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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
The wide diffusion of the concepts of “cultural personality” or “cultural originality” in the social thought of developing Asian and African countries is determined by a number of circumstances. These concepts, though they claim a theoretical understanding of the processes involved in the “entry of these countries into the 20th century,” all boil down to the basic fact that the source, the foundation and the decisive sphere for the processes of self-determination in developing Asian and African countries in the present day world must be their traditional cultures, as opposed to the industrial civilization of the West.
1 Traditionalist positions are defended, for example, by S. Cudjoe, a Ghanean sociologist, when he proclaims as the inviolable bastions of African society the power of the tribal chiefs, poligamy, the extended family and the cult of the elders. Even the subordinate position of women, from his point of view, is justified because it conforms to the natural function of maintaining the clan. (S. Cudjoe: The Conflict of Cultures -in Africa. Alger, 1969).
2 "Présence Africaine," 1969, N. 70, p. 147.
3 For example, Zambia alone has 73 tribes each with its own different traditions and language, and the life of these "micro-personalities" can only be maintained at the expense of the whole. The campaign for consolidating the "Zambian spirit" launched in that country has run up against obstinate cultural separatism.
4 Arab Nationalism. An Anthology. Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1962, p. 225.
5 Arab Nationalism, p. 120.
6 L. Senghor, On African Socialism, London, 1964, p. 9-84.
7 R. Emerson, From Empire to Nation, Cambridge, 1964, p. 153.
8 K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, Vol. 46, Part 1, p. 169, 2nd Russ. ed.
9 This criticism of capitalism in concepts of "originality" rejects not so much capitalism as such, as its economic productive orientation, opposing it to non-productive ethical solidarity. Bourgeois relations are condemned for sentimental reasons, and with these the "excessively" productive-technical orientation of "European socialism" is also condemned, for supposedly ignoring the individual.
10 K. Kaunda, Humanism in Zambia and a Guide to Its Implemetation, Lusaka, 1967, p. 4.
11 N. Z. Nuseibeh, an Arab theoretician, in looking for a more profound definition of the nation, uses for his premise that "man is a social animal and can ill afford to live in isolation from his fellow men." Community of life, he assumes, can arise only on the basis of "a consciousness of fraternity" stemming from a "uniformity of thinking and feeling." N. Z. Nuseibeh, The Ideas of Arab Nationalism, New York, 1959, p. 216.
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