​Cultural Differences and the Refugee Crisis

​Natalie Ashton

​This month, five members of the ERC team participated in the public lecture series Flucht, Asyl, Menschenrechte. The lecture series was organised by the University of Vienna's Department of Philosophy as a way for staff to show how their work connects with issues raised by the current refugee crises in Europe.

If you want to listen to our group lecture, you can find it (in English) here. You can also listen to Martin Kusch’s lecture from earlier in the series (in German) here. In this post, I’ll summarise what we talked about in our group lecture.

The Relevance of Culture
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As Katherina Kinzel explained in her introduction, our talk was atypical as it involved collaboration between several people with very different philosophical backgrounds. The common thread that we chose to connect our individual contributions was the concept of culture. Katherina pointed out that current discussion of the refugee crisis often focuses on the idea of ‘culture clashes’:

​“It is a dominant and broadly accepted trope of current political discourse on migration and refugees that the central problem we’re facing right now is the question of ‘culturally integrating’ into ‘our’ host society people who allegedly have different cultural values than we do.”

Because of this, we decided to explore the way that the concept of culture is used in three of the areas of philosophy that we work on, and to consider how what we learned tells us about our current political situation.

Herder’s Concept of Culture

Niels Wildschut kicked things off by discussing the concept of culture in the work of Herder (1744-1803).  He told us about the typical understanding of cultures attributed to Herder, according to which they are naturally isolated wholes which are essentially different from one another. On this conception cross-cultural understanding would be impossible, and so migration would seem to be a “threat”.

However, Niels then presented some aspects of Herder's philosophy of history which qualify this interpretation. First, Herder's ideal of humanity is the overarching goal to which all Völker should contribute - and they can, because we share a common human nature. Second, Herder's understanding of enculturation shows that no atemporal essence of a particular culture predetermines its actual practices and expressions.  In fact, as Niels explained, Herder attempted to show that intercultural understanding is possible through the exercise of our Einfühlungsvermögen (empathy).

Culture in National Socialist Philosophy

Johannes Steizinger then moved the discussion on to the early 20th century, with a discussion of the concept of culture in the political anthropology of National Socialism. He explained how the economic, social and political developments of the ‘long 19th century’ lead to mass migration, and an important reaction to this - the idea of “endangered identity”, understood in racial terms.

Johannes then discussed the concept of race underlying this idea. He showed that whilst an important element of National Socialist thinking involved the idea that race is a biological concept - for example he discussed Alfred Bauemler who naturalized the concept of race - this was not the whole story. In addition, a number of key ideologists had a metaphysical understanding of race, such as Alfred Rosenberg who argued for the idea of a ‘racial soul’, which was intended to connect nature, spirit, biology, and history. This idea was used to justify a racial and cultural hierarchy, and to justify dehumanisation and racism.

In closing his contribution, Johannes noted the striking, and frightening, parallels between the economic and social conditions, and the political rhetoric, of the early 20th century, and the conditions and rhetoric of today.

Culture in Jose Medina’s Work

My contribution addressed the concept of culture at play in the work of Jose Medina, a contemporary philosopher. I argued that something like a concept of culture plays a role in his work in political epistemology. Like the philosophers discussed by Niels and Johannes, Medina is interested in the collective awareness of different social groups, although his conception of this is fluid, dynamic, and dependent on contingent factors.

I then explored two ways that this concept features in Medina’s work; namely in his account of social change, and in his thinking about ‘epistemic benefits’ - benefits that relate to knowledge and understanding. Medina argues that groups which are socially oppressed can develop such benefits because their oppression gives them a unique cross-cultural perspective. However socially privileged people can also develop these epistemic benefits as long as they seek out, and nurture, relationships with people who are culturally very different from themselves.

I suggested that whilst we might think that migration would increase cross-cultural interaction and put lots of people in a good position to develop epistemic benefits, this would be a mistake. Current policies relating to refugees prevent them, and the members of the countries that they arrive in, from developing meaningful relationships with one another.

Changing Conceptions of Culture

Robin McKenna closed the session by highlighting the similarities and differences between the different conceptions of culture that our lecture covered. First, he pointed out that both Herder and National Socialist philosophers saw cultures as having essences, and as being integrated wholes. However Herder did not see cultures as isolated, and thought that differences between them could be overcome, whilst National Socialists saw the differences between cultures to be unbridgeable. Medina on the other hand resists the temptation to essentialise culture altogether, and refuses to treat contingent differences between cultures as intrinsic to them.

Second, Robin noted that both National Socialist philosophers and Medina attribute epistemic advantages, or benefits, to certain social groups. However, he pointed out that this superficial similarity is underscored by important differences: National Socialists talked about an epistemic advantage with respect to self-knowledge and expression, whilst the advantage Medina talks about is with respect to the ability to shape a shared social reality. Further, the advantage National Socialists attributed to the ‘Nordic race’ was not contingent - it could only be achieved by members of that culture, and because of something intrinsic to that culture. For Medina on the other hand, contingent social conditions are what lead to the advantage.

Finally, Robin focused attention on a difficult question that remains. De-essentialising cultural differences doesn't make them disappear, and so what should we say about them? How should a society decide which practices should be tolerated, and which should not? He conceded that we are yet to find an answer to this question. But: 

"​the troubled history of philosophical treatments of 'culture' and 'cultural clashes' shows that we should tend towards tolerance rather than intolerance, and that we should try to understand unfamiliar practices before condemning them."

If Medina is right, striving to promote tolerance and understanding will also have positive epistemic effects, both for us and for society at large.

You can listen to the full talk, including the question and answer session that followed, here. If you have your own questions or comments, please leave them below.

Look out for Delia Belleri’s post next month, which will explore a related theme - different approaches that governments could take to tolerance and recognition of cultural differences.