower blocks going up in the cities were a welcome change to the slums he'd written about in The Road to Wigan Pier. At least people had central heating, hot water, their own bedrooms etc.

Of course what he couldn't forsee was that because the tower blocks were ugly, because they didn't feel like they belonged to the people who lived there, because they were shoddily built and because they didn't foster a sense of community, they bred crime and vandalism. You may feel that your attitude is precious but is it really? If you find the buildings ugly what about the people that are going to live in them? Maybe they do too?

I'm not suggesting that the slum clearance shouldn't have happened but the new estates were just another kind of slum. And the style of house that in those days was a slum dwelling is now, with modern refurbishment, being sold for £300,000 in London. Aesthetics aren't the preserve of the rich you know. I don't know much about Portuguese peasant food, but maybe it is better than imported pizza? Maybe these things deserve to be preserved? Much of the beauty and tradition of Britain was wiped out in the Industrial Revolution. That's why we go to France for our holidays.
posted by Summer at 6:51 AM on August 18, 2002

First off, for morality and ethics, cultural relativism simply does not work; anyone who has take a basic college ethics class should know this. If one does believe it, then they must also believe that (to use the most common example) Hitler was correct in enacting and enforcing the Holocaust. It was the culture of the Nazis, therefore if must be right according to cultural relativism (henceforth CR).

That's absurd. By the same idea, ritual genital mutilation is right too, and whatever other horrible things you can think of (on the other hand, look at the practice of circumcision in the US, so why then do people raise such an uproar when it's done elsewhere?).

So what about CR in regards to culture? I think: It's perfectly okay to respect other cultures (props to the Yanamamo), but to attempt to artificially restrict the growth and change of a culture is wrong. I see problems with artificially forcing change of a culture as well (missionaries in 3rd World countries, I'm looking right at you). By artificial, I mean forcing change to a more Western culture. Simple interaction is fine, though it's terribly difficult between, say, Papua New Guineans and gold miners, without some sort of subjugation, which is wrong.

To attempt to preserve an entire culture as "cute" or "primitive" is a horrible idea. Would we trade our computers in for cows? No, probably not. I have the same problem as Miguel, though, in that I prefer old cafés, pubs, and architecture. I deal with the paradox by advocating change as my rational preference, contrary to my irrational preference of static and antiquated design.

Hmm... this may be full of holes, but alas, I have a hangover. I'll defend as needs be, I guess.
posted by The Michael The at 7:01 AM on August 18, 2002

great thread.
posted by mlang at 8:36 AM on August 18, 2002

excessive cultural relativism and respect for pre-industrial cultures have the perverse effect of maintaining and indeed reinforcing the conservative, National Geographic/Discovery Channel/geopolitical statu quo

that's pretty ironic :) although i think having that attitude itself presupposes a kind of obverse to the noble savage and associated noblesse oblige/orientalism that's just as bad! because like ramakrishna sez is suggests that pre-industrial cultures lack agency/are unable to modernise and can therefore be dismissed.

i look at it as a continuum between the prime directive and the federation. like leave well enough alone but if you want to play we can be accommodative (yet still willing to bring the smackdown in defense of human rights). i think that's why i find cosmopolitanism so appealing, coupled with migration and syncretism. it's more useful to look at it as a process instead of stasis i think. also, i was just thinking, perhaps a system that embraces dynamism is even more fundamental than one whose foundation is human rights?

re: "the romanticisation of the working class," peter bagge had something to say about tavern turnover :)
posted by kliuless at 10:58 AM on August 18, 2002

Summer: . You may feel that your attitude is precious but is it really? If you find the buildings ugly what about the people that are going to live in them? Maybe they do too?

This is a good point and one that has been mostly overlooked in this thread. The struggle between preservationists and advocates-for-change exists within those same communities. I have seen this first-hand since many members of my family are involved in development activities in Mexico, seeking a balance between modernization and tradition.

The idea is to be selective about what the community would like to maintain. Everybody wants cable television and Coke and Jeans and even SUVs. But likewise, there are ongoing efforts to preserve the colonial architecture of these small towns, to rescue beautiful haciendas from being converted into Modernist structures and to help create dictionaries and teaching manuals for many of the local native languages. No efforts have been imposed from outside. Each of these ideas and projects was conceived and is run by members of the community as that community as a whole struggles to join the modern world yet maintain the dignity and beauty of its traditions.

There are still many gorgeous Indian villages in remote parts of Mexico where women wander the streets in their Serapes, men walk barefoot in their white cotton pants, the market stalls are overflowing with exotic fruit and everyone bathes in a nearby river.

Great for tourists and many of the natives are indeed attached to this way of life. But, behind the scenes, there is also high unemployment among the young, rampant alcoholism and the growing violence of restlesness. Those that want out should get out, find jobs, join the modern world. Otherwise these beautiful Indian towns or seaside villages are just empty facades.

Ultimately, its about self-determination.
posted by vacapinta at 11:10 AM on August 18, 2002

I am not sure that I agree that the "mis"appropriation of cultural elements by a subsuming culture is completely irrelevent to cultural divversity.

Agreed, sometimes such borrowing leads merely to superficial aesthetic flavoring: Hawaiian shirts, "Ye Olde Discounte Store," monkeywood coffee tables. But corporate snarfing of cultural elements can lead to larger cultural changes. Rock music, plundered and sanitized from black musicians for personal gain, spawned a mentality, culture, and lifestyle that have had an undeniable effect on the way large numbers of people think, act, and interract. Not always a great effect, but there is value in diversity, which is something I think most people can agree on. Just not how to propogate it.

Sometimes all you might want from a culture is its aesthetics. Returning to serfdom, polygamy, animal sacrifice, or communal living might be impractical, taxing or offensive. Beliefs don't travel quite as well. And --at heart-- all cultures contain an underlying presumption of solipcism: that they are the only ones that matter. Most primitive and developing cultures' word for themselves equates to "the people" or "the Ones." Outsiders are merely others. It's harder to maintain one's tribalism on a global scale, but lord knows we try.
posted by umberto at 11:47 AM on August 18, 2002

The Michael The, yea that's what they tell you in an introductory level class. Think about it for a little longer or take a class that deals with theoretical issues and you'll come to the conclusion there is no right or wrong.
posted by nads at 1:49 PM on August 18, 2002

I would question rhyax's (and Sandall's, by the way) assumption that Euro-american society is awash in "relativism" and "cultural sensitivity" and that we must resist the tidal wave of people's acceptance of difference.

i'm not saying the society is awash with relativism, i'm saying a group of people that are proponents of this relativism are changing their beliefs about it, and that causes a general loss of relativism in the whole culture. i am also not saying that we should lose it, it's just what seems to be happening.

I would disagree that this characteristic of "cultural relativism" is limited to liberals. For instance, when a CEO says that child labor is part of a third world country's culture, and that we can't impose Western standards for how old someone should be to work in a factory.

yes, this is a good example of people who are not liberal co-opting the idea of relativism and acting in the frame of mind that relativism requires. what i'm saying is once the liberals stop being so relative it will even further free people like this to act in ways that are damaging to other cultures.

i don't think this is necessarily a good thing, and of course i would rather people see themselves as humans and not with an "us vs. them" mentality, but that's not the reality. when i read things like this i just think it's the culture starting to get more aggressive.
posted by rhyax at 1:57 PM on August 18, 2002

Nads: "Zach, Why are the rights inalienable? You keep asserting they are and never state why. You say its a natural force to be reckoned with, but history shows you are wrong."

History shows I am right.

"This overthrow of the rights of freemen and the establishment of such new relations required a complete revolution in the principle of the government of the United States, the subversion of the state governments, the subjugation of the people..." - Jefferson Davis

Though tangible, the concept of freedom in humanity is as powerful a force as the wind. From the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, slavery persisted, but eventually the opinions of individuals against slavery persisted. The rise of slavery abolition became like a tidal wave force against the oppressors. This was not a happy accident. It was an inevitable revolution. The force of freedom may be patient and it may be violent, but it will not be ignored. History has proven that.

"Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes with an unprepared people a tyranny still of the many, the few, or the one." - Thomas Jefferson

When force is used to forge a nation, resulting in an undemocratic state of being for its peoples, the force of freedom is kept at bay for a time, but revolution is a good thing, and an inevitability. Sometimes it takes centuries, and sometimes it takes millenia, but it will not be ignored. And make no mistake. Though intangible, it is present at all times even when denied its natural state of being.

"The advance of liberalism... [encourages] the hope that the human mind will some day get back to the freedom it enjoyed two thousand years ago." - Thomas Jefferson

Freedom has existed and will exist. We the people deny it to ourselves when we place our own selfish needs above others, be it at the barrel of a gun or some political piece of paper. Eventually, the very force of freedom will out.

You can pretend freedom is not there. That doesn't change the fact that it is. Just as an aetheist can deny that some supreme force governs the universe. I agree it's probably not a old grey man in a robe hanging out in clouds, but something is out there. Something almost tangible and yet elusive, which governs the very fabric of space-time from the largest star to the smallest subatomic particle.

"If there be a God and He is just, His day will come. He will never abandon the whole race of man to be eaten up by the leviathans and mammoths of a day." - Thomas Jefferson

You can pretend it's not there. That doesn't change its state of being.

"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." - Thomas Jefferson

I just love Tommy. He was a slave owner by the way, but a great long-haired hippie of his time.


Calico: "Zachsmind, you argue eloquently, but I think you're wrong. Rights mean nothing except for in their implementation, and I think you half-recognise this when you say that rights are "almost tangible." Almost, yes, but not. Rights are an abstract concept: the right to pursue happiness means nothing by itself."

Though denied, rights still exist. You can deny the existence of the air you breathe. That doesn't change the fact that it's still there. You can even try not to breathe, deny your body's connection to your environment till you're blue in the face. Eventually you will lose the battle against that which you deny.

Abstractions may not be proven in a test tube. You may not be able to pound your fist on it to prove its existence to yourself. Freedom is that elusive, but it still permeates throughout human history.

"...Isn't it the state's job to guarantee your rights?"

It's YOUR job to guarantee your own rights against your oppressors. In America our forefathers put together a government entity which was supposed to do that for us, but when it fails the responsibility falls again upon our shoulders.

"If I stop you from peacefully assembling somewhere am I not allowed to pursue happiness?"

You create the presence that your rights can be taken from you. You set a precedence. Cannibalism is an unthinkable abomination, except in a culture that allows cannibalism of its enemies. When one person creates an 'acceptable rationalization' for the taking of another person's rights, that precedent has the potential of doing the same to you.

"In Germany the Nazis came
first for the Communists.
And I did not speak because
I was not a Communist.
And then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the TradeUnions.
And I did not speak up
because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics.
And I was a Protestant and so I did not speak up.
Then they came for me.
And by that time there was no one left to speak for anyone.

- Martin Niemoler

And where are the Nazis now?

Freedom will out.
posted by ZachsMind at 2:03 PM on August 18, 2002

ZachsMind : Freedom will out.

So will schizophrenia, apparently. What was that?
posted by hob at 4:02 PM on August 18, 2002

A bunch of replies to nads:

The harder thing to swallow is the fact that our moral beliefs are really just random.

In the cosmic scheme of things, perhaps -- insofar as the fact of our existence on this planet is itself just random. That doesn't make either of them any less important.

I would think a diversity in ideas and beliefs is more important than a diversity in what we wear or eat. But apparently diversity means food and clothes not thought. We are all suppose to think the same (or at least share a core). Some diversity.

This is because ideas matter at a deep level. Diversity of beliefs poses difficulties that diversity of food and clothes do not. If I like tom yam goong and you like mashed potatoes, so much the better! If I believe that you deserve to be my slave on the basis of your skin colour while you believe that all people should be free, we have a problem. Ideas affect what we do to other people, and ignoring their differences is irresponsible. I don't say this to encourage arrogance; we must always keep in mind the possibility that we might be wrong, and not rush to judgement. But that's very different from leaving the different beliefs unquestioned: "you say evil genocide, I say purification of the national spirit, let's call the whole thing off."

Think about it for a little longer or take a class that deals with theoretical issues and you'll come to the conclusion there is no right or wrong.

No, there is right and wrong, and you are wrong. :) If you really want to play the credentials game, I'm saying this as a PhD student in the philosophy of religions who is teaching a course in ethical theory.
posted by ramakrishna at 10:47 PM on August 18, 2002

ramakrishna, I'm right and you know it! Moral and ethical theory are normative enterprises. Yet they still endure regress problems similiar to those in epistemology. Since your studying philosophy of religions, I'm guessing you take a foundationalist approach and have God stand as your unmoved mover. However, if you don't believe god exists, foundationalism doesn't work, infinitism is bs, and coherentism has a number of problems. Basically, the point is, right/wrong don't mean what most people think they mean. Right/Wrong mean with respect to culturally defined beliefs, not absolutes.
posted by nads at 12:46 AM on August 19, 2002

Miguel, thanks for this thread. It's one that MeFi has needed for a long time.

eurocentric culture is slowly gaining the mental tools to say it is better than other cultures.

The objectionable part of this idea, rhyax, is the full stop (period) at the end, because it implies 'absolutely better than other cultures' when the question should be 'better at what?' English culture isn't better at helping you to live in the heart of the Amazon than Yanomani culture. American culture isn't better for living in a city of ten million Chinese than the local culture of that city.

Cultures should be considered relative to their particular environments. That has little to do with the stereotyped cultural relativism that critics attack for suggesting that 'anything goes'. Such 'crude' cultural relativism (as it is often described) is a strawman. Sure, some people may believe it, but you'll see it attacked much more often than you'll ever see it defended.

I spent most of my twenties grappling with these issues, as part of a broader study* of how traditions and cultures change. My conclusions about 'rights and rites', as Miguel so neatly puts it, were simple enough:

- Certain universal rights and values take precedence over any defence of a particular practice as traditional, part of an indigenous culture, etc. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights may not be a perfect expression of those universal rights and values, but at the moment it's the best political tool available to encourage their protection. We should not flinch from promoting and arguing for human rights over traditional practices that breach them anywhere.

- But the necessary flipside of this is: practices that fall outside the domain of universal rights and values are the preserve of particular cultures. They are by definition not universal, but local and relative: that is, to be considered in the light of the surrounding physical and social environment, local values, and so on.

- In the light of the latter, any statement that a certain culture is 'best' in absolute terms is pointless. A culture can only be the best at doing certain things in certain environments and certain circumstances in certain people's judgement. Talking about 'Eurocentric' culture as 'the best' shows the pointlessness of such claims: what is 'Eurocentric' culture? American culture is not Australian culture, Australian culture is not Scottish culture, Scottish culture is not English culture, English culture is not German culture. So whose is 'best'? And before you say 'USA!', American culture is not Southern culture is not Midwest culture is not West coast culture is not Californian culture is not Northern Californian culture is not San Francisco culture is not Haight-Ashbury culture.

And before anyone counters, 'Well, Eurocentric cultures are best at respecting human rights'... I haven't read Sandall's book, but the last paragraph of Tallis's review is worth commenting on for a wider audience:

Some of the passion in Sandall's writing comes from a local issue: his horror at the betrayal of the Australian Aboriginal people by practitioners of romantic primitivism, the intellectuals who rewrote Aboriginal history, enforced bilingual instruction, encouraged a cultural apartheid of "self-determination" and prioritized the preservation of traditional culture over the skills of modern life.

Non-Australians may not be aware that the 'betrayal' being attacked here was an attempt to redress the terrible effects of exactly the sort of cultural assimilation and Western triumphalism we see promoted by various posters around MeFi. For much of the 20th century, many Aboriginal children with partial white ancestry were forcibly removed from their mothers, tribes and homes and 'integrated' into white society for their supposed betterment, a policy that remained in place in some parts of the country until 1970. The attempts of recent years to support traditional Aboriginal culture, while they may not have been wholly successful or without problems of their own, have to be seen against that background of attempted cultural obliteration as an attempt to undo harm, or at least prevent further harm.

We may not agree about exactly which rights are universal, but the right of children to remain with their families would probably make most people's list. Out of a belief in its own absolute superiority, 'Eurocentric' culture demonstrated in Australia - a democratic, Western society - that it is just as capable of transgressing basic human rights in a sustained and misguided fashion as any other.
posted by rory at 4:35 AM on August 19, 2002

nads: As you state, regress problems in ethics are "similar to" -- or even the same as -- "those in epistemology." As far as I can see, your waving away of various approaches to grounds for knowledge applies not just to right and wrong, but to everything that exists (or doesn't exist). Which is to say that, by your logic, your own navel doesn't exist any more than do universal standards of right and wrong.

(PS I don't actually believe in the God of a particular religion, more in the abstract sense of an ultimate ground of being.)

rory: When we speak of universals, we can still only do it from our own limited point of view. Abstract appeals to human rights are not going to convince those who didn't believe in "rights" as such (which includes the vast majority of people in human history, since the concept of a right is quite a modern one). The surprising thing about the Universal Declaration is just how many governments have signed on to it, and I'm all for using it as a lever on them: "look, you said you agree with this, now live up to it!" But that approach doesn't work with those who haven't signed, and I don't see why it should. Better to refer to their own indigenous concepts of a just state or moral behaviour and make a critique of those.
posted by ramakrishna at 8:41 AM on August 19, 2002

Yes, that's why I said 'rights and values'. Values that once would have been framed in different terms are nowadays often framed in terms of rights, but that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't universal. (My own ideas about what makes a right 'universal' are a bit too involved to go into here, considering it took a whole masters thesis to outline them the first time around.)

I view the UDHR as a political tool, not as a philosophical statement of absolutes. A lever, as you say. And because so many countries have signed it, it does exert pressure on those that haven't: countries risk international condemnation, or worse, if they fail to measure up to it, whether they've signed or not.
posted by rory at 9:50 AM on August 19, 2002

The human trafficking (or the young female prostitute persuasion) in Asia is rampant

And is fuelled in large part by sex tourists (many of whom are pedophiles, straight and gay) who come to Asia from the US, Canada, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, (insert predominantly white first world country of your choice here).

In Korea, there are untold hundreds of thousands of women enslaved in prostitution, who are bought and sold like so much cattle. Some enter the profession by choice.

And this doesn't happen in the western world? Please.
posted by lia at 10:55 AM on August 19, 2002

The objectionable part of this idea, rhyax, is the full stop (period) at the end, because it implies 'absolutely better than other cultures' when the question should be 'better at what?' English culture isn't better at helping you to live in the heart of the Amazon than Yanomani culture. American culture isn't better for living in a city of ten million Chinese than the local culture of that city.

no, and again i'm not saying this is a good thing, i'm just saying where i think our culture is headed right now. i don't think the christian right cares what the yanomani are good at, and when the left stop saying things like, "we need to respect all cultures as being equal" the shift is towards the right.

i am not saying the new liberals would say these other cultures are any less worthy of protection but they may be less vocal in their statements of the other culture's equality. it's also central to what i'm saying that everyone in the eurocentric culture isn't thinking the same way on these issues.

i am absolutely not saying that eurocentric culture is the best, what i am saying is it seems that eurocentric culture is gaining the ability to say it is the better than others on an individual basis. they are very different things. and yes, of course there are differences in subcultures, but i think eurocentric culture is cohesive enough a group to talk about. there are large shared values there with smaller differences.
posted by rhyax at 3:07 PM on August 19, 2002

Hob: "So will schizophrenia, apparently."

I see nothing contradictory between the belief in freedom and the realization that we're on a spinning rock - finite space and in need of elbow room. It's gonna take a few more generations but we will eventually start colonizing other planets. Some of the world's greatest minds (and admittedly a handful of kooks) are working on it now. I think it's Japan or China that's working to have a moon hotel of some sort by 2020.

Well either we'll find more elbow room, or we'll go the way of the dinosaurs and I'll be wrong. Personally, I'd prefer to believe I'm right.
posted by ZachsMind at 5:12 PM on August 19, 2002

Ramakrishna to nads: No, there is right and wrong, and you are wrong. :) If you really want to play the credentials game, I'm saying this as a PhD student in the philosophy of religions who is teaching a course in ethical theory.

I agree entirely. nads, I have studied a good bit on ethical theory. You should do some more reading on the subject. Not postmodern dogma, either. Try Peter Singer and Peter Unger for some good utilitarian views (and applied ethics as well), and Kant for the other side of the fence. And they don't use god as an ethical basis, because it's impossible for god (in the christian/judaic/muslim sense) to be the root of moral law, unless you believe that wacky continental philosophy.
posted by The Michael The at 9:22 AM on August 20, 2002

My recommended reading list on the subject would involve Plato (Gorgias and Republic) and Aristotle's Ethics. I do believe a lot of that wacky continental philosophy, just not postmodernism. (Hadot, Gadamer, Habermas -- good stuff.)
posted by ramakrishna at 10:42 PM on August 20, 2002