ranking cities is quite popular these days! beijing is of course no exception and decided to measure its wenming-ness by observing, for example, if people are disciplined in queuing, crossing roads, etc. But last week, during an interview, someone made an interesting comment, saying that the difference between Beijing and Paris or Berlin, is that here, you can’t just borrow a cigarette from some random people in the street. I noticed that in Scandinavian countries too, and the reason is that cigarettes are so expensive there, that you would not even think about asking! but here the reason seems quite different: you can’t  – apparantly – trust anybody. who knows, the cigarette might as well contain some drugs! it’s probably not the case, but I think this small thing says quite a lot about how people “live together” in cities. what is trust built upon? and how far is it important to make cities more urban? maybe this could be an interesting way to compare cities and think about the implications of such a small, daily fact.

I found this very interesting paper – that was re-published by the online magazine Eurozine – about culture and individuals as bearers of particular cultures. The author argues that the actual conception of multiculturalism shares a lot of its conception with racism theories. For Malik, cultural relativism goes too far since it tends to naturalize the culture and fix the identity of the individuals.

Anyway, I’ll be happy to talk about it!

Kenan Malik, Mistaken identity
Multiculturalist advocacy of collective rights has opened the door in some western
nations for religious law to take precedence over civil law, argues Kenan Malik.
Partly responsible is the idea that human beings are bearers of a particular culture
as opposed to social and hence transformative beings.