Many have written over the years about the political risk arising from cultural values. Back in 1992, Benjamin Barber, in his popular book Jihad vs McWorld, visualized violent local politics (“jihad”) as a reaction to the cultural uniformity induced by globalization. Samuel Huntington took the idea to a widely-discredited extreme, when he argued that continental-scale cultural clashes will be the biggest source of political risk in the future.
Such broad culture-talk generates weak arguments because it takes politics out of the equation. Islamophobia is one instance. The conservative paranoia about the so-called “ground zero mosque” uses crass cultural imagery to not only deny constitutionally guaranteed religious freedoms but also portray the act of building a community center as the “triumph” of a foreign culture. The real issue, however, is not culture, but politics: election-season politics, foreign policy politics, and political risk in provoking far right ideologues.
Similarly, Westernophobia is a trick that the Chinese government has been using to deny basic human rights to Chinese citizens. This came to the fore with the award of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo. China’s hostile reaction to that award is based on the premise that human rights are not universal, but culturally-defined, and represents Westernization. Here too, the real problem is not culture, but politics: Human rights and political freedom pose great political risk to the regime in power.
In globalization circles, broad culture-talk, i.e., East = X, West = Y, has been a useful ploy to mask the political sources of risk. Uninquisitive minds readily accept that Western Judeo-Christianic values are superior, are spread through globalization, and provoke primitive reactions in the form of “jihad” in the East because either “they envy us” or “they haven’t seen the light”.
Such talk perpetuates many historical inaccuracies. In a recent article in The Sunday Times, historian William Dalrymple points out some of them:
- The “earliest known experiment in formal inter-religious dialogue” was not in the West, but in India, led by the Emperor Akbar of the Muslim Mughal Empire.
- Akbar upheld freedom of religion at a time (16th century) when “in London, Jesuits were being hung, drawn and quartered outside Tyburn, in Spain and Portugal the Inquisition was torturing anyone who defied the dogmas of the Catholic church, and in Rome Giordano Bruno was being burnt at the stake in Campo de’Fiori.”
- “Judaism and Christianity are every bit as much eastern religions as Islam or Buddhism. So much that we today value – universities, paper, the book, printing – were transmitted from East to West via the Islamic world, in most cases entering western Europe in the Middle Ages via Islamic Spain.”
- The first ruler “to emphasise the importance of the equality of his subjects” was the Buddhist Indian Emperor Ashoka. This was in the third century BC.
- The huge upturn in violent conflict in the last hundred years was not in the East, but rooted in the West: the World Wars, the ideologies of Marxism-Leninism, Fascism, Nazism.
- Genocide began with “the worst excesses of western colonialism.”
- “The European slave trade forcibly abducted 15m Africans and killed as many more.”
The list goes on. The point is, it is not only crude but historically false to portray the West broadly as a freedom-loving culture that is using globalization to spread superior values, and the East as reactionary, backward, developing, and emerging, with hiccups, into enlightenment. And it’s even more false to then predict a giant collision between the two.
Political risk does not come from broad cultural clashes, but from politics, which is about power. As analysts of political risk, we should be aware of cultural trends, but we should ensure that we assess the significance such trends by asking: what does this mean for the competition for power?
We should not assume that risk to Western investment in “emerging” markets is automatic, or endemic, or sourced in cultural assumptions such as, “they don’t understand the value of investment,” or “they’re backward and don’t get what free market means.” There is no automatic jihad against McWorld. Risk arises because of the power politics that accompany such investment.
I completely agree with the post. I think there are two major takeaways (at least in my opinion) from this.
1. It really all just boils down to politics.
Religious extremist groups (of any strain of religious thought), Communists, Capitalists, Atheists, right/left wing radicals, and whatever other kind of group I can’t think of at the moment have a specific agenda that they use to promote their political ambitions. Anyone can start running down the list of events over the centuries: wars, bombings, and economic strategies just to name a few and when each situation is really looked at, that particular group or individual is merely pursuing their political agenda. Each of these groups/individuals push their political agenda, but it is wrapped in their personal philosophy, no matter what that may be. “Cultural clashes” is not a actually present, it is merely windown dressing.
Now, I’m not saying that groups like Al Qaeda don’t believe in a violent interpretation of Islam, they do. But, they conduct attacks based on the desire to push their political agenda on other people, and religious ideals is one way to push that agenda.
2. Clashes between two different cultures occur not because of a the inability of two cultures to coexist, but rather the forceful nature of politics.
Cultures may differ, but the major problem arises from people being forced to do something that they don’t agree with. A perfect example of this can be seen with the right and left ends of the spectrum in American politics. Is this a clash of cultures? or a political fight between two different ideologies, and both sides trying to force their ideologies on the other? You can apply this to a majority of major conflicts around the world.
Now, you also have to look at the politics of both sides of these conflicts, and determine what each side is pushing for and against. The politics of each side may be somewhat determined by certain cultural aspects, so culture definitely plays a part, but when you really look at the clash, it is really just politics.
I concur on both points. The current US conflict against global terrorism is obviously very complex and layered, but at the end of the day a large portion of al-Qaeda’s beef with the US is over the presence of American military bases in the Middle East and the Arab regimes that allow it. Despite the animosity engendered by the decision of these regimes to allow US forces on their soil, they allow it, and why? Politics. US forces provide a level of stability in the region as well as (in many cases) important economic benefits. Al-Qaeda, in the meantime, is frustrated by their inability to circumvent the iron-fisted internal policing of Arab nations and actually at one point found it easier to go after American targets. Their ability to target the US has since changed, but their desires have not, so we can expect al-Qaeda to continue on with their ridiculous goal of re-establishing the Caliphate.
Also, when two ideologies clash it can be expected that politics will be driving force in portraying the enemy a certain way. Of course Islamist militant leaders will paint American forces as monsters who have come to their countries to impose their politics and cultures on them; this is no different than the titanic struggle between fascism and communism in World War II, where the Nazis tried to stem the tide against the “Asiatic hordes” descending from the East, and Soviet commissars exhorted their troops forward with cries for revenge against the “fascists beasts.”
re: “Cultures may differ, but the major problem arises from people being forced to do something that they don’t agree with.”
Hmm, but then how do you stop stuff like discrimination against women, people of color, gays and lesbians, etc? In each case, many people are forced to do something they don’t agree with (let someone black go to an all-white school, etc).
Pro-equality changes occur with many people being forced to do things they don’t agree with. Women would never have gotten the vote if we had waited for everyone to agree with it – and before that, no votes for women forced all women not to vote, something they disagreed with.
In short, I find many of your statements – such as “Clashes between two different cultures occur not because of a the inability of two cultures to coexist, but rather the forceful nature of politics” – ignore many aspects of reality.
I’ve done a lot of thinking and writing on the West and Islam. You can check it out at The Idea Emporium.
I was referring to international relations, and used a simple domestic example to convey a point that it is a difference in politics and people forcing their political ideas on each other. I was not discussing the issue of equal rights, I was discussing international political clashes. I was also not stating anything that was for or against equal rights.
In short, I find many of your statements to ignore the actual content of what I wrote.
@Elsa, I’m sorry I really can’t stand when someone takes one sentence out of an entire posting and takes it completely out of context while ignoring all else. I read Kyle’s posting twice and had no idea what you were attempting to do other than soapbox on an issue he wasn’t even addressing. I don’t think he was implying that we go back to separate water fountains.
As for the main posting, there isn’t much else to say about it other than you hit the nail on the head. Political risk stemming from politics and power dynamics rather than generalized cultural “clashes” is absolutely correct. However, for conversation’s sake, isn’t politics, which is shaped by those in power, an image of some aspect of culture?
It would be ethnocentric to believe the West to be some gallant savior of the East from their own backwardness or that the West represents equality and democracy in its purest form. That said, the same is done in the East, where Westerners are depicted by some groups as, quite frankly, the whores of Babylon. Aren’t generalizations or identification of differences the simplest and oldest forms of human interaction?
So while politics are certainly the most fruitful point to begin an analysis of political risk, cultures and beliefs can’t be discounted. There is an inherent relationship between the too.
As for the “Ground-Zero Mosque,” I offer this up for debate: it is hard for me to see that it is not a political move on both sides of the fence. The neighborhood surrounding Ground-Zero is not a highly residential neighborhood, nor does it have a Muslim population. So why place a community center right there? To build such a center involves ample resources (this applies to any religion or group building a center), and so there must be a good reason for doing so (lex parsimoniae). So what is the reason if it is not there to serve the immediate community? The simplest explanation is political motive. To some in the East this would be seen as a “triumph” of sorts–if you can call it that. To level-headed American liberals it is, of course, a constitutional right and should be protected as denying its right to exist would be more damaging than its actual construction! But, one must question the motive.
At the end of your post you say that risk arises because of the power politics that accompany such investment [into emerging markets]. But does everyone see it this way? Perhaps you are right about what you say about some in the West and how they view such investment, but what about the East? If the power politics involved in an American-based corporation’s actions in a given country galvanize the public against it, suddenly it becomes a symbol of the hegemony and wickedness of America; of Britain; of Denmark; of the West. In actuality its actions are the results of men (and women) from both sides making decisions that will result in the largest profit regardless of state origin, culture, or the greater good.
I wonder, when considering the infamous Muhammed cartoon published in the Danish newspaper, and the global uprising that ensued, was it power politics that sparked such a popular uprising or was it cultural? Is this a chicken and the egg question? I wonder if you can even separate the two? I personally don’t think one trumps the other–that is power politics trumps cultural difference. They are bedfellows, but your point is quite clear–the politicians extract from culture the power they need to achieve their end goals.
I would make the argument that the clash isn’t about politics or culture but purely about power. Furthermore, there are a number of factors that influence the equation of power and determine who comes out on top. These factors include politics and culture, but they also include economics as well as military strength. In my opinion this is the reason over the course of history we have seen the international system go from being multipolar to bipolar and now unipolar. This of course stems from the argument put forward by Huntington’s contemporary Francis Fukuyama in “The End of History?”
The ability of one side to prevail over the other has to do with how each manipulates these variables (politics, culture, military, and economics) as well as others. Of course these variables can co-exist in equilibrium but they can also influence each other. Inevitably how they feed into an actors projection of power can have a residual effect on these variables.
I think of the two concepts of Westernophobia and Islamophobia that were given. In the case of Westernophobia the reaction to it stems from the fact that the West is not only very heavily politically, economically, militarily and culturally involved all over the world but that these variables forced upon others by some of the worlds major power brokers. In the case of Islamophobia, I find it to be a case where there is part of an ideology, in this case radical Islam, that attempts to, but for the most part fails, in bringing its ideal of power to overwhelm that of the West. I’d like to think that most of us would agree that radical groups like Al Qaeda are not representative of the larger umbrella of Islam. Of course the world operates with constant considerations about power and whereas no other group, specifically Islamic, is as flagrantly expressive with their displays of power it is easy for the west to generalize all of Islam as being represented by Al Qaeda, hence the Ground Zero Mosque. Alternatively, the West clearly dominates politics, economics, culture, and militarism globally. Therefore, a Westernophobia seems a little more rational to me. In the case of “human rights” I would argue Westernophobia over it stems directly from the fact that nations like the US have used their power in all senses to force this way of living on others. Rather than nations like China making rational considerations about human rights they become grouped in with being a Western display of culture-based power, which actually seems logical given the global displays of Western power.
What it boils down to is that neither phobia is just, however, in my opinion there is certainly more evidence to support a fear of the West. As the definitive broker of power in the world the West should certainly remain cautious of cultural trends and political risk and how they influence power. Still it is the non-West such as China and Islam that have more to be concerned about and as time goes on that concern is beginning to translate into action.
1. I am bit confused by what you mean by power not politics, isn’t politics the distribution of power?
2. Could you clarify the distinctions you draw between politics, culture, economics and military strength?
3. While not agreeing with Islamophobia and Westernophobia, do you think that these are simply products of delusion, or more likely, that they are flawed projections with basis in reality?
4. How does your discussion of phobia touch on the main point of the cultural trends and political risk?
One possible way of looking at politics is as the distribution of power. Similarly, you might look at power as being the distribution of politics. The latter is the means I was considering in my initial post. My reasoning for distinguishing between politics, culture, economics, and the military is that these are some, if not all, of the major ways in which we see power displayed. Typically, the most common displays of power involve politics and the military. We know that the military distributes or expresses power via war, and we also know that war is often considered to be “the continuation of politics by other means.” However, we also see power expressed in terms of culture and economics and sometimes this is done with minimal consideration for politics or military power.
An example I can think of is the current debate about immigration in the US. Fears over immigrants, legal or illegal, are not based in concerns over Central and South American nations monopoly on political or military power. Instead the fears are based on concern over the impact immigrants have on the US economy as well as the culture. This may not be what most would consider an expression of power as it does not appear that immigration is a calculated tactic used by immigrants native countries. I would argue that fear is in the eye of the beholder, and whereas the American public appear to be afraid, the argument that they economy and culture are being threatened could be sustained. The threats to economy and culture are rooted minimally in politics, NAFTA for example, but even this crosses back into the realm of economic and culture. Another possible example is China, where fears are primarily based on their economic power, and how their manufacturing of goods exerts cultural power, trickling down to politics and military power.
To clarify, I don’t believe that expressions of power via politics, military, culture, or economics exist independently of each other, I believe they are codependent in varying degrees. Furthermore, there may be other variable expressions of power to be considered.
In regards to Islamophobia and Westernophobia I would agree that they are not entirely delusions but more likely flawed projections with basis in reality. This also related back to my example about the threat of immigration as well as that from China. They are considerations of power and reactions to it based upon an assessment of the correlation between politics, culture, economics, and military.
Finally, my discussion of phobia touches on the point of cultural trends and political risk because I believe that while cultural trends can influence political risk as Jalal’s post suggests, it can also go the other way. Sometimes we may falsely consider something to be a cultural trend when it is really a political risk which is what I find to be one of Jalal’s main points. However, I argue that at times there are instances where culture, economics, politics, and military might each over take each other as being the primary expression of power, merely receiving support from the others.
politics is the authoritative allocation of values which can, but not necessarily must, translate into power.
This post brings up my conflicted feelings on cultural relativism. On the one hand, I want to say that there are no universal cultural norms, and that everything is relative, particularly with respect to China and human rights. The Chinese argument on human rights is that they provide basic living necessities for all their people through the “iron rice bowl” policy, and that it is ethnocentric of the West to criticize them for not guaranteeing civil liberties such as freedom of speech when the West does not guarantee basic necessities for its people. I find this argument valid because it is possible for your freedom of speech to have a conflict of interest with your ability to secure basic necessities. Furthermore, I think the case could be made that freedom of speech, or ‘freedom’ in general is more of an illusion.
To get back to the main point of the article, I agree that culture/religion are used interchangeably in explaining conflicts between different states. From a reductionist perspective, conflicts can be explained as arising from a conflict over resources — whether it’s power, land, or political influence.
You raise a great point when you remind us that while the Chinese have a bad record on some human rights (free speech, political freedom), the US has a poor record on some as well (lack of healthcare chief among them).
Is it any more of less objectionable that the US allows between 20,000 – 45,000 people to die each year from lack of access to health insurance, than it is for the Chinese to block search terms and websites? Maybe, or maybe not. Reasonable people can disagree.
But in light of that, it is important for Americans to remember that for whatever reason–cultural, political, economic–we have some policies that many other nations find to be incredibly immoral.
I agree. But we must work…through dialogue and other forms of discourse to achieve some semblance of universality. By not doing so leaves the door open to future conflict as a clash of cultures al’a Huntington is ultimately a clash of “non=negotiable values”
I agree with this assessment of the common misconceptions of the imbalance of power between the East and the West. Rather than “using globalization to spread superior values,” it would be more accurate to say that the West is spreading misconceptions to further its own stake in a globalized world.
Cameron stated that “the ability of one side to prevail over the other has to do with how each manipulates these variables (politics, culture, military, and economics) as well as others.” The U.S. has been using its understanding of the current political and economic climate to frame events to their advantage. Europe gained much of its power during the Imperialist era because it framed the new world order according to its own advantage; so too is the U.S. framing globalization today. However, just as it is inappropriate to vilify Islam, it would also be inappropriate to say such things of Western states. The attempt to further a state’s stake in the world is none other than realpolitik. Such a political value is present throughout all cultures. It is not a state’s cultural values that dictate its position in the world; but rather, it’s a state’s willingness to use its position in the world that dictates its level of power.
I will first respond to the original post. I will, however, take a closer look at the 7 comments made so far (and others to be made soon, I presume) and engage them as well.
A couple of things spring to mind, here One, is that virtually every nation in the history of the nation state publicly state that there cultural values are the most pure and the most honorable. This fact alone makes any public statement by public officials, in which they assert they are spreading cultural values to other parts of the world, worthy of serious skepticism. And the original post reflects such skepticism, noting that in many cases “The real issue … is not culture, but politics.” Jalal is talking about the mosque controversy, but gives other examples where politics –electoral, international, domestic–were masked in the veil of culture.
Let me consider another, fairly obvious example. The invasion of Iraq was waged with many public statements about “spreading democracy,” and “freedom.” This was not the only rationale (weapons, national security were also used), but they were strongly emphasized. Dick Cheney argued that civilization itself was at stake.
The media largely accepted that the goal was spreading democracy and freedom (some thought it was a misguided goal, but few actually said it was a mask to the real aims of the mission.) Accordingly the did not note that in 1945, the State Department concluded that Middle East oil reserves were “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in history.” This very understanding has been central to US interventions in the region, ranging from its push for control of Iran through a coup in 1953, to the US “special relationship” with Saudi Arabia.
Vice President Dick Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, even once declared that “the Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil … is still where the ultimate prize lies.” Further,
the invasion occured just as Iraq was, in the middle of what historian Charles Tripp called, “Iraq’s reemergence as a major oil producer and regional economic power.” This reemergence was benefiting US economic rivals Tripp noted: e “Russia and China could not resist a piece of the Iraq market” and thus were gaining more control of crucial resources . When the US toppled Iraq, oil contracts between Iraq and US economic rivals were no longer valid.
Of course, a war of great expense in blood and money is tough to sell on the premise of “increasing US power over its rivals.” And so, like so many wars, it was sold as an act of benevolence — spreading US values across the globe.
This, too, is true of globalization. People often say, and Martin Wolf is one of them, that globalization represents the triumph of Western culture: free people, free markets, democracy and so on.
But, of course, the policies strongly benefit power brokers–who are very deeply involved in lobbying and advising national governments and international bodies– with real short-term financial gains.
And the argument that democracy is protected by globalization is quite dubious. For example, left-wing governments in Latin America were elected by their populations–in free and fair elections–on platforms that strongly oppose the Washington Consensus. Yet, these actual expressions of democracy are viewed as threats by advocates of globalization. Again, power and politics, trumps not only culture, but even democracy
I think culture is so often emphasized, because it strikes a chord with populations. When we see political ads demonizing immigrants in Nevada, or Newt Gingrich calling Obama a man whose belief system is rooted in Kenyan anti-Colonialist sentiment (even though, as president of the US, Obama is a staunch supporter of capitalism, and used a great deal of political capital to help preserve it), we see examples of politicians making the calculation that the US population is fearful of foreign cultures. So it makes sense that politicians would sell many policies as cultural endeavors, as opposed to being about power. pro-Globalization, then, is not pro-business policy, but pro-US-style democracy policy; the War in Iraq is not about international power, but about making the world safe for freedom.
I do think that, as graduate students studying international relations, most of us are often able to look past the public statements of politicians and assess political and economic factors. But, many people do not look past these statements. And accordingly, using culture talk, often works as a political communication strategy.
Lastly, I use the term Culture Talk intentionally, because I think to revisit Mamdani (which many of us read in a class last year). If we recall, he mentioned the way culture is emphasized, and why this is.
For those who sold the book, here is chapter one: http://www.enotalone.com/article/4903.html
He writes: “Culture Talk assumes that every culture has a tangible essence that defines it, and it then explains politics as a consequence of that essence. Culture Talk after 9/11, for example, qualified and explained the practice of “terrorism” as “Islamic.” “Islamic terrorism” is thus offered as both description and explanation of the events of 9/11. It is no longer the market, (capitalism) nor the state, (democracy) but culture (modernity) that is said to be the dividing line between those in favor of a peaceful, civic existence and those inclined to terror. It is said that our world is divided between those who are modern and those who are premodern.”
Much like the chicken and the egg argument which was brought up earlier, I feel that East vs West, Power vs Culture arguments are circular and endless. These arguments have been fairly extensively covered by the previous commentators so I won’t reiterate them but add an observation. It was not too long ago when we in politics and IR used “cultural sensitivity” as a key term. It has been discarded by the majority now but I believe it is a clear example of how culture has been used to disguise power politics. If there was a program which was objectionable to a group or population then we would look for the culturally sensitive way of implementing the program. Rather than look at how this program may be offensive we sought out cultural back doors which would allow the offending program to be implemented rather than adjusting the goal of the program itself. This was a way of manipulating culture in a political struggle. Although we have abandoned this terminology, I doubt that the methodology has changed.
I am absolutely agree with Jalal’s statement that political risk does come, first of all, from politics. Despite the era of globalization, realpolitik or politics of power still dominate the world. In this case, the power politics consist of not only military and economic power, but also culture. In this regard, Cameron is right, saying that ‘the ability of one side to prevail over the other has to do with how each manipulates these variables (politics, culture, military, and economics) as well as others’.
In fact, culture was the object of manipulation by the world powers since long ago. As was discussed this semester in our ‘Regioanlizm’ class, cultural stereotypes are often invented, superimposed and maintained by the most powerful states in order to distinguish ‘civilized world’ from ‘barbarian’. Thus, culture, religion etc. have always been convenient and effective weapon in hands of the powerful, ,whether in terms of IR or domestic politics, and are likely to remain so. Here I agree with Rebekah that the argument is endless.
However, as Jalal stated, we definitely should be aware of cultural trends, because politics do influence culture and vice versa.
I see the foundation of the issues surrounding the ground zero mosque not one of culture or politics, but of ignorance and intolerance. Everyone has heard arguments from both sides. If the din of intolerance is loud enough, the elected representatives take note, and this makes it political. And, when one group screams loudly enough, there easily are those found on the other side who yell back, and in this case – they argue with ‘culture.’ Each have strong, valid points, but only one group will be victorious. It will depend on which intolerant group creates a larger political stand.
I do agree with the earlier posts on human rights. Each country defines the level of human rights they acknowledge for their own people, and many countries then force their definition onto other countries who define it differently. The most severe of human rights as defined by the United Nations should be universal, and punishable, but as has been seen in with acts of genocide, many times politics trumps even that definition.
It is not about culture, it is about politics. Culture is used as a reason, when saying it is political is immoral or unpopular.
The uproar over the Ground Zero Mosque is truly unfortunate and represents the worst form of political exploitation in America. Do I understand those who argue it may be insensitive? Yeah, I guess. But at the end of the day that argument fails to hold any water with me. I think that the symbolism of putting an Islamic Cultural Center on the planned area is very powerful and potent, and will have a far more positive effect than the negativity engendered by denying the cultural center’s right to build. If anything, the US would look like a huge hypocrite and would feed the claims by our enemies that America is not tolerant of Islam, despite the patent absurdity of such words. The bottom line is that once people get past their initial hysteria and actually think reasonably about the cultural center, they will realize that its construction will have a very positive effect on America’s image as opposed to anything else.
Cultural Values and Political Risk or Global Security
Going through some definitions for political risk, it became evident that the changing factors within a nation—“instability affecting investment returns could stem from a change in government, legislative bodies, other foreign policy makers, or military control”–not necessarily transcend itself into the international trade system; however it makes any future and long term investments in those nations more uncertain. Therefore, understanding the difference between political risk and global security within the integrating global milieu is vital. It seems global security is more discussed over the globalization trend, in its unclear and general definition, than the quality and prosperity of the trade system. The basic reason for a less political risk is the economic well-being in which in the worst case scenario the “outcome of a political risk could drag down investment returns or even go so far as to remove the ability to withdraw capital from an investment.” But it seems globalization wants more; a unified/modern culture along with its healthy and practical, at least the one it works for the powerful nations, international trade system. In the globalization equation the global security surpasses the political risk and becomes ally with cultural unity. And therefore there is a gap between the economic prosperity of globalization and its need for the global security.
In nowadays any time we hear about the global security the culture and ideological aspects of societies, especially developing and less advanced countries, seem to become a big part of the problem. As the selected ideology and cultures become more and more into the security scene the discussion over liberalizing and creating a melting pot for “those” nations to accept a unified socio-cultural society as a wondrous solution, becomes closer to the political mindset of Western nations—if “those” peoples could understand how wonderful and modern minded we are!! But what do they mean by the unified culture anyway? Who are the ones defining it? And why globalization isn’t accepting a multicultural dimension? To answer these questions one needs to look at the capital rich developed countries’ prospect. They are the ones that define the definitions and have the political power, want, and needs to come to see “other” nations as wobbly and baseless enough to give permission to themselves to define how “those people” should be look like and behave, not just within the international trading system but by changing the way of life within their own national boundaries. Jalal’s point however shows that the unification of cultures and ideologies hasn’t been a successful solution but otherwise; “violent local politics (“jihad”) as a reaction to the cultural uniformity induced by globalization.”
Also, when Huntington talks about the clash of civilization I don’t think he is depoliticizing the matter of cultural factor in the political risks and its eventual effects on the international trade and globalization, in a general sense and as a unifying trend. Especially China’s good regional trading relation with Taiwan and Hong Kong, for him, is good amount of positive reasons to pin point the benefits of cultural and ideological unity. However by noticing the consistency and the settled nature of culture and ideology factors, he immediately refers to the variability and less mutable economic and political elements in which can be interpreted as he is implying a policy recommendation. This comparison shows politicizing cultural factors can shorten their life expand and people will lose their strong ties and identical association with them sooner and maybe easier—like the experimentation of politicizing the issue of veiling in Iran and France. In this sense I can be on the other side of equation with what Jalal says regarding Huntington’s remark. I don’t think Huntington’s general argument necessarily puts the already politicized cultural factors out in another context that politics is not included.
The blog post I think discusses the confusion we have about the intermingled relationship between power politics and cultural interactions.
Some say that whatever we do is for keeping our values from aggression. Power politics is only necessary to maintain our defense against cultural aggression of outsiders.
The others say that cultural confrontation actually means nothing. It is all about power. Culture, ideology, values are only discourses to hide the power relations.
I would say that the matter is about independence. You/I/everyone will always want to be independent in your actions. The imposition by others is the last thing that human being would want to tolerate, I think.
In order to avoid imposition on individuals/communities, everyone wants to get means of opposing ‘others’. This motivation for getting the means of opposing hurts others and we know this. But we still insist on freedom and independence, we want to be treated as if we are ‘god’s. Either as a community or as individual this is what we want. There is no morality in this. So we are embarrassed of what we seek, namely independence in expense of others. So we seek to find ways that will justify our selfish search for power. This is imposition of morality of on us. Why should we care about the pressure of morality on us? I think our concern about morality shows that we are not arbitrary self interest seekers. However, it doesn’t mean that we balance our selfishness with real moral restrictions. In the final analysis we fall in the trap of selfishness, because we are more concerned about our freedom/independence than our moral concerns. In case you are subdued by others, what would morality mean? This is our question that makes us to avoid moral pressure on us. But we are hypocritical on that, we don’t confess that we preferred freedom to ‘not hurting the other’ principle.
Once we made our choice on freedom, we seek power so that we can get our freedom. What morality require from us is being fair. Yet, we do choose freedom and power. Once we did our choice, we will justify our cause. We will say that I don’t respect the X because the X is inferior or is an aggressor. So once we set such an equation in a sophisticated way, we are on our way to not think about our moral responsibilities. But we refine our views to justify our aggression for getting power, or our resistance for keeping power, in a very subtle way. All the education system, all the books, all the novels, all the media, in the subtext, refine and skillfully hide our real intentions.
This justification is individual as much as it is societal. The community/state is more able to hide its intentions, because there are few members of the communities who are more concerned about equality and fairness. So when we look at the community we have a diversity of views which makes us to think that there is not a single motive (freedom/power search) that guides the entire society. But, in fact, that only shows the sophistication of society. Those members of society who talks about equality are sure about one thing; the society is not that crazy to pursue what those egalitarian guys talk about. At some point, sometimes, those talk about morality are more hypocritical because they are openly hypocritical, even though there are exceptions.
Applying this reasoning to inter-state, or inter-society relations, I think, the culture talk is totally an effort to justify our moral crimes, power projections. When I say that the country X is bad, and it doesn’t let me to invest for the good of humanity, I just justify my crime of aggression on the other society. When I try to prevent the investment of country Y, I would say that, these investors are bad, they are trying to harm our identity. This time, again, I do culture talk, and my purpose is to prevent the other take advantage of gaining more power. In case, I get enough power, someday, I would be able to justify my crimes, by remembering the crimes of the others over my community.
But, at the end, our search for freedom and independence forces us to these ends. This is applicable to the states, economy, companies as well, I think.
I agree, political risks do come from the desire for power: power over money, governments, land, resources, even a particular culture and so on. The claim that globalization is a mechanism to “Westernize” the rest of the world is inaccurate. The disrespect and altering of cultures and beliefs in emerging and developing countries that lead many to argue globalizations is an attempt to Westernize the world is an unfortunate byproduct of globalization, not the goal. China rightly acknowledges that culture is unique and not universal; however, globalization is about power and politics. For example, President Bush claimed the War in Iraq was about defeating Islamic extremist and terrorism, however, in actuality it was (to a certain extent) a vendetta against Saddam Hussein and power over oil resources. Bush spun the war as an attack against a particular culture in order to generate fear that then garnered public support for the war. As a result, pundits (Juan Williams) now make statements that flying on airplanes with Muslims is scary. Similarly, multinational corporations that invest in emerging and developing economies are not seeking to change society into a Western society. Multinational corporations are hardly concerned about changing a culture to remold it as “Western”. The goal is to make money.
“Samuel Huntington took the idea to a widely-discredited extreme, when he argued that continental-scale cultural clashes will be the biggest source of political risk in the future.”
I agree with the argument above given that nation states seek to maintain their dominance and status over the globe through hidden power politic agendas. In the case of the US, this is very true. It must use any mean at its disposal to guarantee its superpower status for future years to come. If it is for it to use soft power like creating the myth posited by the neocon of a clash in civilization between the west and the east, that’s only what it must do to survive.
I think the ultimate take away from this post is that the sovereign state as moral unit view produces a myopic vision of the world. While political actors within states such as the RNC or DNC in the US, or the Communist Party in the PRC, arguably no better, the desire for political leverage trumps all.
The question is this, how do we shift the field of vision from the parochial to the global?
While the struggle for power (as we know it in Western culture) resides certainly behind political, religious, and other kinds of pursuits…power as concept is not conceived in a vacuum; it is a cultural concept, shaped and formed by our life experiences and environmental influences. While both Orientalism and Political Islam have fed rhetorics of “clashes” based on what Mundami says:
“Culture Talk does not spring from the tradition of history writing but rather from that of the policy sciences that regularly service political establishments. The key reason lies in the relation between history writing and forms of power, and there are two broad forms of history writing: nationalist and metanationalist. Is nationalist history writing has been mainly about giving the nation an identifiable and often glorious past, metanationalist writings have given us equally glorified civilizational histories, locating the nation in a global context. It does not make sense to think of culture in political and therefore territorial term. States are territorial, culture is not.”. (Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, Chapter 1)
Risk springs from a complex interaction between these clashes that are in fact internal, and how in order to justify then or overcome them, domestic elites create foreign menacing forces that are inherently dangerous and conniving. Just the assumption of the remote possibility of the Ground Zero Mosque representing some kind of triumph of one “civilization”or “culture” over another, denotes how internalized culture talk really is.
Power as a zero-sum gain type of concept that is inherently coercive is purely a cultural creation. Many philosophers like Foucault argued for an idea of power that revolved around constraint and enabling . Political risk springs from interpretations of power entrenched on inequality and oppression, that have benefited some interests groups in the past or presently, as they interact with opposing views and challenges.
I agree that Western investment in emerging markets is not predicated on the feelings of cultural supremacy. (One of my good friends is a financial analyst focusing on emerging markets, particularly in Latin America. She meets with the business and government delegates to review both the business risk, but also considers the impact on sustainable development. That only to say, that the actual people doing this work are real, and per my one example, good people.) However, Western investment in emerging markets still perpetuates the image of East vs. West, or McWorld conquering the planet. Though risk may arise “because of the power politics that accompany such investment,” it still looks bad. And that image has consequences. Like you wrote, it is about power relations, where the more powerful is able to extricate resources and wealth from the less powerful. This image of strong and weak is inherently biased, favoring strong to weak. This same bias can be mapped onto the relationship and read in terms of cultural supremacy. It’s not leap in rationalization and is an easier narrative to follow than understanding the global financial network. Business and governments should be aware of the way their actions play to a lay audience and continue to take steps to ingratiate themselves with local populations.
You also mentioned the way cultural currents change through time, which I agree with completely. Another continuity is that the nature of culture creates an “us” and “them.” This again inherently has a better and worse. It is when these cultural relativisms are not identified and spoken about that they can be misconstrued and become a “clash of civilizations,” rather than seen as a result of the power politics of the time.
This post is completely accurate in showing politics as the root of political risk. This is perfectly evident in the way North and South Korea became divided in the aftermath of Cold War politics. WWII had left Korea split with the North under soviet occupation and the South under the influence of the Allied countries. This is a great example of a group of people with an identical cultural background, being completely separated and having their values transformed due to political ambitions. North Korea has gone on to become a single party military state while the South has become increasingly westernized in their politics and values. Politics has more affect on a country’s actions than cultural clashes. Other posts reffered to “Operation Iraqi Freedom” where political motives superseded the stated goal of bringing Iraqis out of oppression. There are many other countries where citizens are just as oppressed if not more oppressed than Iraq under Saddam. This has been happening throughout History. In WWII, the Allies allowed Stalin, a murderer in his own right, to join them in the defeat of Germany, whom he was previously aligned with.
That being said, sometimes politics and culture are intertwined and it is difficult to differentiate the two. Take Lebanon for example, a country I grew up in where different communities are shaped by religion. Politics are divided by parties with different religious affiliations thus exhibiting different values. Furthermore, many Muslims in the Middle East live by the laws of Islam (Shari’a Law) and the codes of the Koran. This has an impact on their everyday lives, from their law system to the political arena. So the argument for cultural differences causing political risk cannot be completely ruled out.
I agree with this post. Politics are about power and one key way for parties to stay in power is to unite against a common enemy. In the United States, the conservative party allows the religious right to do much of their dirty work for them. They manufacture an enemy based on whatever their current agenda is and then get the most conservative representatives from their political party to get behind them and turn the enemy, whomever that may be (Muslims, gays, immigrants) into a threat to our nation’s security.
It takes relatively little effort after the events of 9/11 to invoke fear in the American public and convince them that this enemy wants to harm them and their families. Most people have neither the time nor the desire to vet their news sources and are happier to let the media tell them what is true and what is false and they leave their critical thinking to other aspects of their lives.
This creates a perfect environment for people to be brainwashed because they believe whatever they are told as long as they have easy talking points to defend their beliefs.
After establishing an enemy and creating a perceived threat, people will fight vigorously to defend their security, their religious or constitutional freedoms, their democracy or whatever is deemed to be at risk by the political party whose power is being threatened. What I always find ironic is that in fighting for those freedoms, people usually feel justified in oppressing the freedoms of others.
Many think that truth is something that can be arrived at later, after the threat has been mitigated. This is a dangerous way to operate because as has been said so many times before, none of us is truly free if any of us are oppressed.
First of all I think that Huntington’s idea of a generalization of 21st century conflict as a clash of Wester-Eastern/Muslim culture is not that absurd regarding the time of publication and the events of 9/11. Of course his approach represent a macro-level theory which cannot be very specific and therefore doesn’t imply politics per se. But I don’t think this is neccessary actually, because the major conflict line the West had to face so far, since the end of the cold war, is the fight against Islamist terror. The interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have shaped post-Cold War politics, have significantly determined the relationship with its major allies and the war on terror is the foundation of the post-Cold war US grand strategy.
While politics may play a role if we focus on meso- and microlevel approaches, however, I think that macrolevel analysis make sense to identify the motivation of political action.
I strongly agree with Jala’s blogpost. Political risk does not come from broad cultural clashes but from politics which is about power.
This also becomes apparent when looking at political risk and risk for violent conflict at the intra-state level. Studies analyzing the causes of civil wars have found that ethnicity and religious and other cultural fractionalization have no significant effect on the outbreack of war. Also there is no emprirical evidence for Huntington’s theory of clash of civilizations (see Sorli et al. 2005, Toft 2007 and Roeder 2003). Elites rather use ‘religion’ or ‘culture’ to mobilize society and legitimize the use of violence in the struggle for political and economic power. They do so by using collective action frames, framing the societal discourse. The underlying force driving the behavior of political actors is power. This does not mean that all elites always act rationally and consciously manipulate their citizens but in my opinion it is no contradiction that elites actually believe in cultural differences and still use them to mobilize in order to reach political goals. I think the same is true for international politics.
I totally agree with Harrison’s point. And to further emphasize I would like to bring in Edward Said’s argument in “Orientalism”. The conception that the Middle East is a unified homogenous region for instance, is without a doubt a fabrication. The very concept that unity prevails among Middle Eastern countries because of the common characteristics shared among its many countries is a misleading generalization. This concept is a construct and a fiction. The idea of the Middle East, mainly the idea of the “Oriental” Arab world, has been constructed by the “Occident” i.e. the West (according to Edward Said) based on false western perceptions and understandings of the Arab culture. Furthermore, Abdel Malek, accuses Europe of “constituting itself as a subject by constructing the Orient as its own demonic object.” (Said 1979, 45-46) Edward Said, in “Orientalism”, discusses the tendency of Europe “to polarize the distinction” (Said 1979, p.3) between Western and Oriental, European and Arab, or US and THEM: “European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the orient” (Said 1979, p.65). Furthermore, identifying certain people as the “other”, gave superiority, power, validity and centrality to the “occident” which is the West, and diminished the “orient” by making it inferior and not valid. Thus the West is a region that has been successful in defining itself as different from the “other”. The West was able to label the “other” and identify it as it wished, they built certain characteristics about the Orient while marginalization others hence it was a distorted image of the “orient”.
In order to define Identity, you must talk about the essential elements that define the character and orientation of people and affirm their common needs, interests, and goals. Yet what most people fail to take into consideration is that identity recognizes the importance of differences just as it considers similarities. When defining an Arab Identity, you can’t chose to see one side of the coin, in other words you can’t look at the unifying elements while disregarding the divisive ones and visa versa. I feel that identity is a very sensitive topic and most of the times can be interpreted wrong.
So yes cultural values do influence politics and at many times may cause political risks, a simple example is the misinterpreted cultural gap between the Middle East for instance and the West. I personally feel like my experience as a Lebanese (Arab) in the US made me clearly see the way “SOME” and i stress on some, Americans have “construct” ideas of that particular area of the world, and visa versa how Arabs have generalized perceptions of the West.