Christoph,
At 02:05 28/07/99 +0200, you wrote:
>On Sat, 24 Jul 1999, Keith Hudson wrote:
>> For better or for worse, we recreate society much as it was before whenever
>> we have passed through technological/economic change. OK, we might well
>> lose picturesque customs and metaphors (such as 7 or 70 different names of
>> snow -- and it's important for scholarly reasons that records are kept of
>> these), but we recreate new ones which are equivalent. In England during
>> the last couple of centuries the typical medieval village has entirely
>> disappeared and there has been much wailing and nashing of teeth about its
>> demise. But in its place today a vigorous and attractive new type of
>> village is emerging -- together with modern equivalents of ancient customs.
(CR)
>The above notion that "picturesque customs" come and go, and always did so,
>ignores what's fundamentally new in the current process of globalization:
>That old local/regional customs are not being replaced by new local/regional
>customs, but by GLOBAL "customs" -- by a McDonalds/Coca-Cola mono-"culture"
>that is the same everywhere. What is being lost isn't just "old customs",
>but the cultural diversity of this planet.
If we are, in fact, losing cultural diversity then it would be a great
shame. However, I'm not so sure that this is happening. True, 70% of the
populations of the advanced countries seem to be passive customers of the
same sorts of inane things and, true, most cities look exactly the same as
one another. To this extent there is a global culture. Nevertheless,
cultural diversity may be growing. Perhaps we are looking in the wrong
places for it. For the active, curious, intelligent 30% of the population
there have never been as many different sorts of specialist organisations
as today. For example, in Bath 50 years ago there was only one choir (that
is, a secular choral society as opposed to church choirs). Today, even
though there hasn't been any significant growth in the number of active
singers, there are over 20 choirs -- each one with a different type
repertoire.
(KH continued on 27-Jul):
>> There is a lot of historical confusion here because you are repeatedly
>> associating merchants and traders with the military. OK, there's collusion
>> sometimes (particularly in the defence industries) but the big lesson of
>> human history from post-tribal times onwards shows that merchants (who need
>> freedom) and governments (who want to establish control over their
>> populations) are basically antagonistic.
(CR)
>I think the U$A is a great example that
>- merchants and governments are NOT basically antagonistic
> (just think of the current U$--EU trade wars on bananas and hormone beef,
> or the wars in Iraq, Kosovo etc. etc.)
>- merchants do NOT need freedom
> (just think of the most successful merchant in history, Bill Gates,
> and his coercive monopoly that enabled this success in the first place)
Yes, one can always find examples (particularly in the US where there is
such a well-developed lobby system) where some industries have got an
inside track with government departments and are able to persuade the
government to help them with subsidies, protection from imports, etc. But,
by and large, most business steers away from involvement with government,
even from asking favours, because as soon as they do so, civil servants
start meddling in their affairs.
(REH)
>> >Keith, if you want to know what you are losing with the
>> >death of the languages then consider the following:
>> >it ultimately won't effect the outcome because the
>> >battle over this is not scientific or economic,
>> >(efficiency is cheaper) but political and cultural imperialism.
(KH)
>> Yes, I appreciate this, and, yes, nation-state politicians in all countries
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> have tried to stamp out minority languages for the sake of establishing
>> firmer control. But they don't always succeed and whether a language
>> survives or not is very much more to do with whether it's in the interests
>> of the people within the relevant region.
(CR)
>Please don't confuse "nation-state" with "imperialist state".
I think it's being pedantic to differentiate between "nation-state" with
"imperialist state". Whether a country is inimical to its domestic
populations or to both its domestic populations and foreign ones, either
state is undesirable. There is all the world of a difference between
politicians and civil servants who are truly answerable to the people and
those who have wrapped themselves up in cosy departments of state and seek
to make themselves as independent as possible from the people. Instead of
calling one country a "nation-state" and another an "imperialist state" I
would place them both along the "state" axis rather than the governance axis.
(CR)
>For the
>record: *Not* "all countries [or their "nation-state politicians"] have
>tried to stamp out minority languages for the sake of establishing firmer
>control" -- for example, Switzerland has 4 official languages (and some 20
>dialects) and spends a lot of money and efforts to *maintain* this diversity
>instead of stamping out the minority languages. The only thing that will
>eventually stamp out this diversity is Globalization, taken to its extreme.
>(Example: The newly privatized Swiss Telecom has excluded the "smallest" of
> the 4 national languages from all phone-books, because it "couldn't afford"
> the additional pages in this language anymore since it was privatized !
> The shareholders are laughing all the way to the bank about this decision.)
What seems to be happening is that everybody is learning English -- that
takes care of globalisation; but also speaking their own language -- and
this, of course, may be a regional or local language and not the official
one. For example, in France, the Bretons -- in order to retain their
language -- are threatening to break away from the French state and join
Wales! Breton, apparently, is similar to Welsh.)
In truth, a two-way process seems to be going on. Yes, there's a
globalisation effect -- a drift to common standards and large organisations
-- but there's also a strong devolution effect (to speak of politics) or
specialist effect (to speak of jobs and hobbies) in most advanced countries.
Keith Hudson
________________________________________________________________________
Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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