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Re: OT: Worcestershire sauce

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Tuesday, October 14, 2003, 12:19
Quoting Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>:

> En réponse à Andreas Johansson : > > > > > There's something fishy going on here. The fact that the article Padraic > > > gave said that most pica was found in non-Western cultures should have > been > > > a clue. It seems that pica means more exactly "the eating of substances > we > > > Westerners don't find acceptable" :))) . > > > >While that's an perfectly possible interpretation, I'd like to point out > that > >most cultures are "non-Western", and that something occurs primarily in > non- > >Western cultures really means little more than that is unusual in Western > >cultures. > > That was basically the point of my post you know?
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.
> >Now, I'm not really suspecting Christophe of this, but the tendency to > >think of > >all non-Western cultures as essentially the same is not appreciably less > >common > >in the intercultural exchanage and understanding brigade than among Western > >supremacists. > > Where in my post did you ever get the idea to mention that? My whole post > was pointing out that opposing Western and non-Western was a stupid idea > anyway. I just used the terms of the article we were discussing about, > nothing else.
From my interpretation of what you said about "pica" it's not very long to the wider question of the attitudes of westerner's to other cultures. 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. (Would you assert that contrasting, say, Javanese and non-Javanese is also necessarily stupid?) Andreas

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Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>