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Terror
and Cultural Diversity
in
Times of Adversity
By
Nur
Yalman
Professor of Social Anthropology and
of Middle Eastern Studies,
Harvard University
TFF
associate
October 22, 2002
The Problem of
Cultural Paranoia
My topic today is Terrorism and Cultural Diversity.
The tragic events of September 11 are still reverberating
around the world. I am sure that the question of the role
of cultural diversity in providing the breeding ground
for "terror" is on many people's minds. Does "terror"
arise from cultural distance? Is it the "foreigners",
those people we do not understand, who are the
"troublemakers"? To be anxious about strangers in our
midst is a natural reaction. In times of fear and panic,
the "aliens", the "foreigners" become suspect. We must be
very careful to distinguish between realistic threats to
security from those paranoid reactions against all
foreigners. The very great danger in times of crisis is
the focusing of anxiety and anger on outsiders. This
leads to "ethnic profiling", or "stereotyping", and then,
as a direct result of this, the "scapegoating" of
innocents. Such times are also very convenient for
unscrupulous politicians to manipulate the public mood
for their advantage.
I do not wish to minimize the scale of the disaster
that struck New York and Washington. It is however also
true that in the panic that ensued, the major
constitutional safeguards for individual liberties were
swept aside in a stampede for national security in
America. The Patriot Act has given the US President very
wide discretionary powers. "Foreigners" can now be
arrested, tried with secret evidence, in secret trials
and they can be sentenced to death in the US. This can be
done all the more easily in an American military base
like Guantanamo which is outside the jurisdiction of US
Courts. Hence the delicate diplomatic status of the
Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners held there. This situation
is no different than the notorious "disappearances" of
persons in Chile, Argentina and elsewhere. Fortunately,
there has been serious opposition to these policies: it
is reported that the administration, under pressure from
its European allies, has finally decided to change its
position on the status of these prisoners. The
International Geneva Convention will now be applied to
them (New York Times, Feb.23, 2002).
We have seen the tragic consequences of these kinds of
reactions in our recent history. The burning of the
Reichstag in Germany gave the Nazi's the excuse to attack
those elements they regarded as alien to German society.
The results were disastrous. There are similar histories
associated with the ordeal of Koreans during the Tokyo
earthquake in Japan at the end of the WW1, but it must be
admitted that no society is totally immune to these
profound troubles which represent a combination of
psychological, anthropological, and political
anxieties.
The personal tragedies associated with the McCarthy
era in the US have not been forgotten. Large numbers of
brilliant people were smeared with the broad brush of
Communism. They were accused, harassed and forced to
escape their country. I had numerous friends in Cambridge
England who had found refuge in the brilliant
intellectual circles of a great University who had
provided a home for these unfortunate Americans. One of
the most outstanding of these persons was Moses Finley,
the great classicist. He was in origin Mr. Finkelstein, a
Jew from New York. He refused the "loyalty oath" that was
demanded by his University. Accused as a "commie", he
left for England in 1956. He was so much appreciated in
England that he rose to become the Master of Jesus
College in Cambridge and was knighted by the Queen. He
ended his stellar career as Sir Moses Finley. So, in
times of crisis, cultural and ethnic categories and the
accusations they may lead to may become highly dangerous
weapons for the body politic.
Focus on
"Scapegoats"
The unfolding of the human disasters in the heart of
Europe, ethnic conflict in the Balkans a few years ago,
began with simple stereotypes and then escalated into
political murder as cathartic human sacrifice. There was
the stereotype of the "enemy" for the Serbs; the "enemy"
was defined as the "Muslims" and dehumanized. The use of
the media (especially television) in categorizing,
labeling and stereotyping the "target" populations was
crucial in this respect.
The process outlined above can be readily adapted to
different situations. The New Yorker (March 15, 1993, p.
4) ran a Comment entitled "Quiet Voices from the
Balkans." It reported on the visit to New York of the
editor of Vreme ("the only independent magazine still
publishing in Belgrade"), Vasic, and a Professor of Law
from Sarajevo, Pajic. This is what Vasic was reportedly
saying: "Both stations began to traffic in
stereotypes.... On Belgrade TV, the Croats became
Ustashas. On Zagreb TV, all Serbs were Chetniks. These
are terms from the Second World War that today are ethnic
insults. And then both stations began to play with the
notion that Muslims are unreliable, dangerous
fundamentalists. You could just watch these stations and
know that something really big was rolling behind. (What
was rolling behind...was War.)...It is very easy....
First you create fear, then distrust, then panic. Then
all you have to do is come every night and distribute
submachine guns in every village, and you are ready."
These comments of Vasic were evidently not to the
liking of the American correspondent for Belgrade
government television. The New Yorker ends the Comment:
"That detail made it especially chilling, somehow, when
she glared at Mr. Vasic, her fellow Serbian journalist
and spat "Traitor!" Note the pattern: frustration, the
focusing of anger, scapegoats, sacrificial violence. And
behind all this generating, manipulating, directing the
passions, political agents calculating their moves with
the care and attention of chess masters.
It is thus that all the daily frustrations of the
unfortunate masses in the streets can be mobilized to
attack those institutions which are held to be
responsible for their sorry state of affairs. Liberal
institutions of government, the more clear-headed
newspapers, those who might claim that the "hated"
populations have some "constitutional rights," all these
"soft" nationalists can then be ridiculed or worse,
attacked and frightened. Step by inexorable step, one
moves towards a dismantling of "constitutional liberal"
safeguards, until the levers of power are in the grasp of
the most unscrupulous of political elements. This is, in
outline, what had happened, fortunately for a short
period, in Sri Lanka. (Tambiah, Buddhism Betrayed). There
are hopeful signs to-day that the we may see the end of
that disastrous conflict which has cost almost 100,000
lives among the Sinhalese and Tamils.
We have been much more fortunate in the case of India.
The extraordinary complexity of languages, traditions,
castes, and etnicities have been accommodated by a
reasonable constitution and representative institutions
so that the many potential dangers have been avoided. The
danger of conflict, however, is always in the wings. We
have all heard how the whole India used to come to a stop
when the great epics of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana
were being aired on national TV some years ago. But there
evidently was also an underlying message, a targeting
going on towards perceived "alien" elements.
This process has the psychological advantage of the
focusing of frustration on people perceived as
"outsiders," "foreigners," "immigrants," even if they
have lived in the country for centuries. So one can
pretend, for example, that Muslims - all 130 million of
them who are as local as can be imagined - do not
"really" belong to India. They came too late, only 1000
years ago, they are still not Hindu's, and it is time for
them to leave. (See also, Rudolph, Susanne H. and Lloyd
R., "Modern Hate" in The New Republic, March 22, 1993,
pp. 24-29).
The Calais
Incident
Some years ago, The New York Times (October 30, 1992)
reported on a remarkable incident in Calais, N. France. A
rumour had suddenly swept the town that a dark skinned
fellow, a stranger, had been kidnapping, raping,
torturing and killing some children from one of the local
schools for some infernal purpose. As the rumour spread,
anxious parents converged on the school to save their
children. The principal was called out to meet the
parents. He denied that any such incident had taken place
at his school. No one believed him. The matter got into
nationwide TV in France. A swarthy, ex-drug addict,
partly Algerian, whose French mother lived in Calais, was
"discovered." He was accused of committing the heinous
crimes. He barely escaped with his life. After
considerable commotion, it was clearly established that
no child was missing, no murder had taken place and that
there was no basis at all for the panic. The "Algerian"
could not be accused of any tangible misdeed. The
townspeople remained unsure: some dark act had to have
taken place which was being denied by the authorities as
usual. Eventually, the "Algerian" escaped to the safety
of Paris. Calais simmered down. By way of explanation,
The New York Times suggested that unemployment and
frustration with the economic situation had been
particularly high in this neglected northeastern corner
of France.
There are obviously many ways of approaching the
complex subject "ethnic labeling" and "scapegoats".
However, the question of political manipulation, the
political psychology of "crowd-hysteria," of "targeting"
and focusing of mass frustration is evident. The cases
mentioned above may provide some basis for further
thoughts on the subject. This is something on which there
is much to be said from an anthropological
perspective.
The Experience of
Islam and India
While there is always the danger of "categories" being
utilized for political mischief, we are also well aware
of the different experiences of civilizations on the
question of "diversity". I would argue that both in the
Islamic Empires and in India, in other words a vast area
of the ancient world, the very complexity of the ethnic
background of the populations was so great that
"difference" became an everyday matter. The acceptance of
difference as a matter of course in ones life rendered
human relations more tolerant . It was part of the fabric
of life. You could speak one language at home, another
one in the school, a third one with your neighbors and a
fourth one in the market. No one would be surprised at
that anywhere in India or, to a lesser extent, in Western
Asia. While the language issue might not have given rise
to such a rich variety, the Islamic societies managed the
human relations between the different elements without
resorting to "caste" divisions as in the case of the
Indian sub-continent.
So cultural diversity need not lead to trouble and
division. It can increase the cultural richness and
creativity of a society. It does however need good and
effective administration. The bloody European experience
of the 19th century, with nationalist ideologies and
extensive ethnic cleansing on the continent, must make us
wary of lurking "totalitarian" attitudes in diversified
societies.
Allow me to give you some sense of the complexities
involved.
On Diversity In
West Asia
It was Mansur, the second Abbasid Caliph (754-775) who
built the city of Baghdad on the banks of the Tigris near
the ruins of the old Sasanid capital of Ctesiphon. The
geographer Ya'qubi describes the idea:
"This island between the Tigris in the East and the
Euphrates in the West is a market place for the world.
All the ships that come up the Tigris from Wasit, Basra,
Ubulla, Ahwaz, Fars, Uman, Yamama, Bahrain and beyond
will go up and anchor here; wares brought on ships down
the Tigris from Mosul, Diyar-Rabi'a, Adharbaijan and
Armenia, and along the Euphrates from Diyar-Mudar, Raqqa,
Syria and the border marshes, Egypt and North Africa will
be brought and unloaded here. It will be the highway for
the people of the Jabal, Isfahan and the districts of
Khurasan...It will surely be the most flourishing city in
the world." (Lewis 1958) , p.82.
So, Baghdad was to be a great trading center. The
civilization of the early Islamic 'Empire fulfilled those
hopes. Historians report that "...muslim merchants
(leaving the Gulf ports) traveled to India, Ceylon, the
East Indies and China, bringing silks, spices, aromatics,
woods, tin and other commodities...Alternative routes to
India and China ran overland through Central Asia." The
goods brought from China included, silk, crockery, paper,
ink, peacocks, horses, saddles, felt, cinnamon, pure
Greek rhubarb; from the Byzantine Empire...gold and
silver utensils, gold coins, drugs, brocades, slave
girls, trinkets, locks, hydraulic engineers, agronomes,
marble workers and eunuchs; from India...tigers,
panthers, elephants, panther skins, rubies, white
sandalwood, ebony and coconuts." "...Muslim navigators
were quite at home in eastern seas, where Arab traders
were established in China as early as the eighth
century.
There was also extensive trade between the Islamic
Empire and the Baltic via the Caspian, the Black Sea and
Russia. "With Africa too, the Arabs carried on an
extensive overland trade." The Jews served as a link with
Europe. The early ninth-century geographer, Ibn
Khurradadhbeh, tells of Jewish merchants from the south
of France - "...who speak Arabic, Persian, Greek,
Frankish, Spanish, and Slavonic. They travel from west to
east and from east to west, by land and by sea. From the
west they bring eunuchs, slave-girls, boys, brocade,
castor-skins, marten and other furs and swords...they
sail on the eastern (Red) Sea from Qulzum to Al-Jar and
Jedda, and onward to Sind, India and China. From China
they bring back musk, aloes, camphor, cinnamon, and other
products...Some sail with their goods to Constantinople,
and sell them to the Greeks, and some take them to the
king of Franks and sell them there."
In other words, a "common market" without boundaries
and with considerable mobility was evidently a
characteristic of the brilliant period of the early
Islamic Empire. The historian again, "We hear of banks
with a head office in Baghdad and branches in the other
cities of the Empire and of an elaborate system of
cheques, letters of credit, etc. so developed that it was
possible to draw a cheque in Baghdad and cash it in
Morocco."(Lewis 1958)
It was this coherence of the Islamic lands within
their immense diversity that the Ottoman Empire had tried
to preserve against the predatory attacks from west. It
is astonishing also that they were relatively successful
in doing so until 1918, the end of WW1.
The reason it is worth mentioning these matters is
twofold: first, the idea of a "common market" among
Muslim countries at least, is as old as Islam, and
second, a sense of security and easy personal relations
with full freedom of movement was the norm until very
recent times. After all, it was not at all surprising for
the intrepid and indefatigable traveler Ibn Batuta to go
from Fez and Meknes in Morocco all the way to Cairo,
Anatolia, Crimea, Baghdad, Delhi and the Maldives and to
be received as a learned 'Alim - professor - in the Royal
courts of all those places. He even found the time and
energy to make a trip to West Africa after his return to
Fez.
A more controversial recent example maybe the sorry
adventure of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda Arabs in
Afghanistan. How is that these Arabs who did not speak a
word of the local Pashto language were somehow accepted
and given a respectable welcome in a most unlikely
context? There is a story to be told here. We have not
yet heard the anthropological side of it.
Terror, Diversity?
Freedom Fighters?
Now what about "terror"? Does cultural diversity as
such provide the fertile ground for acts of terror? I
indicated above in connection with the Balkans or Sri
Lanka how trouble ensues when matters are allowed to get
out of hand. But this is no different than relations
within a family where matters can also get out of hand
with tragic results. There is no substitute for
intelligent administration. Cultural diversity in itself
is not the cause of terror. Diversity has obvious
political repercussions, but just as all politics does
not end up in hostilities, cultural matters need not end
up with Kalashnikovs. Terror, especially terror of the
kind we have witnessed, is a profoundly political act
with serious political implications and repercussions. It
is intended to be so. It is said that War is an extension
of diplomacy by other means. Similarly the use of
"terror" is a kind of warfare by other means.
Robespierre in one of his speeches said that "the
maintenance of popular government in time of revolution
is both virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror
is evil; terror, without which virtue is helpless. Terror
is nothing but justice, prompt, severe and inflexible: it
is therefore an emanation of virtue" (quoted by Elie
Kedourie in Nationalism in Asia and Africa, p. 103)
Robespierre was formulating the use of terror by the
state presumably for lofty ideals. All states claim the
monopoly of force, and thereby the use of deadly weapons
for their own purposes. We do not need to be reminded of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When the state engages in
"terror" to crush "terrorists", as is often the case,
then it is the very conception of justice which rises to
the surface.
Terror in the hands of rebel groups is the problem in
question. We may agree or disagree with the intentions of
such groups. There is little doubt though that great
states are formed which begin with the rebellion of small
armed groups. The US is one example: Paul Revere and the
actions of the rebellious group of people in Boston would
have been regarded as "terrorists" in London. Israel came
into being in 1948 after much illegal activity by
underground armed forces both against the British
Administration in Palestine and against the UN. The Irgun
and the Stern Gang, secretly supported from abroad,
finally forced the British to give up the Mandate in
Palestine through "terrorist" activity. Once Israel was
recognized as a state, past members of these underground
groups, Yitzak Shamir and Menahem Begin both became
honored Prime Ministers. So the nature of "terrorist"
actions have to be examined in the context of the
political circumstances which give rise to them. This
does not mean that they can be excused. It only means
that a "political" position must be formulated to deal
with them. However much the Sinhalese may have referred
to the Tamil Tigers as "terrorists", a civil war of 50
years ensued which demanded a "political" solution.
The problem of "terror" before us is not "cultural
diversity". Terror arises out of political grievances. It
is the sense of dishonor and injustice which drives
people to undertake extreme actions as injured and
victimized parties. After September 11 there was much
speculation whether the large Irish constituency in the
US would regard the actions of the IRA in Northern
Ireland as "terrorism". The British had no doubts about
it.
Cultural diversity is an essential ingredient of a
modern, vibrant, creative society. It would be impossible
to imagine Paris without a Picasso (Spaniard) or Van Gogh
(Dutch), or NIjinski and Nureyev (Russian). The vitality
of the US is impossible to imagine without the
contributions of the millions of gifted immigrants. Only
in the last 20 years have the Indian immigrants put their
mark on many American businesses from the Patidar in
Hotels and Motels to the great entrepreneurs in
Information Technology coming out of Indian technical
colleges. We need hardly ;mention the immense
contributions of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese
and other Asians in the US. Terror is another matter
altogether.
Terror and the
Clash of Civilizations
Terror and cultural diversity is parallel to the
problem of war and the "clash of civilizations". Here
again, there is much loose talk these days about the
great division between Islam and West. Bernard Lewis has
written of the "Revolt of Islam" (New Yorker, Nov.19
2001) He had also written of the "Roots of Islamic Rage"
in which he predicted a coming "clash of civilizations"
long before Samuel Huntington became the Cassandra of
doom. "When civilizations clash, there is one that
prevails, and one that is shattered", he wrote, and he
added prophetically, "the usual result of such an
encounter is a cohabitation of the worst." (B , Lewis,
Middle East and the West, 1964) Edward Said and Roy
Mottahedeh to take two of the most prominent critics of
Lewis and Huntington have provided us with all the
reasons why these thoughts are unfounded. Nonetheless,
the suspicion persists that there must be some cultural
incompatibility between Islam and the West which makes
for a "clash" to seem inevitable. Osama bin Laden
certainly was more in the "Huntington" mode than
Huntington himself. He would have wanted to play the role
of the Leader of a Universal Islam against the West.
Are we going to have a "clash of civilizations" a la
Hollywood as predicted by Osama bin Laden and Samuel
Huntington? Is this going to be between Islam in general
and the West, or only between Arabs and the
Anglo-Americans? And who is going to lead it? Some
lieutenant of Osama and his Wahhabi warriors? Saddam
Hussein and his secular forces? Colonel Khaddafi
supported by his oil fortunes paid for by Europe? Or
perhaps will the forces of a militant Islam be led by
President Khamenei of Iran? Even the mere mention of such
names is likely to remind us of how preposterous these
paranoid speculations turn out to be. There is now in the
West a curious inchoate anxiety about a huge swath of
mankind who, it is thought, is somehow out to destroy
Western capitalist civilization. At least so writes, Paul
Kennedy, the celebrated Yale historian in his review of
the views of Bernard Lewis, in the New York Times Book
Review of 27 January. "The unvarnished truth is that the
tensions there are of a different order of magnitude...a
vast, sprawling area, where a badly damaged though
powerful and religiously driven order is locked in battle
with global trends more penetrating and unsettling than
could ever have been imagined...What Lewis is writing
about...concerns one of the greatest cultural and
political divides in modern history." There has been
nothing like this fear since the days of the Berlin or
Cuban crisis and the Iron Curtain. We need to examine the
basis for these exaggerated worries.
What is amazing is that this vague fear of "terrorism"
is so much more acute in the US, with the most powerful
military/industrial complex in the world, than in Europe
which, after all, is home to many millions of Muslims.
Allow me to raise the question as to whether this is a
matter of cultural difference or whether some of these
Islamic countries have some good hard political reasons
to detest the high handed policies of the West.
Osama bin Laden in his Oct. 7 videotape spoke of the
"more than eighty years" of "humiliation and disgrace"
suffered by Muslim peoples at the hands of Westerners.
Many in the West wondered what he could have meant by
that date, though in the Middle East his listeners could
relate immediately to the cataclysmic events at the end
of W.W.I. In 1918, the last great Islamic state, the
Ottoman Empire of 600 years, was defeated and its
provinces divided up between fractious victorious powers
who could hardly agree among themselves to share the
spoils. In 1924, the Turks who had provided the military
shield for the Islamic and Asian world, decided to cut
their losses and go their own way. They abolished the
ancient institution of the Caliphate in 1924 which had
provided a sense of unity to Islamic peoples. It has not
been revived since.
These catastrophic events were followed by much
further humiliation especially for the Arab speaking
peoples. The Turks rejected their defeat. They fought
back the allies, won back their liberty, and reorganized
themselves to form their secular republic. They have been
cultivating their love affair with the West in NATO, and
in the Council of Europe, since then. The Arabs on the
other hand were misled by their leaders, thoroughly
double crossed by the allies, led astray, broken up into
various so-called "protectorates" and finally totally
dominated by Britain and France between the two World
Wars.
As if these colonial disasters were not sufficient as
a severe punishment and a stern example to others in the
British Empire, such as India, who might have entertained
dangerous ideas of "independence", Britain also decided
to provide a "homeland for Jews" in Palestine, an ancient
land that was densely occupied by a rural population of
mainly Arabic speakers. There were Jews among them, and
Christians of various denominations. The majority were
Muslims.
Up to this point in the rich history of these lands no
one in this vast region had been conscious of belonging
to "nations". As far back as one could recall, all these
peoples had been subjects of the Sultan. It was the
Ottoman Sultan who had the duty to make sure that the
subjects of his domain were contended and at peace with
each other. And, indeed, a large degree of local autonomy
and a general peace had reigned over these lands ever
since the defeat of the Mameluk Turks of Egypt by the
Ottoman Turks of the north in 1517. The peace had been
punctuated, it is true, by local troubles from time to
time, but these had been manageable. They had not led to
large scale "national" movements of any kind. The Middle
East in this respect was unlike the troublesome Balkan
lands in the 19th century where "nationalist" passions
engendered by European ideological currents had been the
order of the day.
With the defeat of the Ottomans, the British and the
French proceeded with the effective policy of "divida et
impera". So, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Saudi
Arabia and a multitude of small Sheikdoms on the
Persian/Arabian Gulf were created in the 1920's with
entirely artificial borders which are still in dispute.
The Kuwait affair in 1990 is part of this story. They
were controlled by colonial officers through indirect
rule. Egypt, occupied earlier, was constantly chafing
against British rule, and there were many uprisings in
Iraq, Syria, Palestine and elsewhere. Their troubles read
like a depressing history of intrigue and deception
between the colonial powers and the local
populations.
Enter America. American anti-colonial influence,
combined with the great oil discoveries in Saudi Arabia
eventually undermined British and French rule in the
Middle East. The Suez War of 1957 was the last direct
attempt by the old colonial powers to hold some military
outposts in the region. Meanwhile, with the arrival of
millions of Jews escaping from the racism and the
unspeakable outrages of Europe, the Israel problem came
to dominate Arab consciousness. The pitiful plight of the
Palestinians who had been chased out of their homes and
villages with the creation of the State of Israel in
1948, could not be evaded. The continuing tragedy in
Palestine began to haunt every Arab regime. It led to
hopeless wars with Israel in which many thousands lost
their lives.
Given all this sorry history, and the daily
humiliation of Palestinians for the last 50 or more
years, is it surprising that some people have become
desperate. Are American Ambassadors not aware of the
negative mood in Arab streets? How long is it going to be
possible to control the ordinary people by rich and
powerful elite groups? Franz Fanon wrote bitterly about
the "collaborating middle classes" in Africa in relation
to white colonial rule. Similarly, the ordinary people in
the Arab lands feel that their rulers have betrayed
them.
Listen to the chief of Intelligence in Saudi
Arabia:
The recent eloquent warnings of Prince Abdul Aziz, the
director of the Saudi intelligence service, are quite
telling. The New York Times (Jan.27, '02) reports that
the Prince indicated that according to a Saudi
intelligence survey, "of educated Saudi's between the
ages of 25 and 41...95% of them supported Mr. bin Laden's
cause"..."even though they rejected the attacks in New
York and Washington". Arabs, and many others, in Iran, in
Pakistan, and elsewhere are angry. "All the governments,
the people of the region believe that America is
supporting Israel whether it is right or wrong, and now
if something happens to Yasir Arafat, the feeling against
American policy will be stronger." He also had something
quite pointed to say about American attitudes to the
region. "Some days you say you want to attack Iraq, some
days Somalia, some days Lebanon, some days Syria," he
said. "Who do you want to attack? All the Arab world? And
you want us to support that? It's impossible. It's
Impossible."
America had made this mistake before in Iran when it
supported the Shah against the nationalist Mosaddeq.
Eventually the Shah regime was destroyed by a popular
revolution which took an Islamic form. Similarly, the
popular feelings in Arab countries are also turning in
the direction of Islam.
None of this has to do with the diversity of Islamic
or Western civilization. It has everything to do with
hard political facts on the ground in various parts of
the world in which the US projects her power. The fight
has nothing to do with Coca Cola, but everything to do
with the use of F-16's in Israel, and Apache helicopters
in the Philippines. It is part of the concern that is
widely shared with the use that is made of the
overwhelming military, economic, political instruments in
order to control the fate of entire nations. The
temptation is towards a new Imperium. We are now facing
great dangers in the creation of a more equitable and
peaceful world. We will need much greater international
cooperation and much more effective international
institutions. There is no question that better and more
statesmanlike policies - not simple minded slogans - are
needed to solve the urgent problems that confront us.
Levi Strauss warned us 50 years ago with some
memorable lines on this subject of diversity. "The
necesity of preserving the diversity of cultures in a
world which is threatened by monotony and uniformity has
surely not remained unnoticed by international
institutions...We must listen to wheat growing, encourage
secret potentialities, awaken all the vocations to live
together that history holds in reserve...Tolerance is not
a contemplative position, dispensing indulgence to what
was and to what is . It is a dynamic attitude, consisting
in the foresight, the understanding, and promotion of
what wants to be. The diversity of human cultures is
behind us, around us, and ahead of us. The only demand
that we may make upon it (creating for each individdual
corresponding duties ) is that it realize itself in forms
such that each is a contribution to the greater
generosity of the others." (in Race and History,
Structural Anthropology 2).
Cambridge, February 23, 2002
©
TFF & the author 2002
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