The Cultural Salad Bowl

Morning of March 27th was very interesting. We got a chance to get a general overview of the origin and challenges of defining an American Culture by Dr Gary Weaver, Professor, School of International Service, American University, Washington DC. In my opinion, I found the overview to be an excellent, very generalized account of why American Culture is the way it is today. I think Dr Weaver gave the Fellows a wonderful opening to discuss amongst themselves, what Culture was all about and what it meant to us. And because it is so important to engage in that discourse, here's my view and account of what I feel culture means to me and how I think diverse cultures are seeping through physical boundaries.

I feel culture is a way of life. It's how we celebrate our lives and our environment. We celebrate life and and opportunity with music, culture and the arts, which give way to policies and topics for discussion and education. And then platforms such as Eisenhower Fellowships provide the platform for healthy discourse.

Technology factors into the spread of culture and ideas in such a big way, it is amazing. But perhaps because it is so new and most people think that they don’t understand the technology therefore don’t have a right to pass an assessment on the success or failure of it. We perhaps don’t criticize or even give the media enough credit for breaking all sorts of boundaries. Think back to the television ad where Coca Cola picked up on this cultural osmosis – Hritik Roshan travels into this remote village in India and has a group of children give him a welcome reception. They apparently don’t speak hindi and have never watched television, yet they end up singing a song which Mr Roshan sang in his debut film. The impact of the ad was wonderful but it said something so critical about culture being embedded into different societies even where there is no media intervention.

I often sit in public places in Karachi and look around me and I am amazed to find the diversity in the cultures around me. It leads me to think that the younger generation is more ‘westernized’ and less traditional than the older. The rich class seems to practice a culture that is more customized to their taste than the poor. Because we were ruled by the British for so many years, does this mean that all of our cultural elements originate from the British? Beyond explaining why we have so many high teas, I don’t think that explains too much else.

If music and the arts play such a vital role in our cultural societies, then why are the arts looked down upon in countries like Pakistan? What role does religion play in promoting or restricting culture? What role does the media and new media play? And if the world is indeed flat and shallow (or peaked and diverse according to Dorrie Friend) will all of us eventually be practicing a global more international culture?

Dr Weaver talked about the fact that America is not the melting pot, rather a salad bowl of different, distinct cultures. How large is this salad bowl becoming and how has the study of history, religion and origin of things play into this discussion? And the more important question, Dr Weaver? What kind of salad are we?!