All Cultures Are Not Equal
Let’s say you are an 18-year-old kid with a really big brain.You’re trying to figure out which field of study you should devote your life t o ,so you can understand the forces that will be shaping history for decades to com e.Go into the field certain national traits endure over centuries.why certain cultures.why certain cultures em brace technology and economic growth others resist them.
This is the line of inquiry that is now im polite to pursue. The gospel of multiculturalism preaches that all groups and cultures are equally wonderful.There are a certain number of clo-minded thugs,especially on university cam pus,who accu anybody who asks intelligent questions about groups and enduring traits of being racist or xist.The economists and scientists tend to assum e that m aterial factors drive history—resources and brain chemistry—becau that’s what they can measure and count.北京22中学
But none of this helps explain a crucial feature of our time: while global econom ies are converging, cultures are diverging, and the widening cultural differences are leading us into a period of conflict, inequality and gmentation. Not long ago, people said that globalization and the revolution in communications technology would bring us all together. But the opposite is true. People are taking advnewport
antage of freedom and technology to create new groups and cultural zones. Old national identities and behavior patterns are proving surprisingly durable. People are moving into lf-gregating communities with people like them lves, and building invisible and som etimes visible barriers to keep strangers out.
If you look just around the United States you find am azing cultural gm entation. We in America have be en “globalized” (m eaning economically integrated) for centuries, and yet far from converging into som e homogeneous culture, we are actually diverging into lifestyle gm ents. The m usic, news, magazine and television m arkets have all gm ented, so there are fewer cultural unifiers like life magazine or Walter Cronkite.
gossip girl 第五季Forty-million Americans m ove every year, and they generally m ove in with people like them lves, so as the late Jam es Chapin ud to say, every place becom es more like itlf. Crunchy places like Boulder attract crunchy types and becom e crunchier. Conrvative places like suburban Georgia attract conrvatives and becom e m ore so. Not long ago, m any people worked on farms or in factories, so they had similar lifestyles. But now the econom y rewards specialization, so workplaces and lifestyles diverge. The m ilitary and civilian cultures diverge. In the political world, Democrats and Republicans em to live on different planets.
Meanwhile ,if you look around the world you e how often events are driven by groups that reject the globalize culture. Islamic extremists reject the m odern cultures of Europe ,and have created a hyperaggressive fantasy version of traditional Islamic purity.In a much different and less violent way ,som e American Jews have m oved to Hebron and becom e hyper-Zionists.From Africa to
Seattle,religiously orthodox students reject what they e as the am oral mainstream culture,and carve out defiant revival movements .From Rome to Oregon ,anti-globalization types create their own subculture .The m embers of the and m any other groups did not inherit their identities .They took advantage of modernity,affluence and freedom to becom e practitioners of a do-it-yourlf tribalism.They are part of a great reshuffling of identities ,and the creation of new,often m ore rigid groupings.They have the zeal of converts.
全国研究生报名Meanwhile,transnational dreams like European unification and Arab unity falter,and behaviour patterns across nations diverge.For example,fertility rates between countries like the U.S. and Canada are diverging.Work habits between the U.S. And Europe are diverging. Global inequality widens as som e nations with certain cultural traits prosper and others with other traits don not.
People like Max Weber , Edward Banfield , Samuel Huntington, Lawrence Harrison and Thom as So
well have given us an inkling of how to think about this stuff,but for the m ost part,this is open ground.If you are 18 and you have got that big brain,the whole field of cultural geography is waiting for you.
文化大不同decathlon
假设你是个18岁的有想法的聪明孩子，你正在试图决定为哪个领域的研究而奉献一生，从而能够理解那些能在今后几十年塑造历史的力量。那就请你选择这个几乎不存在的领域吧：文化地理学，研究人们为什么聚在一起，又如何聚在一起；为什么有些民族特征可以延续几个世纪；为什么有些文化拥抱技术和经济发展而有些却抗拒。
巴黎宝贝英文版
这是一门现今被认为很无礼的学问。多元文化主义的圣经宣扬所有群藩和文化都同样精彩。有些思维狭隘的恶棍，特别在大学校园里，指控任何一个对文化群落及其持久的特征进行研究的人为种族主义者或性别歧视者。经济学家和科学家倾向于认为物质因素驱动历史一smart原则举例
venus一资源和脑化学一因为这些他们可以测量计算。
但是这些都无助于解释我们时代的一个重要特征：虽然全球经济在汇聚，文化却在分流。而文化差距的扩大将我们带入一个充满冲突，不平等和隔离的时期。不久前，人们说全球化和通讯技术的革命会
arke
使我们走到一起来，但事实刚好相反，人们正在利用自有和技术早这新的文化部落和文化地带。而一些旧的民族身份和行为模式显示出了令人吃惊的生命力。人们搬进自我隔离的社区和自己的同类住在一起。并修建了无形的有时甚至是有型的屏障以便将陌生人挡在外面。
你只需环视下美国，就会发现惊人的文化隔离。我们在美国已经“全球化”（指经济融合）了几个世纪了，而我们非但没有汇聚成一种大一统的文化，反而分流成了众多不同生活方式的隔离区。音乐，新闻，杂志和电视市场全都分隔开了，所以几乎没有像《生活》杂志或沃尔特·克朗凯那样可以同化文化的现象了。
每年有四千万美国人搬家，通常是搬到他们的同类那里去。正如已故詹姆斯·查宾常说的，每个地方都更像它自己。像博尔德那样的自由地方会吸引更多的自由派从而变得更自由，
像佐治亚州郊区这种保守的地方会吸引保守派从而更保守。以前，人们或在农场或在工厂做工，所以生活方式是相类似的。但现在，经济崇尚专门化，工作和生活方式也因此分流。军事和平民的文化分流。在政界，民主党和共和党像生活在不同的星球上一样。
同时，如果你环顾一下世界，你会发现很多事件的发生都是由拒绝文化全球化得群体推进的。伊斯兰极端主义者抗拒欧洲现代文化，所以建立了一种极具攻击性的文化，幻想以此保留传统伊斯兰世界的纯洁。美国犹太人的做法于此不同并相对温和，他们搬到希伯伦成为流文化并发动了颇具挑战性的复英文学校
兴运动。从罗马到俄勒冈，反对全球化得人建立了他们的亚文化。但是这些以及其他文化群落的成员并没有继承他们的身份，而是利用现代社会的富足和自由“自己动手”创造了新的部落文化，他们参与了身份大洗牌，划定了通常更苛刻的新的部落界线，他们有着皈依者的热情。
另外，像欧洲大一统，阿拉伯世界大一统之类的跨国梦想止步不前，国际间的行动模式也产生分流。如美国和加拿大的人口出生率差距在拉大；美国与欧洲的工作方式茶叶在拉大。全球不平等现象越来越严重，因为有某种文化特质的一些国家繁荣昌盛了，而有另外一些特质的其他国家却没有发展。
马克斯·韦伯、爱德华·班费尔德、塞缪尔·亨廷顿、劳伦斯·哈里森以及托马斯·索威尔等人在这方面已经做了些粗浅的研究，但是这一领域总的来说仍是一片有待开垦的广阔天地，如果你已满18岁并且有聪明的大脑，文化地理学的整个领域正在等候你。
