CounterpointStimulating debate with the British Council

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:

The Inner Lives of Cultures

Beyond Multiculturalism

Voices for the Res Publica II

The Inner Lives of Cultures

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

Beyond multiculturalism

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.

Voices for the Res Publica II

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

• The Intercultural Imperative, by Ramin Jahanbegloo
• Hamed Abdel-Samad: memoirs of a muslim in Europe
• Tzvetan Todorov and AC Grayling in conversation
• Eurozine - a collection of cultural journals online
• Shashi Tharoor on Indian culture and soft power