Anakena - the Role of Religions

Anakena Paddon

SOC 400

Culture and Globalization: the Role of Religions

            The most interesting phrase from this week’s reading, to me, was that presented by Uma Narayan: “death by culture”. She begins her article by attempting to unpack her frustration with conversations regarding “bride-burning” and the confusion when talking to people who do not really know any valid facts about the practices. One of the first points she is careful to highlight is the difference in which domestic violence is treated in a country like India and a Western country. Third World women are automatically made out to be helpless victims of their culture (hence the expression, “death by culture” which both oversimplifies the relationship between women and the social issue and renders the culture in question all the more foreign-seeming and “wrong”) whereas women in the Western World, while still victimized, seem to be presented more as collateral damage of a social phenomenon rather than victims of an overwhelming cultural pressure.

            The beginning of this extract reminded me of the Stabile and Kumar article on the role of women in serving as legitimizers for war. Narayan states: “By calling attention to the difficulties in giving “cultural explanations” for violence against mainstream Western women, I attempt to think about the political implications of the fact that “cultural explanations” seem more plausible with respect to violence that affects Third-World women”. The importance of the role of politics in this gender issue is crucial to the understanding of her article, because the reason why the issues and representations in domestic violence are represented so differently in India and the U.S.A. are institutional.

            Indeed, feminist groups in the U.S.A. are able to focus on a wider scope of issues that fall under the umbrella term of “domestic violence” because “feminist efforts in the U.S. seem to have moved in the direction of widening the scope of what is understood to constitute ‘domestic violence’, pointing out that verbal, emotional, and psychological abuse often constitute components of domestic violence” (Narayan, p.91). Contrary to this, the feminist movement in India has highlighted the issue of dowry deaths and not the general issues of domestic violence, because this was how they were able to get media coverage and more attention to the importance of the issue, spreading awareness on a local level (Narayan says that prior to widespread information from feminist movements, she had never heard of that phenomenon). To me, this indication that an educated, involved feminist such as Narayan did not know about dowry deaths indicates that is does not constitute common knowledge and therefore is not a blanket, cultural happening.

            So clearly there is a loss in translation somewhere along the way – and Narayan’s conversation about absence and visibility was very interesting. It is difficult to identify what is missing so we focus on what is placed at the forefront of social issues in the media, in this case, general issues about domestic violence in the USA and the specific focus on dowry deaths in India. However, the problem is that this focus is also the only glimpse foreign countries get into those social problems, hence why Narayan is hearing conversations about dowry deaths at cocktail parties.

            Her final section, titled “Differences of ‘Culture’ and Differences in ‘Culture as Explanation’” really connected this extract with the title of our week’s readings, emphasizing the role of religion in culture and globalization. She points out the weaknesses in trying to establish a valid connection between a “culture” and a religion. I really appreciated how she focused not on dowry deaths or domestic violence but on their perception in the media and in popular culture.

            In Barber’s article on the Jihad vs McWorld, he portrays two opposing and clashing “teams” of globalization. In his own words, “the rival observers seem to consult different almanacs drawn from the libraries of contrarian planets”. The two rival observers are grouped under the categories of race (which according to him reflects the tribal past) and soul (which anticipates cosmopolitan future). By oversimplifying both categories, he titles them Babel and Disneyland – which overarchingly encompasses their main values, but also hints at the potential for destruction each carries (Babel ending in violent civil wars and Disneyland turning the world entirely into a capitalistic venture).

            Both depend on one another to exist, because they work in opposition of one another, but at the end of his article, Barber presents the scenario where one would prevail over the other, the Jihad’s perspective displaying “microwars” and McWorld introducing a semblance of “micropeace”. He states that if they are unable to find a compromise, then the planet must prepare for a “terminally postdemocratic lifestyle”.

            While I understand the fear that comes from the prospect of losing the stability what often is presented as democratic stability, part of me wonders why we rarely agree to look into alternative political systems. What if there is something more practical that does not pit the Jihad vision of the world against McWorld? Is it truly relevant to compare religious extremism with capitalist extremism? Is he presenting capitalism as a religion?

            Kurzman’s article on “bin Laden and other thoroughly modern Muslims” argues against the popular view of equating globalization with Americanization, suggesting that there are other avenues of modernization and “progress”. While it is politically practical to frame the Middle East in a timeless, backwards way, conveniently forgetting their technological access and widespread use, as well as the importance of media, it is more useful to recognize their own modernity and how it could enrich and change ours. Along with the article on Lagaan which seemed to introduce the advent of Bollywood as the new all-popular genre of cinema, this article proposes that there are alternatives to Americanization.

            Some will most certainly fear this “other” alternative and this foreign influence, but I am sure that many would also be relieved to know that modernity does not have to mean the McDonaldization of the planet but that new thoughts on education, political debates and international issues can be shared.

            The final article, by Caitlin Killian on North African women in France who were responded to the headscarf affair, was very interesting to me because I grew up in France and in recent years there were a flurry of news reports concerning young women in high schools who were banned from wearing their headscarf or would be banned from attending school.

            This article is somewhat scary to me, because I find that it highlights the intolerance of a country and the necessity of cultural and religious assimilation to France (although it is not spelled out in so many words). I suppose I agree with the demographic I fit into: Killian states that “young and especially well-educated women are more likely to believe that the veil is a matter of the personal right to religious freedom and that France should be more accepting of the diverse cultures that compose it”. I think that when young girls are evicted from school for wearing a headscarf (don’t even get my started on the hypocrisy of young Catholic students who wear gold crosses around their necks), they are being shown that their culture and religion is not accepted in the country and that difference from the mainstream demographic of a white, Catholic person means you will not be privy to the same opportunities or rights.

            I found this section challenging emotionally, because I felt like the intolerance and unfairness was very blatant and so often tied to ignorance (as highlighted in Narayan’s article in particular). Religion is a delicate subject because it has been used so often to justify world issues or as an excuse for evicting middle-schoolers for gaining the education that would allow them not to make such poor, and overly simplified judgments as have been demonstrated in this collection of articles.