Provisos
Let me start by saying that I am not against integration: learn a language when you go to live elsewhere, certainly; learn something of the culture if you can too; try to fit in with the local people. It is fairly essential if you plan to live somewhere abroad. One would hate to end up with Bulgaria developing a situation, as in Spain, where foreigners don’t learn the local language and don’t integrate into the local culture. Yet, even given this, what I am questioning here is the value and correctness of cultural courses as a method of integration. I will argue that they are not only unnecessary and perhaps even ridiculous, they are also insidious and detrimental to both the students and to Bulgarian culture itself.
I realise that this is the second digression from the subject at hand, but one should say some quick words concerning culture in general. Culture can be considered to be almost any aspect of a society or societal subgroup, that is shared by all members of the society, yet is not inherited or a function of other external influences. Cultural courses can focus on many aspects of a culture, from literature and art, to business practices and sales, through such things as cultural traditions.
Cultural Iron Curtain?
An obvious question springs to mind to start off with: is Bulgaria so different from other countries that you need a course to settle in here? My colleague will argue that yes, it is so different to her prior experience that both social and work life need formal education. Let’s start with those business practices.
Andrea suggests that Bulgarians’ perceived inability to plan ahead is a condition of their culture. She will suggest that the fact that business meetings break for cigarettes and that fax machines and the internet are not widely used are, in some sense, cultural phenomenon that need to be addressed in a class. There are certainly arguments that business practices, where they differ, should be learned. But can one honestly say that having a smoke break is a practice that one needs a class to learn? What of faxes and the internet; surely a result of economic development as much as any cultural resistance to change. What then of the lack of planning ahead? This is possibly a cultural trait. Yet an equally plausible argument is that this could have other origins. What benefit would there have been in the past and now to plan ahead in business? With uncertainty rife (and during communism a lack of impetus to improve for the future), why would one develop the skills to plan? Short-term profit was more important.
Socially, the questions are very different. Here, the major differences are certainly cultural. Again though, are the differences so extraordinary that they need to be overcome using by classes? Certainly, in terms of “Civilisation” (as opposed to “Kultur”) Bulgaria does not differ so much from elsewhere in the west: opera, classical music, ballet, rock, etc., all have a presence roughly comparable with elsewhere; indeed, in civilisational terms, it is only during the Renaissance and the following period that Bulgaria was actually cut off from the main flows of Europe. Does one need a course to learn about the lack of Pre-Raphaelites in Bulgaria? As for the local culture (many of the features of which find their equivalent in the rest of Europe), surely discovering it is part of the joy of travel, and certainly not a question of having to be learned to function.
This question of “being different” also resonates on a personal level, which perhaps it doesn’t for many of the readers here. You should ask yourselves, “How would I feel if I was a Bulgarian faced with these courses?” Rather annoyed to be pigeon-holed as “other” I should imagine. Imagine if I moved to Britain or America or Germany and decided that I needed to take a course in culture in order to fit in, that these places are so different from the norm of western life that they cannot be understood without the aid of a course. Crazy you’d say. Why then should it be different for Bulgaria? I say that this is resonant for me, because my country (Ireland) was treated as a strange place in the past; it was seen as an unredeemabley backward place by foreigners. Today, I hope, it is not seen so. And yet, our culture is as close to Germany’s as Bulgaria’s is, and as close to Bulgaria’s as to America’s.
US, Europe and Bulgaria
I do not wish to turn this question into a European-American issue, but I feel it would be remiss of me to ignore one very pertinent issue. The United States is large and homogenous: the majority of the country speaks one language; cultural practices differ minisculely from place to place; the same businesses and labels can be found throughout the country. Europe, by contrast, is relatively small and far more diverse. Even within small countries, such as Switzerland, Belgium and Slovakia, there is enormous cultural variation. When one gets to speak of larger states, such as Italy for example, the sheer variation of culture is staggering. And living in any European country, with the possible exception of Iceland, one is close to other countries’ cultures too, as we are physically very close to each other. Growing up in these two very different environments would naturally affect your ability to assimilate other cultures and to assimilate to other cultures. If one grows up in Europe, one faces other cultures as a daily part of life, on television or when travelling. Thus, the idea of moving between cultures is rather natural – the idea of having to go to class to learn about cultures rather ridiculous.
It is not just that these courses are just unnecessary or ridiculous. There is also a definite negative aspect to them. How can someone tell you what a culture is without imparting to you their agenda and their prejudices? Surely, in learning about the culture naturally, one can get a diversity of opinions with which to inform oneself. Further, one can form one’s own opinions as to what is a truly important aspect of local culture, rather than those aspects that can be learned in class, can be taught, and can fit in with the overall episteme of an education system. Culture is definitely not logical.
Above, we examined the diversity within and between European countries. But there is one aspect of this diversity that has not been mentioned: the diversity within Bulgaria itself. Doing a course on Bulgarian culture assumes that the culture is in some sense monolithic. There are two aspects to this. Firstly, there are the obvious differences between non-Bulgarian nationalities and Bulgarians themselves. The culture of the Turks, Greeks, Roma and Vlachs are obviously various and different to the majority culture. Secondly though, there is another aspect to this, i.e. the diversity within the Bulgarian nationality itself. This can be regional, topographical or even just a question of age or class. The point is that it is not possible to learn all about a culture, when the very idea of what the culture is remains in flux.
One final aspect of the American nature of this question is the commercialisation aspect of these courses, something which is perhaps more developed in the US (Americans are very good at selling things after all). It may seem acceptable to some to take the culture, package it and then sell it again as a product that can be consumed two evenings a week over four weeks; for me it is not. You cannot take a culture and resell it without consequences. It is a further example of the encroachment of business into culture, leaving us all more impoverished.
Philosophical Questions
Bulgaria is a small and relatively poor country. As a result, one should contextualise the relationship between westerners and its culture. The western states, in particular the United States, have in some sense a hegemonic relationship with Bulgaria. The theories of how culture and cultural relations work in a hegemonic situation were common in leftist philosophy in the 1950s and 60s. They are well developed by Antonio Gramsci, an Italian philosopher. He looked at how the dominant class within a culture effectively co-opted the culture that opposed it. The initial example he used was the counter-culture. This relationship can also be seen between countries.
This theory of hegemony gave rise to the theory of “Orientalism”.This was a further development of the power relations that govern cultural contacts between states. This is particularly true as a result of colonialism, the theory rising in the study of Postcolonial Theory that was very popular in the 1970s. Orientalism was initially proposed, in an eponymous book, by Edward Said, a Palestinian philosopher at the University of Chicago. As part of the theory, Said showed how even the “benign” idea of interest in a culture in terms of education was a caustic part of the relationship, not just the physical colonisation of the areas in question. Orientalism, according to Said, began with the linguists and historians who were interested in Egyptology, Semitic languages and so on. This form of studying a culture froze it; the culture became defined and written by westerners and the people came to understand it through western eyes rather than through their own. Something similar is happening to Bulgaria and these cultural courses are a reflection of this. Bulgaria is becoming a cultural “other” for many westerners, Andrea included. This is how westerners have always justified their existence, in these terms of Manichean opposites: Hellenic-Barbarian, Christian-Pagan, Christian-Muslim, European-Primitive, Western-Eastern. To choose to put the Bulgarians outside our western unity, as “other”, is to buy into the Clash of Civilizations theory and all that that entails.
Perhaps the most important aspect of this argument is the simplest one. A culture, as shown above, is a living, breathing thing. It is constantly is a state of flux and evolution. The process of learning about a culture should reflect this; it should be organic. Just as a child learns about its culture in fits and starts by talking and listening, by reading and experiencing, so too should the prospective integrationist. If it isn’t too tree-hugger to say so, it is the only ethical way to learn about a culture.
