Interculture and Conflict

Conflict is a cultural phenomen. All attempts to define conflict in purely political, economic or religious terms are doomed to fail. And if conflict is cultural, than the healing process must begin with cultural means. There is no greater challenge today, both globally and locally, than the constructive exchange between diverse cultures, religions and peoples.


There are many threats to this exchange. Fragmentizing populations - dividing and conquering - is a common tactic for some politicians and religious leaders throughout the world. A key drift that informs this tactic: Power.

I visited Belfast a couple of weeks ago, to speak at the Belfast One City Conference  http://www.onecityconference.com. Well-organised, warm and informal, The conference organizers had managed to gather some of the shining business, cultural, political and activist leaders from both sides of an historically troubled city. The clearest sensation: that a thriving city is a cultural city and everyone there knows it.

Power evolves by establishing hierarchies. Populations are effectively manipulated through fear. We define ourselves by excluding the Other. Barriers, real and imagined, are built to prevent healthy exchange. We lock ourselves into definitions of ”us and them”, magnifying differences instead of negotiating them.

I was first introduced to community activities and city center re-invention plans. I was then put in the competent hands of four men, about my age. 2 republicans and 2 loyalists, former combattants. They showed me essential places in their community, where cultural symbols (murals, meeting places) and defense architecture (walls, meshed windows, metal barriars) were intertwined. They worked now with getting the community behind changing the neighborhood story, re-designing public art and public space. A sincere work being done by these men, fine-tuned by years of personal experience with the consequences of cultural conflict.

Power deriving from fear is a manifestation of ethnocentricity and cultural narcissism.

Shared space is essential for dialogue. Our personal histories are different but our playing field is common. There are essential spaces shared throughout the world: the school, the workplace, the sports arena, media networks, the town square and other urban gathering places. Cultural spaces like theatres, concert houses, museums and heritage sites are among the most important.

Belfast is a city making plans to build, re-construct and re-invent their shared space. There are numerous cultural centers struggling for support, a multitude of ideas and inventiveness. This is a healthy sign recognized by the new leadership growing up in Northern Ireland. But who will dare to invest?

Conflict is Culture. Cultural stategies can also heal conflict, not by silencing or sidestepping, rather by confronting and engaging. Give people places to meet and things to do and they will step beyond.

Raising the stakes …

I was pleasantly surprised to see a wink towards culture in the latest series of budgets and counter-budgets at this early stage  in the campaign towards Swedish national elections 2010. A special focus was given to international and intercultural investment. The media missed it.

It began with the recently launched Proposition on Culture, presented by the current government as a political reaction to an earlier commissioned national survey on culture. The more radical and confused elements of the national survey have been put aside. The Minister for Culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth offers a clear position on intercultural action, without proposing any extra resources. Instead, her budget refers to the present experiment - about 1 (one) million Euros annually for three years - and underlines the need for further analysis. This money runs out in 2010. Intercult is one of the organisations following defined international missions in return for this fragile subsidy.

The opposition - composed of social democrats, left democrats and the green party - offer a shadow budget including 2 (two) million Euros a year for three years, earmarked for intercultural action. A 100% increase. Maybe we should be content that the issue is even on the table. Maybe we should applaud and vote.

I am hoping - probably in vain - that increased investment in international exchange, as proposed by the opposition, might raise the stakes. Can Lena Liljeroth and her team offer other solutions? Which political narrative best incorporates a modern and progressive approach to interculture? Which alliance is willing to see cultural initiatives that cross borders as primary research and development for the European project? Which political alternative opens our perspectives internationally?

It seems like a good litmus test for the sustainability of any future Swedish government, living as we do in an immensely transnational environment.

Nobel Peace Prize: Why Obama?

Many were surprised and some even shocked when Barack Obama was honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009. Apart from the wish by the Nobel Committee in Norway to play a role in world politics (it seems often that the prize has been decided by what we HOPE someone meant and not by what he/she actually did ...), there may be a cultural rationale for the choice.

Barack Obama is the first major world leader with a clearly mixed cultural/ethnic background to take the stage. It is not his "blackness" which incites our imagination - rather the mixed signals that his roots and upbringing send. For the first time in modern history an American president underlines, both rhetorically and symbolically, the necessity of intercultural competence. He continues to tread sensitive territory, both when it comes to American self-image and the imagination that other peoples have about the USA.

Giving the Peace Prize to Obama is potentially a kiss of death, archiving him already into the history books simply by his election. Endowing greatness is also a way of marginalizing and disarming a leader. Icons are seldom effective implementors of change.

But one can also see it - as someone expressed it in the evening papers - as a "start package" for peace. Maybe it is a reflection on our growing sensation, throughout at least the Western world, that a combination of mixed background, dialogue skills and sincere curiosity about the Other is far preferable to demonization.

At the root of the debate is a cultural/political question. How do we speak with our opponents? How do we share responsibility for global issues like migration, climate change and human rights? What alternatives are there to military action? An essential change from confrontation to consensus seems to be taking place.

Barack Obama has awakened hope among many - apparently even in the Nobel Committee. The Litterature prize this year also reflects the intercultural question, with Herta Müller's German language against a relief of Romanian communism.

Have we begun to understand that hybridity arising from cross-cultural experience is in fact our future strength and not a reason for introversion and drawing hard and populist lines?