Cultural Essentialism - Essay Example

?Cultural Essentialism During last decades attitude to cultural peculiarities has been drastically changed due to general recognition and understanding of its role in modern society. Scientists all over the world have came along with a common thought that culture is considered to be one of the most essential sources of social and economic development in every country. Currently concrete measures defined by government include implementation of target program aimed at sustainable cultural growth, attaching special value to national traditions and norms, strengthening of material base for achieving stated goals. Nowadays cultural aspects are vital not only for social and spiritual base, but also for economic development, since the time when entrepreneurship has obtained international character, retracting more and more people of different national identities into business relations. However, today culture of various nations suffers from serious ambiguously influential tendency that has a worldwide scale. It is the process of rapid globalization, which causes elemental and uncontrollable borrowing of cultural values. Hence, making a trip to another country, traveler is prone to realize the fact that cultural orientation varies from place to place, therefore, person expects to feel at least the slightest resemblance of cultural shock; meanwhile, not infrequently lifestyle of foreign state is able to amaze with its paradoxical similarity to accustomed life pattern. For instance, while visiting any European country it is not hard to notice that cultural aspects do not differ much, providing population with the same brands of cloths, styles of music, trite movies and sometimes even the same pronunciation of cliches. In this respect, there is formation of common united standards of universal and international culture, which contains values, norms, ideas, patterns and symbols that are close to entire humanity. There is a wide layer of culture based on powerful processes of integration. On the one hand, globalization leads to convergence of nations, development of cultural contacts, mutual enrichment, exchange and migration. On the other hand, there is a significant negative feature that threatens with loss of cultural identity. The problem of cultural alteration and borrowing of cultural peculiarities is fully depicted in the article of Larry Strelitz “Against cultural essentialism: Media reception among South African youth” that emphasizes the fact that nowadays boundaries between such notions as “worldwide” and “local” gradually are starting to be obliterated. It is getting complicated to detect cultural identity while indigenous culture is extremely affected by foreign influence. In his article Larry Strelitz refers to numerous authors, criticizing and arguing their claims. Repeatedly he accentuates the idea of cultural hybridity that dominates in the world. The major reason of this phenomenon is invasion of different cultural specificities due to mass immigration processes. Author agrees with Robertson stating that the aspect of saturation and influence between mass and indigenous cultures occurs in bilateral way (cited in Strelitz, 2004, p. 627). Hence, mass culture has been formed under influence of the Third World countries while each local culture is prominently affected with global impact. Strelitz raises the topic of musical peculiarities and preferences, making examples of famous musicians that despite their origin have chosen quite unusual to their cultural identities music styles. For example, author recollects Lucia who describes individual sound of Ibrahim’s music as a mix of traditional African melodies, Islamic chant, American jazz style, European parlor songs and gospel music (cited in Strelitz, 2004, p. 628). Also author points out Ballentine’s claim concerning the fact that black American culture is considered to be the most influential one, simultaneously being subordinate to development of local elements. In addition, author believes that frequently taste in music depends on personal perception and initial sources, which are the basis of music style. Hence, one of the students in Strelitz’s interview explains that major reason of his predilection for American jazz is the fact that initially it has been formed under great influence of African style. Therefore, local roots and origin affect our choices even if we do not pay too much attention to these factors. Mentioned article also brings up a query of segregation revealing statistical indicators of 1990s that show disparity between living standards of different races in great details. Hence, in South Africa more than 90 per cent of poor population were African, meanwhile insignificant part of it were colored. According to Degenaar, mainly the problem of apartheid caused influence on lack of unified national identity, which in the last decade of twentieth century politicians tried to create with a help of using great events of worldwide importance (cited in Strelitz, 2004, p. 631). However, despite assiduous attempts of Mandela during Rugby World Cup tournament to unify nations and eliminate ethnic disparities, some people argued the question of African belonging considering that white South Africans intentionally insisted on their nationality for the purpose of land ownership. Only after collapse of apartheid class structure of population has started to face salient differentiation. It is obvious that problems of segregation managed to affect cultural formation in the country, creating totally different worlds for white and African youth. According to Strelitz, to identify the reasons of why a person prefers foreign media products, it is essential to take into account private conditions and events that happen in human life. Hence, for example, preferences of gay community to listen to George Michael, Queen or Elton John instead of any other musician can be explained with the fact that songs of American singers reveal difficulties, which gay people are able to face, and contain deep gist, mentioning situations that are close to listeners. Therefore, more often than not, some cultural directions that do not belong to indigenous peculiarities can be considered as genuine for specific personality. The great strength of the article written by senior lecturer of Rhodes University is the fact that Larry represents results of own research conducted among students, who share personal views and thoughts concerning their preferences and choices. Hence, Loren explains the main motives which encourage her to watch American show in spite of a girl’s origin and belonging to white family. The student admits that characters from the series get into situations that are quite familiar to her that is why sometimes she is able to see herself in different episodes and incidents. Girl’s closeness to a plot of the show increases her interest, giving opportunity to review accustomed situations from another angle and periodically laugh at happened absurdities. In this respect, the major author’s point is that our preferences mainly depend on the things that take place in our real life. Being well-structured and scientifically grounded, mentioned article is able to awake reader’s interest with urgent topic, big variety of alluded claims that belong to other authors, clear arguments and relevant citations of interviewees. However, in my opinion, the only weakness of presented work is that sometimes in specific parts interpretations of different author’s statements are written in complicated language that is not easy to catch at once due to complex sentences overwhelmed with definitions. Basically, article presents fair and perfectly grounded critical appraisals fascinating its readers with deepness of carried out research and reality of depicted problems. Students’ reflections and argumentations of own world outlook compel readers to comprehend the gist of raised questions more vividly. Strelitz managed to interpret numerous claims, arguing and criticizing authors’ statements. He analyzed versatility of cultural essentialism, emphasizing hybridity of different cultures. Presenting his article, author revealed aspects of cultural formations from practical points, retelling students’ experiences and considerations. Consequently, analyzing importance of Larry Strelitz’s article and reviewing its strengths, it is fair to conclude that presented work can be considered as a good example of perfectly conducted research that contains all elements of first-class study, such as presence of main thesis, critical appraisal, statistical basis, convincing arguments, relevant examples, appropriate citations and intelligible conclusions. Works Cited Strelitz, Larry (2004). “Against Cultural Essentialism: Media Reception among South African Youth.” Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 26(5): 625-641. Print. Read More