CULTURE AND PRESENTING DIVERSITY

Abstract

This paper analyzes the relationships being established from the cultural position of individuals and social groups toward diversity and otherness. The author focuses attention on the relations of diverse and foreign, universal and relative, primitive and civilized, intolerant and tolerant. The contrast between one’s own and foreign is shown in such a manner so as to present one’s own as accessible and inherent, while foreign appears as inaccessible and non-inherent. In this context, the attention is directed toward the discrimination of foreigners and stigmatization of certain social groups on the basis of their cultural diversity.

Within the relations of universal and relative, the paper discusses the globalized world („culture of the world”), posing the question whether it is possible to avoid the cultural uniformity of the planetary universe or not. Specific cultural projects are considered, such as the musical phenomenon of „world music”. The author question the possibility of survival of special (local, national) cultures in the process of cultural globalization. Analyzing the notions of „primitive” and „civilized”, he emphasizes their relativity and conditionality of values. Furthermore, the paper identifies „primitive” behaviors of the so-called civilized world.

Intolerance and tolerance toward foreign cultures are in this paper observed through two opposite forms of relationships: ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. Here, the author also critically discusses Eurocentrism, which maps Europe as the center of the world. Finally, he reflects upon the social distance and intolerance toward Roma, small religious communities, and LGBT population in Serbia, as well as the influence of all of this on the processes of European integration of the Serbian society.