WHAT is CULTURE?(Notes for the workshop on ‘Culture Reporting’, for Nigerian journalists, Goethe-Institut, Lagos/Nigeria, 2006)
Topical intro – inspired by:
a. an advert in the London ECONOMIST, June 24th, 2006, and
b. an article in the NYT of March 6th, 2006, as printed in the SZ SUPPLEMENT
The advert has two messages
”Culture is the real power of globalisation”
meaning: It IS…
but then the last line states:
“UNDERSTANDING culture is the key to successful globalisation.”
and in between the advert says:
that “Vlerick.. right at the heart of Europe, in Belgium… is the best place to study…with the emphasis on qualitative, original and entrepreneurial thinking in a …truly multiculrural environment.
Interact with with our worldwide network of alumni and discover how culture can be the real power of globalisation. (CAN BE!) . We provide the environment to engage with and learn from participants from all over the world in an ambiance of respect for this great diversity.”
You have guessed it:
- it is an advert for a university, which – unheard of twenty
years ago! – is advertising its ‘product’ world-wide,
- and is doing so in the ECONOMIST!
- in a smallish European country,
- which is really diverse, with three languages spoken:
French, Dutch and German,
- which has long been said it would break up because of its
tribal divide,
- but which also houses the EU and NATO headquarters
- thus – because in the heart of Europe – is truly multi-cultural,
with Germany, Holland and France (and Britain across
the channel) only being a few miles away!!!
… diversity…
So CULTURE does sell
(compare sales slogan by representative of one of the new Laender in East German – to attract US, Indian, Japanese, Arab investments, stating that ‘Kultur ist ein Standortvorteil’ – meaning: the cultural environment helps to atttact foreign investors)
And then the article in the English language supplement of the NYT, which is also being printed by papers in France, Spain, Italy etc… as a free extra…
I jump right into to the middle of that article where it says:
“It turns out that it’s hard to change the destinies
of nations and individuals just by pulling economic
levers. Over the past few decades, America has trans-
fered large amounts of money to Africa to build
factories and spur economic development. None
of this has worked. As the economists Raghuram
Rajan and Arvind Subramanian demonstrated, there
is no correlation between aid and growth.”
Where then is the real problem, one is tempted to ask?
And the author answers that question right in the title of his contribution:
“QUESTIONS OF CULTURE”
Meaning… that YOU Africans don’t have the right kind of culture… or could it be that the NORTH/West did NOT understand your African culture, when it got engaged in Africa?
We shall come to that in a moment, after we have done away with DAVID BROOK’s nonsensical, false statement that
“America has transferred large amounts of money
to Africa to build factories and spur economic development…”
It is patently FALSE:
a. since America did NOT transfer large sums… NEVER !
IN FACT THE SUMS WERE RATHER SMALL compared to those of other ‘transferers’ (like Europe, the World Bank and others!)
and
b. America did NOT ‘transfer large sums’ ”to build factories”
- if at all, it is US companies that have invested, but we call
those
INVESTMENTS!
and
c. the sums meant “to spur economic development” were
- rather smallish,
- very often spent on useless projects;
- in which half or more of the money was spent on so-called
- and expensive ! - US experts.
So, now we have done away with this nonsense and we can come back to the issue of CULTURE proper, and I shall sum up some of Mr. BROOKS main arguments…
Argument One:
“Once, not that long ago, economics was the queen of the social sciences. Human beings were assumed to be profit-maximizing creatures, trending toward reasonableness.
As societies grew richer and more modern, it was assumed, they would become more secular. As people became better educated, primitive passions, like tribalism and nationalism would fade away and global institutions would rise to take their place. As communication technology improved there would be greater cooperation and understanding…
None of these suppositions turned out to be true.”
Argument TWO:
”Communication technology hasn’t brought people closer together; it has led to greater cultural segmentation, across the world and (…MINE!) even within the US. Education hasn’t made people more moderate and independent-minded.
…
All of this has thrown a certain sort of materialistic vision into crisis. We now know that global economic and technological forces do not gradually erode local cultures and values. Instead, cultures and values shape economic development. Moreover, as people are empowered by greater wealth and education, cultural differences become more pronounced, not less, as different groups chase different visions of the good life, and react in aggressive ways to perceived slights to their cultural dignity. (see SOYINKA on Palestine and Dignity!)
Economics which assumes people are basically reasonable
(WHAT REASONABLENESS ???) and respond straight-forwardly to incentives (???), is no longer queen of the social sciences.
The events of the past years have thrown us back to the murky realms of theology, sociology, anthropology and history.”
QUESTION:
MURKY as COMPARED to the REASONABLENESS
of ECONOMICS?
That is American IDEOLOGY!!!
Question to Mr. BROOKS: does he hereby mean the born-again attitude of Mr. G.W. Bush and his ‘evil empire’ terminology?
Does he mean the bush-fire-like spreading of American fundamentalism, above all in Africa, but also in Latin America and the Philippines ???
Let’s continue with Mr. BROOKS:
”Even economists know this, and are migrating to more behaviouralist and … CULTURAL approaches.
… Alan Greenspan said that he once assumed that capitalism was “human nature”. But after watching the collapse of the Russian economy, he had come to consider it was “not human nature at all, but culture.”
Mr. BROOKS then asks a number of questions among them:
”How do I fulfil my yearnings for righteousness? What is possible and what is impossible?”.
To which he answers:
“The answers to these questions are wildly diverse, and once worldviews have been absorbed (from childhood days…), they produce wildly different levels and types of social and … cultural capital. East Asians and Jews, for example, seem to thrive commercially wherever they settle.”
And that’s where Africa, as quoted in the beginning comes in…
He then also describes the mess in the US, and states that
“a million experiments to restructure schools and
bureaucracies in the US”… have not produced any results,
And why?
”But students who lack cultural and social capital because they did not come from intact, organized families continue to fall further and further behind – unless they come into contact with some great mentor who can not only teach, but also changes values and behaviour.”
ME:
what a load of US individualistic BULLSHIT.
The author simply forgetting to ask why there are fewer and fewer ’intact, organized families’ when the income of the average American middle class family has fallen by some 30 percent in the last 30 years – forcing both partners to work or the father to have two to three Jobs at the same time!
And that was BEFORE the present crisis !!!
I is individualist, moralistic, protestant bullshit – like here in Nigeria, when you place your hope on that MENTOR,when the Bushs, Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Condoleezas and others represent the interest of the CHEVRONS, Halliburtons and other crooks – who have been over-charging the US Defence Department ever since the start of the war in IRAK?
WHERE ARE THE MENTORS?
May be America needs a Nelson Mandela or a
Wole SOYINKA?
And Mr. BROOKS to sum up:
”It all amounts to this: events have forced different questions on us. If the big contest of the twentieth century was between planned and free market economies, the big question of the next century will be understanding how CULTURES change and be changed (DOES THAT INCLUDE HOW POSSIBLY US CULTURE MIGHT BE CHANGED???), how social and cultural capital can be nurtured and developed, how desctructive cultural conflict can be turned to healthy cultural competition. People who think about global development are ahead of the rest of us in thinking about these matters.”
And what does Mr. BROOKS come up with???….
“I recommend rival anthologies: “Culture Matters,” edited by Lawrence Harrison and … Samuel Huntingdon, and “Culture and Public Action”, “edited by Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton.) But the rest of us will catch up soon.”
I, FOR ONE, DOUBT IT AFTER HAVING READ THIS ARTICLE… |
