Editorial
By Dr
Thomas Albert Gilly
Vol 5 No 1 2008
Vol. 4 of our Review is behind schedule due to
a couple of problems. We have successfully faced the challenge .We give the
strong commitment in publishing the issues of the Fourth Volume of our journal
soon. We apologize for the delay.
To be on schedule we publish the first issue of
Vol 5 of our Review.
The first series of articles we have collected
are altogether based on papers that have been presented at our 2007 joint SCRAE
and ERCES conference in
According to the general theme of the
conference, risk is the central topic developed in this first series of
articles.
“Family Interaction; The Case of Children of
Primary School Age with Learning Problems - Social Risk Indicators”, by Silvia Tzvetkova provides for a systematic in-depth study of
risk factors in childhood. The family is central in that it impacts either
positively or in a negative manner risk factors.
Given the circumstance that the crisis that
affects the public education system is a phenomenon that is observable in the
majority of the member states of the EU and in many counties of the Western
World, there is hardly need to spotlight the actuality of the paper and its
relevance for cross national comparative risk study. In this regard the author,
by demonstrating the commitment to risk prevention modelling, makes a major
contribution to the actual debate about education problems with children.
The second paper of this series is dealing with
the risk of alienation, deprivation and anomie, as it results from the impact
of ‘culture shoch’ upon acculturation in multri-ethic and multi-cultural society.
In “Culture Shock and Adaptation in a
Multiethnic City”, Diane Petkova presents the results of an empirically based
intercultural research study that was conducted at the Univrsity
of Massachusetts at Amherst during the period September 2006 - February 2007.
On the basis of data collected in surveys, the
paper discusses the nature of culture shock as well as the impact of the latter
upon those cultural patterns that are copied and those that are rejected by
people from several non US countries (Bangladesh, Bulgaria, China, Ecuador, Japan, India, Iran, Iraq, Italy,
Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Romania, Russia, South Korea, Spain and Vietnam) who
had experienced the US culture during their stay (period of stay: three weeks
to six months).
With her paper, Diana Petkova seeks also to answer the
question: Are there differences between the
As far as this part of the discussion is
conducted with reference to the topic of “culture shock” the paper requires a
critical comment:
Many of the patterns of the
People are likely to be shocked about behavior
when they experience it in an environment that is not familiar to them; they
are not shocked about the same behavior when their life experience is realized
in their proper cultural context. It follows that the shock or even the revolt
can never be thought as a direct effect of the behavioral pattern as such.
Rather it is the cultural environment which impact the way of how behavior is
perceived. It follows furthermore that the negative experience of behavior and
life style can never be interpreted as an indicator for the superiority of the
culture of those who experience negatively the US American culture, and it is
not an indicator for the superiority of the non US intercultural model either.
May this critical comment impact the further
debate about culture shock.
“Culture Shock”, “Kulturkampf”,
“Clash of Civilization” are issues that came rapidly to the fore of the debate
about fundamentalist Islam and terrorism.
May
be you remember, the term “clash of civilization” was first used by Bernard Lewis in an article in
the September 1990 issue of the “Atlantic Monthly” titled “The roots of Muslim
Rage”. Samuel Huntington, in an article published in 1993 in Foreign Affairs
developed and formalized the theory of the clash of civilization in reaction
against Francis Fukoyama’s 1992 book “The End of History and the Last Man”.
Huntington later developed his thesis in “The Clash of Civilization and the
Remaking of Word Order”(1996).
As
far as Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism is interpreted with reference to
Lewis’ and Huntington’s thesis, the former is central to the Western and the
Islamic civilization and culture.
Huntington’s
thesis came rapidly to the fore of the debate. Some scholars criticized his
Islam and Western paradigm as culturally one dimensional and simplistic.
Christopher Hitchens suggests that the paradigm of
the clash of Western and Islam civilization is to be supplanted by by that of the clash within the Muslim world. This
paradigmatic turn stems from the thesis that the radicalization in in Islam is the result of inherent counter-productive
effects of the modernization of the Muslim world. Schematically and
emphatically, Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism is a problem that can not be
thought with reference to the clash of civilization, rather it is rooted in the
problems that are inherent of and surround acculturation.
The
most important consequence is that fundamentalist theocratic Islam and
terrorism do not derive from the nature of Islam itself [i]
Also
note, this thesis is central to a series of other interpretation-schemes that
developed in reaction against Lewis / Huntington, e.g. post-colonialist and
post-structural approaches, neo-marxist etc.
In
the debate about Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism the position of Oriana Fallaci is out of the
ordinary in that she rejects both the thesis that Islamic fundamentalism is not
embedded in the nature itself of Islam and the thesis of the clash of
civilization, as Lewis and Huntington understand it. Fallaci rejects the notion that the war
between fundamentalist Islam and western civilization can be analyzed within
the framework of culture-conflict since her value judgment is that
western-culture is far more superior to the Islamic one and hence they cannot
be compared on a par basis since even in conflict they cannot be examined on a
same level. She agrees with Lewis and Huntington in that Islam is in war
against the Western civilization.
“Culture
Clash: Investigating the Nexus Between Western-Muslim Ideological Dissonance
and Islamist Terrorism”, by William Bloss is the starter of the second series of the
articles we have collected in this issue.
Bloss refers to Huntington, pointing the heuristic
richness of the model. But he differs from the clash of civilization paradigm
in that his paper’s principal thesis argues that the dissonance between radical
Islamists and Western societies stems from a dispute among ideologies not
cultures: Islamist terrorists represent a militant and extremist perspective
drawn from an ultra-fundamentalist viewpoint. Inspired by writers advocating
purification, holy jihad was proffered as a solution to the decline in Muslim
power and position in the world.
The series continues with “From Mistreatment
Towards Anomie. Radicalization and the Eclipse of Western Values. -
Totalitarianism on spotlight” by Thomas
Albert Gilly..My
essay is at the crossroad amongst the paper by Willimam
Bloss and Peterr Tarlow’s essay that concludes our second series - in at
least two regards:
On one hand, the issue of Islamist
fundamentalism is central to the essay
On the other hand, the paper provides for linkages between ethics, as
they are rooted in and out-figured by Biblical texts (namely the Hebrew Scripture)
and key-paradigms in social theory and deviance theory. This is also the major
concern of Peter Tarlow’s essay.
Mistrearment is one of deviance theory’s most
popular paradigm. Beginning with a critique that addresses the limits of
mistreatment in regard to terrorism, namely Islamist terrorism, and ending with
the celebration of Mimesis, as it is developed in the Hebrew Scripture and
eloquently documented in the twin-tale Esau and Joseph, this essay constitutes
an advocacy for the call for the come back / renewal of Western values as the
only means to prevent and to fight all sorts of totalitarianism, namely
totalitarian religious politics.
The essay’s central thesis argues that the predisposition of non-Western masses towards
radicalization and reject of Western values increases proportionally to
the reduction in Western value' and the Western norms' power and
efficiency. The Mimesis of anomie in the Western and Non-Western world, namely
Muslim world, is central to this argument.
Why Judaism has never shaken hands with
totalitarianism? What has the tale of Esau and Joseph to do with the call for
the renewal of Western values? Why the lesson of mimesis, as it is out-figured
in Torah, is the most relevant and the most efficacious means for totalitarianism
prevention? What has the eclipse of Western values to do with Islamist
fundamentalism and terrorism? What can deviance theorists, criminologists and
social scientists lean from Torah, and in what Jewish ethics provide for a
deconstruction of the paradigmatic understanding of mistreatment?
My essay seeks to answer all these questions,
and sets many others up for discussion.
“A Tale of Three Incidents”, by Peter Tarlow,
examine how one set of Biblical texts understood social control/deviance in
light of sociological theory. By discussing the topics of social deviance and
loss of social control within the framework of a series of incidents, beginning
with the “Golden Calf” incident and in ending with Korach’s
failed “coup d’Etat”, the essay seeks to demonstrate
Torah’s relevance and actuality for the discussion about core-paradigms in
social thepry and deviance theory.
The whole Jewish nation is celebrating the 60th
Birthday of Israel. We wish you prosperity, peace and force!.
May Peter’s essay and my own contribute to the
commemoration of the most exciting project that human being has ever
formalized!
.
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“
[i] Christopher Hitchens, reflecting on the response to Rushdie’s
The Satanic Verses, provides us with an answer:
“For a
long time now, a major fissure has been opening in the Muslim world…To speak
very roughly and approximately, Muslim societies are undergoing a general
crisis of adaptation to modernity and to ‘the West’. Some states, like