I was thinking about something Bryson said in last week's class. He asked if there was some distinctly African solution. The question wasn't particularly well-received, but it set me thinking.
We've talked about the importance of thinking about Africa as individual countries, or even competing groups (illustrated well in Porter's post). We've talked about the failings of pan-Africanism. But there's a flip-side...
We call it "the West," and talk about imposing "western" solutions on Africa or other places. Culturally, the US, France, Sweden, Italy, Iceland, etc. are all very different, but similar solutions work for them. Is there some common denominator for Western nations that doesn't apply elsewhere? Or is the "West" homogeneous because of Roman influence?
Just something I've been thinking about. We get up in arms about referring to Africa as a single entity, but not about referring to the West as one.
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Chris, your blog brings up a very interesting idea. We do tend to group all of Europe, Canada, the US, Australia, Japan,etc., into "the West". Culturally, however, we are all so different! Yet there are some fundamental ideas and characteristics that unite us. This brings up the question that Bryson was getting to last week...Are there some ideas or characteristics that are fundamentally African? I would think there are. Latin America, for example, is also home to numerous languages, races, cultures and religions. Yet there are fundamental Latin American characteristics that surface in their governments and economies.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of our International Management class. There are many different theories behind analyzing cultures (cross-cultural psychology, hofstede analysis, etc), and maybe these theories help define a western, eastern, african, solution. For example, The "western" curltures you stated " US,France, Sweden, Italy, Iceland" are mostly individualistic and have lower power distances, according to hofstede. While many of the countries in Africa are collectivist and have a notably high power distance. So it would only make sense that with different categories of cultures, there would be different solutions. You may be on to something Chris.
ReplyDeleteI was a bit confused from the comments to Bryson's question in class. The posts on this subject are along the lines of what I was thinking so thanks for sharing. In sociology they say that although people certainly have their differences, there are often more similarities. I felt like that might fit into this discussion. As we continue to read about Africa we can already see patterns taking place and areas of commonality. I do feel that this might indeed point to a possibility of a “common denominator” among different people.
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