Is there a touch of cultural imperialism, and incipient commodification, in the efforts of Kiptik, a solidarity organisation working with the Zapatistas. Kiptik recently gave a talk in London about their work.
Bringing commodification and a touch of cultural imperialism to the Zapatistas?
Is there a touch of cultural imperialism and bringing of commodification in the project of 'Kiptik', a solidarity organisation who work with the Zapatistas?
There was a talk recently by people from Kiptik about their work with the Zapatistas (LARC 13.07.03). Kiptik claims not to be an NGO (though they do fundraise eg. by selling their merchandise) but, rather, a solidarity project, whose main areas of interest are water, health, media and art.
The project sound reasonable from the website. Their work installing drinking water systems seems to respect ‘bottom up’ approaches by using gravity to pipe water, and leaving a toolkit so people can repair it themselves.
The media aspect involves showing local people videos and films. Kiptik say the local people love TV. The art aspect involves getting more people to paint murals, and bringing over Banksy. In terms of health, they’re aware of the importance of people relearning traditional medicine, but combine this with a modern (Western) approach with healthcare/doctor provision. Kiptik also help encourage the growing of a wider diversity of crops to help alleviate malnutrition apparently resulting from an impoverished diet of staples corn and beans.
This sounds like a worthy to reasonable project, but there some aspects, particularly ones emerging from the talk they gave, which raised my alarm bells.
Their work seems to go beyond the project’s website remit. They stress that they don’t have an agenda and only respond to what the Zapatistas want. One of the projects they support is the setting up of schools. I’ll move on later to use Illich’s ideas to give a critical angle on schools. Here I want to draw attention to a knock-on effect of this schools development. Which is that teachers need paying, and that therefore the people want ways of earning cash to help pay for their children’s schooling.
The projects that Kiptik are involved in to help Zapatista people make some money include helping people set up a recording studio, a CD-making project, and helping people grow corn as a cash crop.
The people in the project seem to be more lefty than anarchist (just judging by their celebration of the use of Che Guevara as a reference for naming things/places, while making no mention, in the presentation, of the place named after Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magon; and also judging by their star logo showing a pickaxe and spanner instead of a hammer and sickle). But either way I’d expect them to be a little more aware of capitalism, the market and commodification and to at least question whether it was the right thing to help people draw themselves towards or into these areas (ie. through the CD production and sales and the cash cropping). But they vehemently defended this aspect of the project.
They also mentioned their desire to help people find ways of not working on the land – which raised the notion of becoming a worker rather than a campesino since the projects seemed to involve entering the market rather than community exchange. Marx was always scornful of people who worked on the land, preferring the modern ‘worker’. So this fits with a Marxist agenda. And, come to think of it, there’s a strand of uncritical Marxism which sees large-scale commodity production as OK as long as the ‘means of production’ are in the hands of the people. Which is not to say Kiptik are Marxists, just that there’s some correspondence of ideas.
Anyway, when challenged on the potential Westernising effect of bringing film and video showings to the area, Kiptik discounted any concerns about the impact of the media, simply claiming that people loved it.
I want to look now at their attitude towards SCHOOLS. Kiptik claimed that these schools were for teaching reading and writing and the history of the Zapatista movement and (presumably) the local people’s history. It seems difficult to see why children (or adults) would need a special building, specially paid teachers and school-style attendance for this, since all this could be met by community meetings and informal structures. For someone to learn to read and write just needs the presence and attention of another who can read and write; similarly one’s own history is better learnt through family and community. I also imagine that most school books would be written in Spanish rather than one of the myriad languages spoken by the people of the Chiapas, adding another element of downplaying indigenous diversity.
But, on a deeper level, schools are an important aspect of WESTERN DEVELOPMENT. Ivan Illich began to develop his critical ideas on the impact of school and development in Mexico. Though the Kiptik website mentions the notion of ‘human scale’ – a term which derives from the same area of thinking in which Illich was involved (ie. writers like Leopold Kohr and Kirkpatrick Sale), the Kiptik people appeared to know nothing of his ideas, or consciously rejected them.
Briefly, Illich saw development, including schools, hospitals, wage labour and transport as destroying what he called autonomous ‘vernacular’ culture. Illich saw that people had a natural capacity for skills at learning, healing, and subsistence. These self-reliant skills are expropriated and monopolised by large-scale Western institutions. For example, in Illich’s terms, school represents the mass production of education, an industrial commodity enterprise, replacing community and familial learning; transport replaces self-reliant mobility; hospitals monopolise and destroy healing practices. Illich emphasises the ‘dependency’ then created in the populace who, deprived of the means of fulfilling needs for themselves, become dependent on the commodity, the machine, the transport system, school and hospital.
It is ironic that Illich spent some years working in Mexico, where, in Cuernavaca, he co-founded the Centre for Intercultural Documentation (CIDOC). One might think that Kiptik, with its fundraising, could use the money to bring Mexicans sympathetic to Illich’s ideas to the Chiapas to present people with another perspective on Western ideologies of development and ‘progress’.
Similar points to Illich’s have been made by Helena Norbert-Hodge, whose experience with people of the Ladakh in the Himalayas is that school ‘teaches’ children, formerly satisfied with their simple and small-scale lives, that their lives are impoverished and squalid. And there have been many studies of the impact of the media on the lives of people in poorer lands, who then perceive their lives to be inferior and wanting.
I’m aware that the people of the Chiapas have suffered oppression and disruption of indigenous ways of life for centuries. If there is malnourishment then the roots of that malnourishment need to be addressed. There must however be local Mexican knowledges and practices that could be relearnt to increase subsistence crop diversity and well-being, without the baggage and suppositions of Western development and technological ‘progress’.
Some of the attitudes of Kiptik speakers were contradictory. For example they acknowledged that the Zapatistas, when asked what they wanted by way of support for others, said they wanted people to fight their own patch. Yet Kiptik felt totally justified in bringing to them the so-called ‘benefits’ of Western technological ‘progress’, and commodities, in the form of media, Western-style murals, a fridge, schools, doctors. This was a chosen path instead of the idea of indigenous and autonomous inventions and techniques, and informal and community learning.
Kiptik made much of what local people wanted and requested. Yet they were aware of the power of ideologies, since they acknowledged that it was local people themselves who had been bought off and drawn to enter the local government administration.
Kiptik also emphasised cultural exchange as a means of glossing over their bringing in of commodities and technologies connected to media and CD production. There was little evidence that this cultural exchange was anything other than one way (West to Chiapas). Even an anecdote about dancing showed how our noble white men thought the local dance just a bit boring and thought they’d liven it up with some ska. It’s difficult to see them doing the local dance of the Chiapas in their Bristol clubs. So much for cultural exchange?
As for the meeting itself there was a little rigidity in the discussion from the organisers and Kiptik. Someone from the audience raised a point about the history of the Zapatista movement as originating from the moving in of Maoists from the north, and subsequent recruitment of indigenous people into the Zapatista army. One of the organisers chipped in suddenly at this, bringing up an unrelated point about middle class primitivist activists having romantic ideas about indigenous peoples. The Kiptik guy chipped in with ‘yes, they think they’re noble savages’. It seemed that the Maoist origins of the Zapatistas were not to be addressed.
Both the speakers seemed imbued with a (Marxist?) progressivist notion of history, a factor that was clear from their references to technological ‘progress’ and wanting to help people work off (not on) the land. When asked about this from a member of the ‘audience’, they immediately pigeonholed that person as ‘anti-technology’ and claimed to speak for all the Chiapas people as ‘not being against technology’. An anecdote about a man who sung a traditional song and then started up his chainsaw was recounted to support this. Obviously the chainsaw was nothing to do with Kiptik, and had been purchased by a local person to help him in his work. Chainsaws are for cutting up (or down) very large trees, such as grow in rainforests, so this is a little unnerving…
An interesting question that I’d never much considered before now is how far the Zapatista army has coopted a movement of peasants/campesinos. There’s no doubt the attentions of media-savvy Marcos have raised their media profile. But what are the hidden costs and recuperations? You can see how the demands of the people of the Chiapas have been put into the language of academics and Marxist intellectuals. For example their formal demands have been framed in terms of a demand for ‘civil society’: not a term that ordinary people, anarchists or campesinos use to ‘frame’ their visions of what they want.
Kiptik have shown that they’re aware that the Zapatistas want people to fight their own struggles, in their own corners of the world. This is in the spirit of autonomy. Is this autonomy compromised by the efforts of some solidarity organisations? Does taking film and TV showings to the people, and helping them set up recording studios and CD-producing projects, and sending out Banksy, have just a touch of cultural imperialism?
Is there a touch of cultural imperialism and bringing of commodification in the project of 'Kiptik', a solidarity organisation who work with the Zapatistas?
There was a talk recently by people from Kiptik about their work with the Zapatistas (LARC 13.07.03). Kiptik claims not to be an NGO (though they do fundraise eg. by selling their merchandise) but, rather, a solidarity project, whose main areas of interest are water, health, media and art.
The project sound reasonable from the website. Their work installing drinking water systems seems to respect ‘bottom up’ approaches by using gravity to pipe water, and leaving a toolkit so people can repair it themselves.
The media aspect involves showing local people videos and films. Kiptik say the local people love TV. The art aspect involves getting more people to paint murals, and bringing over Banksy. In terms of health, they’re aware of the importance of people relearning traditional medicine, but combine this with a modern (Western) approach with healthcare/doctor provision. Kiptik also help encourage the growing of a wider diversity of crops to help alleviate malnutrition apparently resulting from an impoverished diet of staples corn and beans.
This sounds like a worthy to reasonable project, but there some aspects, particularly ones emerging from the talk they gave, which raised my alarm bells.
Their work seems to go beyond the project’s website remit. They stress that they don’t have an agenda and only respond to what the Zapatistas want. One of the projects they support is the setting up of schools. I’ll move on later to use Illich’s ideas to give a critical angle on schools. Here I want to draw attention to a knock-on effect of this schools development. Which is that teachers need paying, and that therefore the people want ways of earning cash to help pay for their children’s schooling.
The projects that Kiptik are involved in to help Zapatista people make some money include helping people set up a recording studio, a CD-making project, and helping people grow corn as a cash crop.
The people in the project seem to be more lefty than anarchist (just judging by their celebration of the use of Che Guevara as a reference for naming things/places, while making no mention, in the presentation, of the place named after Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magon; and also judging by their star logo showing a pickaxe and spanner instead of a hammer and sickle). But either way I’d expect them to be a little more aware of capitalism, the market and commodification and to at least question whether it was the right thing to help people draw themselves towards or into these areas (ie. through the CD production and sales and the cash cropping). But they vehemently defended this aspect of the project.
They also mentioned their desire to help people find ways of not working on the land – which raised the notion of becoming a worker rather than a campesino since the projects seemed to involve entering the market rather than community exchange. Marx was always scornful of people who worked on the land, preferring the modern ‘worker’. So this fits with a Marxist agenda. And, come to think of it, there’s a strand of uncritical Marxism which sees large-scale commodity production as OK as long as the ‘means of production’ are in the hands of the people. Which is not to say Kiptik are Marxists, just that there’s some correspondence of ideas.
Anyway, when challenged on the potential Westernising effect of bringing film and video showings to the area, Kiptik discounted any concerns about the impact of the media, simply claiming that people loved it.
I want to look now at their attitude towards SCHOOLS. Kiptik claimed that these schools were for teaching reading and writing and the history of the Zapatista movement and (presumably) the local people’s history. It seems difficult to see why children (or adults) would need a special building, specially paid teachers and school-style attendance for this, since all this could be met by community meetings and informal structures. For someone to learn to read and write just needs the presence and attention of another who can read and write; similarly one’s own history is better learnt through family and community. I also imagine that most school books would be written in Spanish rather than one of the myriad languages spoken by the people of the Chiapas, adding another element of downplaying indigenous diversity.
But, on a deeper level, schools are an important aspect of WESTERN DEVELOPMENT. Ivan Illich began to develop his critical ideas on the impact of school and development in Mexico. Though the Kiptik website mentions the notion of ‘human scale’ – a term which derives from the same area of thinking in which Illich was involved (ie. writers like Leopold Kohr and Kirkpatrick Sale), the Kiptik people appeared to know nothing of his ideas, or consciously rejected them.
Briefly, Illich saw development, including schools, hospitals, wage labour and transport as destroying what he called autonomous ‘vernacular’ culture. Illich saw that people had a natural capacity for skills at learning, healing, and subsistence. These self-reliant skills are expropriated and monopolised by large-scale Western institutions. For example, in Illich’s terms, school represents the mass production of education, an industrial commodity enterprise, replacing community and familial learning; transport replaces self-reliant mobility; hospitals monopolise and destroy healing practices. Illich emphasises the ‘dependency’ then created in the populace who, deprived of the means of fulfilling needs for themselves, become dependent on the commodity, the machine, the transport system, school and hospital.
It is ironic that Illich spent some years working in Mexico, where, in Cuernavaca, he co-founded the Centre for Intercultural Documentation (CIDOC). One might think that Kiptik, with its fundraising, could use the money to bring Mexicans sympathetic to Illich’s ideas to the Chiapas to present people with another perspective on Western ideologies of development and ‘progress’.
Similar points to Illich’s have been made by Helena Norbert-Hodge, whose experience with people of the Ladakh in the Himalayas is that school ‘teaches’ children, formerly satisfied with their simple and small-scale lives, that their lives are impoverished and squalid. And there have been many studies of the impact of the media on the lives of people in poorer lands, who then perceive their lives to be inferior and wanting.
I’m aware that the people of the Chiapas have suffered oppression and disruption of indigenous ways of life for centuries. If there is malnourishment then the roots of that malnourishment need to be addressed. There must however be local Mexican knowledges and practices that could be relearnt to increase subsistence crop diversity and well-being, without the baggage and suppositions of Western development and technological ‘progress’.
Some of the attitudes of Kiptik speakers were contradictory. For example they acknowledged that the Zapatistas, when asked what they wanted by way of support for others, said they wanted people to fight their own patch. Yet Kiptik felt totally justified in bringing to them the so-called ‘benefits’ of Western technological ‘progress’, and commodities, in the form of media, Western-style murals, a fridge, schools, doctors. This was a chosen path instead of the idea of indigenous and autonomous inventions and techniques, and informal and community learning.
Kiptik made much of what local people wanted and requested. Yet they were aware of the power of ideologies, since they acknowledged that it was local people themselves who had been bought off and drawn to enter the local government administration.
Kiptik also emphasised cultural exchange as a means of glossing over their bringing in of commodities and technologies connected to media and CD production. There was little evidence that this cultural exchange was anything other than one way (West to Chiapas). Even an anecdote about dancing showed how our noble white men thought the local dance just a bit boring and thought they’d liven it up with some ska. It’s difficult to see them doing the local dance of the Chiapas in their Bristol clubs. So much for cultural exchange?
As for the meeting itself there was a little rigidity in the discussion from the organisers and Kiptik. Someone from the audience raised a point about the history of the Zapatista movement as originating from the moving in of Maoists from the north, and subsequent recruitment of indigenous people into the Zapatista army. One of the organisers chipped in suddenly at this, bringing up an unrelated point about middle class primitivist activists having romantic ideas about indigenous peoples. The Kiptik guy chipped in with ‘yes, they think they’re noble savages’. It seemed that the Maoist origins of the Zapatistas were not to be addressed.
Both the speakers seemed imbued with a (Marxist?) progressivist notion of history, a factor that was clear from their references to technological ‘progress’ and wanting to help people work off (not on) the land. When asked about this from a member of the ‘audience’, they immediately pigeonholed that person as ‘anti-technology’ and claimed to speak for all the Chiapas people as ‘not being against technology’. An anecdote about a man who sung a traditional song and then started up his chainsaw was recounted to support this. Obviously the chainsaw was nothing to do with Kiptik, and had been purchased by a local person to help him in his work. Chainsaws are for cutting up (or down) very large trees, such as grow in rainforests, so this is a little unnerving…
An interesting question that I’d never much considered before now is how far the Zapatista army has coopted a movement of peasants/campesinos. There’s no doubt the attentions of media-savvy Marcos have raised their media profile. But what are the hidden costs and recuperations? You can see how the demands of the people of the Chiapas have been put into the language of academics and Marxist intellectuals. For example their formal demands have been framed in terms of a demand for ‘civil society’: not a term that ordinary people, anarchists or campesinos use to ‘frame’ their visions of what they want.
Kiptik have shown that they’re aware that the Zapatistas want people to fight their own struggles, in their own corners of the world. This is in the spirit of autonomy. Is this autonomy compromised by the efforts of some solidarity organisations? Does taking film and TV showings to the people, and helping them set up recording studios and CD-producing projects, and sending out Banksy, have just a touch of cultural imperialism?
Comments
Hide the following 9 comments
YES just a smidgen
16.07.2003 18:04
the important thing to take from this is not that Kipitik are marxists (i'm sure they would be horrified at the suggestion) or that they should not be supported, but that whenever anyone get's off their arses and tries to build some links with a far off place they will inevitably take a little of their cultural baggage with them.
I also wonder if you have analysed your own paternalistic attitude towards the Zapatista's - the implicit assumption that they won't be able to see the 'cultral imperialism' coming a mile away and protect their traditions themselves,
those in glass houses and all that...
A Bristolian (not connected with Kipitic)
Mayler
Ex disappearing up his own a-hole
16.07.2003 21:10
real solutions
Thinking out loud
16.07.2003 23:15
The only thing to fear is fear itself :-)
PS
comment
17.07.2003 10:28
Pity that just as in the talk (from the sound of it) when people asked certain questions they got attacked rather a reply, people on IMC can only attack you.
P
'P' not true
17.07.2003 12:48
I thought i conceded that the poster had a point but that the behavior he was pointing to was a human trait rather than one specific to this group of people.
mayler
KIPTIK'S RESPONSE TO EX
17.07.2003 12:51
Firstly, we do not want to become entangled in a protracted war of words with embittered armchair intellectuals. Kiptik has not the time or inclination to do so. We prefer to carry on with the ongoing direct, practical solidarity work in which we are involved. This is our response to your diatribe, and this will be our last communication with you, Ex (although we would be interested to hear what you are actually doing towards building a better world). We would suggest that if you do not like the way we do things, try doing it better yourself. Actions speak louder than words.
Despite having spent a lot of time on Sunday, listening and responding to your comments, it seems you were unable (unwilling?) to hear what we were saying. Too busy axe grinding? Up to you but don’t misquote and misrepresent us in the process.
We can’t help wonder why, when your ‘alarm bells’ were raised your response was to go shouting FIRE, rather than check it out. Why not talk to us after the meeting or email Kiptik? Why play detective and come to false conclusions about our political persuasions when you could have just asked us? Why take our comments out of context and present them as Kiptik’s ideology?
Your comments (critique?) also suggest a lack of understanding about what life is really like for the Zapatistas, and a difference in understanding of what ‘solidarity’ means.
If you knew what life was like in a Zapatista community we can’t believe you would seriously suggest using hard earned funds to espouse theoretical notions of progress and development rather than funding access to fresh water. The Zapatistas have identified the need for income generation schemes to fund their ongoing struggle, both for survival, and autonomy. We recognise this as a pragmatic response to their situation of extreme poverty. This is the real world, after all. We fully support Zapatista intitiatives such as the independent distribution of Zapatista music CDs and self – managed coffee production and marketing.
You would also realise that Kiptik hasn’t ‘brought over’ CDs, radio, TV, doctors, schools, fridges or murals. For better or worse these things were already part of the Zapatista’s way of life, long before Kiptik! (As for the reference to Ska – that was actually meant as a joke. Solidarity work can be fun too you know! We try to keep a sense of humour – how about you?)
We don’t have a ‘desire to help people find ways of not working on the land’ as you stated. We merely made a passing comment that being able to read and write gave people a choice. It’s easy to be ideological about how “they” should live from the comfort of a London meeting room. For the Zapatistas it is often a more immediately pragmatic choice about ‘how can I feed my children?’.
You criticize Kiptik’s attitude to schools – our attitude is this – if the Zapatistas want to build schools to further their autonomous education, (not to be confused with state education!) that is up to them. They know better than Kiptik or Illich what works for them because they are living it. And yes, indigenous language and culture is very much on their curriculum.
Ironically, it’s your ‘concerns’ that smack of a kind of cultural imperialism to us – of the patronising ‘we know what’s good for you’ variety. Of course there is a place for reflecting on ideology. But like the Zapatistas, much of Kiptik’s ideology is borne from experiential rather than academic knowledge.
You refer to our ‘chosen path’ – our chosen path is to support the Zapatistas in their chosen path. We respect their right to self-determination and their right to make and learn from their mistakes along the way. If you take issue with their path, I suggest you take it up with them.
Finally, you say there was little evidence that ‘this cultural exchange was anything but one way (West to Chiapas).’ Were you really listening with such closed minds that you failed to realise that in telling about our experiences in Chiapas we were sharing with you what we gained as individuals from the culture of the Zapatistas? We brought back with us changed hearts and minds, inspired by the rebel dignity, strength of community, determination and ‘autonomy in action’ that we experienced.
For more info on Kiptik and the solidarity projects, check out www.kiptik.buz.org
volunteers
e-mail:
kiptik@eudoramail.com
Homepage:
http://www.kiptik.buz.org
A few things from original article not addressed?
18.07.2003 09:26
Of course CD's are part of the world - does that mean it's right to fund a cash-raising project making them?
Kiptik have denied two points made by them at the meeting, and which can be confirmed by anyone there. Firstly they said that cash was needed to pay teachers, and now they say the cash is for the movement. Secondly, the woman speaker said they wanted to help them find ways of not working on the land; now this is being denied.
The Kiptik post certainly is defensive and a little rude.
Person
When I hear the word culture I go for my gun
18.07.2003 17:14
1. Kiptiks projects are based upon the needs of the Zapatistas not on what we think the needs of the Zapatistas are. We are able to provide materials, skills and volunteers to help implement (with them) some of the projects that are decided on by the Zapatista organisation.
2. Kiptik is neither a marxist, anarchist nor primitivist (!) organisation. It is a collection of activists and/or volunteers that support the content and direction of the Zapatista struggle from practical experience.
3. Historically there have been numerous examples of practical solidarity for revolutionary struggles around the world. These have in many cases involved cultural exchange, unsurprisingly. For example, should the support given to the revolutionary struggle in the Spanish civil war in 1936 been reconsidered in case the Spanish working class started listening to jazz ? Or the Welsh miners who fought and died might have started dancing Flamenco ?
4. Why is it that criticisms of practical solidarity come down to things like "cultural imperialism" and why is it assumed that this cultural exchange is one way ? These arguments treat the Zapatistas like children to be protected from the evils of Britney Spears. Saying that having a fridge to put medical supplies in is cultural imperialism is absolute bollocks.
5. Kiptik actively respects the cultures of the various Zapatista ethnic groups (even if we do not like some aspects of it ourselves). We also understand the changes in these cultures which have been occuring as the revolutionary transformation takes place in their communities and the fact that it is under their control. Cultures are fluid (moving at different rates according to the conditions) and as one Zapatista Women insurgent put it "we need to take the good things from our previous culture and keep them and throw the bad things away". She was talking about throwing away stuff like arranged marriages, domestic violence, lack of education and political representation of women etc. All of these were part of the "holy" indigenous culture of a people that are "at one with nature" and which of course are beyond criticism for the primitivists safe at home in Hampstead.
6. Ironically, if the Zapatista revolutionaries had folowed the theories propounded by Ex then they would have had severe problems in uniting the 6 different ethnic groups that make up the bulk of the Zapatista movement. After all they were culturally diverse, spoke different 1st languages etc. and perhaps should have been protected from each other in case there was any cultural imperialism going on. Instead there has been an exchange of ideas and ways of living, with the collective use of Spanish as a second language to allow organising and running the autonomous zones and the insurgent army. From this "clash" (I prefer "meeting") of cultures a knowledge of history, common oppression, collective understanding and the ability to change things has occurred in tandem with a dynamic cultural movement.
7. I believe in a world of change (not stagnation) and I believe that all human groups have some good and bad cultural elements to their lives (often products of both resistance to and living under both feudal and then capitalist societies). It is true that the mass media and consumption of the major capitalist power blocks provides an inequality of transfer of information and power. But that is why as revolutionaries we try to change this. Trying to keep groups isolated from this is not the solution, it's more like the power relations in a Zoo. The question really is do we want to try to isolate ourselves from the prevailing power relations (i.e. drop out which isn't possible in this world) or overthrow them with an explosion of global cultural exchanges in the process ? This is not cultural imperialism, but the building of a world human community in all of its dynamic and diverse forms. This is the kind of globalisation I want and has nothing of the homogenisation that our often stifling local cultures suffer from.
8. Capitalism is quite happy to keep groups culturally divided as it benefits its attempts to crush our resistance, unhappily for our enemy they have a massive contradiction to deal with. There are massive pressures on them to open up borders and allow free movement of labour to allow them to increase profits. In this process is the seed of resistance and revolution as groups break out of their cultural and geographic seperations to create new cultural forms. This is not a new phenomenon. The same changes in the UK for example in the 19th century led to the explosion that was the womens movement in the 20th (amongst numerous examples). So don't be afraid of Britney Spears, I think together we can do a little better than the shit they offer us.
Down with cultural imperialism !
Down with dropping out !
Down with primitivist isolationism !
Down with essentialist binaries (?) !
The Red Butcher
Red Butcher
e-mail:
dodger@irational.org
When I hear the word "culture" I go for my gun
18.07.2003 17:23
1. Kiptiks projects are based upon the needs of the Zapatistas not on what we think the needs of the Zapatistas are. We are able to provide materials, skills and volunteers to help implement (with them) some of the projects that are decided on by the Zapatista organisation.
2. Kiptik is neither a marxist, anarchist nor primitivist (!) organisation. It is a collection of activists and/or volunteers that support the content and direction of the Zapatista struggle from practical experience.
3. Historically there have been numerous examples of practical solidarity for revolutionary struggles around the world. These have in many cases involved cultural exchange, unsurprisingly. For example, should the support given to the revolutionary struggle in the Spanish civil war in 1936 been reconsidered in case the Spanish working class started listening to jazz ? Or the Welsh miners who fought and died might have started dancing Flamenco ?
4. Why is it that criticisms of practical solidarity come down to things like "cultural imperialism" and why is it assumed that this cultural exchange is one way ? These arguments treat the Zapatistas like children to be protected from the evils of Britney Spears. Saying that having a fridge to put medical supplies in is cultural imperialism is absolute bollocks.
5. Kiptik actively respects the cultures of the various Zapatista ethnic groups (even if we do not like some aspects of it ourselves). We also understand the changes in these cultures which have been occuring as the revolutionary transformation takes place in their communities and the fact that it is under their control. Cultures are fluid (moving at different rates according to the conditions) and as one Zapatista Women insurgent put it "we need to take the good things from our previous culture and keep them and throw the bad things away". She was talking about throwing away stuff like arranged marriages, domestic violence, lack of education and political representation of women etc. All of these were part of the "holy" indigenous culture of a people that are "at one with nature" and which of course are beyond criticism for the primitivists safe at home in Hampstead.
6. Ironically, if the Zapatista revolutionaries had folowed the theories propounded by Ex then they would have had severe problems in uniting the 6 different ethnic groups that make up the bulk of the Zapatista movement. After all they were culturally diverse, spoke different 1st languages etc. and perhaps should have been protected from each other in case there was any cultural imperialism going on. Instead there has been an exchange of ideas and ways of living, with the collective use of Spanish as a second language to allow organising and running the autonomous zones and the insurgent army. From this "clash" (I prefer "meeting") of cultures a knowledge of history, common oppression, collective understanding and the ability to change things has occurred in tandem with a dynamic cultural movement.
7. I believe in a world of change (not stagnation) and I believe that all human groups have some good and bad cultural elements to their lives (often products of both resistance to and living under both feudal and then capitalist societies). It is true that the mass media and consumption of the major capitalist power blocks provides an inequality of transfer of information and power. But that is why as revolutionaries we try to change this. Trying to keep groups isolated from this is not the solution, it's more like the power relations in a Zoo. The question really is do we want to try to isolate ourselves from the prevailing power relations (i.e. drop out which isn't possible in this world) or overthrow them with an explosion of global cultural exchanges in the process ? This is not cultural imperialism, but the building of a world human community in all of its dynamic and diverse forms. This is the kind of globalisation I want and has nothing of the homogenisation that our often stifling local cultures suffer from.
8. Capitalism is quite happy to keep groups culturally divided as it benefits its attempts to crush our resistance, unhappily for our enemy they have a massive contradiction to deal with. There are massive pressures on them to open up borders and allow free movement of labour to allow them to increase profits. In this process is the seed of resistance and revolution as groups break out of their cultural and geographic seperations to create new cultural forms. This is not a new phenomenon. The same changes in the UK for example in the 19th century led to the explosion that was the womens movement in the 20th (amongst numerous examples). So don't be afraid of Britney Spears, I think together we can do a little better than the shit they offer us.
Down with cultural imperialism !
Down with dropping out !
Down with primitivist isolationism !
Down with essentialist binaries (?) !
The Red Butcher
Red Butcher
e-mail:
dodger@irational.org