Re: OT: Worcestershire sauce

Quoting Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>:

> En réponse à Andreas Johansson :
>
>
> >No I didn't - I interpreted it as saying that you thought "pica" was just
> >a way
> >of denigrating non-Western habits. Sorry for misunderstanding.
>
> It's OK, I was probably unclear.
OK.

> >I don't necessarily agree that contrasting Western and non-Western is
> stupid;
> >it makes perfect sense when discussing areas where Western culture differs
> >from
> >what is otherwise normal in human societies.
>
> I personally find it useless because there's no single Western culture.
> There are just plenty of related cultures, but the differences are strong
> enough that talking about a Western culture as opposed to other cultures
> makes the word "culture" meaningless (I should know. I've been living for
> two years in a country only 300km from my home country, and I've still not
> completely recovered from the culture shock).
I've not felt much of a culture shock moving a bit further abroad than that,
but I guess it's coming!

By "Western culture" one would have to mean what is common to Western cultures.
But what it all boils down to, I guess, is that you have to look at every
actual comparison made you encounter and see if it makes sense.

> >  (Would you assert that
> >contrasting, say, Javanese and non-Javanese is also necessarily stupid?)
>
> I would say it's useless, as there's no such thing as a single non-Javanese
> culture (and is there a single Javanese culture?).
If I've got it right, there's multiple cultures on Java, but only one known
as "Javanese". Could be wrong, of course. (See, the pro-drop disease is
spreading!) Roger Mills can perhaps clarify?

> Comparisons between
> cultures can be enlightening, but only when you define clearly both terms
> of the comparison. As such, any "one against everything else" comparison is
> doomed from the beginning.
Not, IMHO, when one is looking at something that's unique for that culture.

> And with all the prejudiced stuff you see around these days (from all
> sides), this kind of comparisons, or anything related to it, looks
> suspicious to me. It may make me suspicious against perfectly innocent
> studies, but I still prefer to stay vigilant :)) .
Well, being vigilant is of course good, as long as you don't get paranoid! :)

                                                           Andreas

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