The five scholars explored the question, “What is the meaning of food?” and debated its role in ethnic and religious tensions. They also examined the possibility that “food, which is something that all of us share, albeit in different ways, can be used to bring people together instead of differentiating between us.” According to Goldstein, one of the most important ideas to come out of the group was that food is a social process rather than a commodity and thus is central to multicultural understanding: “[Food] has to do with how we live and it’s not just an object that we ingest.”
Food: History & Culture in the West [PDF], was a 2010 UC Berkley Symposium exploring multiple links between food and culture:
[more inside]
posted by byanyothername
on Jan 7, 2013 -
14 comments
What does it mean to be Canadian? It isn't about an ethnicity, a religion, a language, or a shared heritage or history. From
CBC's Ideas comes the two-part radio documentary,
Being Canadian. "From east to west, public intellectuals and private citizens (both new and old Canadians), tell film-maker Sun-Kyung (Sunny) Yi about the concerns, the questions, and the challenges of living together in a multicultural and diverse society." It is also the story of how and why a Korean family became Canadian, first in the law, and then in their hearts.
posted by Hildegarde
on Dec 29, 2010 -
120 comments
Slavoj Žižek
recently gave five talks under the title Masterclass - Notes Towards a Definition of Communist Culture. It sez 'ere, "The master class analyses phenomena of modern thought and culture with the intention to discern elements of possible Communist culture. It moves at two levels: first, it interprets some cultural phenomena (from today’s architecture to classic literary works like Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Heloise) as failures to imagine or enact a Communist culture; second, it explores attempts at imagining how a Communist culture could look, from Wagner’s Ring to Kafka’s and Beckett’s short stories and contemporary science fiction novels." Audio of Zizek's talks and subsequent discussion is now online:
Part I Utopias;
Part II Architecture as Ideology;
Part III Wagner’s Ring as a Communist narrative;
Part IV Populism and Democracy;
Part V Environment, Identity and Multiculturalism. Those who like to watch the beard in motion will find links to video of some of the talks posted
here.
posted by Abiezer
on Jun 22, 2009 -
29 comments
"Hundreds of thousands of Americans have endured tours of duty in Iraq. They are returning home with a new word on their lips. It will have an impact on the American Experiment,
inshallah."
posted by Firas
on Dec 7, 2007 -
52 comments
I'll take "Western Superiority Complexes" for $500, Alex... Let the wars begin: The ever controversial Ayn Rand Institute suggests that on the eve of Columbus Day we reject revisionist Politically Correct history that Columbus was a butcher. By what justification could we state that Western Civilization is superior to others? Is multiculturalism a bad idea? Does this suggest we have a 'right' to wipe out peoples inferior to us? Darwinism at its potential worst--or a scary reality to admit?
posted by tgrundke
on Oct 11, 2002 -
60 comments
Multiculturalism v/s Democracy On this day in 1858, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois and Abraham Lincoln, a Kentucky-born lawyer and one-time U.S. Representative from Illinois, began a series of famous public debates on the issue of slavery, during the course of which Lincoln said:
"They [Founding Fathers]
meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all: constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, every where."
I argue that when a culture values slavery, when a culture is built upon a system of basic inequality, regardless of the reasons, that culture is incompatible with Democracy and the ideals of American society, and can not and should not be embraced by Americans.
Is it possible that part of the anger at the US stems from the "spreading and deepening" influence of American principles, and not just at our economic and military mistakes?
posted by ewkpates
on Aug 21, 2002 -
28 comments
Can we at least agree to disagree that Multiculturism has gotten us somewhere? Many Arab Americans are safer because of it. Is it possible that age-old liberal propaganda has insured at least partially, a much more measured response from the US government, as even conservative leaders seek to include Muslim voice in their sermons of American togetherness?
Are we growing up as a society as a result of this cataclysm? (Warning: Link to antithesis of my point--which is exactly the point as it were)
posted by crasspastor
on Sep 15, 2001 -
10 comments
