The Karma of Culture
Description:... Appraisal
"This book provides a thoughtful and fearless approach to some important and highly topical questions. What constitutes Australia's nationhood? What is her role in Asia and in the world? How can, and should, the burgeoning economies of Asia contribute to the development of Australia, not just as foreign investors and trading partners, but in terms of cultural and spiritual values? What is the nature of democracy, and how can democratic ideals be realized in Australia and in its Asian neighbours? What is the meaning of multiculturalism in the Australian context? These questions are raised in an intelligent and thought-provoking way."
"You give us valuable insights into your own experiences as an 'outsider' in a predominantly white 'Western' environment, who has been able to become part of that environment without losing your deepest links with your own culture. And you demonstrate that the influence of Eastern philosophers to which Australia is uniquely exposed among Western countries has the potential to counteract the West's slide into materialism and the spiritual impoverishment that provides fertile soil for cultism and fundamentalism in all their forms."
"This is a hard-hitting, insightful book that will appeal to academics, public servants, students, and many members of the general public."
Synopsis
Culture is ubiquitous. Culture is all-pervasive. Many (mainly Asian) immigrants take into white host nations strongly divergent, and historically durable, cultural stances and practices. In the migrant-receiving countries of the Western world, the core issue of a conflict between a sustained attempt by such immigrants to retain their cultures and theosmotic force of equal opportunity offering an earlier and smoother integration into the values and mores of the host people bobs up and down in the seas of social policy. Cultural diversity can therefore be de-stabilising to a hitherto cohesive society. The national identity which had evolved through the merging of culturally compatible tribes and peoples can now be seen to be threatened. Whilst this book is about Australia, the issues raised have relevance for all immigrant-receiving nations.
One's culture provides the template for dealing with life. Its base is laid in childhood, through the values imposed by family and community. The cultural practices of one's tribe reinforce these values and associated perceptions. The impacts of nurture (experience) upon nature (inheritance), as one passes through life, are filtered through this network of cultural values. A conditioned belief among some in the West that a human zygote equates to a human being, contrasting with an older Asian belief that the human soul enters a baby's body at or after birth, is reflective of divergent cultural values.
The need for immigrants to reconcile their inherited cultural values and associated practices with the predominant values and practices of their adopted nation-state can create stresses on both cultures. The issues which arise from this cross-cultural impact are those of: equal opportunity; whether a unified people can arise from a wide tribal diversity; individualism vs the collective (the family), ie whether the individual or the family unit has priority in terms of rights and responsibilities; the definition of family, and its role in society; cultural hegemony and political sovereigntyin a globalising nation-state; the place of the Creator in modern life; and whether Australia's 'fair-go' social and policy ethos needs an infusion of Asian values.
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