Dialogue of Cultures - Essay Example

Introduction The culture of any nation, defining its spiritual uniqueness, expressing its creative power and abilities, simultaneously is a property of all mankind. Dialogue of cultures provides mutual understanding between people, revealing of spiritual uniqueness of each of them. Preservation and development of culture of each nation should become business of all world community. The culture is a basis of social and economic development of people, states and civilizations, spiritual and moral development of a person. Cultural distinctions of people and inability to cultural mutual understanding and dialogue of cultures have become one of the main reasons of interethnic wars and international conflicts of the twentieth century. Realization of values of democratic way of life and human rights is appreciably defined by level of cultural development of a society. Loss of any element of cultural heritage is an irreplaceable loss, it conducts to spiritual pauperization of all human civilization. During last decades of the twentieth centuries multi-ethnic states became an arena of grandiose political shocks and great violence. The special attention should be paid to the fact that the majority of conflicts arising today in the world have a cultural component in a basis, as globalization, telecommunications and new information technologies change habits of people to identify their cultural difference. The cultural variety today becomes a very significant issue in research field of international relations, first of all for the best understanding of laws of society life, organization of statehood and management in complex communities, prevention and resolution of conflicts. There is no doubt that cultural factor is obviously present in modern policy of international relations. Robert Garson (“extra information”) states: “issues of culture, rights and justice drive international relations and international politics in a certain direction”. Moreovere according to Garson, culture is very important because: “it is the key to our social and ultimately individual identity”; “if to look at the rhetoric of international politics, that rhetoric is actually wrapped up in cultural phrases. People talk of themselves as being French or Tanzanian or American, they use these identities”; “culture is actually one of the organising principles of most political communities”. The role played by cultural difference and cultural conflict in international politics For the first time the question on cultural variety arises in world politics after the First World War I when the countries-winners have formulated the doctrine of self-determination on an ethno-cultural basis as the mechanism of abolition of imperial states of Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Turkey, imperial Germany and imperial Russia. A certain formula of "national self-determination" gradually began to gain a foothold as the international norm of state formation. There was an idea that the society should be culturaly homogeneous, and the state is a property of certain ethnically defined people (Hungarians, Serbs, Albanians, Poles, etc.) And certainly it should speak in one language and, whenever possible, to have one religion. It is quite natural that here simultaneously emerges a problem of "national minorities" and necessity of protection of their rights because of inconsistency between the doctrine of "national self-determination" in ethnic sense and created "the national states", which all the same always appeared to be multi-ethnical. Radical change of global political geography after the Second World War has changed general conditions around the question on cultural and ethnic variety. There was a phenomenon of "ethnic purges", violent movings of the population on the basis of ethnicity, for the sake of achievement of cultural homogeneity of politically outlined territories or an establishment of so-called fair borders. “Nationalism, in both its mild and more virulent forms, has played a vital role in shaping the structure and development of the international system” (Brown, 2004, p. 195). The most scale historical experiments with ethnic nationalism took place in the East Europe, India and in the former territory of Palestin. In "socialist camp" the ethnic nationalism was officially constituted in the form of "right of nations to self-determination down to sepatation", but thus was under the rigid totalitarian control, which did not allow any realization of this claim of socialist Utopia. Debate about rights of national minorities have drooped in conditions of the post-war world, devoted itself to economic restoration and summing up of political results of war. Self-determination have been left only for colonial people, and territorial integrity of the states have been made the maximum principle. Under the term "people" the international law always meant territorial community, instead of an ethnic generality. Nationalization of political map of the world during decolonization and arrangement of a new global unit of world division ("national state") has demanded to design a myth about national consolidation or national unity as an obligatory characteristic of the modern state. Despite of difficulties of the organization of complex communities, their big political variety, and also the flashing open conflicts, this global project as a whole was carried out rather successfully. “While the state remains at the centre of the international system, its citizens identify with aspects of culture beyond the bounded frontier” (Brown, 2004, p. 224). Problems of intercommunal conflicts and ethno-racial discontent were perceived as difficulty of a transition period on a way of national integration. Parts of the population, which have been culturaly different from dominating "norm" part of population, especially immigrant groups, were considered as "transitive groups" which should join to existing "national kernel". Bipolar division of the world of times of cold war promoted stability of state units, not leaving special resources and public space for debate about interstate heterogeneity and cultural particularism. The last was severely maintained only in geopolitic rivalry, but never admitted as the self-sufficing factor of international and state policy. We may observe such examples in internal wars and the armed conflicts in Chinese Tibet, in Kashmir, in many countries of Africa, which were supported by superpowers of the USA and the USSR. Last quarter of the twentieth century together with economic achievements, easing of global opposition, liberalization of many political regimes, strengthening of world migratory streams has lowered obsession of nation-state formation. In cultural sense the futility of most this project was clear. Together with homogeneity and assimilation, it were kept language and other cultural distinctions. Some nations seemed to be ethnically homogeneous became even much more complex on structure because of reception of migrants in their numbers. Some scholars claim that we are developing towards a global culture. The other researches consider that it is just “one culture trying to push itself into other cultures, and in other cultures people are reacting to it in one way or the other, and so we end up with a clash of cultures rather than a global culture” (Jef Huysmans, “extra information”). In the process of improvement of social conditions of life cultural distinctions got the increasing value for separate people and for small communities. In well-to-do countries social movements for the civil rights began to include struggle against racial, religious, and ethnic discrimination, struggle for elimination of historically developed inequality of separate groups of population and regions of their primary residing. In poorer countries group coalitions on the basis of kin-tribal divisions, religions, castes, etc. began to be used as a basis for struggle for authority and for access to the limited resources as means to change character of the state regimes, or to change the states by autonomism or secession. Huntington (1996) believes, that in modern world the basic source of conflicts will be neihter ideology, nor economy. The major borders dividing mankind and prevailing sources of conflicts will be defined by culture. The nation-state remains the main character in the international affairs, but the most significant conflicts of global policy will be developed between the nations and the groups belonging to different civilizations. Collision of civilizations becomes the dominating factor of world politics. Robert Garson (“extra information”) states: “we live in a world where there is not only democracy but you are ultimately answerable to the people who live within your frontiers. And the way in which one proclaims that interest is through invocations of culture… Culture is increasingly important and it is increasingly important because actually the rhetoric that is required in the conduct of international affairs, and international relations requires rhetoric which people can identify with. And the more broadly politics is based, the more there has to be cultural invocation”. Conclusion Today in conditions of acceleration of civilization processes an integrity of cultures of various nations of the world is under threat, an amplifying expansion of antihumane phenomena of mass commercial culture, menacing to originality of national cultures and cultural development of mankind as a whole is observed. Only the thought over and purposeful policy of a state and world community as a whole in the field of culture is capable to provide preservation and harmonious development of culture of each people, to adjust interaction and productive dialogue between the nations. Dangerous escalation of conflicts and violence on ethnic and religious basis, especially wars in Bosnia, Liberia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Georgia, Russia, have brought global concern about ethnic and cultural self-determination and destructive politization of problem of national minorities. The most demand has appeared to be experience of management of multi-ethnicity within the limits of one state for the general advantage of representatives of greater and small groups. The increasing number of experts and politicians began to come to conclusion that not only for their own countries but also for all other world, more universal recipe is not the policy of division of states or movings of population for achievement of "national uniformity", but improvement of welfare conditions of life and system of management of multi-cultural communities. One of basic principles here is recognition of cultural variety of modern political formations and impossibility of concurrence of ethno-cultural and state-administrative borders. The other principle of internal self-determination is wider participation in political process of representatives of different cultures and religions without creation of ethno-racial and caste-tribal partitions or reserves, including own ethnic territories, etc. The third important point is comprehension of that minority, including diaspora groups sponsored by external manipulators may become sources of violence and even scale terrorism. In a view of new problems the doctrine and practice of so-called multi-culturalism is of interest. Most liberal theorists believe that “the legitimate claims of multiculturalism can be met by an adequate liberal political theory” (Haddock & Sutch, 2003, p. 25). Muli-culturalism is a recognition and a statement of cultural pluralism as the characteristic of many societies. Multi-culturalism welcomes and aspires to protect cultural variety as, for example, languages of minority, and at the same time pays attention to often unequal relations of minority with dominating cultures. Refernce list: Brown, W., Bromley, S., & Athreye, S. (2004). Ordering the International: History, Change and Transformation. Pluto Press. Haddock,B & Sutch, P. (2003) Multiculturalism, Identity and Rights. Routledge. Haddock,B & Sutch, P. (2003) Multiculturalism, Identity and Rights. Routledge. Huntington, S. (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Simon & Schuster. Extra Information. doc Read More