Cultures and/of Globalization

Cultures and / of Globalization

Cultures and / of Globalization

Edited by

Barrie Axford and Richard Huggins

Cultures and / of Globalization, Edited by Barrie Axford and Richard Huggins This book first published 2011 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright Š 2011 by Barrie Axford and Richard Huggins and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-3217-0, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-3217-5

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One................................................................................................. 1 Globalization and / of Culture Barrie Axford and Richard Huggins Part 1: Cultural Dialogues and Borders : Constructions and Crossings Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 14 An Inter-cultural Dialogue on Trans-cultural Issues Marek Hrubec Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 37 Global Fissures: Intercultural Dialogues in Contemporary Art Kristen Sharp Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 54 The Culture of Global Citizenship and Global Media Oleg Susa Part 2: Counter Cultural Voices and Glocal Conflict Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 64 The ‘Long Frontier of Insurgent Action’: Counter-globalism and Climate Justice James Goodman Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 84 Campaigning Against “Fundamentalist” Globalization: Toward a Negative Dialectical Feminist Perspective Regina Cochrane Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 111 The Independence of Kosovo: A Semiotic Stance on Glocalization Matteo Albertini and Paolo Demuru

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Part 3: Cultural and Cross-cultural Spaces Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 128 Multicultural Cities, “Construction Sites” of Globalisation Sara Saleri Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 138 Driving in the Suburbs: The Making and Unmaking of Multicultural Social Space in a Film by Young Arab Australian Film Makers Ilaria Vanni Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 153 The Role of Urban Icons in Cultural Policies: The Case of Casa da Música and Porto 2001 Joana Ramalho Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 171 Identities and Music: Identity of Place and Cultural Identities of Generations. Hungarian 3G Case Study Lyudmila Nurse and Endre Sik Part 4: Cosmopolitan Migration: Transnational Identities and Local Lives Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 204 Respatialisation Dynamics beyond the Myth of a Homogeneous Elite of World Citizens: International Business Travellers and Cosmopolitans Laura Gherardi Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 218 Transnational Lives? The Case of Peruvians in Milan Marco Caselli Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 236 Interethnic Alliances and Transdiasporic Appropriations: The New Sound of the Metropolis Elena Midolo

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Pedagogic Postscript Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 250 The Challenge of Equipping Teachers with Global Perspectives for the 21st Century Classroom Steven Jongewaard Contributors............................................................................................. 274

CHAPTER ONE GLOBALIZATION AND / OF CULTURE BARRIE AXFORD AND RICHARD HUGGINS

This book sits at the intersection of a number of disciplines, all of which have looked to illuminate the still hotly contested theme of globalization by way of what has become known as the “cultural turn�. It explores the ways in which study of culture as the realm of meaning and identity can inform current debates about globalization and thus afford greater understanding of emergent globalities. Of course, appeals for a multidimensional and inter-disciplinary approach to the study of globalization are by no means new, but still lose out to varieties of methodological nationalism and the propensity to analyse social life as though it is composed of discrete zones of experience: usually economic, political and cultural, and in which personal and global are seldom linked . Moreover, academic disciplines often shy away from much that is intellectually foreign, or embrace it mainly through allusion rather than as part of an integrated research design. By drawing on a range of disciplinary and subdisciplinary expertise from across the social sciences and also promoting areas of cross-disciplinary research, the book contributes to the development of theory on globalization and also provides some significant illustrations of (cultural) globalization in practice by giving attention to novel empirical sites and issues. These include eminently cultural realms such as music, film and architecture and those that are invested with a strong cultural component, such as migration and education.

In the main the papers collected here are the selected output of an international conference on Cultures and / of Globalization run under the auspices of the Global Studies Association at Oxford Brookes University in September 2008. Like the book, the conference aimed to draw attention to what might be called the soft features of globalization and globality; that is, to largely cultural and motivational phenomena, and featured academics from the disciplines which promote such approaches to the study of globalization (Sociology, Cultural Studies; Social Anthropology,

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Communication Studies and some areas of Geography and Urban Studies) along with some from the discipline most closely linked to globalization research – international studies. Contributors to the book are drawn from different parts (and cultures) of Europe, from the USA, Canada and Australia and the topics explored have an even wider geographical remit.

For the most part chapters in this book marry theoretical abstraction with quotidian aspects of global processes, focusing on those routine and sometimes conscious connections and accommodations that make up everyday life in a globalized world. Indeed the book itself can be seen as engaging in a form of global practice.

Culture is an intriguing zone of analysis for serious students of globalization and global complexity, not least because of its relative neglect or cavalier treatment by researchers of all persuasions, especially in many one dimensional contributions which see globalization as an economic or (less frequently) a political or geo-political phenomenon. As with all generalisations a word of caution is still necessary. The so-called “cultural turn” in the study of globalization and the “global turn” in the study of culture have produced a rich vein of commentary which ranges over the cultural construction of global social relations to the phenomenon of cultural hybridization as a feature of an interconnected world. This “cultural turn” is reflected quite strongly, if variably, in sociological writing on globalization (Robertson, 1992; Giulianotti and Robertson, 2009), in what is sometimes called “global anthropology” (Friedman, 2007) and in areas of communications research (Tomlinson, 2007). But neglect is still apparent, largely in work from the political and economic sciences, and even in some more culturally informed work on globalization, culture has been used often as a convenient, but frequently under-theorised, means of rounding out or humanising overly economic views of global process As we will demonstrate in the book, things are changing, and in work on globalization as a cultural phenomenon, rather than simply a form of interconnectedness or exchange (Rossi, 2007; Meyer, 2007; Held and Moore, 2008; Giulianotti and Robertson, 2009) the emphasis is on the growth of a widespread cultural consciousness of global interdependence and of national and local embeddedness in world society; or else traffics the intriguing, but often under-specified, concept of “glocalization”, an eminently cultural concept (Hopper, 2007; Holton, 2005; Tomlinson, 2007; Meyer, 2007; Robertson, 1992). In other respects, and much too often, the idea of culture has been over-simplified and concepts such as “global culture” taken as shorthand for an oppressive global homogeneity which stifles localities and indigenous cultures, with McDonaldisation as

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the reflex example (Barber, 1996; see Ritzer, 2004 on “grobalization”). In more visceral interpretations of globalization cultural phenomena are seen as part of a corrosive dialectic wherein opposition to (economic) globalization produces forms of resistance, but also fanaticism, fundamentalism and, on some accounts, civilizational conflict (Barber, 1996; Huntington, 2006).

Under the rubric of the cultural consequences of globalization, the one theme most often rehearsed in the literature (Tomlinson, 2007) there is a wealth of contestation around claims for cultural polarization (Huntington, 2000 and critics) cultural homogenization (Barber, 1996) hybridization/ creolization (Cohen, 2007) and, as a challenge to the oversimplified notion of a diffused Western cultural account, the prospects for alternative or many globalizations (Berger and Huntington, 2002). But there is also a more generic problem at work in many accounts of globalization and culture, because in much globalization discourse the global “level” is taken for granted (Urry, 2003) and globalization is depicted as the force through which sub-global actors (of all varieties) come to identify with the global. As a result globalization becomes a kind of reified structure, with individuals, groups, localities, regions and so on, also reified as subaltern agents, with the whole often underpinning a simple domination-resistance motif of globality. Moreover, this fault appears in accounts with quite different intellectual provenances. Concepts such as “glocal” are clearly an attempt to redirect this approach and to offer a more relational and cultural take on globalization, but here too there is a good deal of disagreement on what the concept denotes and thus how use of it modifies or subvents the idea of the global as either an autonomous (cultural) field, a “self-evident global scale” (Sassen, 2007, 7) or as Friedman has it, an historically specific articulation of “local” (cultural) conditions and practices (see discussions in Rossi, 2007, particularly the contribution by Friedman. See also Sassen, 2007 and Knorr-Cetina, 2007).

For researchers the problem has been how to proceed in light of this critique. In a recent excursus John Tomlinson identifies two ways forward (2007). The first prescribes a radical approach wherein globalization reveals deep flaws in modernist social science and thus requires new concepts and analytical frameworks to canvass its dynamics. Recent writings by Ulrich Beck and John Urry are mentioned as avatars of just such tabula rasa approaches. Second, while noting the same “instabilities and fluidity of the global order” (2007, 150) which exercise Beck and Urry, he cautions a less dramatic response rooted in a heuristic approach where “the hermeneutic tradition of cultural analysis….attempts to interpret and contextually understand rather than systematically to explain

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the social world” (2007, 150). Indeed, he opines that cultural analysis is best suited to generating concepts which can be used to interpret what he is happy to describe as “new orders of experience” (ibid, 150). Tomlinson is also right to insist on a moratorium on the often simplistic study of the impacts of globalization on culture, because in such accounts globalization is treated as both exogenous to and imposed on the local, leaving culture as a “peculiarly inert category”, rather than, pace Geertz, as a context in which “events may be meaningfully interpreted” (1973, 14) and agency practised.

For Tomlinson, as for others, the point is to recognise that culture is “intrinsically constitutive” of globalization (2007, 151) while retaining a distinction between the “consequentiality” of culture for globalization and any attribution of causal power to culture. Now, such a distinction may be a necessary prophylactic against crude positivism, but it does rather beg the killer question of what “constitutive” means, especially in discourses which, presumably, already admit the likelihood of multiple causation and complex relationality. Part of the answer must lie in the canonical definition of “culture” as contextual; indeed, pace Tomlinson, as the context in which agency arises and takes place and in which meaning is assigned to action. Constitutive processes can be seen as generative and potentially degenerative as the identities of actors and institutions are reproduced and transformed through, among other things processes of cultural enactment.

So, the key lesson for students of globalization is that culture ought be understood as the contextual expression of interpretative practices by agents. Cultures do not exist outside their making, they are constituted in action. Moreover, following James Clifford (1988) and others, it is clear that culture is not defined just by territoriality, a property solely of bounded space, but can be constructed and reproduced anywhere. To be sure, this is not an uncontentious claim and it sits ill with those accounts that still see local and bounded cultures as peremptory and absolute. Nor can such claims be dismissed as the outcome of poor science or inferior research design, notably where they spring from deeply held world views and exclusive identities.

The immodest aim of this book is to help shift the investigative emphasis away from an under-theorised focus on cultural globalization to a consideration of globality as enacted in part through cultural processes as part of global complexity. In other words, none of the contributors are inclined to conflate the conjunctural features of contemporary (cultural) globalization with culture as the realm of lived experience integral to the enactment of all social-systemic relations. In some respects this approach

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may be seen as part of a shift – perhaps a paradigm shift – in how we need to understand the space of the social, and in how, or whether, we construe the global as in some way constitutive of all social relations (Shaw, 2003).

To do this research has to treat culture as more than shorthand for some exotic conjunctional features of current globalization, and examine cultural phenomena as part of a description of new forms of sociality constituted through global processes, from the quotidian to the exotic. In the latter guise, culture becomes the realm of shared meanings and purposive action in systemic relationships constitutive of and dependent on larger processes of global complexity. The book will also contribute to the study and understanding of processes of globalization by locating some of its key concepts and debates within specific research fields or subdisciplines as these reflect upon culture (Giulianotti and Robertson, 2009).

In what follows, we group contributions under a number of themes which permit an examination of cultural phenomena through attention to some key issues from the generality of globalization debates, including normative issues. At the same time, our selection of chapters has been governed mainly by the aim of exemplifying these debates by reference to some innovative empirical work which was presented at the conference and which explores, for example, cross-cultural dialogues in contemporary art, music and conflict resolution: harmonies and dissonances in global identities, the culture of global citizenship when inflected by media and multicultural cities as “construction sites” of globalisation. Contributions are grouped under the following thematic heads that allow us to examine a range of concepts and issues at the centre of globalization research:

Part 1: Cultural dialogues and borders : constructions and crossings In chapter 2, Mark Hubrec reflects upon the nature of and prospects for intercultural or intercivilizational dialogues. The powerfully normative component of the notion of intercultural dialogue arises from the prescription that cultural diversity should be recognized, but that transcultural universality, which allows for the expression and realization of common values, should be promoted. In turn, transcultural values can be enabled and embedded through intercultural dialogue. Clearly there are many barriers to the achievement of a modal intercultural dialogue, including civilizational and national cultural differences and the ideology of consumerism, which certainly promotes homogenization, but infantilizes and dehumanizes both citizens and consumers. In the chapter Hubrec addresses a theme of immanent tension in a globalizing world still

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characterized by the valorization of difference and, sometimes, by stern defence of that principle as it is applied to matters of cultural integrity.

In chapter 3, Kristen Sharp also takes up the theme of intercultural dialogue and exemplifies it in relation to encounters between artists from Melbourne in Australia and Xi’an Yang in the People’s Republic of China.

These encounters and exchanges also demonstrate interesting facets of intergenerational dialogue. The globalization of contemporary art practice includes the emergence of new forums and spaces for exchange and interaction between artists and their works. Artist-in residence programmes are exemplars of this phenomenon, but the intercultural encounters they occasion do not correspond to any simple model of the clash of differences or of routine hybridization. Sharp undertakes a critical analysis of artist exchanges, stressing how, perhaps counter-intuitively, miscommunication and “fissures” between practitioners can still be important ways to negotiate cultural differences.

In chapter 4, In a forceful chapter, Oleg Susa ponders the ways in which citizens of the world – cosmopolitans – may be produced and reproduced. In this process, the instantiation of global cultures conducive to such developments will be heavily reliant on processes of communication and the communicative spaces they create. Without recourse to systems functionalism he argues that media forms and new technologies are key agents and contexts for creating and sustaining those public spaces of communication necessary to enable and sustain cosmopolitan sensibilities and routines. Communication processes leading to greater intercultural understanding are by no means untrammelled; witness the commercialization and segmentation of the World Wide Web. So the democratizing and liberating qualities of new media not only cannot be taken for granted but are under threat.

Part 2: Counter cultural voices and glocal conflict In chapter 5, James Goodman also invokes a spatial metaphor when he builds on David Harvey’s notion of the “long frontier of insurgent action” to characterize the geographies of counter globalism. In Goodman’s account the long frontier is a social frontier between a transnational capitalist class and a battery of subaltern social forces. It represents the expression of differences between what is variegated and diverse, plural and local and what, both culturally and economically, threatens to become all-embracing and homogenizing. The long frontier is contested and always shifting. It is contested by those cleaving to the globalist ideology of the market and by those movements and local particularisms concerned

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to articulate other possibilities and other solidarities. All are couched in what by now is a global imaginary.

In chapter 6, Regina Cochrane takes up the notion of globalization / globalism as a kind of fundamentalism, especially as evidenced in the platforms of the Anti-Globalization Movement (AGM) and in the literature influenced by that movement. It is especially prominent among feminist organisations and groups in and around the AGM, such as DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era). For such feminists, globalization produces not only economic injustice, but cultural injustices too. Cochrane draws on Adorno’s philosophy of negative or non-identitarian dialectics to challenge the idea of globalization as fundamentalism, arguing instead that such an approach is non-dialectical as it reduces issues of economic redistribution to issues of cultural recognition.

In chapter 7, Paolo Demuru and Matteo Albertini traffic a semiotic perspective on one of the most debated contemporary geo-political conflicts: the independence of Kosovo. The authors are concerned to locate this conflict in the frame of grobal-glocal dynamics, pace George Ritzer and Roland Robertson, but go beyond the analytical boundaries set by these luminaries. Their novel interpretation of the Kosovo crisis blends these approaches to globalization with the concept of “semiosphere�, first espoused by Yurij Lotman (1984). The semiotic model of semiosphere defines culture as an organized and dynamic system characterized by processes which mediate the relations between local and global discourses with regard to Kosovo. In turn, Kosovo independence contributes to a deconstruction of the, largely, Western model of the nation-state.

Part 3: Cultural and cross-cultural spaces In chapter 8, Sara Saleri examines the phenomenon of multicultural cities as the construction sites of globalization. Contemporary cities, some of them world cities in the sense conveyed by Saskia Sassen, among others, are sites where multiple cultures cross each other and enact different representations and conceptions of space. The chapter develops a thesis around the idea of plural spaces and their contribution to a common memory of the city. The city is seen as a space of negotiation, a relational space that is continuously being remade, reinterpreted and transformed by its inhabitants, and this process is especially evident in those neighbourhoods where the presence of immigrants is conspicuous.

In chapter 9, Ilaria Vanni explores the theme of borders under conditions of globalization and offers a counterpoint to the thrust of much

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theorizing on the concept. Instead of privileging the idea and reality of mobility, liquidity and movement, to suggest a networked and even deterritorialized world, Vanni proposes the hypothesis that the weakening of borders entails counter-processes of re-territorialization, of materialization and de-materialization, and thus contributes to new and different kinds of borders. These are often displaced from conventional locations – for instance at the edge of nation-states, only to reappear, sometimes in nonmaterial form, within cities and as affective borders on the margins of new geo-political spaces. She uses the work of young film makers in Western Sydney, a very multicultural zone, to explore how affective borders are criss-crossed, negotiated and experienced.

In chapter 10, Joana Ramalho uses the case of the Portuguese city of Porto, a European Capital of Culture in 2001, to reflect on the ways in which urban renewal relies on George Simmel’s dictum that it is vital to the identity and survival of a city for it to establish itself on both national and international “territory”. Today this process is more pressing than ever as economic liberalization increases the territorial competitiveness between cities. Perhaps more than global cities, medium sized entities need to develop strategic planning capacities to facilitate their entry to global markets. In this survival strategy, culture now looms large as cities look to invent or refurbish cultural symbols whose appeal transcends frontiers and thus establish a city on the international stage. Ramalho uses the case of Porto 2001 as a way to demonstrate how cultural policies focus on the imagery and thus the marketability of the city and on amenities and iconic symbolism that enhance the consumption of cultural product.

In chapter 11, Lyudmila Nurse and Endre Sik offer an empirical investigation into the role of different musical genres in the formation of the cultural identities across different generations in Europe. The chapter builds on previous work in the field of ethnomusicology by exploring links between cultural identities and music, deploying indicators to measure these connections at the individual and family levels.The study links the music preferences and identities of three generations in Tótkomlós, a small town in Hungary. It also addresses the question of the role of place in building a link between music and cultural identities in the era of Globalisation and what is often prescribed as “standardised Euroculture”

Part 4: Cosmopolitan migration: transnational identities and local lives In chapter 12, Laura Gherardi takes up a theme that figures quite prominently in globalization literature and which maps transnational

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economic elites or the transnational capitalist class (TNCC), but rarely offers a sociological perspective on such networks. Gherardi’s focus is on financial elites, especially those sojourning in Italy. Much research either assumes or uncovers an imaginary in which these sojourners see themselves, and are seen, as part of a homogenous elite of trans-cultural travellers, recognizable by way of lifestyle and uniform responses to travel and life as expatriates. Her own research paints a more complicated picture through an exploration of the processes of hybridization and respatialization experienced by members of this financial elite. The upshot is that a jobbing and instrumental internationalism, necessary for the efficient conduct of work should not be confused with anything that resembles a thorough going, even a banal cosmopolitanism.

In chapter 13, Marco Caselli returns to the theme of migration as an index of transnationalism. He uses the concept to refer to mainly the tightknit network of exchanges and two-way connections that migrants create between their countries of origin and destination. It also refers to the fact that often, these same migrants commit to and are simultaneous participants in the social lives of the countries of origin and residence.

Using empirical research conducted on the Peruvian community in Milan, Caselli provides some important insights into the routines of transnational dynamics and the everyday lives of migrants. In doing so, he contributes to the rich vein of study on ways in which globalization is made and practised through such small interventions.

In chapter 14, Elena Midolo looks at the production and consumption of Islamic conscious rap by British Asian Muslim youth as a means of addressing the relationships between cultural worlds and social transformations in contemporary British society. This society is labouring under the tensions between official multiculturalism and the perceived threat of the other carried in various discourses on the “war on terror” and translated into popular attitudes towards Muslims. Midolo’s concern is to depict Islamic conscious rap as an intensely local experience and one that acts as a link to the transnational networks that connect the members of the imagined Muslim world community. Instead of merely replicating traditional Asian cultures in diasporic settings, young British Asians enact a process of cultural reproduction through creativity and innovation.

Islamic conscious rap stands as a source of identity representation that spawns translocal networks that connect members of the Muslim ummah and also create at least the possibility of cultural connection with other youth diasporas.

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Pedagogic Postscript In chapter 15, Steven Jongewaard addresses a crucial issue in the debates on globalization: how to provide classroom teachers with the global perspectives now essential to effective citizenship. Given the centrality of global discourse in education at all levels today, this focus is often sadly lacking. Institutions of higher education talk glibly about global citizenship, but the concept is ill understood and the pedagogy aimed at its delivery is often instrumental and rudimentary. Jongewaard offers what he calls a developmentalist model that would lead to the acquisition of global perspectives. The chapter traces the simultaneous development of multicultural education and global education in order to ground the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of his model. In turn this leads to a model for the acquisition of trans-cultural competency. The chapter and the book ends by advancing a specific teacher training programme for this important pedagogic and cultural task.

References Barber, B (1996): Jihad versus McWorld, New York. Times Books Berger, J and Huntington, S (2003): Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World, Oxford. Oxford University Press Clifford, J (1988): The Predicament of Culture, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press.

Cohen, R (2007): “Creolization and Cultural Globalization: The Soft Sounds of Fugitive Power”, Globalizations Vol 4 (2). 369-384 Friedman, J 2007): „Globalization, Global Systems and Anthropological Theory“, in I. Rossi (ed): Frontiers of Globalization Research, New York. Springer Geertz, C (1973): The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Giulianotti, R and Robertson, R (2009): Globalization and Football, London. Sage Holton, R.J (2005): Making Globalization, Basingstoke. PalgraveMacmillan Hopper, P (2007): Understanding Cultural Globalization, Cambridge.

Polity Huntington, S (2006): The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York, Simon & Schuster

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Knorr-Cetina, K (2007): “Microglobalization” in I. Rossi (ed) Frontiers of Globalization Research. Theoretical and Methodological Approaches.

New York: Springer.

Meyer, J (2007): “Globalization: Theories and Trends”, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 48, 4: 261-273 Moore, Henrietta L. and David Held (eds) (2008) Cultural Politics in a Global Age: Uncertainty, Solidarity, and Innovation. Oxford: One World.

Ritzer, G (2004): The Globalization of Nothing, New York. Sage Robertson, R (1992): Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture, London : Sage, 1992.

Rossi, I (ed) (2007): Frontiers of Globalization Research, New York.

Springer Sassen, S (2007): A Sociology of Globalization, New York. W.W. Norton Shaw, M (2003): ‘The Global Transformation of the Social Sciences’, in M. Kaldor, H. Anheier and M. Glasius, eds,Global Civil Society Yearbook 2003, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 35-44.

Tomlinson, J (2007): The Culture of Speed, London. Sage Urry, J (2003): Global Complexity, Cambridge, Polity.

PART 1: CULTURAL DIALOGUES AND BORDERS : CONSTRUCTIONS AND CROSSINGS

CHAPTER TWO AN INTER-CULTURAL DIALOGUE ON TRANS-CULTURAL ISSUES MAREK HRUBEC

Different social classes and cultures interpret human rights in different ways. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that we are confronted with class conflicts and clashes among civilizations. While in my article ''Unrecognized Rights-Agents, Misrecognized Rights-Holders: Social Justice in the Global Context'' (Hrubec 2007), I was concerned with human rights in relation to social conflicts in global capitalism and efforts for social justice, in this chapter I will concentrate on the issue of human rights, exploring the potential for consensus among cultures by means of an inter-cultural dialogue. This chapter may be considered as a contribution towards overcoming the confrontations among civilizations and to the eradication of the coercive imposing of human rights onto other cultures.

I would like to demonstrate that the inter-cultural promotion of human rights across individual cultures is one of the most effective forms of resistance against people being misrecognized. However, this requires a formulation of human rights based on the values of individual cultures and the dialogue among them. In the first part of the chapter, I will briefly discuss the topic of conflict and dialogue; in the second part, I will focus on the inter-cultural and inter-civilizational nature of this conflict; in the third part, I will concentrate on human rights per se, and in the final part, I will touch on the legislation concerning human rights.

Such an interpretation, which is a contribution to creating 'unity in plurality', is not entirely obvious. The attention of most people is focused either purely on inter-cultural dialogue and the issues of cultural plurality, or only on human rights and the issues of the universality of civilization of all human beings. The attempt to create a connection between both types of discourse may be interpreted as a part of an eradication of the frequent ideological misuse of human rights which deforms the inter-cultural

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dialogue and commonly shared human rights, together with the conditions for their realization.

Conflict and Dialogue There are frequent inter-cultural conflicts in the present global climate which is characteristic of an increasing number of interactions of people from different cultures from the fields of economy, communication or other types of cultural interaction. This does not always mean a state of war. Conflicts take on diverse forms from the cultivated variety to aggressive ones (Arnason 2003). Although the confrontation of cultures and civilizations leads towards the polarization and culmination of the conflict, inter-cultural dialogue among cultures attempts to contribute to their mutual recognition.1 These forms of conflict resolution did not develop as separate abstract entities but stem from the development of mutual conflict relationships between people and the requirements for their resolution. The process of misrecognition of certain groups of populations in the long term historical perspective causes their justified dissatisfaction and articulation of their claims for recognition. At the same time some types of misrecognition might be initiated by artificial conflicts which are invoked for the purpose of the legitimization of particular power structures or for the purpose of unjust economic and other interests. Despite the fact that some confrontations between cultures are fictional because they are forced upon people without any essential connection with the reality, a possibility of 'self-fulfilling prophecy' has at least a partial influence on the transformation of these conflicts into serious and real confrontations. The seminal example may be the conflict between the West and Islam.2 The relationships between people are then formed as a complex of real and fictitious conflicts.

People react critically to disadvantages and other forms of oppression which they face and in this way they map the individual problems that need to be resolved. In the background of their experienced reality they notice positive fragments of reality and try to develop them. In a relatively favorable environment, the criticism of current forms of misrecognition and attempts to correct them may be realized in the form of a cultivated inter-cultural dialogue. The notion of conflict then includes the notion of consensus which may assist the direction towards the desired final state.

Inter-cultural dialogue attempts to identify the current social norms through critical discussion and create new ones that might be shared by individual cultures in a universal way. Because the communication does

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not concern only two cultures and therefore a dia-logue in the literal sense, it is more precise to talk of a poly-logue.3. Such a broad concept of the discourse cannot in the least supplement the solutions to all social, economic, political and other related problems. What can be done is nevertheless to provide conditions for an important inter-cultural framework for working on these problems.

The discourse which is the subject of my analysis contains two fundamental elements. The first one relates to the forming of a dialogue 'from below' from the perspective of various cultures and their relationship within human civilization. The second element is in the form of universal human rights which may be the outcome of this type of dialogue. This kind of approach, which is gradually formulated and subjected to many comments from individual cultures, could be the unifying and universal element (An-Na'im 2002). In short, the objective is to reach a commonly shared 'trans-cultural' consensus through inter-cultural means in order to replace the current supra-cultural situation which is not universally accepted.

Culture and Civilization What does it mean to talk about the dialogue which is supposed to be inter-cultural? The adjective may be initially read as an umbrella term which covers the relationships among individual cultures or civilizations or culture/civilization circles. This definition raises the question about the relationship between the words culture and civilization. The preliminary answer might be to define them as synonyms but under the condition that the limits and any possible misunderstandings are clarified before using these terms. Their frequent inter-changing is not only the case in Western languages. For example there is also the Arabic word umran, which has a prominent place already in the teaching of Ibn Khaldun from the 14th century, which can be translated either as civilization or as culture.

Some authors prefer to use the word civilization. Yasuaki Onuma presents this term as more appropriate because the word culture may be interpreted also in a restricted sense in which it speaks only about art works and works with an aesthetic function (Onuma 1999). This is certainly correct. Moreover, aside from this interpretation, another use of the word culture exists which is bound only by one type of human rights which are the cultural rights. Also in this case the word cultural is conceived in a narrow sense when applied to the admittedly broad issue of the inter-cultural conflict about human rights, including the cultural rights (Kroeber, Kluckhohn 1963).

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The word civilization is likewise not used in one sense only. On the one hand it designates the whole of human civilization across entire humanity while on the other hand it designates just one of the civilizational or cultural circles or groups; it is used for example in relation to the civilization or culture of the West, Islam or the Confucian world (Benjamin 1973).

The first mention of the word civilization can be found when defining a specific stage of development of society or culture (Diamond 1997).

Civilization means trying to overcome the primitive stage of cultural development. It begins to digress from primitive culture at the moment when it becomes characterized by the complex organization of society.

Whereas primitive societies seem to be relatively static, civilizations are characterized by the process of development. It is possible to speak in detail about the gradual development from hordes to tribes and chiefdom to state and super-state formations. The criteria of differentiating between these types of cultures has taken into account population density, patterns of colonization, relationships between relatives or relationships within the society, the intensification of food production, the introduction of the division of labor and egalitarian or centralized types of decision making, informal or legal conflict management and so on. The trajectory of development had previously only its regional character, and its various historical stages were analyzed in far more detail than the complex planetary trajectory. Once the civilization stage of development of the majority of cultures spread across the planet, the discussion was concerned with one civilization of the whole humankind. Therefore, from the point of view of this thesis, development proceeds from cultures to civilization.

This process also allows discussion about progress or regress.4 This interpretation is also compatible with the relating of civilization to the practical-technical sides of a society although the term 'culture' is then used in the opposite sense, that is not as the more primitive but the more developed product of a society. The distinction between culture and civilization is based on defining civilization by the technical dimensions of the society such as script, urbanism and so on. Culture is then ascribed, sometimes not without difficulties, to the more refined role related to values and humanistic ideals (Tรถnnies 2005).

The disadvantage of this way of defining the word civilization, as used with regards to individual participating civilizations (Western, Islamic, Confucian and so on) is that it does not allow for discussion about intercivilizational dialogue with cultures that did not reach the civilizational stage of development. Dialogue is then reduced only to the discussion

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amongst technically developed civilizations and other cultures are left in power dependence on them or in other kinsd of dependency relationship.

Moreover the use of only one word, civilization, in the plural as well as the singular sense contentiously serves to erase the difference between the cultural (plural) and the cosmopolitan (singular) meanings. These multiple meanings have their consequences for inter-cultural and trans-cultural discussion. The use of the word civilization in the plural sense may implicitly incline towards a discussion which omits the acknowledgment of differences between individual cultures and which aims towards a unifying approach. This approach then defines cultures with an emphasis on one civilization comprising the whole of humanity. This kind of approach is usually not an embodiment of a true universalism which in the intercultural dialogue of a desirable and non-imposing manner tries to unify the current positive elements of individual cultures while also suggesting universally acceptable elements which could be voluntarily shared between individual cultures. It is more often the case of an imperialist point of view, whether actual or not, which under the heading of civilization promotes one culture over another. The history of colonialism and the forms of colonialism which were legitimized by European universalism or more accurately by pseudo-universalism are its unfortunate consequences (Wallerstein 2006). The meta-theoretical viewpoints commit the same transgression which, without the contribution of other cultures, and from the viewpoint of one culture, attempt to dictate which social concepts, values and so on, are relevant and eventually should be considered as universal. All these approaches are usually defined as a cultural imperialism (Said 1994; Kรถgler 2005).

One way of preventing these kinds of problems is firstly to retain the wider sense of the term civilization, that is, to use it only in the singular sense for defining the whole of human civilization and secondly to define the term culture by its plural connection with individual societies. The word culture might be susceptible to various partial conceptions as previously mentioned, from culture as a collection of art works, to cultural aspects of various areas, for example cultural rights, to cultures which have not developed into complex civilizations and which have not the use of technology and also to cultures as a synonym of civilizations. Despite this wider notion, it is always various partial entities and not culture as a singular whole which is under consideration because culture is not usually thought of as an all-humanity culture but rather as various cultures or cultural plurality. Here we might refer to Majid Tehranian who, in his analysis of civilization and resolving of its conflicts, says that it is more

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adequate to analyze one human civilization and many human cultures (Tehranian 2007).

At the same time we should reject fixating purely on one of these categories, on civilization in a singular sense or on culture in plural sense.

It is necessary to acknowledge both the differences of individual cultures as well as the common values which bring humanity as a whole into one civilization.5 The key is that in this definition it is possible to respect the plurality of opinions and to work 'from below' with individual cultures and aim towards their interconnectedness in one civilization. It seems to be appropriate from this viewpoint to reserve the plural meaning for the word culture and the singular meaning for the word civilization. At the same time there is a continuous exchange between the social constructions of these terms. Moreover, I would like to add that the concepts of culture and civilization, which are defined in the opposite sense to that presented here, may also be at least intuitively reasonable.6 The key is to define positions with the aid of terms and not by fixating on these terms.

One of the previously mentioned problems which arises in connection with cultural imperialism, is cultural particularism. It often promotes the same values as cultural imperialism, cleaving to a specifically nonuniversal viewpoint. Due to the fact that the advocates of cultural particularism emphasize essential differences between individual cultures, they frequently tend towards the opinion that individual cultures cannot reach commonly shared values and therefore they cannot in certain respects unify in one civilization and the community of human beings. Of course, the absence of a universal consensus predetermines this outcome along with cultural imperialism and the immanent confrontation of cultures. In this respect the word culture as well as the world civilization has the negative connotations because they both can refer to Kulturkampf or the Clash of Civilizations.7 While placing an emphasis on insurmountable differences between individual cultures, the advocates of cultural imperialism and cultural particularism frequently perceive cultures in a segregated way, as historically enclosed units and unchangeable given entities. Individual cultures are here conceived as specific essences (Wallerstein 2006).

However, the essentialist view is disturbed by efforts to construct not only random elements of inter-cultural consensus based on the current partial overlapping of various cultural values, but also by elements of a transcultural consensus which requires openness of individual cultures to partial re-definition of their values. The inter-cultural dialogue does not accept the essentialist view. The essentialist view is confronted by the critique of generalization of cultures and the emphasis on the gradual

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formation of cultural patterns as social constructs, which means the rejection of the trans-cultural essentialist view (Samson, Smith 1996).

Rejection of the essentialist view should not on the other hand lead towards the relativist view which is at the same time a resignation concerning the non-contingent trans-cultural consensus.

The conception of cultures in the inter-cultural and trans-cultural dialogue also requires a more exact identification of the cultural subjects of the dialogue. According to Lawrence Blum, the three categories can be distinguished, although none have to be designated definitely and they can transform in time (Blum 1998; Ingram 1998). Firstly, it is possible to speak of an individual who is formed by a particular culture or an individual with a particular cultural identity (identities). Secondly, we may discuss a group of individuals specified by a particular culture or group with particular a cultural identity. Thirdly, we can analyze an entire culture.

The first category of the subject is not the centre of attention in the inter-cultural dialogue because the dialogue primarily follows relationships between larger cultural units than individuals. Relationships at the individual level are certainly important though, in the conflict of entire cultures, millions of individual persons do not enter into discussion but rather the representatives of people who can promote their individual and group interests. Nevertheless, it is important to make sure that the representatives of individual cultures do not represent just their own view and marginalize that of their culture. In cases when the representatives are successful in representing their culture, they should not represent the mainstream of their culture more predominantly; it is obviously desirable to acknowledge the minority streams as well. This opens the question of a multi-cultural dialogue within the intra-cultural framework between the majority and minorities, between men and women, and so on (Taylor 1994; Senghaas 1998). Intra-cultural conflicts also largely relate to social conflicts. As mentioned by Yash Ghai in the context of East-Asian economies, a particular territory does not offer just one means of access to rights. The heads of companies stress laws perhaps not shared by unionists, and minorities emphasize laws other than those favoured by members of the majority, etc. (Ghai 1999). Within the framework of intercultural dialogue, it is important to remember these significant socioeconomic factors. (Hrubec 2007).

The other category which constituted by culturally formed groups of individuals includes in a more restricted sense the majority of the population; of France, for example, and in the broader sense, the majority of the entire Western population. It is the population of the European

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Union, USA and other countries which have similar specified cultural, economic and political systems. A similar type of categorization could be considered in relation to Islamic minorities in France and in the European Union in general. Although this is not a general rule, these minorities are often culturally related to the majority of another country: the Turkish minority in Germany is culturally related to the majority in Turkey, for example. Minorities and majorities of course cannot be considered as fixed and the ratio between the minority and the majority may significantly transform in time or even reverse its course.

The third category, which is formed by entire cultures or civilizations which, if I use this term imprecisely, includes the creation of pretty much all culturally defined groups, from art works to various social customs and finally to the whole social life in the society. In the wider context and from the long-term perspective, it is also possible to add populations to these entities which may be considered a cultural project in itself. In such instances, a population per se may not perceive itself as a totality but asserts itself primarily as a creative subject which gradually creates cultural customs, rules and objects in interaction with the environment.

But is it possible to refer to the third category in an inter-cultural dialogue which means the entire cultures? Charles Taylor speaks of entire cultures when he expresses the need to recognize the cultural value of cultures which is required not only for dialogue but in particular for their own vitality. He says that we should analyze and recognize the equal value of cultures (Taylor 1994). In Taylor's interpretation, the recognition of equal respect to different cultures is analogous to the recognition of the equal dignity of individuals.

The question remains whether or not it is appropriate to apply an equal approach to individuals, which we implement in relation to their common characteristics, humanity or citizenship, for example, also for the recognition of cultures (Blum 1998). This approach to cultures seems problematic for two reasons. The first is the gnoseological argument about the difficulties in measuring the value of individual cultures. In order to evaluate the Afro-American culture or the Roma culture, for example, it would mean considering them as some kind of totality to which we attribute a specific measurable value. The second argument relates to the difficulty in comparing the value of individual cultures even if this value was measurable. This does not mean any tendency towards relativism but only the acknowledgement of the problems of comparing entire cultures.

The claim for value stems from justified and historically founded fears of dismissive Euro-centric or West-centric approaches towards other cultures.

One of the sources of this problematic approach is based on the thorough

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evaluative comparison of cultures which often led to the conclusion that the Euro-American culture is superior to other cultures.

If we abandon these kinds of rigorous cultural comparisons and try to redefine Taylor's formulation by focusing primarily on the equal recognition of groups of people which are defined by a particular culture, there is a chance that we also rid ourselves of the dismissive West-centric attitude. Then, it will be possible to better understand the requirements of the politics of recognition. It is also necessary not to slip towards an interpretation in which homogeneously ignores various groups of individuals with diverse cultural identity, or to the approach which uses exact techniques of measurement and subsequently sorts them into hierarchical categories.

These kinds of arguments lead back to the second category of the subject, i.e. to groups of individuals, whether they are small communities in the position of a minority or larger communities in the form of a majority or even entire 'cultures'. Here I advert cultures in the sense of groups of individuals and not cultural entities which are not defined by human subjects.

Groups of individuals may at the same time have two basic requirements which are often connected with legal requirements: one is the claim for their recognition as subjects with different cultural identity which will not be ignored, and the second requirement is the claim that these groups as subjects of dialogue and action are recognized by others as equal to other groups. Although this kind of conception of subjects of inter-cultural dialogue is not entirely ideal and requires a certain amount of reformulation, which is not necessary for the purpose of this text, nevertheless, this approach is more suitable than the approach which talks about entire cultures or civilizations without recognition of groups of individuals. In the contemporary global age when nation states are losing their dominant position, to adopt a politics towards culturally defined groups of individuals is a politics which is generally more far sighted than the current obsolete stance of international law which is almost entirely fixated on nation states.8

Human Rights In line with the explanation I offered above, it is possible to say that the connecting element between the cultures, which are primarily tied to culturally defined groups of individuals, and the civilization in terms of the entire humanity is the inter-cultural dialogue. The significant feature of the inter-cultural dialogue is the effort to find certain a trans-cultural