The Threat Emerging out of Distinct Composite Culture of Britain - Essay Example

Community, Culture and Change Task: 'Would you consider diversity and difference in contemporary in British society a strength or weakness for community cohesion and integration; and what evidence would you present for taking either one or the other position for your conclusion Order#: 200817 Deadline: 2008-01-09 22:12 Style: Harvard Language Style: English UK Pages: 9 Sources: 7 Writer ID: 6746 INTRODUCTION: THE THREAT EMERGING OUT OF DISTINCT COMPOSITE CULTURE OF BRITAIN The composite culture that is a gift of the historic tradition and cultural heritage comprise of all the liberal and modern element of civility at times poses a question whether composite culture has perilous drawbacks. This question became evident in the mind of every rational human after the historic set back Seven July London Bombing and September Eleven Attack. Britain in particular is more concern in this question when it has a diverse society of multi faith, multi racial and multi cultural mode of social composition. It bothers much on the issue of the ethnical minority whereas Britain believes in enrichment of lives through cosmopolitan outlook of human existence via eco-social aspect of its perception. Behind the principle of social theories that every good society is ever changing, there erects the monument of the cross-question what about the recognition of the ethnical identity of the mainstream Britain. The opportunity of racial acceptance, religious tolerance, political understanding and economic support led Britain to face this serious question withering the belief that society that does not change gets extinction. Initiated and influenced by British initiative in the post and prior industrial revolution European White settlers almost colonized the one third of the world. The Second World War brought a drastic change in the imperialistic set up and colonial power had to honor the democratic rights of each commonwealth nations. This followed a great influx of immigrants in Britain in the process of idealizing a multicultural British society. Still the question poses the righteousness of such historic liberality.The latest official figures surveyed in 2006 show net immigration to the UK of 591,000 immigrants and 400,000 emigrants Stephens, J. 2006 "Multiculturalism". Only one in six were from Eastern European countries. Immigrants from New Commonwealth countries outnumbered them. Immigration from the Indian subcontinent, mainly fuelled by family reunion, accounted for two-thirds of net immigration. By contrast, at least 5.5 million British-born people are living abroad. The threats born out of liberal public policies in Great Britain demand minute scrutiny over the facts of composite culture. No civilized man would appreciate the historic 7 July whatever be the ground of identity crisis if even one side the bombers and their influencing powers. The 7 July 2005 London bombings were a series of coordinated terrorist bomb blasts that hit London's public transport system during the morning rush hour. At 8:50 a.m., three bombs exploded within fifty seconds of each other on three London Underground trains. A fourth bomb exploded on a bus nearly an hour later at 9:47 a.m. in Tavistock Square. The bombings killed 52 commuters and the four suicide bombers, injured 700, and caused disruption of the city's transport system and the country's mobile telecommunications infrastructure, (News archive 'The Guardian' UK). Different world free thinkers forums were shocked to get the shocking news that mix origin British citizens carried the nasty terrorist's acts. Fundamental belief system inspired them, which has been a serious concern for the mainstream British today. HISTORIC CULMINATION OF CHANGES IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Social changes that promoted multicultural consensus of human existence under the British clemency had its roots in literature, art, science, technology and every sort of humanistic social institutions. Their terrestrial expansion even propagated a classless and fearless free society where feminism, rights & liberty, freedom of every action within a social code emerged boundlessly. The 1960s are often considered a time of great shifts in attitudes in the United Kingdom. One notable event was the publication of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover by Penguin Books in 1960. The book was seen as one of the first events in a general relaxation of sexual attitudes. Other elements of the sexual revolution included the development of The Pill, Mary Quant's miniskirt and the 1967 legalization of homosexuality. There was a rise in the incidence of divorce and abortion, and a resurgence of the women's liberation movement, whose campaigning helped secure the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act in 1975. Reforms in education led to the effective elimination of the grammar school. The rise of the comprehensive school was aimed at producing a more egalitarian educational system, and there were ever-increasing numbers of people going into higher education. In the 1950s and 1960s, immigration of people to the United Kingdom, mainly from former British colonies in the Caribbean, India and Pakistan, began to escalate, leading to racism. Many people with differing cultures have successfully integrated into the country, and some have risen to high positions in diverse fields of occupation and resources. The United Kingdom's entry into the European Community (EEC) in 1973 meant that Britain was now more closely tied to its member states than ever before, and the country's relationship with the European Union is still much debated. The ecology movements of the 1980s reduced the emphasis on intensive farming, and promoted organic farming and conservation of the countryside, which welcomed more labors trough immigration promotion. Further, religious observance declined notably in Britain during the 20th century, even with the growth of non-Christian religions due to immigration and travel. Church of England attendance has particularly dropped, although it is not clear if personal spirituality has changed markedly. The movement to KEEP SUNDAY SPECIAL seems to have all but lost its battle, and the move towards a 24-hour society continues, with working and living patterns changing accordingly. The UK is multicultural by definition, because of its Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish minorities whereas various cultures and languages are added to the dominant English culture from around the globe. Nevertheless, the multiculturalism Britain is particularly proud of is that which refers to the immigrants from all over the world. Nevertheless, this model of integration is now facing its own limits as the mainstream British sideline their ethnical position primarily on the basis of race and religious foundations although they least bother to observe strict religious principles. Empirical evidences suggest Modern Britain, the post renaissance England experienced Christian submergence of social lives including today. The Christian dominant England also experienced assaults on the Jews; it by no means adopted any state policy to discourage their existence. As a result, Britain, even being primarily Christian soil provides a secular home for the Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism as well as any other faiths in the world including Jewish beliefs. Following the introduction of the printing press into England by William Caxton in 1476, the Elizabethan era saw a great flourishing of literature, especially in the fields of poetry and drama. From this period, poet and playwright William Shakespeare stands out as arguably the most famous writer in the world and the subsequent years follow the flow of both fiction and factual works in the printing media marking the topmost peak of the academic world with so-called rational and scientific social set up. This actually had been possible due to the sensibility of unifying western ideology along the merging of the judicious occidental practices and worthy humanistic and technical ideas. Britain also supports a number of major orchestras including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia, the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Because of its location and other economic factors, London is one of the most important cities for music in the world. The English Renaissance, starting in the early 16th century, was a parallel to the Italian Renaissance, but did not develop in exactly the same way. It was mainly concerned with music and literature; in art and architecture, the change was not as clearly defined as in the continent. Painters from the continent continued to find work in Britain, and brought the new styles with them, especially the Flemish and Italian Renaissance styles. This traditional workforce began to flourish from the developing countries after the postmodern period in the Great Britain in order to reach a wide platform of multicultural cohesion. When talking about religion we find today one of the more 'secularised' states in the world, the United Kingdom is traditionally a Christian country, with two of the Home nations having official faiths. As mentioned before religions followed in the UK include Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism, and Buddhism. Census information of 2001 suggests that over 75 percent of UK citizens consider themselves to belong to a religion, Gallup International reports that only 10 percent of UK citizens regularly attend religious services, compared to 15 percent of French citizens and 57 percent of American citizens. A 2004 YouGov poll found that 44 percent of UK citizens irrespective of their origins believe in God, while 35 percent do not. The disparity between the census data and the YouGov data has been put down to a phenomenon described as "cultural Christianity", whereby many who do not believe in God still identify with the religion they were bought up as, or the religion of their parents. Stern modern philosophers such as Edmund Freud address this as a feature of modern lifestyle in a cosmopolitan society. THE DEBATED SYMBIOSIS OF MULTICULTURALISM AND THEIR COHESION Many tend to opine that Britain as per certain hidden agenda of state policy do encourage even illegal immigration, Strong, Roy ,1996 "The Story of Britain", London: Hutchinson, ISBN 1-85-681099-2. In case of legal immigration, the matter is evident although they scrutinize each potentiality of the economic and cultural sustenance. The United Kingdom has continuous high immigration rates, among the highest in the EU. Most of the immigrants of the last decades came from the Indian subcontinent or the Caribbean as stated above from former British colonies. In 2004, the number of people who became British citizens rose to a record 140,795 - a rise of 12% on the previous year. This number had risen dramatically since 2000. The overwhelming majority of new citizens come from Africa (32%) and Asia (40%). In the UK, supporters of the Labor government's approach believed it was defending the rights of minorities to preserve their culture, whilst encouraging their participation as citizens by integrating without assimilating. Critics argue that the policy fails on all counts because social conditions and insularity become barriers to the integration of minorities. There is now a lively debate in the UK over whether explicit multiculturalism and "social cohesion and inclusion" are in fact mutually exclusive. In the wake of the July 7 Bombings 2005, which left over 50 people dead the opposition Conservative shadow home secretary, called on the government to scrap its "outdated" policy of multiculturalism. In the May 2004 edition of Prospect Magazine, David Goodhart, the Editor, temporarily couched the debate on multiculturalism in terms of whether a modern welfare state and a "good society" is sustainable as its citizens become increasingly diverse. Open criticism of multiculturalism - hitherto sometimes disingenuously equated with racism, jingoism and xenophobia. The first member of an ethnic minority to be appointed as Archbishop of York stated, "Multiculturalism has seemed to imply, wrongly for me: let other cultures be allowed to express themselves but do not let the majority culture at all tell us its glories, its struggles, its joys, its pains in November 2005." Bishop Nazir Ali of Rochester has also voiced criticisms. The community and local government secretary Ruth Kelly made a speech, which some saw as signaling the end of multiculturalism as official policy during August 20006. In November 2006, Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that Britain has certain "essential values" and that these are a "duty". He did not reject multiculturalism as such, but he included British heritage among the essential values- "When it comes to our essential values - belief in democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, equal treatment for all, respect for this country and its shared heritage - then that is where we come together, it is what we hold in common." This declares the openness of the state policies to both safeguard the mainstream British and conjoin the richness of diverse imports of heritage. Modernism remains a significant force in UK architecture, although its influence is felt predominantly in commercial buildings. The two most prominent proponents are Lord Rogers of Riverside and Lord Foster of Thames Bank. Rogers' iconic London buildings are probably Lloyd's Building and the Millennium Dome, while Foster created the Swiss Re Buildings and the Greater London Authority Head Quarters which primarily could be worked out in coordination of regained British identity from among the distributed powers of different race and social institutions in the united kingdom. CONCLUSION: MULTICULTURALISM BRINGS HOME THE KEYS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. British who enlightened the world into a civilized peak of human existence through its invention, discoveries and other intellectual contribution of human existence could not predict the outcome of the liberal state policy of multicultural integration. On the other hand, Britain takes pride to extend its cooperative hand of interdependence and sharing the common ideas, resources and heritage. Britain was the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th century, but the economic cost of two world wars and the decline of its empire in the latter half of the 20th century diminished its leading role in global affairs. The UK nevertheless retains significant economic, cultural, military and political influence and is a nuclear power, with the second highest defense spending in the world. It holds a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council and is a member of the G8, NATO, the European Union and the Commonwealth of Nations. The British started the Industrial Revolution, and, like most industrializing countries at the time, initially concentrated on heavy industries such as shipbuilding, coal mining, steel production, and textiles. The empire created an overseas market for British products, allowing the United Kingdom to dominate international trade in the 19th century. However, as other nations industrialized and surplus labor from agriculture began to dry up, coupled with economic decline after two world wars, the United Kingdom began to lose its economic advantage. As a result, heavy industry declined, by degrees, throughout the 20th century. The British service sector, however, has grown substantially, and now makes up about 73% of GDP. No foreign policy discourages the consensus of this heritage despite the threats and negativism in the racial, religious and social roots of the population. Possibly, Britain now looks forward a reformative policy to bind the values of cultural cohesion. Since Britain is a European state, and has many cultural links with its former colonies, particularly those that use the English language and strive to form unison of faith, culture, economy, literature, art, technology and above all a multicultural heritage. The origins of the UK as a political union of formerly independent states have resulted in the preservation of distinctive cultures in each of the home nations. Technologically, the UK is also amongst the world's leaders. Historically, it was at the forefront of the industrial revolution, with innovations especially in textiles, the steam engine, railroads and all forms of engineering. Since then, the United Kingdom has continued this tradition of technical creativity. The UK remains one of the leading providers of technological innovations today, providing inventions as diverse as the World Wide Web and Viagra. Social scientists feel, this had been possible due to the liberal multicultural outlook in the ever-changing British Society. REFERENCES 1. Briggs, Asa (1983). A Social History of England. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0-29-778074-3 2. Trevelyan, G. M. (1967). English Social History: A Survey of Six Centuries from Chaucer to Queen Victoria. Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN 0-14-020860-7. 3. Strong, Roy (1996). The Story of Britain. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 1-85-681099-2. 4. Stephens, J. (2006) Multiculturalism. Read More