s'box
29 Mar 2006, 02:12 PM
The pictures of Iran got this started, but theres an impression that theres a single contradiction between an open and free western consumerist culture and purely rigid traditional culture, with very little as far as a third way is concerned.
It doesn't seem right that there should only be either radical islam or mcdonalds, mao zedong or... well, mcdonalds, peasant villagers in traditional clothes or t-shirts and blue jeans aplenty.
I can't think of much in the way of solid cultural identity being retained or even a new cultural identity being formed while at the same time not lapsing into the vices of the western world.
The one example I can think that sortof counters this is in Cuba. Cubas always been the nice guy of communism in relation to the arts and general culture, and the cuban government has been getting vastly more permissive about everything as time goes on, but the embargo keeps most US junk out of there, so there seems to be a striving sense in the arts and quite a bit of expanding 'culture' going on thats not state sponsored and not corporate sponsored.
So I figure im missing quite a bit as far as worldy knowledge, so what would be some other examples of cultures that are neither 'western' in the abstract mcdonalification of things, nor traditional/state sponsored
It doesn't seem right that there should only be either radical islam or mcdonalds, mao zedong or... well, mcdonalds, peasant villagers in traditional clothes or t-shirts and blue jeans aplenty.
I can't think of much in the way of solid cultural identity being retained or even a new cultural identity being formed while at the same time not lapsing into the vices of the western world.
The one example I can think that sortof counters this is in Cuba. Cubas always been the nice guy of communism in relation to the arts and general culture, and the cuban government has been getting vastly more permissive about everything as time goes on, but the embargo keeps most US junk out of there, so there seems to be a striving sense in the arts and quite a bit of expanding 'culture' going on thats not state sponsored and not corporate sponsored.
So I figure im missing quite a bit as far as worldy knowledge, so what would be some other examples of cultures that are neither 'western' in the abstract mcdonalification of things, nor traditional/state sponsored