10 March 2010
Watch four speaker's contributions to The Inner Lives of Cultures conference
by: Jonathan Mundey
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10 March 2010
by: Jonathan Mundey

9 March 2010
by: Counterpoint

1 March 2010
by: Jonathan Mundey

18 February 2010
by: Counterpoint

4 February 2010
by: Eva Hoffman

3 February 2010
by: Jonathan Mundey
3 February 2010
by: Jonathan Mundey
20 December 2009
by: Ari Magnusson
18 December 2009
by: Ari Magnusson
In our ever shrinking global village, it is easy to forget the immense privileges that global communications and transport bring us. We can eat Japanese food, listen to Bulgarian folk jazz, watch Senegalese art house cinema or engage in any other cultural activity to our hearts content. More to the point we have the opportunity to indulge and expand our cultural awareness in any direction we desire, yet such benefits are not enjoyed by all the world's population.
North Korea is arguably the last stronghold of totalitarian socialism in our ever shrinking world. A few years ago Vice magazine travelled there to film a documentary providing a profile of this 'hermit kingdom'. Throughout their stay they were closely monitored to ensure they never got too close to the locals or see any undesirabe section of North Korean society.
17 December 2009
by: Ari Magnusson

About Us:
‘The ability to live with difference, wrote Zygmunt Bauman in Liquid Modernity (2000), let alone enjoy such living and to benefit from it, does not come easily and certainly not under its own impetus. This ability is an art which, like all arts, requires study and exercise’. Like much of our work, the Counterpoint projects under the Cultures category all share one thing in common: they ask how we can develop and perfect the art to which Bauman refers. Here, in one form or another are the studies and the exercises, we hope, that will help us ask the questions and provide the answers that will lead us to feeling more at ease with diversity and difference.
Counterpoint is currently involved in three projects which explore these issues:
In our highly interconnected, and simultaneously de-centered world, cultural relations need to be thought of as a reciprocal process, whose aim is a deeper and richer mutual understanding. How do we gain insight into the matrix of symbolic meanings, visions of society and self, forms of private and public discourse which constitute the “inner life” of each society and culture? And how can we conduct meaningful cross-cultural dialogue across sometimes deep and subtle cultural differences? Read more
Official government policy for 25 years, multiculturalism is now becoming one of the dirty words of national politics. Why has a policy that was for so long lauded as a template for the success of modern Britain been so apparently devalued? Embroiled in arguments over national cohesion, integration and participation, the debate raises key questions about how we wish society to operate and structure itself. Does multiculturalism reinforce segregation and fragmentation by emphasising difference over shared values or do its policies reflect a progressive society that recognises that all cultures are imperfect? Counterpoint analyses public and institutional commitment to the values of diversity and tolerance to ask: has multiculturalism done its job? And where do we go from here?
The projects in this section reflect our conviction that multiculturalism, far from having failed, has delivered stronger communities and more confident voices. The next steps however are still to be defined. Below are two examples from which we might take inspiration.
The ‘identity’ quests of the last decades were not in vain. They strengthened minority group positions and offered cultural and psychological anchors during the years that followed movements of mass immigration and at a time marked by retrenchment and fear on behalf of many native populations. But with the passing of time and the change of generations their usefulness may be over–for the children of yesterday’s immigrants are here to stay, and in their vast majority they are ‘us.’ Hence the need to rethink the very bases of nations, beyond the welfare state, as we go about pooling ever scanter resources. Read more
Can the findings of neuroscience tell us who we are?