Cultural Globalization: The Role of Religions Leah Feutz

Leah Feutz- Cultural Globalization: The Role of Religions Blog Post

            I began by reading “Death by Culture” by Uma Narayan, which was a very interesting look at a specific issue as a way to discuss the broader subject of misconceptions and the challenges of the “general project of ‘learning about Other cultures’” (84). While I sense that a large part of globalization studies begins with trying to break down our own American “problematic assumptions and understandings” of “other cultures”, this reading also helped me see how these perceptions are formed in the context of their own localities (83). In general, Narayan’s piece is a discussion of the “ways in which ‘culture’ is invoked in explanations of forms of violence against Third-World women, while it is not similarly invoked in explanations of forms of violence that affect mainstream Western women” (84). More specifically, her piece seeks to understand “the effects of national contexts on feminist agendas around domestic violence”, and how that has created different framings of these issues and thus undermines comparative understanding, which s necessary to “transnational cooperation and solidarity among feminists” (86, 88).

        One of Narayan’s points that I found to be most interesting is where she stated that, “there is a marked tendency to proffer ‘cultural explanations’ for problems within communities of color within Western contexts more readily than there is to proffer ‘cultural explanations’ for similar problems within mainstream Western communities” (87). She sites the example of welfare dependency and female-headed households, which are only attributed to “cultural pathologies” within communities of color and not when referencing white Americans (88). I think this is especially evident in some more conservative political discourse, where it seems that the welfare debate is often discussed in reference to single mothers of color, and many even condemn these women for creating a poor environment for their children. Poverty is also discussed as a cycle, producing delinquent, anti-social children who become criminals in adulthood, etc. The way this issue is discussed in reference to ethnic minorities in the United States insinuates that somehow these groups have a propensity for welfare dependence and that the way to combat this “culture” is to re-instill family values into American life. Poor white families, on the other hand, are discussed as being victims of the economy and Democratic legislation, and are not accused of the same type of cultural ineptitude that minorities face. I understand that this type of discourse serves to promote a political agenda and to capture these poor white votes, but there is clearly a huge injustice and danger evident in skewing issues in this manner. Narayan’s idea of the importance of comparative understanding can be seen here. Whereas white poor people are victims of a system, communities of color are self-victimizing. This is a huge impediment to recognizing or acknowledging the systemic factors that perpetuate poverty in many of these communities, and also undermines a lot of the potential for collective action.

Similarly, Kurzman’s article discusses the framing of Islamist Muslims as all exhibiting the same more traditionalist ideals as the Taliban, and seeks to break down these perceptions by showing the different ways in which this clearly not true. In the end, he states that, “Western culture, we are learning, is not the only form that modernity may assume” (20). Liberal Islam is discussed as having many of the similar sentiments in terms of progression and society as Americans. This is a very interesting discussion of how we generalize different groups of people and assume that anything associated with Islam is backwards, uneducated, and dangerously fundamentalist in some way. This does help in justifying the War on Terror, just as racial undertones in welfare debate help to serve the cause of welfare reform, and misses many of the ways that these types of discourse fail to see specificity and thus undermine enacting affective policy.

In “The Other Side of the Veil” by Caitlin Killian, the author is investigating “the headscarf affair”, and interviews North African immigrant women as an “opportunity to understand how they negotiate their identities and position themselves culturally in France” (568). She hypothesized that many different factors such as age, education, religiosity, and amount of exposure to French culture before arrival could “influence their discourses about the veil”, but found that age and education were “the best predicators of responses” (568, 586). I found the discussion of women as “guardians of identity and culture” to be especially interesting (570). Killian discusses how, “in the eyes of the host society, immigrant women are seen in one of two was: as either ‘barriers to assimilation’ because of their insistence on maintaining cultural traditions or, as the opposite, ‘vehicles of integration into dominant society’” (570). This bind or the pressure of this role is perhaps complicated or compounded in the context of French culture and laicism, as opposed to contexts more conducive to cultural pluralism. I am continually fascinated by the way that the immigrant experience in general is shaped by and responds to new societal contexts. Killian also mentions in her conclusion that this discussion should turn next to looking at the second generation of Maghrebin women in France. I feel like this is part of the larger need of many or perhaps all youth to form their identity and assert this self, specifically with immigrants in the context of feeling as if their cultural identity is divergent or different from the dominant culture they are living in. Even with young people who’s families have been in a particular country for multiple generations, there is perhaps still this struggle between influences of dominant society and the cultural influence that family has in one’s life. In my high school, where there was a highly diverse student body and many students with different ethnic, religious, national, and cultural backgrounds, I saw some of this same theme of how young people perform their identity. There were multiple “cultural groups”/organizations/clubs, such as the Eritrean club and also a group of predominately Pakistani boys who would play cricket out on the field after school every day. But this context/environment was conducive, and furthermore encouraging of cultural pluralism, as opposed to other contexts like French society that incentivize assimilation. I would love to know more about how cultural identity is performed and expressed in different contexts. Also, I wonder what is acceptable in certain contexts, and what symbols of cultural difference, like “the veil”, is deemed unacceptable or backwards.

Finally, in “Jihad Versus McWorld”, Benjamin Barber discusses a world “caught between…the two eternities of race and soul: that of race reflecting the tribal past, that of soul anticipating the cosmopolitan future” (4). In these depictions of scenarios, the world is caught between war and bloodshed, rejection of modernity itself, and a clash of cultures occurs, or, conversely, global infatuation with a “homogenous global theme park, one McWorld” (4). Barber describes these two forces as opposing and conflicting, and that “they produce their contraries and need one another” (5). In other words, there is a “powerful and paradoxical interdependence” or dialectic to be seen in the relationships between Jihad and McWorld, even with keeping their radical differences in mind (6). I found it very interesting when Barber described how civic virtues, liberty, and “the virtues of the democratic nation” are at risk or even lost as a result of this confrontation (7). Maggie wrote in her post about how she was skeptical of the idea that this will undermine democracy, and I think that is a very interesting point. This made me think of how discussion of where America fits into the globalizing world centers on the idea of democratic values, and how spreading democracy to the world is perhaps the central aim of the American agenda. I wonder if this will only strengthen with time, and maybe will be an important factor to incorporate into Barber’s theory. I know that his article was written in 1996, and so there are lots of new ways in which that American value of democracy has played out and developed, especially with the “war on terror”, etc. Maybe new conceptions of this dialectic should take into account the multiple factors that could be at war and in interdependence in the future, and potentially this will create a more complicated but also accurate description of how the world of tomorrow could look.