Jubba Chronicles
“Mirror Mirror on the wall, whose culture is the greatest of ’em all?”
On cultural supremacy
Can there be an actual empirical answer to this question? Herodotus says, the answer would vary from person to person. According to this great Greek Historian,
“ If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably — after careful considerations of their relative merits — choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best; and that being so, it is unlikely that anyone but a madman would mock at such things. There is abundant evidence that this is the universal feeling about the ancient customs of one’s country.”
Herodotus was right in describing the universal feeling people have regarding their own cultures and lifestyles. By own, i mean the group the individual belongs to. A culture encompasses a lot of things. A certain demographic follows a certain set of ideas, customs, languages, food habits, entertainment styles, festivals, religion, moral codes, rituals, social institutions, attires etc. So, it becomes a part of the individual’s identity which aligns them with the rest. The homogeneity of culture thus integrates a wide array of people and assigns them an identity. And, strength in unity, right? So when an individual violates the norms and adopts another style in any of the cultural elements, it is seen as an foreign influence, an invasive influence which of course, poses an identity threat. From the fear of existence, the culture which is being replaced pulls out a defense mechanism, it pushes its bearers to retreat against the invasive ones. The hosts turn violent on the intrusion of the slightest foreign cultural material in their safe space. It seems logical if we consider that the purity of all culture should be well-preserved and maintained, without allowing it erode or get modified even a little.
Memes!!!!
But! Who gets to decide that cultures must be constant and not dynamic?
And moreover why should it really be like that?
Change is good and should be welcomed, but frequent change might create chaos, and restoring order might be tough. Also, it is human nature to be comfortable around familiar spaces, not around differences. But a question does arise, then how come in the world, such a wide variety of culture exist?
Because, in short, culture had never been constant, and never will it be. It's the nature of culture to dynamically evolve. The cultures of the past were far different than present ones. In the future, maybe the cultural landscape will take a wholly different look. People have been always the most inquisitive and imitating animals. A culture breeds in an area, it develops and flourishes. Then gypsies, travelers come along, carries the cultural virus to other places of the world, where they migrate or travel across. Like genes, culture spreads through hosts. In 1976 Richard Dawkins popularized the term “Meme” through his book “The Selfish Gene”.
It basically refers to cultural units that are spread through people to people, for people being excellent copiers. Like genes, cultures mutate, evolve and replicate. The parallel of the genetic transmission with memetic transmission is uncanny but the latter one being more fast and having a wider mode of transmission. The memes with the most replicability sustains while the others perish out. Dawkins coined the term as a way to explain the spread of ideas and culture. So, cultures replicate, in pure or mutated form, from time to time, place to place. It does not stay static and confined. The most flexible and fittest of the cultures succeed to thrive while the rest just makes their way into history.
Culture or memes transmit through human interaction. Transmissions can occur both vertically and horizontally. Vertically meaning from parents to children (through generations) which is a little slow paced, while horizontally means through group interactions (within a generation) which can occur unimaginably fast. While, as for genes, they have only one way of transmitting, the vertical and slow way. The modes of genetic transmission is through DNA inheritance, nucleotides playing the role all the way. Memes do not have such biological modes of transmissions but through books, inscriptions, generational mimicry, oral inheritance, mass processions, festivals, rituals etc. And now technology ( Television, Internet, Satellite communication etc. ) have entered the field for memes to transmit, which is by far the most effective and fastest way. This is where historians start to debate on the legitimacy of memes of they can truly be paralleled with genes. But according to Daniel Denette, we can in fact draw parallels between the two, since the main point is information being transmitted, no matter how it is being. If we consider nucleotides as a information pool about the physique, then it’s exactly analogous to memes which are nothing but a set of information about a mode of behaviour in human beings.
The point of all of this blabbering is this, cultures won't ever stand still. It will flow from one end to another end given the charm it holds, and the usefulness it brings. T.H Huxley considers cultural memes as living organism, it goes through all the evolutionary stage as a meme does. So, if genes are allowed to mix and transmit, why do we have so much aversion for memes to get inside the borders of our home?
That being said, we return back to the very first assumption of ours. That is, to preserve order and integrity. But the one thing we forget is that, the very culture we are defending as vectors, are a combination or a mashup of a lot more that came before it. All of these are a mutated mix. So, we are basically defending something which is already impure. Which aspects of purity do we talk about when we defend a certain culture? But if it’s to keep order and avoid a chaotic drama in society, i may give it a pass. Though we cannot tell for sure if what we are being scared of would actually come true or not. Would an addition or modification really bring chaos or would everything go along just fine?
This is also quite complicated to address. It depends on the element of culture and the clash of the additive part with the already existing ones. How much hostile is the new culture to intruders or vice versa, or how much welcoming or hostile is the old culture to the new ones, is to be asked to get an answer to this. Therefore, when a big cultural shift happens in a certain demographic all too quickly it usually follows a mostrous event, mass migration, political movement, war or disaster of any sort. If not, the shift occurs quite slowly. But a shift will surely occur, sooner and later. It shouldn’t come to us as a quite big of a surprise.
On Relativism
But should we be accepting of the shift or be adverse to it? Before answering that, let’s take a peep into cultural relativism. What is cultural relativism?
Cultural relativism basically originated as an antithesis to western ethnocentrism. The term was coined by Franz Boas, the father of American Anthropology. Boasians, or in other word the people who subscribe to Boas’s theory of cultural relativism, argue that there is no standard or absolute culture. Every people’s ides, beliefs, customs should be viewed by the lens of the culture that he adheres instead of weighing it in comparison to another. To understand this proposition of theirs, let’s say Bengalis eat food with their hands, while it is seen as inappropriate in other parts of the world. In our country we do not refer to our elders directly by their names, but through a different set of distinct honoring pronouns, “ bhai, apu etc.” In western cultures, such distinct addressing features do not exist. So, a person of this land may travel to say US or the UK, and get baffled by the insolence of their youngsters. But the age old tradition of the Bengal was never there, the children were not brought up like that, so do we have the right to get disgusted? Also taking food practice into consideration, chinese people have a very different food habit than the rest part of the world. Recently coronavirus outbreak have brought their food habit into question once again, implying it was always there. But our disgust stems from the fact we have never been exposed to eating wildlife animals, but farm animals. Also in the US, pork is one of the most popular food, in our country whereas pork is heavily looked down upon. So can we really put out a moral judgement and put us above them? We actually can’t. Our taboo stems from religion and the culture it bred for hundreds of years. While they didn’t have to go through any such issue which made things normal for them. But like others, it too poses some dilemma. Whaling for example, is a popular sport for the japanese. But it is severely damaging to the ecosystem. The japanese defend themselves by saying that whaling is a tradition which needs to be preserved. Environmental activists are concerned that it might drive these marine species into the book of extinction. So, taking cultural relativism into consideration, whose side are we to take. Here, Boasians say that, the problem arises because we confuse cultural relativism with moral relativism, which is not its intent at the first place. Their opinion is that to understand other people’s cultural, to know the meaning and weight of the cultural elements, we need to put on the lens of that particular culture and see the world through it. If we keep the lens of our own culture on and judge the world through this lens, then we would be just moving through an ethnocentric approach, that is centering our personal culture and judging others relative to it. This won’t get us anywhere to our end goal , Boasians say. Hence we need to adopt cultural relativism approach, not cultural absolutism. Their proposition was totally epistemological and heuristic. In pursuit for knowledge and truth, why sth happens and what could be the driving force behind them — was the intent of the approach of cultural relativism. But nonetheless, culture entails morals. So a question of moral relativism would spontaneously occur.
Let’s get back to the chinese. Some of the dietary culture of the chinese people are too brutal than the dietary culture of other continents. Not like the dietary culture of the west is superior, but what i meant is less severe. Torturing, and devouring the animals alive seems too much cruel and unethical. But that’s just how chinese culture is. Now cultural relativism would try to explain why chinese people tend to practice this and consider it normal to do. But if we don’t take in some moral absolutes, like torturing animals is bad, we cannot question their practice. Similarly western people cant put their moral above too. Farming animals is by far the largest source of meat for westerners. But the way the animals are farmed is extremely unethical. There are thousands of PETA reports against farming practices of the west. For instance, some days ago, France banned mass shredding of male chicks in chicken industries. Usually male chicks which are considered to be not profitable for the industry are brutally culled by machines in large number. After years of activism, the French Govt. finally legislated that this would not be tolerated any further. Putting the industrial culture of brutalizing animals to a halt. But it still pertains in other countries, the US for example. The Dairy industry, the Pig industry, nothing is clean. All are literal torture cells for animals. But that’s just how the cattle industries are. So, can an american or a french national question the chinese about not having morals, while the immoral guy is standing just a mirror of a distance away? A vegan of course would get the most upper hand on morals. They would say that they are against animal meat consumption as a whole. That torturing and exploiting a living being is a bad thing to do and should not be practiced. Notice that the vegans here, are subscribing to moral absolutes and not moral relativism. The opposition to a certain cultural practice requires some standard if ethics need to be judged of it, and the vegans are doing it. In many countries of the world, Female Genital Mutilation is a cultural and religious practice. But should we consider it okay in terms of cultural relativism? Though cultural relativism doesn’t answer the ethical questions, but we do have to draw moral relativism here to explain that it in fact is not okay at all. That it is a violence of Human Rights. The caste system of hindus is another thing that falls under the not okay section. But it stems from the hindu religion and culture. To answer all of these, we do have to adhere to some moral absolutes. Another interesting thing is capital punishment. In some countries, like Saudi Arabia you can get you head chopped off as capital punishment. In other countries, the brutal killing may not happen, but the criminals are hanged to death, like in Bangladesh, India etc. In some country they view capital punishment as an immoral thing to do, like some of the scandinavian countries. It is because the culture of these places shaped the people’s moral thoughts in certain away and their moral absolutes varied. But what can be an universal absolute regardless of people’s gender, age, place, time etc?
There are multiple ethical postulates regarding this. Utilitarianism for example. It refers to actions which produce the maximum good are moral and which produce the opposite are immoral.It assumes that people are pleasure seeking animals and tries to reach a stable and pleasant state. Then there is the Golden Rule Theory, where it states that, we should treat others just how we would like to be treated. It bases reciprocity at its core. This idea predates confucian times and can be seen as an essential teaching of every religion, both abrahamic and non abrahamic. Then there is the divine command theory, where religions come across. That some magical being in the sky set forth a set of principles for humans to follow for he created them is the basis of this. There are other ethical models too, but i won’t dive much into them to keep things short. My point is to let you all know that moral absolutes have a good lot of variety and varies from person to person depending on which mode they subscribe to.
Habibi Moments
Let’s take a case study. Recently a huge feud took place online. The driver of the feud was a certain dress, Arabian thawb, popularly known as Jubba. The students of the CSE 15 batch of KUET thought of dressing up as Arabs for their last day of their academic classes of their university life. The tradition around KUET is that, the students tend to dress up as creatively as possible in their last class. The more creative way of expressing themselves, the more applause they get. Every department tries to be different from each other. Colourful Panjabi, Dhuti etc. are common ways of celebrating. So to stand out of the crowd the students of Mechanical 15 and CSE 15 thought of dressing a little differently. They chose to dress up as arab people. The day was full of fun and games, but the problem occured when the news started to spread.
Now to clarify one thing, this is not the first time any university students celebrated any occasion by dressing this creatively.The students of International Islamic University of Chittagong, dressed up as such for their rag day in 2018. But it didn’t went viral on the internet. The spread of information was very much slow for the people of IIUC, maybe due to them being less on focus or maybe the hype was low, or maybe the domino effect just wasn’t there. As for the Kuetians, the news spread like wildfire, mostly due to the students and the alumni all being quite active and expressive on facebook. It soon grabbed the attention of news agencies and renowned online figures. After this happened the reaction that followed can be classified into three categories. One party thinks that this was wrong because it is giving a foreign culture an upper hand and preference over the local culture. Their point is Bengali culture is being threatened by the introduction of this foreign cultural ways. Some see this as an attempt of islamizing the country, others don’t get too evident with their claims but cover it by more Politically Correct ways, wrapping it under the sense of nationalism. Another group on the other hand rose question about the morals of the dress code, implying it hurt their religious sentiments. Some of the students from that very own batch didn’t go away with the flow just for the sake of their religious sentiment. And then comes the other party, mostly the students and alumni who think that this mode of celebration is just a harmless and fun way to put an end to the 4 years of struggling engineering life.
On Mullahs and Chauvinists
The claims of the first two party can be discarded out without giving a second thought. Lets jump to the religious sect, who tell that this mode of celebration undermines religious sentiment. But actually it doesn’t. Because a dress doesn’t have any religion and a dress is an indication of a particular demographic and their culture, not the religion. Religion is meant to be universal, not local. So their point doesn’t hold much of a value. On the other hand, the party who claim that cultural integrity is being threatened, and that its a reflection of islamization are too wrong in a sense that it isn’t. Because the outfit doesn’t represent a religion but a certain demographic, and also they were not engaging in any religious ceremony neither were they influenced by any. So by inductive reasoning we can claim that the third party is right, that it really be considered totally guilt ridden.
Cultural Appropriation
Now i would like to bring the reader’s attention to a fact, which is cultural appropriation. There is another angle to view this phenomena which nobody seemed to notice which is cultural appropriation. The reason for not noticing is understandable since, cultural appropriation is not quite a familiar term among our countrymen. So obviously, people overlooked it.
Case Against appropriation:
On 1973 Marlon Brando was announced for an Oscar for his role in The Godfather as Vito Corleone. But he wasn’t present in the Oscar Ceremony. To everyone’s surprise, a woman comes up dressed like a Native American, everyone thinks she would receive the award for Brando on his behalf. But to everyone’s surprise, she refuses the award. She takes up a note that she brought with her and delivers her speech. The girl was Sacheen Littlefeather. Sacheen, being half Native American, half white, has always been active in Native American Activism despite being an aspiring actress. Brando was himself involved with Native American Rights activism, and hence when the moment came, Brando sent Sacheen on his behalf to put a rebellious stunt against hollywood. The rebel was against Hollywood’s portrayal of Native American Culture along with some contemporary conflicts of Native Americans with the State Administrations. The portrayals of Native Americans in Hollywood movies are usually composed by non natives, which yield the room for misrepresentations and mockery of the original culture. The term “Hollywood Indian” is used to refer to this stupid practice of hollywood in its earlier days. Therefore Sacheen used this grand platform to convey her message to a great number of highly prestigious audience against appropriating her tribe’s culture and also asking to put a stop to the Native American oppression. This is the very first opposition to cultural appropriation on such a grand way. You can check the full speech conveyed by Sacheen Littlefeather following this link below.
http://aaspeechesdb.oscars.org/link/045-1/
After 1980s, Cultural Appropriation started to get academic hype and talked about in pop cultures. Fairly recently, outrages against cultural appropriation started to get massive. Many festivals, Entertainment Industries, Pop Celebrities etc. are the most usual vectors of cultural appropriation. Many americans can be seen wearing war bonnet on parties, festivals, and places alike as a fancy ornament.
But war bonnet is a Native American Culture, usually wore by male leaders who earned a potential respect within the tribe. Using it as a party material is usually disrespectful to the original culture. It’s disrespectful to the tribesmen who see it as sth of a huge honor to have, whereas some hippy american is using it to look different and cool in party, while getting intoxicated to his heart’s content.
There are multiple celebrities who have been lambasted for appropriating a foreign culture. Kylie Jenner with her cornrow hairstyle, Katy perry appropriating Japanese culture, Selena Gomez Miley cirrus wearing bindi, beyonce going full indian in coldplay’s music video etc. are one of the many that got accused. Not just celebrities, the african dreadlock hairstyles, can be seen to be adopted too many white americans especially by hippy americans, loosely or mostly inspired from Bob Marley and people alike. Prince Harry was once accused to be appropriating an indigenous culture, where he used their spiritual symbol as an art piece for his school project. Not only people but industries weren’t left the heat as well.
Gucci for example, got into a huge controversy and had to pull of their 850$ jacket for containing blackface mouthcover in it. Blackface is a derogatory portrayal of non white people by whites. It has been a widely used racist practice. In cartoons the instances of blackfaces can be seen hugely. The likes of Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes, etc. had a wide usage of blackfaces in their cartoons. Also in magazines, books, in entertainment media basically blackface portrayals were quite common. For a highly regarded company like Gucci to make a mistake was beyond anyone’s expectation. Gucci issued public apology and pulled their product off from the market.
In Bangladesh, an advert for a telecom company“Running Rafi” rose in a big lot of controversy. The advert made by Nuhash Humayun ( Son of Late Humayun Ahmed ), for a telecom company portrays the life in Chittagong Hill Tracts. The advert shows a kid running door to door to wake people up in the times of suhoor and also to alert them in the times of iftar, showing why cellular network needs to get stronghold on that region. The advert rose controversy in social media and among many intellectual communities, for it misrepresented the cultural of the indigenous people of the hill tracts. Firstly CHT isn’t a muslim majority place, plus the families on the hills were portrayed by Native Bangladeshis, not the aboriginals. Thus, many people, companies, institutions etc. fell prey to cultural appropriation this way or that way.
Now from the info shared above, can it be safely said that, what the guys at KUET did at their last class, can be said to be sort of appropriating other’s culture? It can be, but there is a big “ BUT”. In a sense, what the students were doing were just harmless amusement. But making the culture of others a thing of amusement is just what cultural appropriation is.
But, is it?
Case For Appropriation
Not everything is cultural appropriation. You can dress as anything you like, but if that is disrespectful then the term will come convenient. If it’s not it wont. Therefore, due to utility purpose, when we use other cultural elements, we don’t call them cultural appropriation. Hence, wearing shirts, jeans, suits, ties, gowns dont fall under cultural appropriation. Neither does, celebrating christmas, new year etc.
There is another thing that need to be considered - Power Balance.
If someone dresses up or uses cultural elements of a marginalized community for amusement, it may misrepresent their culture. But the vice versa isn’t always true. In US, in the mid twentieth century ball culture developed. Originated in Harlem, the ball culture expanded in New York, Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia and lots of other places, even outside of the states, like in UK, Canada, Japan as per wikipedia. There were clubs where the poor lgbt, queer, black people get to dress up and spend time dressing up in an exotic and luxurious fashion just as rich people do, and dwell in their fantasies for a little while. Then they go back being their usual self again. But imagine if the opposite happened. What if the rich guys thought to start dressing like poor people just for amusement? That would be mockery at its finest. If Jeff Bezos thinks of living like a poor african american for once or a while because its fun to do, then he might have to step down from being Amazon’s CEO by its stakeholders and board of directors for being such a dumb idiot.
If similar thing happened with the Kuetians, like if they thought of cosplaying as Rohingyas or aboriginal hill tract people, it would have been a condemning thing to do. Because these people are already marginalized and using their cultural content as a amusement material would be like adding to their misery. Jubbas are arab culture, and in no way, arabs are behind us in power. In fact Bangladeshis are seen as poor dirty illiterate people by most of the Arabs because of the worker stereotype, bangladesh being one of the largest worker provider in the Middle Easts. We are a speck of dust compared to the power and rich that the arabs hoard.
Considering this, what the guys did at KUET doesn’t in any way justify as cultural appropriation.
But is always cultural appropriation a bad thing?
Like why cant i adopt cultures which i feel like adopting? If i like chopsticks to eat with, i should be allowed to. If i like to wear japanese cloaks in my home why shouldn’t i be allowed to? If i like to eat chinese cuisine, american cuisine and don’t like bengali cuisine, why should i be stripped of my freedom to do so, because of some fancy academic word. Well, just not piss off people i guess. But if we block all in the name of cultural appropriation, creative ways of expressing self gets blocked. Creativity should know no limits. Because then, creation stops, sth beautiful stops from taking place. What they kuetians did brought the campus colors, festivity and broke monotony. Though it doesn’t technically fall under the banner of cultural appropriation but still, the practice of creativity is an important thing to consider.
Like Ronald Barthes said,
“Every Exploration is an Appropriation”.
If exploration is barred, how would new things come? How would discoveries be made? Well, personally i think, as long as it is does not affect or disrespect any community who are already way below the privilege line, it should be allowed. Plus it shouldn’t look cringy or silly like what the celebrities do, or else congrats on getting memed online brother, godspeed.
But in the end, i would like to say, there will be people who would bark just out of their fundie views regarding religion or chauvinism, or as we say in bangla “Chetona”. The things that triggered me to write this, is the ignorance of many of my friends who aren’t well informed on social affairs, and hence make some ignorant remarks on important matters. One of my friend once told me that he doesn’t support the girls and boys openly hanging together like there is no wall in between. But thats shallow thinking to do. Just because isolating genders is a bengali culture doesnt mean its something holy and deserving to be preserved. It can be destructive which i failed to inscribe in his mind. There were many friends who express their misogynistic views just because they think it is a foreign cultural thing and we should be repelling it in full force. But that it is an inhumane thing to do, and also that it stalls development of a nation as a whole doesn’t occur to their mind. Only thing that passes through their mind is the defense algorithm that their culture inscribed them in, that is, protect me at any cost, repel all the rest. But as history testifies, it never was the case and never will be. There were multiple other cultural debates i had to go through, like if beating up a thief to death or to the amount they get physically impaired is right or wrong, or is should student politics be banned (which many think shouldn’t be since its part of our post war bangladeshi culture), and many other such topics. I wanted them to realize that the culture you are holding so dear to wont last, and will change according to convenience in time. So its pointless fight, just embrace the convenience.
Nothing remains pure. Nothing was, and Nothing ever will be.
Also there will forever be people who will use religion and chauvinism to get their points across. But these are just some vague concepts and doesnt offer much of a logical discourse. Well Chetona, be that religious or nationalistic, can suck a dick in hell for all we can care. It would be fun if these people time traveled to see a whole different world than the world they are so fighting to preserve. Neither will Shariah get established, neither will joy bangla for eternity. Maybe some hybrid chetona like deen e elahi will reoccur with the Barron trump being the Messiah, well who knows?