Since the second week of school when our program officially began at our beloved “DSJ” or Journalisthøjskolen in Aarhus, and just about the time we were learning to pronounce each other’s names, map the fastest bus and bike routes to school, and find the best shawarma in town, we were also “introduced” to a figure that will continue to follow us forever after as we make our way through our academic and professional careers.
Mr. Huntington and his grand debate. The great ‘clash of civilizations’ – an obvious topic of discussion for a masters program in journalism, let alone one studying globalization from a specifically European perspective. So, I couldn’t help but be intrigued when an article arrived in my mailbox here in Amsterdam. The article was actually a speech. It was written and delivered by Professor Georges Corm, a lecturer at Saint Joseph University in Beirut and the former Minister of Finance of Lebanon. On the occasion of a book launch for the Cultures and Globalization Series I: Conflicts and Tensions, Professor Corm gave an interesting, thought provoking, and most of all alternate viewpoint to what we’ve been reading in our textbooks.
In his presentation- entitled “Reducing the divide between the West and the East”- Prof Corm discusses why the west(-ern elite) typically frame the division between the Arab and Western world in a “sterile” way that focuses on the “essential nature” of religious or cultural differences. Rather, Corm argued, we need to put aside discussions on religion and value to overcome the “Huntingtonian thesis” that each culture (either Muslim or non-Muslim) is the same and cannot change. We also need, says Corm, to avoid (utopian) visions for a unified world, because it is not the specific cultural values that are sources of tension, but rather how we historically contextualize the different “traumas”- in this case those experienced by the European and the Arab worlds (ie. WW II and the division of Palestine, respectively). It is only through an understanding of the implications of these traumas (and not the religious or cultural factors) that we can trace the present-day strained and divided relations that exists between the two “civilizations”.
His idea of “mega-identities” is a particularly interesting for our class to consider, especially after an intense month of political science with Professor Georg Sorenson in Aarhus last semester. Corm’s notion refers to how globalization has forged new ethnic and religious identities in place of our traditional ‘national and secular identities’. Western mega-identities are positioned opposite the “antagonistic blocs of countries”; Muslims countries lumped together and assumed to all share the same “civilization”, and thus also share the same basic values.
Without going further into the specifics of Corm’s argument and his historical analysis of why and how the “Jewish trauma” has pinned Arabs as anti-Semitics and relinquished Europeans of their post-genocide burden so they may fulfill a “moral obligation to Israel”, I will instead offer the link and invite my heterogeneous and culturally diverse classmates to comment on their own thoughts regarding Huntington and Corm:
www.princeclausfund.org/en/c_and_d/policy/princeclausfundpublicationconflictandtensions.shtml
