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Janko
Gambia
1267 Posts |
 Posted - 22 Aug 2006 : 13:42:38
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The Earth’s Linguistic, Cultural, and Biological Diversity
The links between language, culture and the environment suggest that biological, cultural and linguistic diversity should be studied together, as distinct but closely and necessarily related manifestations of the diversity of life on Earth. Researchers have referred to this new field of study as “biocultural diversity”.
Sharing a World of Difference: the Earth’s Linguistic, Cultural, and Biological Diversity, accompanied by the map "The World’s Biocultural Diversity: People, Languages and Ecosystems" is an educational material co-published by UNESCO, Terralingua and the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) directed at students and the general public, that introduces the concept of “biocultural diversity” in terms of sustainable development.
Ethnologue, one of the most widely used catalogues of the world’s languages, reports that 6,809 languages were in use (mostly spoken, but also, including 114 sign languages) in 228 countries as of the year 2000. Yet, fewer than 300 of this large number of languages spoken around the world had populations of speakers of over 1 million......... Moreover, just as there are hotspots of biodiversity, there are also hotspots of linguistic diversity, that is, areas of the world with especially high concentrations of different languages......................
The world’s languages represent an extraordinary wealth of human creativity. They contain and express the total “pool of ideas”, nurtured over time through heritage, local traditions and customs communicated through local languages. The diversity of ideas carried by different languages and sustained by different cultures is as necessary as the diversity of species and ecosystems for the survival of humanity and of life on our planet. In many cases the knowledge of natural cures and remedies for illnesses transmitted by languages through generations and linked to local plant life have been lost due to the abandonment of languages and cultures, and the destruction of natural habitat.
Cultural diversity is as necessary for the world as biodiversity is for our planet. Yet, similar to the growing crisis of extinction faced by the world’s environment, the world’s cultural diversity, particularly the diversity and richness of languages is being threatened with extinction. Ethnologue lists over 400 languages that reached near extinction at the end of the twentieth century, while UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger of Disappearing (2001) edition estimates that half of the world’s languages are in varying degrees of endangerment.
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Clean your house before pointing a finger ... Never be moved by delirious Well-wishers in their ecstasy |
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Janko
Gambia
1267 Posts |
Posted - 05 Apr 2007 : 14:07:02
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Aesthetic determinism and changing metaphors - -questioning the nucleus of aesthetic evaluation and its relation to aesthetic judgement.
Aesthetic value judgements do affect how we both understand others and ourselves. However, preconceived ideas are not able to stop the transformation and integration of neither culture nor the cultural dynamics. The aim here is to contribute to the discussion of culture and how aesthetic value judgement and policy affect society as a whole particularly in this era of globalisation. African drums and dance which has been regarded as primitive is today reformed and integrated in everyday life in the West.
What does it mean when African dance and drumming becomes a metaphor that provides a fresh approach to group and individual management training in Western business environment? African drum and dance through training inscribes not only self-confidence in female prisoners but becomes culture anchored in the body.
In harmony or disharmony, conscious or unconscious changes do occur and society does maintenance and rectifies itself through time. The question is where do these changes occur and how do we conceptualise these changes. The inherent integration discourse focused on issues of difference prevents understanding the dynamics fully and hinders the feasibility of new approaches. This demands going beyond the confines of traditional understanding and interpretation and beyond the classical causality paradigm. Thus, an analytical tool that provides socially applicable results to minimize aesthetic determinism, which is more sensitive to differences and excludes not only artists, art forms and artistic products but also excludes forms of daily life and social forms of life. It is not only the issue of trying to understand the depth of human interaction and integration but of building and redefining the concept of culture, aesthetics and value judgement in a global context.
Cultures like African, Indian and Chinese are described primitive and yet are re-define and used in the western contexts ex. in education and medicine. A transformation of the aesthetic value of primitivism, the primitive has become a harem for inspiration.
Transformation: Grounding (a dance that helps burnt-out workers back to work) and Cooperate drumming both derivate from African drumming/dance are compared with raft-building, rock-climbing and other types of recreational adventures indicates an integration of African and Western cultures. The ritualistic aspect in African drumming and dancing did not change in the westernised type. Rather the content and use of the ritual changed from traditional manhood initiation to institutional management training, from marriage ceremony to disciplinary measures for female prisoners and so on.
Disciplinary habitués
Discipline according to Foucault is power inscribed in the body by means of training exercises that portion up and specifies bodily movements in space and time. Habitués according to Bourdiue is culture anchored in the body. African drum and dance has become a new approach to management and disciplinary training in Western business environments and prisons.
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Clean your house before pointing a finger ... Never be moved by delirious Well-wishers in their ecstasy |
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Janko
Gambia
1267 Posts |
Posted - 29 Jul 2007 : 21:23:16
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Ngugi on the modelling and idea behind education in the colonies and the roll played by language – Europhonism
But the vision of a modern university in Africa did not begin in the twentieth century with these official committees but rather in nineteenth century with James Africanus Beale Horton in 1868 and Edward Blyden in 1872. Both Horton and Blyden were of African descent, both from Sierra Leone, and they clearly wanted the best for Africa. Nevertheless, their two visions were different. According to Ashby, Horton wanted to introduce into Africa "undiluted Western education" and "there was no place in his scheme of higher education for the incorporation of African languages, history or culture." The way to African modernity lay by way of the Greek classics and European languages and culture. Blyden on the other hand wanted to free higher education in Africa from "despotic Europeanizing which had warped and crushed the Negro mind" (qtd. in Ashby 13). Writing in 1883 Blyden said:
All our traditions and experiences are connected with
a foreign race.
We have no poetry but that of our taskmasters.
The songs, which live in our ears and are often on
our lips are the songs we heard sung by those who
shouted while we groaned and lamented.
They sang of their history, which was the history
of our degradation. They recited their triumphs,
which contained the records of our humiliation.
To our great misfortune, we learned their prejudices
and their passions, and thought we had their
aspirations and their power. (91)
from Research in African Literatures Volume 31, Number 1
Europhonism, Universities, and the Magic Fountain: The Future of African Literature and Scholarship1
Ngugi wa Thiong'o
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