Twice a month, The duty challenges enthusiasts of philosophy and the history of ideas to decipher a topical question based on the theses of an outstanding thinker.
Cultural globalization places present-day societies in front of major challenges with regard to what is commonly called “living together”. The multiplicity of contacts caused by the massification of migratory flows between populations with different values and lifestyles challenges both host societies and minorities resulting from immigration.
The social integration of immigrants poses a particular challenge for minority cultures, such as that of Quebec, which does not exist much for largely majority cultures, such as that of English Canada. Now, in English Canada, groups are campaigning to increase the number of immigrants, from 400,000 per year that it is currently to 500,000, targeting a Canadian population of 100 million at the end of the century, an increase of 163 %! In this context, worrying about the integration of immigrants and more generally about their relationship with the host society appears highly legitimate.
Members of host societies generally expect new citizens to adhere to the values underlying the rules governing social relationships. For others, however, the identity peculiarities of immigrant communities should be able to express themselves unhindered. The former see the resistance to adopting the codes of society as a form of refusal of integration, bordering on a denial of the principles on which citizenship is based. The latter see rather in the demand for differences the manifestation of a cultural diversity held to be highly desirable.
It is likely that the polarization between these antagonistic principles – namely universalism and communitarianism – will increase in the coming years and that the cleavage between the values of integration and diversity will continue to exacerbate citizens’ debates with regard to the live together. More than ever, it seems imperative to change the way we perceive and deal with these societal discussions. One option would be to take these disputes out of their immediate relevance to understand them in a broader temporality. As these disputes have origins with often very ancient ramifications, it is important to understand them in a historicity that is part of a “long term”.
Areas of continuity
The one whose name remains associated with the “long term” is Fernand Braudel (1902-1985). Modernist historian whose work has marked the social sciences, leader of the prestigious historical school of Annales, founder of research centers, he was one of the most influential intellectuals of the second half of the last century. His major contributions focus on the origins of capitalism and on the notion of the world economy.
For Braudel, civilizations are long continuities (Grammar of civilizations, 1987). His vision embraces a broader perspective than that of Samuel Huntington (The Clash of Civilizations, 1996), for whom civilizations are cultural realities with a potentially antagonistic religious base. Without evading conflicts, insisting as much on borrowings as on inter-civilizational refusals, the Braudelian approach attenuates cultural shocks, thus helping to temper identity tensions.
Braudel sees geography as the matrix that shapes the economic and social structures of civilizations. These structures create in their wake coherent cultural areas tending towards a sustainability of their own. Taking over from the geographer, the historian’s task is to explain these “endless historical continuities” that are civilizations.
These continuities evolve over time through multiple temporalities. A simplified Braudelian diagram establishes three historical times. At the first level, there is a brief time, the political event time for example, which is counted in years. Then, at the second level, a cyclical time, such as that of the economy, lengthens the step to span ten-year cycles. Finally, at the last level, centuries of time slowly move the deep structures in which the values of civilizations lodge.
This long structural time, that which suspends its flight and ignores the aerobatics of conjunctures and the beating of the wings of events, alone allows the historical retreat necessary to grasp the facts of civilization. “We only reach a civilization in the long term […] ; in fact, this […] that a group of men will have preserved and passed on, from generation to generation, as their most precious possession. “
For Braudel, religions are incubators of civilizations. They translate into values cultural traits which are necessarily long term and which are also the most anchored, the least negotiable from one civilization to another. Thus, Western civilization, resulting from the interbreeding of the cultures of ancient Europe, is embodied in Roman Christianity which infuses it with its values. One of its peculiarities is to have known how to distinguish between the sacred and the profane and to grant a real place to reason within its scholastic theology. In the long term, it will emanate from it modern desacralization, the contemporary secularization of its civil institutions, universalist humanism, rationalism and human rights.
Acts of civilization
However, the values inherited from geography and religion do not explain everything. Civilizations result just as much from their commercial and cultural relationships. From time immemorial, they established links with their neighbors by exchanging physical goods, techniques, artistic forms, ideas, knowledge, even beliefs. So much so that a civilization that refused to borrow would condemn itself to stagnation. The great civilizations of the world owe their history to many borrowings. For example, the Arab-Muslim civilization transmitted to the medieval West many crucial legacies, including Arabic numerals (via the Greeks and of Indian origin), the basis of modern accounting, Aristotelianism, the foundation of science, and courtly literature establishing the art of propriety. And we could multiply the examples for each civilization.
But will the multiplication of loans abolish the specificity of civilizations? No, replies Braudel, because these do not borrow everything and do not accept everything; they safeguard their originality to preserve their deep values. Few adoptions without adaptation: “No civilization says no to all of these new goods, but each gives it a particular meaning. For the historian, civilizations generate entrenched collective values which command the choices that are inherent to them.
If distant heritages and ideals mark the consciousness of civilizations, apprehensions and fears lead them just as much to refuse certain loans. “A civilization is loath to adopt a cultural good that calls into question one or more deep structures. […] Each time, the refusal comes at the conclusion of a long series of hesitations and experiences. This refusal to borrow is even a most significant act of civilization, Braudel tells us. “Only lasting refusals are essential. [Ils] operate for centuries with prohibitions, barricades, difficult healing, often imperfect, always very long. “
Braudel gives as an example of revealing rejection the role of women in society. ” The role of the woman [concerne toujours la] structure of civilization […] because it is, in every civilization, a long-lasting reality […] If, as we have seen above, the West has benefited from an abundance of Arab-Muslim influences, it refuses to open the way to an Islamic law which would undermine the values establishing its marital customs and women’s rights. Certain conjugal and family codes firmly anchored in our societies have medieval or even ancient origins. This is particularly the case with the free consent of the spouses to marriage, the proscription of polygamy and the refusal of the wife’s repudiation by the husband. To transgress these codes presents an infamous character even today in the cultures of Western tradition.
Cultural inclusion
The end of the story is never quite said, the Braudelian thesis of the relationship between civilizations would be worth updating and debating. Offering few tangible answers to the current challenges of social integration, it nevertheless has the merit of raising the issues of living together in its historical duration. Braudel teaches us that, if civilizations evolve thanks to loans, they are defined just as much by refusals and prohibitions that only the perspective of the long term allows to grasp fundamentally.
Forty years of cultural globalization force reflection on the relationships between civilizations. Cultural inclusion poses challenges of unprecedented complexity which require – in addition to a deep civic sense made up of mutual understandings – an effort to find innovative formulas for social integration. The long Braudelian duration above all allows us to take account of otherness and identities in the relationships between cultures.