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Al-Ahram Weekly 14 - 20 September 2000 Issue No. 499 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 14 - 20 September 2000 Issue No. 499
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region Interview International Economy Opinion Culture Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Plain Talk
By Mursi Saad El-Din
I was very impressed by an article in the Saturday-Sunday Herald Tribune, written by Flora Lewis. The title of the article was, in fact, a succinct summation of its contents: "One civilisation, in which many cultures talk to each other..." A neat précis, too, of the aims of UNESCO, which, throughout the on-going debate about the impact of globalisation has consistently called for the preservation and strengthening of national cultures.
Flora Lewis discussed the issue in the light of the UN millennium summit, which was attended by an unprecedented number of heads of state and government. Commenting on the meeting, Lewis writes: "There is in fact a persistent call for better communication, more understanding, but it is really an appeal not for more speaking but for more listening."
I have very clear memories of the UNESCO conference held in Sweden when this very issue was discussed. The conference was itself part of a year long programme intended to promote dialogue across cultures.
Flora Lewis is a vehement objector to the plural "civilisations" claiming -- and I am inclined to agree with her -- that there is only one civilisation. "The idea of multiple civilisations that must recognise one another is, I think, misleading. Civilisation is a condition. There are varying degrees, different ways of expressing its values and achievements, but people live together in a state of civilisation or they do not."
Cultures is a better term, perhaps, that civilisations. And it has always been one of UNESCO's major arguments -- indeed, the organisation's raison d'être -- that the more they know of one another, then the better different cultures will get along.
Inevitably, Lewis turns to globalisation, a term that has become, she thinks, "a rather dirty word." It has come to symbolise, she suggests, a growing American hegemony, and it is the fear of such US dominance that lies behind people's increasing mistrust of the concept. Yet it remains important, Lewis argues, to distinguish between the globalisation of attitudes and aspirations -- if only because "there really isn't much choice but freely given cooperation among peoples if the world is to prosper, even, perhaps if it is to survive" -- and a fear of American hegemony and what that implies for non-Anglo Saxon cultures.
The writer also touches upon the by now well-known thesis forwarded by the American political scientist Samuel Huntington, who has suggested that with the end of the ideological conflict of the cold war new lines of battle have emerged between the Judeo-Christian West and the Islamic world.
But it is perhaps the question of peace, and of how to achieve and maintain it, that dominated the Millennium summit. Increasingly, I have noted, people appear suspicious of the word peace, and even more so of the term "the culture of peace." The expression, perhaps, provides too capacious a vehicle for a whole host of personal and national baggage. Sometime ago I wrote an article on the UNESCO manifesto titled The Culture of Peace and was astonished by the hostility of some of the responses. The assumption was, of course, that the article was a veiled call for normalisation with Israel, so easy do some people find it to project their own positions on the words of others. Though well aware of this propensity I was nonetheless surprised that so many of those who were critical seemed to have forgotten that all Arab countries are members of UNESCO, and that they had been perfectly happy to endorse the UN decision that made 2000 the year of the culture of peace.
Certainly there exists a constituency in every country of the world that yearns for peace, though it appears that some leaders believe that to satisfy those yearnings implies a compromise of national sovereignty -- or more precisely, an abandonment of the right to pursue conflict for reasons that are not always clear. Tellingly, the word peace, which featured in the speeches of almost every head of state to address the Millennium summit, acted as a catalyst, galvanising representatives from every continent, particularly those from Africa, Asia and Latin America.
