Are we living in a monoculture?

another thing that might fuel Momus' theory is that of the apparent decline and unpopularity of Mcdonalds that is now catching a hold. they're closing down outlets here and there around the world, they're introducing fruits and yoghurt at the counter in an effort to be seen as healthier.

in your axis of evil para i don't understand what connection there is between the cultural agenda and N. Korea's nukes

I guess I'm wanting a feeling of 'This place is so substantively different from the culture I was brought up in that it could be used as an alternative template for modern life'. What I instead usually get is 'This place used to be substantively different, but now contents itself with accepting the US model and 'catching up'' -- ie the sense that 'how we relate to modernity' and 'how we relate to America' are the same issue. And yet we know that, relatively recently (for instance, the Bauhaus and its attempts to define a very German 'modernity') there were ways to be 'modern' that were not ways to be 'American'.

why is it that they have adapted to american culture and not that they have taken what they like/want from western culture and ignored the rest?

Well, you may be right. But are the elements they've kept from their own culture 'progressive' and 'modernist'? (Brazilia is a nice example of a very regional approach to 'the modern', recognisably different from the US model.)

in your axis of evil para i don't understand what connection there is between the cultural agenda and N. Korea's nukes

North Korea's 'particularity' is very much expressed in military fly-bys, missile parades, people in stadia holding tiny fragments of the national flag, etc. That seems to be culture there. I hear Kim Il Sung is an aspiring film-maker, though, so I reserve my judgement until I see his first feature, 'Whooping Cranes At Torturer's Creek'.

That said, I think Australia is one of the best countries in the world that you could hope to live in. I consider myself very lucky to have that privilege.

McDonalds is shutting down outlets, okay, but there are still thousands. In Europe there's also Burger King, KFC and the rest. But in France there's "Free Time" avec le "Hit Poulet!" C'est magnifique, tres francais! It's as standardized and homogeneous as anything american. But France is an extremely standardized society.

As noted, IKEA is a great example. How is it Swedish? The design comes from Sweden, nothing is produced there. Totally globalized. Not even the Swedes could afford to buy furniture produced in Sweden.

Despite perhaps justified concerns re: a more militarized US foreign policy, I really don't think the gov't has much to do with the willingness of the world to buy certain US products, i.e. films, fast food, levis. People love that stuff. So do I--SOMETIMES. The problem, like anything, is overconsumption. Die Hard to the exclusion of the hundreds of great small US films that often people outside the states don't see, or only in art houses. Whoppers are great, but you'll get fat, and you'll contract cancer and diabetes if you only eat junk.

The problem is, Europeans don't go to European films. Part of that has to do with distribution monopolies, but part of it has to do with the desire to be entertained, rather than instructed. Similarly, the power of fast food is the "fast" part. Even the French don't always have time for a two hour lunch.

Sorry for the ramble. It's a really interesting question. I guess my point is that there are billions of willing victims out there.

probably would be a better world if those Thai children weren't forced by Kathy Lee Gifford and Nike to make clothes and could go back to being prostitutes for Japanese sex tourists.

And it went tres bust a couple of years ago.

IMO the 'US' is just a metonym for a market-dominated monoculture (which also IMO is the lesser of two evils compared to micro-nationalist fervor)

That's a good point. One that is missed by many.

Also.....

People don't even know they've been co-opted sometimes. I was recently talking to a German univ. student who said to me, "We have a concept here in Germany called 'the American Dream.' Have you ever heard of it?" I almost choked on my Bratwurst.

But the Bauhaus point is OTM, leading to the ubiquitous International Style which is, of course, international! Kind of.

Ok, back to topic. Someone else to thread!

I have had this exact conversation with a number of German students, early 20s usually. It's explicitly understood. They have an aversion to German flags, being thought of as German, etc. Of course "Germany" is not very old, relatively, and that may have something to do with it, just since Bismarck, or Weimar, or WWII, or 1990, take your pick of historical milestones.

There is also an element of reverse (and perverse) self-importance. "our guilt is so great you cannot possibly understand."

Oh, come on.

I don't think I understand what you mean by "substantively different" means - whatever point in history you go back to you can find similar family, gov't , social structures across different societies, so I'm a little dubious about the idea that at any point there was that huge a leap between cultures. You can find still significant differences between societies, ways of thinking about how you relate to society that can throw you offbalance when you understand them, they just tend to be things that are subtler and don't jump out and hit you over the head.

re Nathalie's point of "subjective monoculture" - I agree but there are also many ppl who have grown up (and will continue to do so) between 2 or more cultures and so have a unique perspective on them. What would you call that I wonder?

Of course this is a subjective matter. Yes, there are more 'local' things off the beaten path. It's a question of degree. How different is 'substantively different'? How different is 'different enough'? Can we imagine visiting Japan pre-1860s (when it was 'closed to the world') and finding something otherworldly? Japan still has otherworldly elements to it, and yet it also has a lot in common with the west. Surely it's a question of where you look?

At this point (drumroll) I'd like to bring in Alain Badiou, or rather a paraphrase of his arguments from a review of one of his books (apologies to those who were on the 'Indie, Class...' thread, where I also quoted this):

'While purporting to "respect difference," the acolytes of otherness are "clearly horrified," Badiou observes, "by any vigorously sustained difference." Arguing that genuine difference entails conflict, Badiou contends that "difference" is really a recipe for homogeneity and consensus. By this token, left-wing militants, along with Christian and Islamic fundamentalists and African practitioners of clitorectomy, are stigmatized as "bad others" and disinvited from those "celebrations of diversity" sponsored in campus halls and advertising agencies. "Good others," on the other hand, exhibit differences that are remarkably consonant with "the identity of a wealthy West." Indeed, with its mantra of "inclusion" and its vagueness about "the exact political meaning of the identity being promoted," identity politics supplies exotic grist for the corporate mills of Western democracies. Thus, in Badiou's view, "difference," cast in the image and likeness of consumerism, joins "rights" as rhetorical camouflage for Western economic and military domination.'

(Me again) So, in answer to H's question, the degree of difference I'm talking about would be the degree of difference sufficient to cause conflict (since 'genuine difference entails conflict'). It would be the degree of difference that would go beyond what you could put in a Janet Jackson video or a 'multi-culti' advertisement. It would be the degree of difference that would lead to differences of opinion about whether the 'other' concerned was a 'good other' or a 'bad other'.

It goes without saying that conflict does not have to be mortal conflict, though, and that the fact that we might be prepared to call, say, clitorectomy a practise of 'bad others' does not mean that we have the moral right to invade the countries where it's practised and eradicate their difference in the name of 'universal human rights'.

But in answer to your question 'what then should we do', surely the answer is 'We co-exist'. Even with 'bad others', others we cannot 'understand'. Diversity is, in itself, a higher value than whatever moral perspective we currently subscribe to.

That's pretty damn glib when it comes to things like clitorectomy.

i still find places vastly different. i've been on an unintentional tour of english L cities recently, liverpool leeds and london. people look and act in different ways. in liverpool, they just walk right up to you and speak to you. they wear their caps at different angles, even if they bring out st george for the football.

there are still places, very provincial places, where people are deeply suspicious of america. my dad won't watch american comedies, and i know pubs that would have chipboard on the windows in twenty minutes if they tried to serve budweiser.
but in metropoli you're as equal to find anti-amricans, ones who use hip-hop slang, and hate george bush, and wear converse. who'll take on american signs in a progressive and selective way.
so americanisation is a kind of hybridising, enforced specialisation.

(sidenote on S. Africa - a major turning point in struggle was when the banks, Citibank etc. decided that the bad publicity they were getting from protests offset their profits and pulled out, that pushed S. African businesses and some officials to seek accommodation with ANC and to try and make changes locally to improve relations. Coule of interesting articles I wil try and dig up for you.)

Speak white
il est si beau de vous entendre
parler de Paradise Lost
ou du profil gracieux et anonyme qui tremble dans les sonnets de Shakespeare

nous sommes un peuple inculte et bègue
mais ne sommes pas sourds au génie d'une langue
parlez avec l'accent de Milton et Byron et Shelley et Keats
speak white
et pardonnez-nous de n'avoir pour réponse
que les chants rauques de nos ancêtres
et le chagrin de Nelligan

speak white
parlez de choses et d'autres
parlez-nous de la Grande Charte
ou du monument à Lincoln
du charme gris de la Tamise
de l'eau rose du Potomac
parlez-nous de vos traditions
nous sommes un peuple peu brillant
mais fort capable d'apprécier
toute l'importance des crumpets
ou du Boston Tea Party

mais quand vous really speak white
quand vous get down to brass tacks

pour parler du gracious living
et parler du standard de vie
et de la Grande Société
un peu plus fort alors speak white
haussez vos voix de contremaîtres
nous sommes un peu durs d'oreille
nous vivons trop près des machines
et n'entendons que notre souffle au-dessus des outils

speak white and loud
qu'on vous entende
de Saint-Henri à Saint-Domingue
oui quelle admirable langue
pour embaucher
donner des ordres
fixer l'heure de la mort à l'ouvrage
et de la pause qui rafraîchit
et ravigote le dollar

speak white
tell us that God is a great big shot
and that we're paid to trust him
speak white
parlez-nous production profits et pourcentages
speak white
c'est une langue riche
pour acheter
mais pour se vendre
mais pour se vendre à perte d'âme
mais pour se vendre

ah !
speak white
big deal
mais pour vous dire
l'éternité d'un jour de grève
pour raconter
une vie de peuple-concierge
mais pour rentrer chez nous le soir
à l'heure où le soleil s'en vient crever au-dessus des ruelles
mais pour vous dire oui que le soleil se couche oui
chaque jour de nos vies à l'est de vos empires
rien ne vaut une langue à jurons
notre parlure pas très propre
tachée de cambouis et d'huile

speak white
soyez à l'aise dans vos mots
nous sommes un peuple rancunier
mais ne reprochons à personne
d'avoir le monopole
de la correction de langage

dans la langue douce de Shakespeare
avec l'accent de Longfellow
parlez un français pur et atrocement blanc
comme au Viêt-Nam au Congo
parlez un allemand impeccable
une étoile jaune entre les dents
parlez russe parlez rappel à l'ordre parlez répression
speak white
c'est une langue universelle
nous sommes nés pour la comprendre
avec ses mots lacrymogènes
avec ses mots matraques

speak white
tell us again about Freedom and Democracy
nous savons que liberté est un mot noir
comme la misère est nègre
et comme le sang se mêle à la poussière des rues d'Alger ou de Little Rock

speak white
de Westminster à Washington relayez-vous
speak white comme à Wall Street
white comme à Watts
be civilized
et comprenez notre parler de circonstance
quand vous nous demandez poliment
how do you do
et nous entendez vous répondre
we're doing all right
we're doing fine
we
are not alone

nous savons
que nous ne sommes pas seuls.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LALONDE, Michèle, Speak White, poème-affiche, l'Hexagone, 1974.

What is wrong with the concept of universal human rights? When a country signs onto the Declaration it allows its citizens to point out that the gov't has affirmed these rights and thus can be held responsible for its actions.

I don't think it's that cut and dry. That just seems to be the most cynical interpretation and while it may be true in many cases, I think there can be exceptions.

H: If you believe there's nothing wrong with the concept of universal human rights, you also believe that there's nothing wrong with monoculture. So presumably you do not mourn the eradication of genuine difference. There is nothing worrying, for you, about a society with only one concept of 'the right way to live'.

Rather. The further implication is "And I'm going to enjoy them to its full and immediately look for some sort of 12-ft.-lizards of the mind behind attempts to argue for or work towards its extensions beyond its apparently 'natural' bounds." Why don't you just call these non-West countries full of noble savages while you're at it, Momus?

H: If you believe there's nothing wrong with the concept of universal human rights, you also believe that there's nothing wrong with monoculture.

I do not see you having demonstrated this.

Struggle is a sign of vitality, not morbidity.

When we impose 'rights' on another country, it tends to mean 'the right to be more like us and less like yourselves'. The 'right to think and be different' is invariably eroded. So monoculture advances.

Second as I pointed out, these help citizens push their own gov'ts due their being signatories. You are jumping to conclusions that this is always being forced onto ppl by outsiders.

I still don't know what you mean by genuine difference. I think we are pretty agreed that murder for example is wrong, that rape is wrong - if it is seen as permissible ina society shouldnnt I try and change that. If believing that FGM is wrong, that slavery needs to be abolished, that someone should be able to travel without worrying about being killed for being from a different area/tribe is opposition to genuine difference under your definintion then sure.

Sorry to harp on this, but Momus, why are you so set on the idea that it is being 'imposed' on ppl, why can't ppl aspire to some of the same rights enjoyed elsewhere? To follow from that, nobody (except you)has said there is one 'right way' to be followed. You are wildly extrapolating here.

Momus what you should do is come back to the states and live in a predominantly black neighborhood. If you come out of that still thinking that the world is a 'monoculture' then I'll be well and surprised. Then again you have a really nasty habit of seeing only the forest and missing the trees (bidet? WTF is a bidet?) so maybe not.

My position on this argument is basically: Monoculture as defined by Momus = yeah we are probably living in it, thank you global capitalism and media machinery, + yeah I don't see any problem with a monoculture as Momus defines it, bcz there are always plenty of pockets of things that are plenty incomprehensible to me, and that's good enough re: Tom Millar.

Is she?

There is, weirdly enough, a right that some Iraqis may have felt to keep being governed by Saddam, or a right that some Somalians feel they have to keep practising clitorectomy, or a right some atheist Chinese feel they have to keep burning the temples in Tibet. We may not agree with those people, but ultimately it's one ideology against the other.

(oops, one good starting point might be "Black & Gold" by Anthony Sampson. Haven't read it in years but remember it as giving a pretty good overview of the various int'l business interests in S. Africa and how they played into apartheid)

*war machines = franchise foodservice businesses (A KRISPY KREME IN EVERY CITY)

Momus in yr def. of 'universal human rights' and its numbing accompaniment, you seem to be leaving out the right to commit crimes. Even in a monoculture people bend and break the law and make their own in defiance of custom. That's why I don't see such a big problem with what you're calling a 'monoculture' - there are still innumerable places that I can travel to and be astounded, amazed, and feel completely not-at-home.

Then again I'm not as well-traveled as you, and probably much more easily amused.

Millar, so if you are let's say Pakistani and eat at Krispy Kreme, you can't maintain you Pakistani-ness?

I'm not saying the world is a monoculture. There's a big HOWEVER in my original question. This is a struggle that continues. I really want to know whether people think monoculture or diversity is winning.

I lived in NY Chinatown, and what I felt there is that I was 'in the eye of the storm', and that it was the only place I'd lived without a Starbucks, and without a Hollywood cinema. (My local cinema showed Shanghai porn but, worryingly, it closed down in 2000.)

Point being, that if you can provide an alternative that is more appealing to people than their present situation, how is that wrong? (spoken like a true capitalist) American culture dominates because there are some aspects of it that must be more appealing to humanity than other cultures

Sure, it's appealing to eat Krispie Kreems all day, but soon I get very, very fat and suffer a heart attack. And at that point I realise it's cool that not everybody acted like me (even if they wanted to and were jealous), because then everybody in the world would be in hospital.

as for the thread in general, i think there was a point upthread about US being shorthand for corporate-dominated culture and maybe we should just start calling it that because i really dont think any country is monoculture, at least, not within the minds of its citizens. and this distinction is important, because it is somewhat problematic to imagine every person to be complicit in the landscape that surrounds them. on the other hand, a lot of problems in america would be solved if citizens were willing to see the connection between their private actions and the public sphere around them. for instance, it is possible to be liberal-minded and drive an SUV but the world doesn't see the liberal mind, just the SUV, and its pollution. another example: there is a perceived difference between consumption of designer goods in different quarters. the wealthy purchasing Dior are the evil hegemony to be toppled whereas hip hop eurofetishism fashion-wise is seen as somehow being subversive, even if the results are really the same in capitalistic terms (its not who buys but rather what they buy).

However, I'd rather there be sumo and weightlifting in the world, than just weightlifting and a thousand different interpretations and contexts for it.

Sparks' brilliant one-off single "National Crime Awareness Week" comes to mind...

no country can really move out or be completely autonomus

Fair enough, in that Mars is not taking new renters. But yes, I do find Momus's analogy limited.

its not who buys but rather what they buy

This reminds me of a brilliant point Simon Reynolds makes in Blissed Out about the cover of the Style Council's Our Favorite Shop and the goods there that the clear-thinking anti-Tory 'should' be buying, by implication...

So Ned, what do you think of the guy who made up some (very noble and reasonable) rights and mailed them through his neighbour's door? Is he an okay kind of guy? Are you happy if he moves in next door to you? What if he has a large dog that he keeps (for the moment) muzzled?

it's not so much a next-door neighbor as some sort of unified being but instead a somewhat muddied collective where not everyone controls the dog?

That sounds like the US, yes!

Rights talk is usually veiled aggression. We know that Bush telling China to 'respect human rights' is some sort of threat which might eventually lead to a pretext for war.

also, i think momus, you have interpreted my point differently than i had intended. i think the problem, in a way, is that monocultural activites are being seen as being more pluralistic than they really are... in other words, if buying a gas-guzzling auto is the "hegemonic trope", the monocultural activity, then it is the plurality of individual self-perceptions that prevent us from recognizing ourselves as all doing the same thing... if our culture is addicted, then we first have to recognize that we all have the same problem before coming to different solutions, you see?

Fair enough, in that Mars is not taking new renters
yes and also i think what is frustrating is that, in regards to countries, to have a fair-sized economy, international trade becomes important, and therefore interdependance is almost automatic.

Agreed. But value judgements are what you seem to be against. If someone likes to eat Krispy Kremes and watch Stallone films, we can't tell them 'hey, don't do that. It's bad for you. Here's some stuff you should like. It's more like that which your ancestors liked'.
I think we'd agree that dictating culture like this (the flip side of Americanization) should be avoided. However, w/o such measures you have to let people decide for themselves what they should do/buy/watch/read/etc.

Although it sounds absurd, that is what we do tell people quite a bit. For instance, when Channel 4 started broadcasting in Scotland, it was stipulated by the government that they had to have a Gaelic language soap opera. It enhanced the Gaelic speakers' right to see TV in their own language, but eroded their right to escape their own culture when they switched on the TV.

heres the thing... can we import general values of freedom and democracy without creating a bowlderized landscape of corporate capitalism?
an example: as similar as the UK and USA are, I watched BBCs coverage of the war because the US coverage was disgusting. that small difference is still crucial!

Now, was something lost in that transition? Surely power has now shifted from Shanghai production bosses to Hollywood producers? What if relations between Beijing and Washington change, and Hollywood is under pressure to start portraying Chinese as baddies? Can you go back to the local Chinese cinema again?

Power in this case lies in being able to frame the terms of the argument. Just like drafting human rights. If you listen when they're telling you your rights, you may find you have no choice but to listen later when they're reading out your death sentence.

Hardt and Negri, in their book 'Empire', actually say that the monoculture, although it exists, is kind of out of control and not in the hands of any one nation. So we all have a chance to get in there and bludgeon others with our values if we're clever enough. Even German 'native americans'!

Diversity is not a value. Respecting it, or allowing it to flourish, is. Your statement contains within it a "moral perspective" and the elevation of a universal right: the right to be different, or diverse. It's curious that you grant this right to cultures, but not individuals. You laud diversity between cultures but at the expense of diversity within a culture. Most time-honored, ancient traditions are the result of some struggle long ago (an "earlier incident" to use NYC subway terminology), and if someone in a tribe that practices FGM is inspired by "Baywatch" or the National Organization of Women or whomever to rebel against the practice, why shouldn't she have the right? She's making her tribe more diverse, after all. Before, everybody believed in the timeless wisdom embodied in forcible clitorectomy; after, you have a diversity of opinion within the tribe. Vive la différence!

(and by the way, hello Nick, I haven't spoken to you in a while--JD in NYC.)

What struck me as I read this article is how we our system (the very notion) of property has become so ingrained in our way of thought that it appears that there is no way out. It's both at once alien and exhilarating to our Western eyes. Why? I guess the article's shock trades on classical Western conceptions

However, beyond demonstrating how a Western conception of law exacted terrible violence upon the Aborigine people of Australia, and the fact that this is an anthropolegal find of great magnitude, I am stumped as to the usefulness of the Aborigine concept. It does provide the demonstration of the existence of possibility and raises questions therefrom: why is our law this way and not that? Is ours a product of Enlightenment Rationalist abstraction? Is their law the product of their intense, naturalist relationship with the land (to tempt dangerous paternalist cliché for a moment)? Why isn't the law of Scotland the same then, considering our deep seated connections with land ? Is it because Scots law has traditionally been passed by professional administrators, judges, and politicians whereas Aborigine law is in the hands of the community? These are all interesting questions but do not get us any further to answering this question. This sketch of Aborigine law should serve as a useful backdrop to analyse 'our' law: is 'our' law any different, how does 'our' law stand up under the scrutiny of the leading statement?

I suppose.

Property is now so ingrained in Western thought: the grand example of how law affects directly how social relations are lived and experienced. We live in a world where property is the main channel of freedom. In this age of Global Capitalism, we can only enjoy freedom by appeal to the freedom-paradox of property. Only when we can claim rights to property can we be free to use such property securely (i.e. free from invasion by others). This presents an apparent paradox: the creation of this freedom is only possible through active denial of the freedom of the rest of the world against the property. Property is mine when you and I give each other reciprocal guarantees of ownership. Law is a method of establishing a formal system for the negotiation of such agreements, by stabilising parties expectations and the rules of engagement it helps foster this socially constructed relation: property. This is so ingrained in our thought that ideas like those put forward by Irene Watson are, in rejecting our whole system, breathtaking, almost frightening . Irene's Law is so well-formed an answer to the question 'Well, what else could we do?', it overturns the entire system of judgement that birthed it, the assumptions about order and possibility behind the West's logic of property. Does one of the problems lie at this foot?

I know, I know, bo-ring, off point, and overly long.

if what you say is true, then really the experience of property is the real problem now i think, in that it creates a situation in which freedom is defined on negative terms ie "freedom from" X, which is exactly what american political discourse looks like, especally given the recent relationship between Democrats and suburbanites. "freedom" in that relationship is the freedom from the denziens of the city, even as these supposed liberal democrats espouse more leftists values than their republican counterparts. the values are upheld within the community of white suburbanites, a community that, again, depends on "freedom from". (sorry to rely on cliches to prove a point, but I acknowledge that they are cliches!)
(now i am off topic and boring !)

I do respect diversity between individuals as well as societies, but Realpolitik teaches me to be very suspicious when the agendas of large states outside correspond with the agendas of individuals inside. Is the man from 'the Iraqi opposition' (who have the US' endorsement) just another Iraqi? Is the man who studied in the west then went back to rule his country really a representative of his countrymen as valid as any other? Sure, the more opinions the merrier, but why does the opinion that corresponds with the agenda of a powerful state so much more likely to be represented?

(I just switched on the TV and saw that there are demos in Baghdad against the US occupation. Will they prevail? Will those people get their man on the voting papers?)

On the question of law, I think it's entirely typical that Tony Blair, a 'universal human rights' man, also believes in the very dubious concept of natural law.

Heh. I was just talking about this last night. I think that greed, caused by having others' success rubbed in your face constantly, is a big problem that capitalism produces. Many people never seem to be happy with what (property) they have cuz there's always some guy who has a nicer car, suit, house, etc. This can explain the dastardly things that, for example, well-paid executives do in order to become even-more-well-paid executives.

The law actively constitutes the very subject whose existence it refers to. Althusser: it interpolates individuals as subjects with attributes, within the practice of law. Law is a constituent way in which social relations are lived and experienced. [Paraphrase, Stephen Gill]).

Meh.

I wonder if you are right about the dichotomical nature of the poem when i think of it's little pirouette where it goes "parlez un français pur et atrocement blanc comme au Viêt-Nam au Congo" to point at an example where "colonized" people can also "speak white" and exerce coercion somehwere else. to me it is it's highest point because it shows the 'good others' can strike and be as bad

'Is globalism a case of opening up world markets to American products, or it is a case of giving anybody anywhere a chance to break into global markets with a good idea?'

everything is up for grab (advantage going for the american products) ; i've heard of activists who were helping people of different cultures to find strategies to participate to the global market in a manner that is specific to their own culture so their identities will stay strong and go on. more on this later maybe.

Surely law is a binding yet arbitrary system that represents the subjects it refers to? Fiction can constitute a fictional character, but the law must recognise that there is an unknowable particularity to the subject it is judging, even if it ultimately disregards that particularity (using its famous blindfold).

This is why it is so dangerous to submit to laws which cross boundaries, ie laws (and surely codifications of human rights are laws in embryo, propositions with the ambition to become laws?) which you have not been able to participate in the framing of, because they were drafted outside of the processes you have control over in your own state (with your vote, your bribery, your demonstrations, etc)?

Aaron: I think by adhering to what Bush was elected on, which was a 'humble' foreign policy. Insofar as he got the public vote, he got it on a policy platform that included 'humbleness'. He then went ahead with totally the opposite policy.

PS: This does not mean I despair of democracy.

2. Momus, I like these threads and the discussions they engender but I think you make a fundamental conceptual error time and time again whenever you try to conceptualize American culture. American culture has no fixed, normative value. It is not, and never has been, the opaque snapshot of life you took back from your days living in New York's Chinatown in 2000. If anything, American culture is the process, or combination of processes, as played out over generations for better and for worse, since the English dumped settlers here way back when. America is not the product but the process of the constant clash and replacement of values that compete in the coliseum of America's governmental and economic processes. Just as it makes no sense to talk about the "majority" in America, attempts to define American culture in terms of its products are ultimately tautologies because they are merely particular iterations of the products of a diverse population acting out procedural patterns set up long ago.

As dave q points out, these processes spill over into the world arena because they naturally produce extremes (mutuations, statistical outliers, whatever) and the results are quickly ascertainable due to the technology of instantaneousness.

3. Cozen is right about property law. Really, don't you think England has a lot to do with the current set-up of the world because they were the ones driving when the Industrial Revolution took place? Let's think about how Israel got the land it has now. Didn't they buy it from the British?

4. another example: there is a perceived difference between consumption of designer goods in different quarters. the wealthy purchasing Dior are the evil hegemony to be toppled whereas hip hop eurofetishism fashion-wise is seen as somehow being subversive, even if the results are really the same in capitalistic terms (its not who buys but rather what they buy).

Hello straw men! Identify yourselves.

You're saying, Nemo, that intervention is 'not necessarily imposing our values on them' because some people agree with the invading force? How many of the 'diverse' voices should be agreeing before we invade with a clear conscience? As big a proportion of the population as voted for Bush? Surely diversity is not an argument that can even begin to justify invasion.

Where is the neutral ground in an invasion? It's hard to see the victor withdrawing leaving a moral and legal vacuum. What follows conquest is surely domination, materially and ideologically. Whether some people in the conquered country welcome the conquest is merely incidental. Talk of 'diversity' and 'rights' is only the prelude to domination. Will you be surprised to hear such talk now starting to fade in the case of Iraq?

Invasion (whether on moral or material grounds) is naked imperialism.

Felicity, sure I totally accept that the US is a dynamic thing, a discourse. Which is why I think that the countries invaded as a result of policy (a policy far from the one voted on even by Americans) should be part of the dialogue on the policies of, not just their own countries, but those of the US, the 'world's policeman'. Policemen have to be held accountable too.

as for bush and foreign policy, i dont eevn know if humility is the problem as much as consistency, right? would there be something more honest, at least, about the US taking over the entire middle east instead of us making alliances with countries that violate human rights in order to take out countries that violate human rights?

The thing is though Momus, I think that the law-people (through historical contingency, a coarse chronology: Civil War, social contract theories, primacy of the contract) feedback loop isn't just a one way representation. Law through the protection of the concept of property has given this concept a sort of legitimacy by the weight of the thing that is protecting it. So much so that the contract is so ingrained in Western thought that articles like Irene's are 'breathtaking'.

We see a similar problem in computer games: the life-form-health paradigm which has started with Mario (the object of the game is to not lose your life and advance forward) has been woven into the 'thought' of computer games so much so that when games don't adhere to that paradigm then they're breathtaking.

Maybe you also see a similar problem in human conceptions of aliens in film: at its coarsest the aliens are humanoid, but we can't escape our thought at all, shaped by the world we live in. The aliens that we do finally encounter: we most probably can't even conceive of them at all.)

In brackets, because I can't see how I'm answering Momus' initial question, but a personal bugbear.

Point added on at the end because I want to flirt with Adorno: in the case Watson is harping on about (Mabo) the action founded on was one of theft. Already placing the issue within the language of the dominant law: property. When in truth, with the Nunga conceiving of land as part of themselves, as one, as they do, then Cook's 'stealing' of Australia should be conceived of as one of assault. Just an example of how by trying to place the other within our logic we do violence to them.

We cannot say 'You have the right to think as we do, but not the right to change the way we think'.

(Yeah, the computer games bit too. It always bugged me on Star Trek that the alien spoke English -- even if it was explained as some sort of brain-implanted Google thing.)

(I'm being nagged by an almost vestigial memory from some anthropology class of Levi-Strauss's distinction between "hot" and "cold" societies being pertinent here, but I can't remember quite what he said. Does anybody remember and is it relevant?)

do you really feel that one should do nothing to discourage a regime... (which does bad stuff)...

If 'one' in this case is another regime, which then does worse stuff, the answer is yes, nothing would be preferable.

allow oppressed people in other countries (and by that I don't mean people whom we consider oppressed, but people who consider themselves to be oppressed) to determine the course of their lives?

Again, you make it sound so easy and so neutral -- we just 'make a space' for people to 'determine their own lives'. But it doesn't work like that. You replace one set of problems with another. Power rushes into the vacuum.

In the end, it's only those 'people who consider themselves oppressed' whose conception of their oppression corresponds with ours (the 'good others' who aren't, in the end, very diverse from us or our model of the Western consumer / voter, but are not similar enough to us to be allowed the full rights of our own citizens) who may benefit.

What do you say to the person born in Saudi Arabia who wants to be an atheist or a drag queen? "Sorry, pal, you should have picked another country to have been born into. I can't help you, that would be imperialism."

Sure, help them by getting them out of there. Give them a US / UK passport!

Would you object to your records being sold in Saudi Arabia, where they would certainly go against the official culture, undermine it, and promote Western values?

My records have been banned in Singapore, as a matter of fact. Such matters are entirely up to the local authorities, stockists, etc. I have no sense that there's a 'universal right to be distributed'.

I dont know how or if this fits in, but this made me think a little about how certain british records are pop in the UK and underground here. for instance, st. etienne is (relatively) an udnerground band here, and a popular band in the UK. diversity vs. monoculture seems to have a lot to do with popular "sauration" iguess...

Aaron: And that which is considered most authentically Japanese here might seem hopelessly out of date or irrelevant there (and vice versa, of course.

Just in time for our discussion, this in i http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/central/04/17/offbeat.afghan.bar.ap/index.html

but yes that is true about misperceptions between cultures.

Ahistoricity is an extreme problem with some of these claims, I think. Defining human rights alone, for instance, is a problem I don't think you've adequately resolved. Is what Gandhi, for instance, pursued equatable with human rights in terms of the Indian subcontinent's self-determination, to write one factor extremely large? I think the case can be made. Of course, I'm sure you could equally stretch back the case to the East India Company as being the original multinational...

Sure, help them by getting them out of there. Give them a US / UK passport!

So essentially you're saying that the US as a concept should establish a Law of Return for the disenfranchised across the board. Extremely noble, I admit, but what are the practicalities of making that happen -- as opposed to wishing for it or thinking it will happen on its own?

Action of any sort, Momus, is something I think you absolutely and utterly fear. Not necessarily the action of self-interest -- and I don't mean that in a cruel sense. As Suzy reminded someone the other day, your actions with regard to your ex were motivated by love when the crunch time hit in Pakistan. But I think any sort of collective action, of organization, drives you up a wall -- this would be whether it is the disincarnate nature of the influence of ideas and images, TV screens displaying American burgers and Coke and the like, or a banding together of even like-minded souls beyond a protest march.

Intellectually I sympathize. But I think there's a slip between trying to look at the world through the eyes of Realpolitik and those of your ideals which hasn't been smoothed out. You seem to want the world of your ideals to just happen. What is the proof and guarantee it will?

No, this started years before Mario, with Colossal Caves.

I'm afraid these are anecdotal examples. Titanic made half or more of its money outside the US. Sweden isn't that big a country. Statistically, Europeans go to see American films. European films don't fare very well. Again, part of that has to do with the distribution oligopolies, but only in part. Certainly in Germany where I live this is the case. If it's a good German film, some people will go see it, maybe even a lot of people. But most will wait till it's on TV. "Good Bye Lenin" is currently doing good box office. But American films dominate the multiplexes. If you want to compare Bollywood to Hollywood, then you have a topic of discussion. The occasional Swedish success story is an outlier. "My Life as a Fluke."

A couple of other things that wrankle here: the concept that because it's a representative of the global hegemony, it's bad. Not necessarily. Americans make good movies. They always have. Other countries do too, of course, but they've been doing it for 100 years, and they have it down pat. Hollywood makes duds too, but come on.

Starbucks brought good coffee to America. Also a certain kind of standardization, but before S'bucks hit, imagine trying to find a latte in Baltimore. The competition that the chain engendered was a positive force whether or not you like S'bucks. This force is now operating globally.

Nothing lasts forever. American hegemony, Roman hegemony, Spanish hegemony, English hegemony. It comes and goes, it comes and goes (thanks, Boy George). Just wait a few decades/centuries and it will be some one else's turn.

You'd go to Donna's, hon.

I was visiting relatives in the state of Jalisco (Guadalajara, Mexico) some ten years ago, and it felt almost nothing to me like the U.S. Even though my aunt Magdalena drove my mother and I all the way from Texas to Jalisco and we were able to go straight to it without having to stop for the night, it felt like we were a million miles away. I know; I was incredibly homesick at the time. But I did notice that nowhere did I see a fast food joint, at the park we went to the music stalls were selling Mexican music, no one was getting upset over the many cockfights that were advertised throughout the city, and the architecture was more Spanish colonial than Americanized.

The point I'm trying to make here is that maybe if you're only looking at the post-industrial world, it may seem that American ideas are monopolizing other ideas. Mexico is an industrializing country. It's its own self. Maybe in the border towns and resort villages it may not seem like it, but when you go deep into the real Mexico, it feels like a different culture. American TV does get aired, but it's usually about 10 years old, dubbed into Spanish, and put on only one channel. The most popular type of show, the novela (it's a quick little soap opera), is aired everywhere, and Latin American soccer matches are the most popular among the muy macho men.

Just a different perspective. I think.

According to Adil Rehman, the college plays a vital role by creating a generation of Muslims capable of interpreting Islam to the West and vice-versa.

"The irony is that this type of institute can only really develop in the freedom provided by the West.

"But the reason is clear if you think about it. Here the political systems have no understanding of Islam, so they cannot direct it or make people think in a particular way.

"In the East, it is different. Governments there are well-versed in manipulation. They know what they want you to learn and what they don't want you to learn," he said.

The conclusion is also intriguing as well:

However not all Muslims are happy with the course Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has taken, nor with the growing influence of the IEHS and its parent body, the Union of Islamic Organisations in France (UOIF).

Progressives note that the UOIF is linked to the highly conservative movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, and fear that Sarkozy has taken the easy option by dealing with the traditionalist establishment instead of working with more liberal forces.

"For a long time the UOIF has been trying to infiltrate the cogs of state and assume control of the Muslim community by marginalising secular Muslims," said Antoine Sfeir, president of the Middle East Studies Centre in Paris.

"These people are a real threat to secularism," he said.

But Zuhair Mahmoud is quick to retort: "Have we done anything to counter France's humanistic values?

"We believe that to live in a country you must accept its laws. If we didn't accept them, then we would live elsewhere."

I think I'll have to sleep on this and then look at it more closely before I can play out entirely what's being said here, but I would argue that, in a specific context and in miniature, granted, this still shows much more of a nuance in distinguishing differences in values and ideals in different contexts when it comes to cultural influence between East and West -- however defined -- than Momus appears to be allowing for.

I think what I'm saying is very clear and very practical. Look at Iraq, freshly invaded by the US. We are waiting to see what 'human rights' the Iraqis will 'receive' or be allowed to exercise in the new regime set up for them.

There have been demonstrations in Baghdad in which thousands of Iraqis have been asking for the right not to be American. Did you see that on TV, H? Surely it is one of their legitimate rights to have a state they actually make decisions about. That has nothing to do with them considering themselves (or me considering them) 'noble savages'.

What I added is the idea that, if we do not allow people the right 'not to be American', we should allow them the right to be 'fully American' -- ie US citizenship, and the chance to actually change the dialogue of what America is.

What I am trying to avoid is a world where there is only one culture, a monoculture dominated by the US, but a two-tier system in which there are the American Americans, who can vote and define 'America', and the non-American Americans, who are powerless, client states, and basically get ignored, snubbed, punished, used.

I am not anti-American, but I do insist that if we are advancing towards this kind of monoculture we have to rethink what democracy means, and reform the system the way it was reformed in previous centuries. (Think how recently women got the vote in some western countries!) If 'America' is to be the world's only defining, shaping unit, we must all have a stake in America. There must be 'global voting' to match global government.

My preferred development, obviously (and again this is not anti-American at all, you can love America without wanting it to be an empire, surely?) would be a world with true diversity, without imperial intervention. In other words, I would prefer a world where 'local voting' actually meant something, because no would-be monocultural power steps in to interfere (using whatever pretexts -- human rights, weapons of mass destruction, pre-emption or any of the other fig leaves).

I'm really surprised when people try to justify empire to me to counter my 'diversity' arguments, but then won't follow me to the conclusion that if we have empire, it must be made democratic and accountable, even in its 'colonies'.

If this means are we living in a world in which communications are increasingly rapid, global forms of capitalist production and distritution are expanding across ever more complex and widening pathways, certain types of political and social ideas coming from the West dominate international institutions, America is the world's only remaining superpower and English is the currently installed lingua franca, then the answer is certainly yes. If you want to find real otherness in the modern world you have to travel to places where state authority is weak and capitalist production an uncertain enterprise. When I get the desire to go somewhere very different I start thinking about travelling to Papua New Guinea (I live in Australia).

I find that I'm ambivalent about globalisation. Am I for it or against it? On the one hand I like difference and variety. I'm really glad that India is still a largely sari-wearing nation and I'm rather sad that the Japanese have for the most part given up their kimonos. Of deeper significance I think the mass extinction of languages with all their embedded histories and relationship to the environments and cultures in which they developed is tragic, more sad than the loss of some of those ancient artifacts from the Iraqi museums.

On the other I'm part of a multinational family and I like the fact that it's increasingly easy to travel and stay in touch. I enjoy forums such as this which involves a transnational conversation of English writing people. I like the fact that I live in a country where one quarter of the population was born somewhere else and that the somewhere else is such a large variety of places. There's the paradox that in earlier times when you were pretty much confined to a locality for life, as were most of the other people you lived with, life was far more 'monocultural' in that your chances of coming into contact with people from different cultures was so much less.

Although Australia might be like America in many ways, I don't feel as though I'm living in America. America is still quite a strange and foreign place to me, one that I find hard to make sense of. Exposure to American films, tv and news somehow still leaves out many of the particularities that you find there.

I can't bring myself to buy into some liberal fantasy about the possbility of the American lifestyle being available to everyone in the world. We know that the world simply doesn't have enough natural resources and that something has to give. With all this discussion about the invasion of Iraq, people need to remember that eradicating the practice of Sati (widow-burning) was used to justify British Imperialism in India in the nineteenth century. How long a 'tutelage' will the Iraqi people be given before they are allowed to run their own democracy or will they just get an American-imposed government? What's happening in Afghanistan doesn't seem to promise well for the future.

and for all the talk of American dominance, might it not be argued that the British have actually done more (or 'worse' if you prefer) to instigate a monoculture throughout the world in the previous two centuries? does this improve the perspective on the current situation at all?

As for whether giving voting rights to dependent states would ever work, look at France: under the 1958 Constitution of the Fifth Republic, the overseas departments (départments d'outre mer or 'DOM') and overseas territories (territoires d'outre mer or 'TOM') form integral parts of the French Republic. French citizens in all the overseas possessions (Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana and Réunion) have full voting rights in presidential and legislative elections, electing deputies to the National Assembly, and also having representation in the Senate, which is indirectly elected by deputies and local councillors. They also have representation in the Economic and Social Council, and the European Parliament.

I have to take this with a huge grain of salt, Momus, in that on other threads recently you were seeming -- seeming, I note, though I had yet to see an explanation for it -- to say that Saddam Hussein was better for Iraq than the US. If that wasn't the case then I'd like to hear more from you about it, but I don't quite gather where Hussein's empire-in-miniature deserves this higher ranking over whatever's happening now. Especially since in that system one 'group,' however defined -- part tribal, part religious -- engaged in a diktat towards the rest, one that involved personal brutalities that beggar description on too many people. If your argument is that the person was bad but the system was good, then I'd like to hear that explained in a little more detail. Personally I happen to agree with you -- and Amarga's point -- that human rights can be used as a pretext. Where I strongly disagree with you is this extremely loaded assumption that because of this, apparently there is NOTHING to be done or that should be done -- or that at most there should be these extremely airy fantasies about voting and representation which, while attractive, have nothing to do with Realpolitik (and I do believe you introduced the term first on this thread).

And if you don't like Florence, move to Amsterdam!

Momus, like your passport idea, this ignores so many things so vital, so core:

Who can afford to carry this out and get it done? How will they make their transport? What bureaucratic hoops would they have to go through? Would their city-state government not want them to leave? Has it turned dictatorial and refuses them departure? Would it rather imprison them? Who speaks for them if that is the case? What if someone wouldn't want to leave but would prefer to work for something better where they are, to get involved and make a change? Is their not wanting to leave from a bad situation a sign that they are not 'good others' in your own city-state vision?

These are the issues of the here and now around this world and have been for so long now. Your take on how things should be is very appealing, as I keep noting, but it is NOT practical. And if pragmatism is something to be ignored or vilified as something that preserves a horrid status quo or fits into the tools of the oppressors -- arguments which I've heard and which I think can definitely have their points -- then explain to me how the ideals will come about. Will the state naturally wither away? Will we all have to wait? What about those people who don't want to wait and who would prefer to act? Why is preferring to act only and solely and could never not be some sort of surrender to an outside idea that substitutes one tyranny for another?

I should quickly follow up that my point here is to equate this undeniable reality with Momus' looming fear re: the US acting similarly -- again, the question is why one tiny form of empire should be thrown back as a counterargument to another.

Ned, I'm actually very surprised by your surprise at my feeling that unprovoked military interventions may not be a good idea. Your comment about my 'fear of action' upthread suggests the onus is on me to say why the US shouldn't attack regimes it finds fault with. Now you're telling me I have to prove that Saddam would have been better for Iraq than the US, or that his rule wasn't a diktat.

I have no such obligation. It is simply illegal to attack other regimes without provocation. Instead of me, it's your own government you should be attacking for their policy of pre-emption.

I'm not a politician, I'm just somebody looking at the world asking 'Is this fair?' My 'airy fairy' position here is simply a strong conviction that there is a need for conquered colonial people (like the Iraqis) to have the consolation of democratic input into the conquering power. I'm saying to 'Empire': 'Leave them alone or give them a string to the throne!'

There is a strong moral case (with many historical precedents, from ancient Rome to modern France) for giving dependent colonies voting rights. Again, I'm genuinely surprised that such a basic democratic argument should be so hard to make here.

As for 'leave Florence and move to Amsterdam', that was based on a specific case, that of Galileo, whose theories got him in trouble with the Catholic church. Sure, each time someone hopped from one city to another it was as complicated as a picaresque novel, involving letters of recommendation, midnight knocks, long horse rides, offers of protection, etc. People are still living in this way today, hopping from city to city, whether it's me, searching for a 'renaissance' or the Moussaoui family looking for economic security and a respite from racial persecution.

(Gay Dutch politician) Pim Fortuyn was asked why he was so critical of Muslim immigrants. He said he found it shameful that foreign Islamic clergy in Holland, a liberal and tolerant country, used offensive language against gays (calling them 'worse than pigs') and that Muslim men tried to impose medieval rural customs in the Netherlands. "How can you respect a culture if the woman has to walk several steps behind her man, has to stay in the kitchen and keep her mouth shut," he said.

Fortuyn is using human rights arguments (the rights of women and gays) to limit diversity arguments. While seeming to be pro-diversity and pro-tolerance, he in fact uses human rights arguments to mark a limit to diversity and tolerance. He draws a line between 'good others' and 'bad others'. Modern Holland, he asserts, can and should tolerate homosexuals (good others). It cannot and should not tolerate Fundamentalists (bad others). That is 'a difference too far'. It's okay for him, he thinks, to call Muslims 'backward' but not okay for Muslims to call gays (like him) 'pigs'.

Tolerance of people like me, but not of people like you, is not true tolerance. Human rights which leave out the right to have a different conception than mine of human rights are not true human rights. They might even be a form of aggression.

I am feeling frustrated though as the thread has shifted into a discussion (again) as to whether the US had the right to invade Iraq. What I was trying to get you to answer was the more general issue of human rights and diversity as you seem to be using them. Human rights are being discussed only in the sense of an outside power, specifically the US, attempting to impose its own values on another. There does not seem to be an acknowledgement that ppl in different countries might want change in their society and that they themselves may not see not all forms of diversity (in the way you’re using it) as necessarily good.

I’d asked you to look at the Declaration of Universal Human Rights and explain to me what your problems with it were. You seem to be arguing that having a universal concept of human rights would destroy true diversity, which you seem to be defining as a cultural belief/practice that would make others (the West) truly uncomfortable. You seem to see this as a bad thing.

What I want to ask is how far your willingness for ‘true diversity’ would take you? Do you work to change a system you believe is wrong or do you just throw up your hands? (This is what I took Ned’s comment re ‘inaction’ to mean, not military intervention a la Iraq) I know you complained about other threads being brought up but I think I’ve seen you argue against US policies and argue for shaming Americans about their regime. The unwillingness to apply that same kind of judgment or policy to non-western nations is what made me ask about this anti-US bias that seemed to be showing and what made me uncomfortable and think of ‘noble savages’

As I pointed out before the fact that a country has signed the Declaration automatically places a certain burden upon it to pay at least lip service and gives citizens a basis on which to push their gov’t for change. The usefulness of documents such as this is that they do provide a basic checklist that can be used as a measuring tool. The relative vagueness of documents like the Declaration also allows ppl to develop models unique to their circumstances. Obviously there are no guarantees but it is a starting point and has been used successfully in the past.

For example the gov’t’s experiment in ethnic federalism was an attempt to address the fact that there had been historic inequities based on ethnicity and so devised a form of gov’t to try and address that. (I don’t agree with it as there are now no parties except those on ethnic lines which I think is ultimately more divisive but it was an attempt to create a form of democracy that was appropriate to here.)

A problem that comes up though is when you have a conflict between the Constituion that simultaneously guarantees e.g equal rights for women but also enshrines the rights of different peoples to maintain their customs and cultural practices. These have, and will continue to, come into direct conflict and it’s being worked out case by case. It is not easy and there are problems, I just don't see what you are propising and how that works in reality.

Two things are crucial here: power and the law. If the intolerant are not breaking the law, the liberal should not stop tolerating them. If the intolerant are not powerful, there is no reason to fear them. It's when intolerant people take power -- perhaps even take over the controls of the world's sole superpower -- and when they cease respecting the law that we have to set aside our tolerance.

Similarly, a powerful person telling me what my rights are is very different from a weak person telling me what rights they would like to have. For instance, on TV recently I've heard a lot from powerful people about how Iraqis have a right not to be ruled by Saddam. I've also heard quite a bit from poor people saying they have a right to fresh water. These are quite different ideologies of rights, coming from different directions, and their 'situatedness' is important. Who's talking, and what's their wider agenda? I'm more inclined to listen seriously to the poor person. Then again, I know that rights spoken about by the powerful have more chance of being implemented. So I must hope there will be some meeting between the agendas of the rich and the poor, and that it will be possible to implement aid in practical terms.

That said, I'm really uneasy about the powerful determining an agenda of rights. I'd rather see that done by aid organisations who have a lot of experience on the ground, and are simply responding to what people need. My feeling is that human rights are a kind of secular religion, and that when they get encoded into the law it's as dangerous -- and as limiting to diversity and freedom -- as when church and state are not separated.

Can't imagine what made me think of that...

If the paradox for liberals is that their convictions force them to tolerate those who are not liberal, the paradox for conservatives is that they find themselves imposing their 'superior civilisation' in ways that are neither 'superior' nor 'civilised'.

And that is in fact what I meant. Momus reading my objection to his take as me saying "Yay, send in the troops" = a severe, SEVERE misreading of my stance, but given the strange binarism that seems to be rearing its head here, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Among other things it's also ignoring what I have said on other threads -- and while you might ask us not to consider yer words there, Momus, I might however ask you to consider mine.

I'd rather see that done by aid organisations who have a lot of experience on the ground, and are simply responding to what people need.

This seems rather loaded, Momus. In fact this seems contradictory to what you were suggesting elsewhere up above. 'Aid organisations' surely encompasses in part those NGO agencies based in the West, operating under the West's particular principles and developed in its particular socio-political incubator. In some cases that response to what people 'need' is even motivated by specifically religious purposes -- the UK aid rep who was blasting the British control of Umm Qasr a week or two back was in fact representing a Catholic aid agency, and he was specifically there to investigate what people needed, in particular water. Are you suggesting that in fact those organizations are now not to be trusted because they in fact carry their ideas and beliefs with them as they go, as part of their mission? Or are you hoping for a Prime Directive of aid agencies that prevents them from providing more than 'what the people need' -- and if the people need more than just water and shelter, what then?

I think I answered your aid point already when I said that perhaps the best we can hope for is an overlap between the needs of the pwerless and the agendas of the powerful.

Getting back to the thread subject, I think we'd have to say that for a monoculture to impose itself on the world, it would need first to establish a single set of definitions of 'the good' (things like 'rights', 'success', 'health') then impose them, by trade or by legislation or by force, on the rest of the world.

When the right was out of power and feeling somewhat marginalised and victimlike, they sought to claim that there was a liberal monoculture being imposed on the world. They labelled this 'political correctness' and (quite rightly) objected that it was reductive. Now they're in power, they're trying to impose their reductive monoculture. I'm tempted to call it, simply, 'correctness', because it basically asserts that whatever America does is right.

But the difference between 'political correctness' and 'correctness' is that pc (though it may have been, in many cases, 'repressive tolerance') was a meme tipped with sugar, with charm. Its apparently liberal agenda gave it legs and legitimacy. People wanted to submit. Correctness, on the other hand, presents itself as nothing more than an erect Patriot missile. It makes no attempt at self-justification, or, when it does, dips rather unconvincingly back into the toolbox of pc and 'repressive tolerance', talking about rights, democracy, etc. This seems to me its internal weakness.

Because 'correctness' has not yet devised a cloak of legitimacy like the one 'pc' had, it cannot match pc's global reach. A concept like 'human rights' can do a lot more damage to your enemies than a concept like 'full-spectrum dominance'. No amount of Patriot missiles can bludgeon the world into accepting 'correctness'. The philosophy lacks charm, and lack of charm can be fatal.

Capitalism is not the same as power. Selling things is not ideological enough. Sure, you can hype up cigarettes or cars or computers with advertising added value so that they appear to be about a 'way of life' rather than just the use value to the consumer, but ultimately, for people who want to dominate the world, being a service industy, a shopkeeper, is just not the most effective way to go about it. You must dominate 'hearts and minds'. And I think this explains why the US has increasingly concentrated its exports on cultural products like films, music and TV.

So in the end it doesn't matter if we drive Japanese, sit Swedish and eat Chinese, as long as we're thinking American. The trouble is, 'correctness' gives nobody outside the US any real incentive to 'think American' other than fear or some slightly sadistic identification with naked power. And as the US switches from economic dominance to military dominance, the whole part of the 'American dream' which was about getting rich will fall away, leaving instead some vision of 'getting strong'. In other words, the kind of dream that only people like Saddam Hussein would really have responded to.

I think I answered your aid point already when I said that perhaps the best we can hope for is an overlap between the needs of the pwerless and the agendas of the powerful.

The mediation of this overlap is what I think needs more careful addressing -- it sounds like you're saying 'we can only hope' instead of 'we can also act.' True or not? Consider that those aid organizations are in respects in positions of power -- less powerful than a government with an army, more powerful than those with the need. Do we join groups, funnel funds, determine policy and approach, or do we simply trust that they'll do the right thing? Could we do more ourselves? The parallel to party politics may seem uncomfortable but it is also clear -- especially if the groups can then bring their own pressures to bear in a government context.

Also, to address points H raises far above, aid organizations can come from the ground up, can be networks by the seemingly 'powerless' to bring action together, from one source of inspiration or another. The dynamic of power could be more fluid than realized.

Your take on correctness is interesting but I think ignores a strong perception of reality -- namely, that the vision of the US imposing force 'only when necessary' to make things nice and neat plays very very well in America. It is part of the national mythology -- World War II is the endlessly invoked example from its day to now, all other motives and considerations and factors lost in a vision of us fighting the evil regimes. We pride ourselves on being a country that welcomes people FROM evil regimes, and that we could never be evil ourselves. This obsession leads us to hoodwink ourselves constantly, thus the embrace of tyrannical regimes aligned with us during Cold War days -- but, I think importantly, this kidding-of-ourselves has never been truly understood or considered on a wide context, thus allowing the obsession to remain. That it is its cloak of legitimacy and indeed its seductive charm for a wide domestic audience and that is all it will need for a long while to come, I think.

I think this explains why the US has increasingly concentrated its exports on cultural products like films, music and TV.

But are you targeting the government, the nation, the culture, the businesses that produce cultural work, the people themselves? What's under the microscope here? Sony owns Columbia, Vivendi is French, BMG is German. Surely there is more to it than this bald statement. And of course ironically if this explains the concentration it's now backfiring with music's earnings going down the tubes steadily and films quite possibly to follow thanks to ye olde Inter-Nette, though if you wanted to argue that as the reason for the switch from economic dominance...

And as the US switches from economic dominance to military dominance, the whole part of the 'American dream' which was about getting rich will fall away, leaving instead some vision of 'getting strong'.

Again, this ignores the 'breathe free/get away from tyranny' part, though. This PLAYS -- and it doesn't merely play, for many, many people it exists as part and parcel of their thoughts and beliefs, as immigrants or as activists or more. You're arguing the tyranny is here already, but you are going to be a hell of a lonely voice unless you incorporate the mythology more thoroughly into your approach, since you can't reduce it and you can't ignore it.

Seeing that the UN has actively stated that Democracy is now deemed the paradigm form of government that would seem to cast all other types of government into the confused hell of 'bad otherness'. Are you willing to stand behind 'diversity' in protection of these bad others? (Or is democracy a special case?)

There are all sorts of reasons -- apart from the fact that people can be stupid and selfish -- why democracy may not have all the answers. For instance, if China had been a democracy when overpopulation became a problem, they could never have imposed the 'one child per family' policy which saved them (it would have got a democratic government voted out of office as well as infringed all sorts of human rights).

That's all.

If there were truly a monoculture, wouldn't we all drive American cars?

There is a fundamental problem of definition running rapant through this thread. There's way too much mistaking of the symbols of (American) culture with "culture." American cars/McDonalds/Starbucks do not define a culture. The are signifiers, they are markers, they are ambassadors, they are the invading van, but they are not the embodiment of culture. That's why it's so easy for "other" cultures to expropriate these symbols and retain their own culture.

client states
Like Western Europe? Iraq? Oh, come on.

I feel Momus' point about human rights being a sort of secular religion has not been satisfactorily been countered yet. To oversimplify (and indeed misrepresent) for the sake of an example: if "we" say "humans have a right to life" and "they" say: "adulterers should be killed on suspicion" what are our convictions that we're right founded on? If it is not that we think our ideas are better, must it not be a belief in some unqualified "good", and that we feel this "good" is better than those others' "good" only because we don't claim it was decreed by a deity (although we've received it in much the same way)?

During this latest war the press seemed to portray the Iraqi people as innocents, as people much like us who just happened to be in the grip of a brutal dictatorship. Now it's ended, we still don't know whether there is a majority of people in Iraq whose dreams of a just society is expressed by the concept of a secular, multi-ethnic state with a democratic government. According to this article from the Guardian, many of the Shia population want an Islamic state with Sharia law.

I was thinking more about the subtle differences in values and outlook which are difficult to define and yet in experience are immediately tangible in relation to Momus' question about whether Australia is America with an Australian flavour. One interesting example relates to the popularity of country music amongst rural Australians. American country music was embraced by rural Australians as their own music decades ago. Away from the racially-segregated context in which it developed side by side with the blues but separate from it, American country music was embraced with equal enthusiasm by rural Aboriginal Australians. The interesting thing about Australian country music is how different the lyrical content of its songs are compared with their American counterparts.

Re: the question of universal "human rights".

No doubt our notion of what is right or wrong depends to a certain extent on cultural background, context, personal viewpoint and bias and so on.

What is most disturbing to me is the fact those who claim that their actions, or the actions of their country or leader, are motivated by human rights concerns, seem able to overlook the fact that their country nukes, napalms, and cluster bombs (etc...) innocent people.

So believing in the value of a set of universal human rights or at least claiming to do so, doesn't seem to be able to do much in terms of holding one back from full-out violations of some pretty basic human values.

A set of universal principles for global cooperation might not be so bad, if only we would apply them to ourselves and not only to others.

Yes, that's always the problem, isn't it? I'm not making fun, I am agreeing.

I think it all starts with the desire (or need) to travel and also have a home too. This goes way back. When people move around (now we do this in cyberspace as well), they see things, they covet the things they see, and the people who live in the traveled-to places see the travelers and the things they have and they want those too (including the freedom to travel).

In all of human history, whether we are talking about napalm, infected blankets, opium, chocolate or salt, there has only been one way of determining who gets to travel and who gets the stuff that traveling brings, including ideas like human rights. It doesn't make it morally right, but what are the alternatives?

no joke ... we need a set of principles for global cooperation. most likely there is no universal "moral" basis. only the universal situation that if we don't agree that something needs to be done to learn to live together, then at some stage it's game over for everyone.

and whatever the set of principles agreed upon, there needs to be an acknowledgement that "regime change begins at home".

Specifics, please?

Maybe despair would be a more helpful emotion than hope?

I choose to hope that in your heart of hearts you could not possibly mean the second part of your statement.

Yes of course. Peace. Let's at least agree on that.

'Against the monoculture of economic globalization,' comments New Internationalist magazine, we must demand 'a world where many worlds fit.'

I have to admit I'm suspicious of anyone who commands me to demand any kind of world at all. The only kind of world I demand is one where I can openly doubt anyone with such demands. Seems to me that what we need first of all is a lot more doubt.

Maybe you'll check it out this time?

http://www.nancho.net/graph/mosechu-.jpg

Really? I am hoist on my own petard puppet string, then. But maybe I got radicalised in Portugal, where I was seeing a lot of Zapatista graffiti at Coimbra University.

Actually, I noticed when skimming the New Internationalist article I link to that it was published almost exactly on September 10th 2001, and does read like a relic from a different age. We now feel nostalgia for an age where our biggest problems were questioning globalization, Clinton and NAFTA and their trade plans. The capitalist machine has been thoroughly militarised since then, and outrageous imperialism has replaced the merely 'not-so-level playing field' we used to hear so much about. The radical posters I'm seeing around Berlin are now having to say some version of 'Stop the war on Iraq so that we can get back to the war on capitalism!'

And furthermore, most anti-capitalist protestors I know always complained about the imperialist impulses in the private sector (corporate censorship, diktats over behaviour outside working hours, stonewalling of the press, eschewing responsibility, exploiting those who are most vulnerable wherever in the world) and maintain that these actions merely pointed the way to what we've got now, because not enough people bothered to question authority when it was handing them a paycheque or a buy-one-get-one-free deal.

How can you say one has been 'replaced' by the other when there is no *real* difference in power or influence?

Australian culture is really an ever-shifting culture of immigration and seven generations is too long ago to feel part of the culture of immigration. I have no ties to an elsewhere. I only have one passport. I must be the only person in this whole damn street to have only one passport. The only other anglo has a British one too.

So, anyway, officially Australia is multicultural, therefore not part of the monoculture. Personally I'd say it's polycultural coz multicultural now just means eating spaghetti and stir-fry one night a week. Polycultural has not been overused and so it still has impact.

But the monoculture is multicultural! The US is the model melting pot society -- everyone comes, ultimately, from somewhere else. All its customs are synthetic and bastardised. This is why it's such an efficient socialisation machine; everybody in the US has left behind some kind of 'traditional culture' and gone, voluntarily, through the sausage machine of American socialisation. And now they're exporting the technology all over the world. You don't need to go to America because America will come to you.

America's very claims to be racially blind, religiously neutral, an equal opportunities employer etc are what makes it so able to erase other cultural forms, which cling to things like racial difference, religious custom, gender etc as defining cultural essences.

This is the paradox: in order for a country to be truly 'different' it must fail to tolerate difference. If it tolerates difference, it just becomes a multicultural melting pot like all the others. This is why big cities all tend to resemble each other, whereas the countryside maintains some distinctiveness. This is also the reason for the paradox that I keep coming up against: that the liberal traveller who seeks to immerse himself in some truly different culture must enter into some weird pact with the most conservative, foreigner-hating elements there. He must be on the side of those who want to (in terms, for instance, of Japan) kill Christian missionaries and keep the ports closed, rather than those who rush to welcome him and his ilk. In embracing 'the other', he embraces those who reject 'the other'.

And the opposite is true. In championing 'the other' I help undermine real difference. The other must be left to champion itself in order not to lost its own identity and have it replaced with a plastic simulacrum. Because the other is not, initially, 'other' to itself. Once I start to make it self-conscious of itself as 'other' by imposing on it my perception of it, it starts to become 'other' for itself, it changes quickly into a tourist town, a fake, a spectacle, a souvenir. I've actually witnessed whole towns transformed into simulacra of themselves in my lifetime, including my home town, Edinburgh, which is now hyper self-conscious, and has become 'the Edinburgh Experience' rather than just Edinburgh.

God Emperor of Dune finally makes sense, actually.

You're going to have to explain that, Ned Emperor of Prune.

One of the plot elements/background detail of that book -- fourth in the series -- is that it is set thousands of years after the 'god emperor' Leto took control. Arrakis aka Dune had a highly developed and unique culture, the Fremen, with specific social, political and religious practices and beliefs; as part of Leto's own particular evolution and control of the society he took over, he slowly reduced everything and anything about the Fremen to being a tourist act -- described in the book as 'Museum Fremen,' enacting shows for religious pilgrims. Frank Herbert wasn't coming up with anything new per se in this depiction and I'd have to reread the book to understand the exact motivations of the character Leto in this instance, but I seem to recall it being a case of 'perception' writ large, to use your terminology, one of control and marketing, though the latter term isn't used from what I recall. Given the inevitable links and parallels this discussion has had with what has happened in Iraq, the comparison and connection sprang to mind. Also, since the whole Dune series sprang out of Herbert's own experiences in the Middle East, in a combination of reflecting on the land, the people, its resources and a consideration of what drives the phenomena of messiahs, it too can be seen as a take on the 'other' from the point of view of the West, shaping visions.

Another interesting post in an interesting and worthwhile thread, Momus, but I'm not sure I agree with this statement. Yes, Japan, though actively participating in the world economy manages to keep itself culturally separate from the "Monoculture" partially by creating its own monoculture with deeply ingrained and institionalized discriminatory practices. Thanks, Meiji Architects!

But co-existence of different cultures/racial groups is nothing uniquely western. There are many quite 'different' places (perhaps India is a prime example) that are historically fairly tolerant of different cultures. These are multicultural societies, quite distinct from the western model.

Trips to places that fewer travellers go, for whatever reason, are often the most interesting but I don't think this has anything to do with these countries being xenophobic monocultures. Myanmar, for example, is a good place to get away from global culture, largely because there is so much racial and cultural diversity in the country (albeit held together by a non-democratic regime with very questionable human rights).

Let me look at this in a more personal way. I live an extremely rootless life. A couple of months ago I was living in Paris, now I'm living in Berlin. Before that it was Tokyo, and before that New York. I may be an extreme case, but I don't think my life is unusual or against the grain. It's just an accelerated version of how most of us live these days.

Now, sometimes I feel like 'I live everywhere'. But other times I feel like 'I live nowhere'. They're both true. I find myself meeting the same kind of people whichever city I live in, usually musicians from somewhere else. My latest aquaintances here in Berlin are a musician from Budapest, a Jewish-French musician who came here from college in London, and a web / graphic designer from Leeds... But really I could as easily have met these people in Tokyo. And, despite our different roots, we all have a lot in common: a certain rootlessness, a connection to transnational cultures like the web, the music industry, 'design culture'. We resemble the internet in that we're everywhere and nowhere at the same time. We are the monoculture. 'We are the world'!

But of course we're not. Difference does exist, and in fact we're outnumbered by it.

Some areas of Berlin are now being occupied by 'us'. The block I'm living in has really just two types of people in it: old people who lived here when it was still East Germany, and younger people by and large like me, who've arrived within the last ten years. The old people have amazingly baroque flats full of chintzy bric-a-brac. The younger ones (and even me, despite some initial resistance) go to the huge Ikea out at Spandau. As a result, if you went into one of the oldsters' apartments (I catch glimpses when UPS or FedEx delivers some package from NY or Tokyo to the old man who lives alone with his dog next door) you get a real sense of 'the original style of this place', a strong link to the vanished state of East Germany. It's fascinating, because it's so 'other'.

So I've tried to give my apartment some 'local flavour' by buying secondhand granny tablecloths, Karl Marx posters and pseudo-baroque furniture from nearby markets and secondhand stores. But all to no avail: the irony implicit is what shines through, rather than any real 'East German-ness'. As soon as it crosses the threshold to my flat, the furniture, once authentic, becomes ironic. And that irony is a quintessentially monocultural perspective. Irony in this case is no more than a form of sneaking sympathy for the thing it is driving out.

It seems pretty certain that when the old people in this building die, the connections of this area with East Germany, the communist state, will get more and more tenuous. The flats will get more 'vanilla', more 'latte', more 'Ikea', more 'monocultural', despite the apparent diversity (racial and national) of those who will live in them.

It's almost impossible to imagine how this process could be reversed, except by something as radical as the rebuilding of the Berlin wall. But strange things can happen, and happen very fast. If SARS, for instance, gets a lot more serious it's not impossible that we may all be forbidden to travel, and many areas will be quarantined. And that might respresent the end of the 'postmodern monoculture' I'm talking about.

I am still unconvinced by this. I’ve asked you upthread to define what would constitute enough ‘difference’ or ‘true diversity.’ I think you’ve done so (something that would be sufficiently discomforting to people not from that society)

First, I’m not sure whether that is necessarily a bad thing, I would be willing to sacrifice some of the unique cultural characteristics to be found here in exchange for an improvement of the lives of people. Most of what would be lost is also stuff I think most would have a hard time defending (FG, abductions/forced marriages, slavery and so forth).

Second, as logajam pointed out, there are many non-western societies which have had histories of coexisting pretty peacefully while having diverse communities comprised of different ethnic groups and religions. The ways they have evolved to accommodate these different groups can serve as models for their change.

In regards to your gloomy predictions of blandness, even in the metropolis where things seem pretty similar, once you delve a little below the surface you will probably find a surprising amount of local difference, which is still a part of people’s lives. Picking and choosing what you will take from your own society and what you will keep is not necessarily bad. I’d argue that the best aspects of a culture would survive in some form or another.

IKEA goes to Japan

I was introduced to the pleasures of shopping at IKEA by a German girlfriend during a brief fling with yuppiedom in late 80's Vancouver. Douglas Coupland's description was "semi-disposable Swedish furniture".

Just like Starbucks. At that time I liked it. Now it's just a bane on the Kyoto townscape.

Maybe you're right about creeping monoculture. Though I'm not sure it's a paradox ... it may be a tautology.

And maybe I'll have to move to Myanmar.

"As I lay alone in the dark, I began to think about the secrecy of this whole mysterious land, a secrecy so deep that it seemed like sorcery. Indonesia is the fifth largest country in the world, exceeded in population only by the three superpowers and India, home to more people than South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong and Nepal combined. But how often was it heard from? And what did we know of it? ... Indonesia was far and away the largest Islamic nation in the world, with twice as many Muslims as Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia combined. Yet even in Muslim Java there seemed to be few mosques, the mythology was Hindu and its most famous monument (Borobudur) was Buddhist."

It is stated that I am 34 years of age and married man having two little children and I am jobless for last 10 months. my education is B.S.C Iam only supporter of my family and my wife is disabled she lost her right leg from hip joint in her childhood and since then she is using wooden leg. We don’t have any other source of income and currently I am not able to give our children two time meal. I am helpless and facing deep crises. I need job or finanacial support very badly to support my family I pray for you in my prayers five times to my Allah.
shakeel hussain
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lol resist monoculture

for u jho