Transculturality in the internet: Culture flows and virtual publics

Virtual stages of discourse

Opportunities for transculturality/transnationality arise when network actors from various nations and cultural backgrounds come into contact with each other. I would like to present two case studies from the first phase of the study in which online discussions were analysed with the help of a focused network analysis. People from various countries took part in both discussions, their contributions clearly signalling that they came from different cultural backgrounds or at least had different cultural leanings. The following questions were of interest in our analysis of the online discussions:

The first case study concerns the online network ‘Mideast Youth’ which was founded in Bahrain in 1996. It is open to participants from all over North Africa and the Middle East, but also to network actors from the Western world. Mideast Youth’s goal is already formulated in its mission statement ‘to inspire and provide young people with the freedom and opportunity of expression, and promote a fierce but respectful dialogue among the highly diverse youth of all sects, socio-economic backgrounds, and political and religious beliefs in the Middle East’. ⁵ The discussion chosen to act as an example illustrates something it has in common with all of the networks we investigated, namely that differences constitute an obvious focus in networks; they are clearly recognized and explicitly mentioned. This is not to be taken as an argument against transculturality but rather as a prerequisite, in Christoph Wulf’s terms, for discovering or developing common ground (Wulf, 2006: 40).

The discussion went under the heading of ‘Women in Islam’ and took place between 2007 and 2010. As far as we could tell, the participants came from Egypt, the Netherlands and Bahrain, the very nature of their religious sympathies making it clear that they came from very different cultural backgrounds. Deviating somewhat from the title, the focus of the discussion can be summarized by the following question: which religion offers women more rights and more freedom? It was initiated by a (male) network actor comparing Hinduism and Islam whose arguments were clearly in favour of Islam being the religion which supported equality between men and women. In the ensuing discussion, some people agreed with his opinion but more often than not it was criticized and, most of all, modified, for example, by pointing out the gap between the rights of men and women as laid down in Islamic law and the actual situation of women in Islamic countries. Several network actors took up an opposing stance, by rebutting the attacks on Hinduism and putting forward Christianity as the better alternative, or by characterizing all religions as being patriarchal.

The online discussion turned out to be a place where discourse was produced and disseminated, and thus constitutes a public sphere in Habermasian terms. Gradually, the first signs of common ground started to emerge, both implicit and explicit. Attempts to deconstruct absolute truths can be taken as explicit onsets of common ground in that rigid value systems are broken down and the course is set for a more open approach. I would interpret one (male) participant’s comment that ‘the fact that women are now allowed to do certain things does not yet prove that they are free’ as being one such attempt to deconstruct an absolute truth. Other endeavours to deconstruct can also be seen in postings which debate the advantages and disadvantages of Islam. Implicit common ground, on the other hand, is represented by the consensus, not specifically mentioned by participants, that freedom and rights are important values to which women and men are equally entitled.

We do not know whether the elements of the New and the Foreign which network actors were confronted with in this discussion permeated further into the Own in another context or at another point in time. However, as already intimated, the discussion we documented gives us insights into a world with a cosmopolitan perspective characterized by the fact that ‘differences, contrasts and boundaries must be fixed and defined in an awareness of the sameness in principle of others’ (Beck, 2004: 17). This underscores Beck’s belief that, if it were not for the similarities, differences could not even be detected whereby, I would like to add, this then lays the foundations for creating new mixtures.

To sum up: despite their different cultural backgrounds and religious affiliations, participants are bound by their interest in religion and, at the same time, by their need to challenge absolute truths, such as those professed by various religions, and their desire to find their own approach to religion. Another aspect that they have in common is their agreement that freedom and personal rights are indispensible commodities for human beings. Against the background of what they have in common, differences can be negotiated. Indeed, this very conglomerate of common characteristics and differences could allow fuzzy margins to arise, or a border zone in which ambiguity and uncertainty prevail (Hannerz, 1997: 9). This gives participants more cultural leeway in which to combine viewpoints, values and lifestyles anew and where something can arise which cannot be attributed to one’s own culture or to a foreign culture but is something in between, a perfect illustration of Wolfgang Welsch’s concept of transculturality.

The second case study relates to the online platform ‘Global Modules’, which was created in a tertiary education context. Global Modules was founded at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont in 2003, its declared aim being to establish contacts between students and faculty members from universities in different countries. In each of the four-week modules, a specific topic is discussed which encourages participants to question their cultural assumptions, think critically and engage in collaborative learning (Scudder, 2008: 110).

The following analysis relates to a discussion which ran under the title of ‘What makes you happy? What do you do for fun in your country?’ It was initiated in August 2007 by Gary Scudder, assistant dean for global engagement and administrator of the modules, and continued until 2009. The contributions discussed here date from 2009 and were made by students from the USA, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, as far as we could tell. In this context we can speak of a subaltern counter-public (Fraser, 1996: 164) as only invited participants could take part in the discussions, but within those limits, the discussion was open to everyone. The rationale behind such debate is the initiation and diffusion of discourse in which personal opinions can be shaped, one of Habermas’s characteristics of the public sphere.

As the discussion progressed, two perspectives started to crystallize. On the one hand, in answer to the original question posed by the administrator, participants mentioned what could be done or what they did to make themselves happy, like shopping, travelling, doing something with friends, watching a good film, working in the garden, getting good grades, working hard. On the other hand, there were many comments which contrasted with the original question, pointing out that happiness is not achieved by doing things but is rather something that is always in us or near us, something which we only have to become aware of. As one (female) participant from Jordan explained, ‘I believe that happiness is always near us, but we are the one[s] who decide to use it or not’, a viewpoint which a (female) participant from the United Arab Emirates agreed with, saying ‘Happiness comes by itself!! I can’t force myself on someone to feel HAPPY!!’

It seems as though the network actors from Arab countries were more strongly in favour of a contemplative vision of happiness while the American participants considered individual happiness to be something which could be attained by doing and achieving something. Whether this differentiation holds in general, however, is not clear because we do not know whether the Arab or American participants had only ever lived in the countries of their birth and were only mirroring valid cultural norms in their respective countries.

Nevertheless, both positions can be attributed to different cultural traditions. The position mirroring the slogan ‘happiness can be created’ reminds us of the Protestant ethic, albeit not just in relation to work, as formulated, for example, by Max Weber (Weber, 1920: 166ff.): ‘Neither indolence nor indulgence but accomplishment alone serves to celebrate His glory as is God’s unequivocal will’ (Weber, 1920: 167). If you want to be happy, you have to do something about it, is what Weber would have us believe. The contemplative viewpoint, in contrast, defines happiness as something which exists and which is available to everybody, and not as something which has to be acquired.

Neither in this discussion nor the previous one is it clear whether the participants start to take on each other’s perspectives or relativize their own positions, but one thing is certain: differences are clearly identified as such and the participants see them as individual differences, which are, however, embedded in different cultural traditions, as outlined above. In the course of the discussion on happiness, not only the differences become clear but also the similarities, namely that all participants consider happiness to be something worth pursuing. Only once such similarities have been established does it make sense to point out the differences in how happiness may be achieved. Once again, the interweaving of differences and similarities becomes apparent which could lead to a cultural mixture typical of transcultural developments.

From the perspective of network actors, network activists and bloggers

Interviews with network actors and bloggers are another source of insights from the research project ‘Communicative publics in cyberspace’, proving that virtual public spaces have the potential to be transcultural/transnational. In all, 32 thematically structured interviews were carried out with participants from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, the USA, Canada, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. As was the case with the online discussions, the interviews were evaluated following the principles of grounded theory.

My examples are taken from two interviews, one with a 26-year-old architect from Saudi Arabia who makes use of Mideast Youth and has his own blog, and the other with a 26-year-old photographer of Swiss nationality and Lebanese descent who used to live in the USA and is based at present in Saudi Arabia and who writes several blogs.

Both of them see the internet as an infinite space which is relatively free of restrictions and which encourages people to open up to the outside world. Both, too, emphasize how they want to take advantage of the opportunities the internet opens up to them. The photographer puts the emphasis on free communication when he explains, ‘When you have something like blogging, where you have no limitations … you don’t have someone above you saying “No, you can’t write this” ’, while the architect promotes the idea of opening up when he describes the internet as being the medium ‘where interaction between Saudi Arabians and [the] international community started to happen’. Both of them emphasize that they can easily imagine an interweaving of perspectives on an equal footing, one of the core elements of transculturality/transnationality. While they also try and come to grips with events in the Western world and let themselves be inspired by the West, they are principally interested in showing the world the way they see things. ‘I’m trying to allow people to look into things especially in Saudi Arabia’, is how the architect explains it, ‘and especially when they look back to Saudi Arabia through Mideast Youth or through my blog, to see the social and intellectual fabric of what makes Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia’, knowing full well that censorship is prevalent in his own country and that Western journalists are subject to it as well. His intentions further the goal of enabling cultural perspectives to intermingle in the first place because one of the prerequisites for that is equally balanced perspectives. Otherwise it would end up with the weaker perspective being colonized by the stronger one. It is a matter of personal concern to both network actors/bloggers that the country and culture they are reporting about online should find recognition all over the world without asserting its dominance in the process. That becomes quite clear in their conceptions of themselves as expressed in the interviews. Here they see themselves as being part of a world in which different cultures engage with each other, even if that engagement is only in the internet to start with. As one of the two puts it, ‘In real life I’m a Saudi guy living in Saudi Arabia and talking within [the] one kilometer radius that is around me … . But online I’m multinational, I’m multi-geographical.’ And the other sees himself as a cosmopolitan with social contacts all over the world: ‘I’m a citizen of the world. My friends are from different parts of the world.’

Education and socialization

If cultural mixtures, as experienced in global, digitally aided public spheres, are to be more than just endured and are not to lead to conflict, it is important that cultural differences are recognized and not suppressed, on the one hand, and that individuals take a clear stance on these differences, on the other. A vision which has been sensitized to differences is interested in the otherness of the Other and as such, distances itself from a universalistic vision which emphasizes the similarity of the Other (Beck, 2004: 76ff.).

At this point I would like to mention Emmanuel Lévinas in whose works the otherness of the Other plays a central role. I do not agree with Lévinas’s viewpoint completely as both my theoretical argumentation, taking a ‘porous Other’ as a starting point, and the empirical examples only confirm Lévinas’s assumptions to a certain extent. One of his central tenets reads: ‘The Other exists in relation to itself and not in relation to a system’ (Lévinas, 1998: 26). This standpoint contradicts the assumption made in this article that the Other exists in relation to the Self and the Self in relation to the Other. Consensuses arise out of the one influencing the other and vice versa, and systems arise out of these mutual influences which then become points of reference for the Self. This does not mean, however, that a system cannot be influenced by the Self – or many Selves.

But even if we do not proceed from the assumption of an independent Other, the Other is still otherwise. This other Other can call me into question – as Lévinas would also claim – and, above all, his/her presence challenges me to reply by virtue of his/her Otherness (Lévinas, 1998: 224). As Beck would claim, and as the analysis of the online discussions revealed, the difference is the starting point for transcultural/transnational processes.

A vision oriented towards differences is not exclusively interested in empathy and acceptance; aggression, too, can be triggered when the Own is threatened or social consensus is revoked, such as the consensus on abiding by human rights. It is not a question of understanding in the sense of accepting, but of reciprocal responses, which can, of course, include contradictions and which are anything but free of emotions. It is not clear where these reciprocal responses are leading us. Christoph Wulf appeals for a move towards openness (Wulf, 2006: 142), allowing for the existence of a Third sphere that would otherwise remain hidden with a strict division between the Own and the Foreign.

Media ethics

Faced with a global public sphere for the media, Nick Couldry points out the necessity for global media ethics (Couldry, 2006: 101ff.). Couldry formulates his notions of media ethics in relation to global media institutions. Digital networks can also be viewed as global media institutions and in some cases they pursue similar commercial objectives to traditional media institutions. I do not wish to relate Couldry’s views on media ethics to the entrepreneurship of network actors, referring instead to their communicative behaviour and the contribution they could make to transcultural/transnational ethics.

Ethics, which Couldry defines as an ‘open-ended process of reflecting on how we need to act so that we live well, both individually and collectively’ (Couldry, 2006: 102), is also an important topic for network actors in global networks, and they are well aware that it is a question of clarifying the relationship between the Self and the Other, between the Own and the Foreign, as the statements from the two network actors cited in the earlier section clearly demonstrate. Couldry reacts to this need in his operationalization of the concept of ethics, which can be expressed in two fundamental questions:

It is not a question of the Self or the Other but of the Self-and-the-Other, whereby the Each-of-Us already signals consensus as a long-term goal.

Couldry goes one step further, delivering ideas as to how we can achieve these notions of media ethics, demanding that ‘we must open up a space where we can hear others with whom we may on some things profoundly disagree but with whom we may share at least a commitment to the greater value … of living together’ (Couldry, 2006: 140). Such a space can be offered in the virtual spaces of the internet by dint of its networked structure, which is able to assemble people from different countries and cultural backgrounds. The examples of online discussions presented here illustrate that virtual spaces – in accordance with Couldry – are used by participants to expose themselves to the diversity of the Other. Network actors do not only get involved with such diversity, the very act of getting involved is a conscious and important step, as shown by the reply given by the founder of Mideast Youth to the question as to what would happen if Mideast Youth no longer existed, namely ‘I would miss out [on] the opportunity to hear diverse opinions from people all over the region’. Couldry does not talk of a transnational or transcultural ethics but rather of a global ethics, but his explanations reveal that he takes an intensification of intercultural processes in a global world as his starting point.

Political affiliation

Transcultural public spheres constitute new possibilities of collective identification across national borders and, thus, new forms of belonging: online and offline. These forms of belonging collide with long-established forms of political affiliation based on the concept of the ‘citizen’ (Benhabib, 2008: 13). For Seyla Benhabib, the proliferation of sub- and supranational spaces calls the traditional concept of citizenship into question (Benhabib, 2008: 13). In most countries, citizenship rests on the three principles of territory, ancestry and consensus (Benhabib, 1997: 7). In view of our increasingly networked world, territoriality and ancestry seem to have become anachronistic criteria for belonging, based on the fiction of a closed society (Benhabib, 1997: 11). Communities are not only emerging across national borders thanks to global organizations, cooperation and mergers in the physical world but also online with the support of digital media in countless virtual communities with different objectives and interests. Due to the deterritorialized reality of online networks, territoriality is a particularly anachronistic way of demarcating space (Benhabib, 2008: 15). According to Benhabib, virtual communities could be regarded as ‘postnational communities’ (Benhabib, 2008: 28), emerging on the principle of consensus, according to which an association of voluntary members makes up the actual community (Benhabib, 1997: 9). She is thus in favour of ‘transnational citizenship’ (Benhabib, 1997: 13) due to the increasing number of such communities reaching far beyond national affiliation. Her plea does not only raise many questions in connection with political organizations, social security systems, health care and jurisdiction but also in connection with how the implications of belonging online and belonging offline should relate to each another.