The Observer, November 17, 2006
Volume XXXIX, Issue 11
One Foot Out the Door: Celebrations of culture analyzed
One cannot help but notice that our campus has lately been rich in activities sponsored by cultural groups. The Middle Eastern Club had its fall Hafla not too long ago, and just before that was the Indian Student Association's ISA Show. The events tend to consist of traditional dance, contemporary music, speeches, and ethnic food. Even if one has no background in that cultural tradition to understand it, somehow the excitement of others who did know what was going on rubs off on you.
Such events are fairly common on and off university campuses. When catching up with a friend last week and inquiring about how she spent her summer, she revealed that she attended four Irish cultural festivals. After seeing my facial reaction to her emphasis on multiple events, she validated her attendance by saying, "It offers me a sense of community." An awkward pause later I replied, "But of the thousands of people there, surely you do not know all of them. In fact, you'll never get to know more than a small fraction of them. You are almost imagining them as your community." I was not being critical of her, I was just curious.
More recently on campus was a panel discussion on the secularization of religious traditions in the United States. One theme developed during the gathering was how different religious traditions are used by immigrant groups to maintain their cultural identity as well as form communities. It would not be uncommon to find that many minority immigrants may become more involved in a religious community because it gives them the opportunity to be among people who are similar in mindset, language, and even physical appearances.
In Imagined Communities, a book written by Bennedict Anderson, the author looks at the phenomena of desiring a community. He describes a nation as being "An imagined political community....It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion."
His interest is in the ability (and consistent tendency) of humans to develop this notion of "community" with people they have never met as a foundation/catalyst in forming a nation. He further suggests this feeling that pleasantly takes my friend to multiple Irish Festivals, me to Middle Eastern ones–is so visceral in humans that it partially explains why people who have never met identify with one another so quickly. In a less benign sense, he also suggests that this is the same driving force that mobilizes so many people in the context of war.
Such an insight has left me bittersweet about these "celebrations of culture" because it seems that the feeling which catalyzes such an event is the same start that potentially helps promote war with a neighboring nation.
