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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (38327)	8/17/2002 3:14:03 PM
From: kumar	Respond to of 281500

Was it not absolute cultural imperialism when the British banned slavery and suttee in India? probably was not - I'm no expert on this topic. (Indians were british slaves, the PC view being they were subjects of the empire). Sati was a practice amongst Rajputs who lost men in war to the Moghuls. Rather than getting raped etc, they chose to commit suicide. The Brits banned it, but more importantly, after Indian independance, as the populace got a bit more educated, the Indian government banned it too. There are some instances of the practice being continued, but they are the exception, rather than the rule. cheers, kumar

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (38327)	8/17/2002 7:45:55 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Nadine, Your position and that of Lindy's makes sense only if you accept the notion that something called "cultures" are wholistic entities and have to be judged as such. Most real life, everyday cultures are fragments of new things, traditional things, in conflict with one another, etc. If as one portion of these disparate things we label with that awkward term "culture," the males in that culture abuse women, I don't have any problem considering it wrong, arguing that power is a frequent creator of the justifications for abuse in social settings and the best form of those justifications of abuse are written into some of the disparate codes that males then appeal to. Sorry about the awkward sentence. But I'm in a bit of a hurry right now. Another illustration, I don't have any problem respecting the portion of my own Southwestern cultural background that laid such a heavy emphasis on individual independence, while bemoaning the heavy emphasis on machoness and justifications for the ready availability of guns. I fail to see any way in which that conflicts with pomo, or whatever. The only admission I make is that, to repeat myself ad nauseum, I don't know whether god, truth, or goodness, as some transhistorical Platonic forms, also approves of individual independence and disapproves of machoness and ubiquitous guns.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (38327)	8/17/2002 7:51:43 PM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 281500

.and many more who reflect them unwittingly. Worse, they turn them into policy, even as every third world dictator learns how useful it is to claim cultural uniqueness for his most repressive policies. And one more. Multiculturalism is hardly complicit in this. Dictators, whether first, second, or third world are very, very serious problems. The American left, in any of its forms, is not culpable. Repeat, not culpable. It was rather, the much admired Kissinger who saw to it that Pinochet was installed; and I can make that list very long. It does not improve conversation here to blame the left, once again, for terrorism, dictators, whatever. There is more than enough ammunition to blame the right. Let's simply not have that conversation.