Thinking about Culture

York International has asked this year’s interns to complete some assignments while we are dispersed all over the world and our first assignment was to answer the question “what is my culture?” I’ve been sitting on it for quite some time and I guess part of the reason why I’ve been avoiding it is because I recognize that I’m so much a product of my culture and I can’t escape or deny it. I’m a westerner. And with those three words comes so many connotations. Words such as colonizer, imperialist, slavery, white man and modernizer come to mind, just to name a few (I’m an IDS student, I think in these terms!). I grew up in England, a country that has a legacy of colonialism stamped right on it. I then spent many years in Israel, a country that has become largely westernized and Americanized. And now, I’m living the metropolis that is Toronto, rich with its many unique neighbouroods, different cultures and people intermixing, often with tension, in a rhythmic city constellation.

Toronto has really opened me up to a diversity of cultures. But the more I am exposed to many different peoples and cultures, the more I realize how much my culture has shaped who I am. That is, I grew up with specific attitudes that are common to the geographic regions I've lived in; I grew up with a certain kind of education - one that had/has very Eurocentric undertones - and I grew up knowing that I will always be housed, clothed and fed. It took me a while until I became aware of my location of privilege and now I am faced with the question of what to do with my privilege, so that I don’t just go through this life consuming mindlessly, abusing my privilege and detaching myself from the reality that we are all interconnected. I feel that in light of an ever globalizing world, it is important to keep this in mind; that decisions that are made on one end of the globe, directly impacts lives of people on the other end. And I’m not just talking about the big cats making decisions behind closed doors. I’m talking about you and me. With privilege comes the power to choose how to live one’s life.

In the same sense that we all have an “ecological footprint,” we also have a “human footprint” - the lives we touch directly and indirectly and the practices that we choose to support directly and indirectly. For much of my life I chose to live with my eyes closed and I feel that this is something that is quite common within “western” culture. There is a tendency to detach ourselves from certain processes that are in play (the process by which a product gets to our shopping bag, for example). What I’m talking about, more specifically, are all the lives we choose to ignore when we buy something that comes straight from a sweatshop; the environmental degradation we choose to ignore when we consume more than the earth can give; the political implication of supporting certain corporations with our purchasing power.

Globalization brings us connectivity and it’s up to us whether we choose to distance ourselves from those who we can so clearly see now, or whether we give name to those who are underrepresented. And with this connectivity, through mass global media, we are now exposed and have greater access to all the cultures that colour this world. Imagine a two year old with a bunch of colours and a colouring book - that’s culture! Culture is messy, with different cultures fusing together, flowing with the reflexivity of time and manifesting in ways that speak to us about this very moment.

After four days of being in St.Kitts I have learned that the culture here is quite complex. On the surface, you have a very friendly sort of people, but below the surface there are extreme political divides within this small nation. This is especially felt right now, leading up to the big September elections between the Labour Party and the People’s Action Movement. There is emerging gang violence which has metastasized into a social phenomenon that creates much civil unrest in certain neighbourhoods. Since the closing of the sugar plantations, tourism has become the mainstay of the economy; however, this causes tension, as the notion of servitude is one that, as a former slave colony, is highly disliked. I was told by one of my supervisors on my first day that the Kittians are a great judge of spirit. These words stuck with me. I’m hoping that the locals will judge me not by my western culture, with all that is represents, but by my spirit and my earnest desire to learn to share and live with a culture of compassion.

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