Social Cohesion, Multiculturalism & Social Media
In a previous article, I discussed the growing trends of nationalism and culture in islamic nations – specifically Pakistan – and came to the conclusion that they are contrarian to the very fabric of Islam. In this article, I will zoom in more heavily on how these relations to culture can manifest in diaspora and how this can be a thing of beauty and also a means to division.
Globalisation is the economic explosion of the post-WW2 world which famously resulted in free trade agreements and widening international flows of goods, services, information and – most notably – people. As a result, the world saw the creation of numerous ‘diasporic spaces’; communities forming of people united by their native cultures; resulting in economic and social changes like more land use dedicated to facets of foreign cultures (eg South Asian restaurants in Tooting, Khalsa Gurdwara in Tooting etc) and less and less deprivation. Of course, this meant more participation in diasporic spaces from those not originally belonging to them – creating multicultural societies as a result of globalisation.
Peter Jackson, a social geographer, suggests that due to globalisation many people ‘live their lives over long distances’ like migrants and asylum seekers. He argues that this facet
of globalisation has opened up ‘new spaces of identity’ and has meant Europe has had to
evolve its attitude toward its significant others (America, Islam and the Orient) – changing
perceptions of Europe and therefore melding its identity.
This phenomena has meant that people in these multicultural spaces form their own individual and collective identities based on where they originally came from rather than where they are; having dangerous effects on social cohesion. In my previous article, I mentioned that being from Pakistan is a huge element of my identity, especially with the fact that I grew up surrounded by hundreds of different cultures and ways of life. Unlike the pre-globalised world, I will not form the majority of my identity on where I live and have been raised, South London, because I am surrounded by so many people forming their own identities based on where they are from.
Theoretically, this must mean multicultural societies breed pluralism, harmony and high social cohesion as there are so many different diasporic spaces people can participate in and so gives them ideas of different cultures. And to an extent, this has happened in many areas. But, when people form their identities on where they are from they may stick to their own diasporic spaces and develop an exclusive bias toward them – causing disunity and harming social cohesion. When you combine this with events of immigrants who form their identity on where they are from putting pressure on housing prices for longer-term residents, or gentrification where immigrants may create stable economic bases in areas and then get crowded out by more affluent people – not from matching spaces – raising property prices in order to reap those benefits ; you get a lot of trouble with the breakdown of social cohesion even resulting to near violence. I’d like to point to the recent conflicts in Leicester, where there were a lot of conflicts between young Muslims and young Hindus. It can be argued that the matter was more of a religious one, but when you take into account that both religions disagree with such methods of action and the pre-colonised and thus pre-globalised Hindustan lived relatively peacefully with similar demographics – it makes a lot of sense that this is the result of culture-based identity hurting social cohesion.
I have previously discussed the flaws of taking culture as the main basis of identity; and further conversations with different people of the younger generation has made me realise that our very definition of culture is flawed. I believe this has a lot to do with the relatively recent introduction of aesthetics. The developed world these days, especially with the younger generations, is obsessed with the idea of aesthetics. There is the classic example of ‘flexing’ and posting on instagram with a car that is rented or clothes that cost hundreds but are borrowed from so and so. We are conditioned to believe things are exactly how they seem and don’t bother to look any further. So when we see extravagant weddings, beautiful movies, amazing foods etc we believe that culture is exactly that. These things are definitely a facet of culture, and a beautiful one at that, but only a facet. Cultures are ways of life; essentially codes on how people should function and how societies should function and diminishing that to aesthetics and then subscribing our identity to those aesthetics is so problematic because not only do we break social cohesion by adamantly sticking to our own cultures – we may even not fully understand what that culture is and live a more western life despite having elements of our own culture. This is especially notable in second and third generation immigrants; particularly of the younger generations. In the stages of our life where it is time for us to form our identity and choose who we want to be for the rest of our lives we fall into these cultural aesthetics and choose them.
To conclude, I’d like to express why this is a bad thing in my eyes. The challenges the younger generations will face will require immense unity to solve. Issues of climate change, poverty and inequality cannot be solved with broken social cohesion. We must take our cultures with immense pride and a deep understanding of what they are while embracing cultural pluralism and forming the majority of our identity on where we are today rather than where we trace our lineage.
