Tainari88 wrote:@Wellsy I like this piece by lumen. I think many people tend to take very cut and dried or black and white approaches to what is wrong or right. One should read what is stated in this piece. It is about culture shock and having to be open-minded and be incredibly flexible when working in foreign cultures.
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/alamo ... entricism/
I see the sense of 'When in Rome do as the Romans do' and that many do come from an ethnocentric perspective as they simply react to things that they do not understand or are unfamiliar with. However, I do think there is the ability to deliberate and come up with reasons why something may still be wrong and that can judge an aspect of culture as problematic.
And I think that this can be approached without necessarily resorting to cultural imperialism which is indeed the case of forcing change rather than the approach of solidarity of subjecting yourself to the aims of another to support their goals.
I think of Henry Rollins own experience where he went to Haiti and simply gave out some goods to some Haitians in a kind of slum and it created a lot of conflicts as people fought over soccer balls and soap. Then some men from the community stepped in and were kind of leaders in the community who then handed out the supplies and they told Henry not to simply step into their community trying to help, that he should go through them instead.
Basically, he shows up wanting to do good and almost started massive fights among people instead of properly establishing himself in relation to people within the community and following their terms.
THis of course is relatively benign to the actual colonization of nations but it is the same dynamic of doing things on the terms of yourself or of the person you're helping. See social workers are sensitive to this where they may want to do what they feel is best for a client but in respecting their autonomy, they must always seek to persuade and convince the person and never paternalistically do something against their wishes. They must build rapport and trust and persuade them to make what they feel are the right decisions.
But back to the example of judging cultures, I think through such a process of subjecting ourselves to the terms of those we wish to help, we can establish a relationship in which we influence one another and may introduce them to things that can help them be critical of their circumstance. That one can help people not be subject only to the dominant hegemonic ideals, otherwise you only help perpetuate the problems you hope are resolved.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/sen-critical-voice.pdfIn India: Development as Participation (2002), Sen goes one step further as a result of his study of ‘son preference’. Son preference is the tendency of people in certain cultures to prefer a son to a daughter, resorting to abortion of female foetuses or simply neglecting the health of young girls. As a result of these practices, India and China are each ‘missing’ about 40 million women in their current populations. Sen observed that this tendency not only increases with industrialisation and rising real incomes, but increased even in those societies where women had a voice. Even educated women and women who have full control over the decision whether or not to abort a female foetus, may be active participants in exercising son-preference because they share their husband’s preference for a son.
This type of gender inequality [son preference] cannot be removed, at least in the short run, by the enhancement of women’s empowerment and agency, since that agency is itself an integral part of the cause of natality inequality. This recognition demands an important modification ‒ and indeed an extension ‒ of our understanding of the role of women’s agency in eliminating gender inequality in India. The enhancement of women’s agency which does so much to eliminate sex differentials in mortality rates (and also in reducing fertility and mortality rates in general) cannot be expected, on its own, to produce a similar elimination of sex differentials at birth and abortion, and correspondingly in the population of children. What is needed is not merely freedom and power to act, but also freedom and power to question and reassess the prevailing norms and values. The pivotal issue is critical agency. Strengthening women’s agency will not, by itself, solve the problem of ‘son preference’ when that works through the desires of the mothers themselves. (Sen 2002, p. 258.)
... the agency of women is effective in promoting those goals which women tend to value. When those values are distorted by centuries of inequality, for example yielding the perception that boys are to be welcomed more than girls, then the empowerment of women can go hand in hand with persistent inequality and discrimination in some fields, in particular ‘boy preference’ in births (with possibly brutal results in the form of sex-specific abortions). Indeed, the agency of women can never be adequately free if traditionally discriminatory values remain unexamined and unscrutinised. While values may be culturally influenced (we have provided some evidence corroborating this presumption), it is possible to overcome the barriers of inequality imposed by tradition through greater freedom to question, doubt, and ‒ if convinced ‒ reject. An adequate realisation of women’s agency relates not only to the freedom to act but also to the freedom to question and reassess. Critical agency is a great ally of development. (Sen, 2002, p. 274.)
To reflect the fact that recognition as an equal participant in the social and political life of a society still leaves the person trapped within dominant customs, beliefs and modes of living, which for example, may include misrecognition of their personality or unjust constraints on their activity, Sen introduced the term ‘critical voice’. This concept of critical voice is thus the fifth in a series of determinations of advantage: wealth, functioning, capability, voice and finally, critical voice. Critical voice is the capacity of a person living ‘inside’ a society to form views available from a position ‘outside’ that society:
... virtually every society tends to have dissenters, and even the most repressive fundamentalist regimes can ‒ and typically do ‒ have dissenters .... Even if the perspective of the dissenters is influenced by their reading of foreign authors, the viewpoints and critical perspectives of these members are still ‘internal’ to the society. (Sen, 2002a, p. 476-77.)
Critical agency refers “not only to the freedom to act but also to the freedom to question and reassess.”
That when it comes to criticizing a culture it must come internally in the sense that one begins from an acceptance of the premises of the dominant culture but is able to show its inadequacy and limitations. In the same way that the most damning criticisms often come from those who are well acquainted with a way of life and its ideology, those who are able to present a perspective beyond it though informed by it.
In this perspective, one does not force change but is not indifferent to the problems that face people. There is an effort to support from the position as an equal rather than paternalistically make people do what you want, which of course does not create real change except through extremely violent means where an old way of life is simply destroyed.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1910/lih/chap01.htmPolitically, Ireland has been under the control of England for the past 700 years, during the greater part of which time the country has been the scene of constant wars against her rule upon the part of the native Irish. Until the year 1649, these wars were complicated by the fact the fact that they were directed against both the political and social order recognised by the English invader. It may surprise many readers to learn that up to the date above-mentioned the basis of society in Ireland except within the Pale (a small strip of territory around the Capital city, Dublin), rested upon communal or tribal ownership of land. The Irish chief, although recognised in the courts of France, Spain, and Rome, as the peer of the reigning princes of Europe, in reality held his position upon the sufferance of his people, and as an administrator of the tribal affairs of his people, while the land or territory of the clan was entirely removed from his private jurisdiction. In the parts of Ireland where for 400 years after the first conquest (so-called) the English governors could not penetrate except at the head of a powerful army, the social order which prevailed in England – feudalism – was unknown, and as this comprised the greater portion of the country, it gradually came to be understood that the war against the foreign oppressor was also a war against private property in land. But with the forcible break up of the clan system in 1649, the social aspect of the Irish struggle sank out of sight, its place being usurped by the mere political expressions of the fight for freedom. Such an event was, of course, inevitable in any case. Communal ownership of land would undoubtedly have given way to the privately owned system of capitalist-landlordism, even if Ireland had remained an independent country, but coming as it did in obedience to the pressure of armed force from without, instead of by the operation of economic forces within, the change has been bitterly and justly resented by the vast mass of the Irish people, many of whom still mix with their dreams of liberty longings for a return to the ancient system of land tenure – now organically impossible. The dispersion of the clans, of course, put an end to the leadership of the chiefs, and in consequence, the Irish aristocracy being all of foreign or traitor origin, Irish patriotic movements fell entirely into the hands of the middle class, and became, for the most part, simply idealised expressions of middle-class interest.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics