Australia Should Move towards a Melting Pot System - Literature review Example

Name: Course: Institution: Tutor: Question: Australia should move towards a melting pot system – where people are asked to put Australian culture first. Argue your position in relation to this statement. Australia should move towards a melting pot system Modern debates on the distinctiveness of specific national cultural value, activities and practices have increasingly become complicated because they are often organized and marketed subject to the values and beliefs of the people and the societies that they affect. It is for this reason that one can support the idea that austral should move towards the melting pot system. Australia prides itself as country made of up a cultural melting pot. The cultural melting pot is based on the belief that Australia as a country and its people become stronger when immigrants integrate their cultural values and philosophies with those of the Australian people. The melting pot tells immigrants regardless of where they come from or what their cultural values are that they are Australians and are expected to follow the Australian way of life (Chen, Meindl & Hunt, 2001). At the heart of Australia’s cultural identity is the country’s liberal legal system. Australia’s legal system is largely based on the British Common Law model, which places strict adherence to following procedural rules over substantive matters before courts. The Australian law model is also based on the concept of precedence which means that courts can shy away from doing something which has not been done previously. An obvious danger in this system is that the Australian courts are slow in adapting to or adopting new social mores or legal ideologies (Voelpel & Han, 2005). In Australia, the domination of culture by people differs significantly from other societies, where cultural values emerge from the everyday lives and interactions of the people, from religious practices and from various other forms of social interactions. It is thus possible for people to argue whether the larger Austrian culture is produced and marketed by the people themselves or is just sold to them. From a cultural perspective, Australia’s legal system is purely based on the melting pot approach, in which culturally unique ways of conflict resolution are not allowed by the country’s legal system. Instead, Australia’s legal system imposes its values on all people who come before it regardless of their cultural backgrounds. For instance, in the family separation cases, Australia’s courts apply the British law systems yet there are varied people and cultures in Australia, with different understandings of what family separation should entail. However, the varying views are not always reflected in court decisions. There are a number of aspects which make Australia unique in the cultural beliefs and values of its people. As part of the culture of the Australian people, majority of the people believe in the priority of individualism (Chen, Meindl & Hunt, 2001). The Australian culture judges people by their individual achievements and actions rather than their affiliation to a particular cultural group (caste, ethnic, racial or social class). Australians suspect that social organizations and institutions tend to oppress the freedom of individuals and hence they easily celebrate individual rebels. It is for this reason that Australian culture features images and stories that dramatize individual struggles with the society such as fairy tales in stories and movies. The Australian culture then differs sharply from that of other countries or societies where an individual is less important than the society. The people of Australia believe in the economic system of capitalism. In capitalism, property is owned and wealth accumulated by individuals. This differs from other economic systems such as communism in which the society or the state owns the means of production. Therefore, individuals who manage to accumulate large amounts of wealth are highly respected in the Australian society, which to a great extent looks down upon poor people because they are perceived to be failures (Long & Fahey, 2000). In Australia, economic success is judged as a responsibility for individuals and hence a matter of achievement. For this reason, there is cultural tendency in Australia to label the poor as less ambitious, less moral and less intelligent. This aspect of Australian culture is very different from other communities where an individual’s economic success is perceived to be arbitrarily dispensed by luck or fate. Despite the predominance of religiosity in Australia culture, the country is predicated as a strict observance of the separation between the state and the church. This has the implication that citizenship, participation in government and legal rights as well as access to public services are universally available regardless of one’s religious affiliations. Basically, acknowledgement and tolerance of religious differences is part of the law of Australia and the government cannot take positions on behalf or in support of particular religious groups. However, there are apparent tensions between Australia’s legal secularism and the cultural religiosity of the people (Voelpel & Han, 2005). Another important aspect of Australia’s culture is that its people participate aggressively in the culture of consumerism. In this culture, what one buys and owns signifies their identity, values, beliefs and character. As such, most people relish products that carry powerful brand names or whose usage signifies latest trends. According to Mark (2008) the Australia consumerism culture runs on advertising. Accordingly, advertising has become an important media experience of most people. In advertising, the content relates consumer products to core values and beliefs and offers consumers exclusive ways of expressing their cultural values through purchasing. Critics have argued that encouraging everybody to embrace the Australian culture by pursing the country’s cultural social policies, social integration and cultural assimilation can be held back. An obvious danger in this scenario is that economic disparities as well as exclusion of minority communities from mainstream politics may occur. However, cultural policies that encourage multiculturalism may encourage political participation by a large proportion of Australia’s people and hence increase minority presentation in local and national political life. Rogin (2002) has noted that democracy can thrive in Australia only if people are encouraged to embrace their respective cultures while at the same time respecting the wider Australian culture. In any event, the Australian culture is not a single cultural code but a representation of the views, values and policies of different cultural groups. In his book, Chen, Meindl & Hunt, (2001) have explained that forcing everybody residing in a certain country to embrace the culture of that country can be dangerous to realization of cross-border cultural integration objectives. For instance, it will be dangerous to force expatriates from Muslim countries working in Australia to embrace Christianity which is the dormant religion in the country. Such a cultural policy will not only undermine the concept of free will but can also deny minority groups the right to exercise more free choice as they cannot otherwise do in a universalist society. Mark, (2008) has argued that concerns for the preservation of a country’s unique cultural values should not overshadow the discriminatory nature of gender roles. He also says that culture should not be used as a basis for rolling women’s rights back. If the various cultural communities living in Australia do not support the basic principles of the country’s national culture such as freedom of religion, the Australian culture can blow up. As an example, the orthodox Muslims of Europe cannot accept freedom of religion in the case of non-Muslims, but they can easily call upon that freedom when they wish to engage in collective efforts such as building a mosque. Regarding multiculturalism and its benefits for the Australian people, it can be argued that multicultural diversity is used to mask hostilities towards minority groups. In his book, Rogin (2002) argued that entrenchment of multicultural values in Australian universities has been used to undermine the universalistic values that were meant to be fostered by liberal education. In particular, Rogin seem to have been disturbed by ethnic studies programs which are a common phenomenon in Australian universities. Moreover, multiculturalism throughout Australia has been criticized by paleo-conservative groups for being a direct attack on Australia traditional Christian culture. Many critics point out to the country’s founding philosophies and earlier political ideologies which stressed on the importance of remaining united through common values and traits. Many people attribute the rise of multiculturalism in Australia to its strong connection to western countries and economic relationships with countries in the Asia-Pacific region. In conclusion, some political movements have claimed that the people of Australia should move towards a unique common culture, arguing that multiculturalism is fast eroding the country’s sovereignty. Although some critics are afraid to criticize multiculturalism directly because of the overwhelming racial sensitivity and culture in Australia, there are nevertheless sentiments that multiculturalism is a major factor that impede the people from moving into a melting pot system. However, with the increasing numbers of immigrants moving to Australia each year, it is strongly felt that new attitudes- one that abandon assimilation and celebrate assimilation- may in the near future be part of the melting pot in which cultural differences are integrated and submerged in democracy. Bouty (2000) for instance notes that minority ethnic awareness has had a number of positive consequences in uniting Australia, which has a remarkable history of racial prejudice. References Bouty, I 2000, ‘Interpersonal and interaction influences on informal resource exchanges between R&D researchers across organisational boundaries’, Academy of Management Journal, 43(1), p. 50-65. Chen, C., Meindl, J and Hunt, R 2001, ‘Testing the effects of vertical and horizontal collectivism: A study of reward allocation preferences in China’, Journal of Cross- Cultural Psychology, 28, p. 44-70. Long, D and Fahey, L 2000, Diagnosing Cultural Barriers to Knowledge Management, The Academy of Management Executive, 14(4), p. 113-127. Mark D 2008, America's Athletic Missionaries': Political Performance, Olympic Spectacle and the Quest for an American National Culture, 1896-1912," International Journal of the History of Sport, 25(2), p. 185-203. Rogin, M 2002, "Making America Home: Racial Masquerade and Ethnic Assimilation in the Transition to Talking Pictures", The Journal of American History (Organization of American istorians) 79(3), p. 1050–77. Voelpel, S. C. and Han, Z. 2005, Managing knowledge sharing in Australia: the case of Siemens ShareNet, Journal of Knowlegde Management, 9(3), p. 51-63. Read More