از مجموعه «طرح های کاربردی به کار نرفته» (۴)

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از مجموعه «طرح های کاربردی به کار نرفته» – ۴ ؛ شناسایی و حل تضادها و تبعیض های فرهنگی و به واسطه خلق فضایی برای گفت و گو
از مجموعه طرح های کاربردی به کار نرفته (۴): شناسایی و حل تضادها و تبعیض های فرهنگی و به واسطه خلق فضایی برای گفت و گو

سالهای ۸۶ تا ۹۰ سالهای سختی برای من بود. به پیشنهادات و توصیه های اساتیدی همچون خانم دکتر لاجوردی و برای شرکت در آزمون دکتری جامعه شناسی فرهنگی دانشگاه تهران، بی توجه بودم و سرمست و مغرور از رضایتی که از تز فوق لیسانس خود داشتم، خیالات بزرگتری در سرم خلجان می کرد: ادامه تحصیل دکتری در خارج از کشور. حاصل کار البته پربار و بیهوده بود، پذیرش در دانشگاه آمستردام و سرانجام ناکامی ام در گرفتن بورس و بی پولی دانشگاه های اروپایی و نیز اولویت بالاتر در گرفتن بورس و برای زنان و آفریقایی ها که حتماً اولویت با آنهاست. پروپوزالی برای دوره دکتری که به یک دو جین دانشگاه اروپایی هم فرستاده شد و احتمالاً در recycle bin دانشگاهی آنها نیز وجود ندارد. بگذریم و بماند. ایده اش به مهاجرین می پرداخت و نوعی پیش نگری محتوم که تروریسم امروزه آن کشورها حاصل کار همان مهاجرینی است که ۱۰ سال پیش هنوز بستن کمربند انتحاری و ترور، شغل و پیشه آنها نبود.

اما به هر حال ایده ام ساده و سرراست بود: مهاجرین برای بازسازی آن زندگی دل نشین گذشته اشان که در سرزمین بومی اشان به ویرانی رفته بود، به کشورهای مقصد مهاجرت می کردند و می کنند . سخن برسر این بود که به کمک ایده کارناوالی باختین، چگونه بتوان آیین های آنها را از نو دوباره در کشورهای مهاجرپذیر زنده کرد تا در پی اش همه دردهایشان را بازگو کنند و هم گوش شنوایی پیدا شود که به کمک خودشان، آن زندگی خوب گذشته اشان را از نو بازسازی کند. البته این پروپوزال جزئیات بیشتری دارد، ارجاعاتی به هابرماس و بنیامین نیز در کار بود و….

اما برای جلوگیری از طول و تفصیل درازتر، متن ۱۶۰۰ کلمه ای پروپوزال در پی آورده می شود. متن های ۳۹۰۰۰ کلمه ای و ۵۰۰ کلمه ای، یک پاره نوشتار مستقل روش شناختی و ضمیمه ای برگرفته از تجربه تز فوق لیسانسم در مجتمع تجاری گلستان نیز به پیوست تقدیم می گردد. در این میان متن ۱۶۰۰ کلمه ای توسط دو دست عزیز هلندی ام فرید دِکِ اونیک وسونیا زیمرمان ویرایش شد. آنها در آن سالها بسیار تلاش کردند تا متن انگلیسی دست و پا شکسته من را بفهمند و آن را به متن سلیس پیش رو تغییر دهند یا توصیه هایی داشته باشند که متن هایم را پیراسته تر کنم. از همین رو و برای اینکه مشخص شود که چگونه متنی با دقت و وسواس می بایست ویرایش شود و به گزاره های منطقی و روشن تبدیل شود، فایل همراه با comment های ویرایشی آنها نیز به پیوست آمده است:

IDENTIFYING AND SOLVING CULTURAL CONFLICTS &

DISCRIMINATION BY CREATING SPACE FOR DIALOGUE

۱-Summary

For finding information about the intensity of conflict or the closeness of interaction between two groups, I created dialogical space for these groups to solve their problems.

Now, at PhD level, I want to research additional methods and more detailed theoretical frameworks for effective dialogues and as result of it more ethical dialogical spaces that can lead to better conflict-management situations.

I want to answer the question how conflicts and discrimination between community members such as youth group or immigrants versus mainstream society can be reduced by these spaces. The topic of my PhD proposal is how to set up satisfactory dialogues for investigation of the causes of conflict in the lives of cultural minorities or subcultures and to help them solve their problems.

۲-The Urgency of the Project

Roots of socio-cultural conflicts are not only weakened solidarity, weakened intimacy and weakened cooperation, but also one-dimensional cultural identities leading to ethnocentrism and selfishness. This research wants to bring back solidarity and intimacy and to develop policies and new insights in the following two disciplines:

۲-۱-Socio-cultural Development

Unbalanced development can be illustrated by the absence of activities and cultural spaces which are needed for a balanced cultural development of the public sphere. According to a theory of Jurgen Habermas on the public sphere (1962) and communicative action (1981) communal discussion forms the basis of public affairs and problem solving by urban residents. In my view the result of communal discussion can work as dialogical spaces. Sometimes recreation areas and coffeehouses have a semi-function of public sphere but they don’t have the properties the public sphere should have according to the theory of Habermas.

The impersonal urban environment with its ordinary people engaging in full time work, media-related leisure and private life has been created without consideration of the need for a public sphere. In the absence of it lies a potential for socio-cultural conflict. It is my hypothesis that dialogue could help build a public sphere and from it new methods may be conceived for cultural planners and public organizations.

۲-۲-Applied human science

If academic disciplines were limited to theory, then experts would be supposed to only discuss and observe social phenomena of society. In that case, what is the link between the social scientist as a theoretical observer on the one hand and the intellectual pragmatist or critical activist in social movements on the other? What is the role of social science, its methodologies and theories and its enlightened spirit for bridging this gap between theory and action or between scientist and activist?

This thesis, may provide an answer to this question because disciplines of applied human science can be used to distill dialogues for practical use, by which scientist and activist jointly can help immigrants to remember and rethink the experiences in the life they left behind when they migrated from their motherland to the selfish environment of the city.

۳-Theoretical Framework

I assume that memories of close relationships may be of great importance for reduction of hostility and conflict. For clarification, I will use some theoretical concepts for the identification of current and past conflicts.

Everyday life provides a framework for understanding how discrimination and conflict originate. For this framework, Walter Benjamin (1939) formulated the concept of ‘Erlebnis’ or ephemeral shock.[1] In everyday life, such shock may occur when someone suddenly realizes a decline of socio-cultural values, for instance when a person is suddenly confronted with recurring problems such as divorce, oppression, fraud, or aggression.

So, Shock may remind more protective situations of the poor people in the past when tradition provided them with economic and affectionate protection of their family members and others or middle class groups may be reminded of the better social security, social welfare and freedom of speech they were used to.

Ensuing reactions may be framed in three different categories:[2]

۱) Indifference and denial of the better past life;

۲) Avoidance of talking, showing regret and proposing measures to counteract discrimination and inequality;

۳) ­Joking, irony and ridicule of the past and present situations.

To these three types of reactions, which Habermas (1976) called systematically distorted communications[3], I formulate three opposites or antitheses.

۱) Attentiveness;

۲) Wanting the others to behave responsibly;

۳) Seriousness, trying to understand the other

These theoretical antitheses are based on the assumption that immigrants will rethink their memories after the shock brought about by dialogue.

۴-Methodology

During dialogues I motivate the individual participants to protest or agree with the idea of restoring the past life which was better according to some people of their community. Subsequently, their problematic present situations as well as their better life in the past are discussed. This may motivate them to consider how that life could be restored in terms of the three antitheses.

In addition, the participants in accordance with their cultural life-styles are motivated to openly express feelings of shame or guilt for having neglected their responsibilities[4], having abandoned their rights [5] or having ridiculed the past and present situations of their life.[6] After that they are motivated to rethink, evaluate why and how these came about and moreover defend, deny or even confirm possible mistakes they have made.

The participants now discuss the better life of the past, and emphasize, exaggerate and revaluate their experiences of the past before migration when they still lived with their families in their old home communities under more respectable circumstances. By such a discussion formerly distorted communications may be able to make way for their antitheses by way of speech acts.[7]

So it is possible that the immigrants somewhat reluctantly accept the merits of their former past life. This acceptance is a corner stone for building their immigrant identity and a basic source for reducing conflict between immigrants and other groups of the society. This is because they can identify themselves by their common history and consolidate their solidarity as a protection against the alienating circumstances of the day.

۵-Limits of the Theoretical Framework and How to Transcend them

The use of the theoretical antitheses has its limits: they are useful tools to motivate the participants in dialogues to accept – reluctantly – the merits of their life in the past. But there is no guarantee that the probably renewed identities achieved by these dialogues will lead to reduction of conflict in the future.

Despite these dialogues, participants may return to their old routines with their discriminative beliefs and the same old problems. For real change the participants should strengthen their renewed identities in practice through new real life experiences. In bridging the gap between theory and action I want to shed light on my role as mediator between applied science and social activism. So, after the first step of – probably reluctant – acceptance that their past life was better practical suggestions can be presented as a second step. These suggestions should be tried and monitored in order to answer the question of this research: how to reduce conflict and discrimination among members of a community, for instance an immigrant community?

The practical suggestions presented below will form a platform for dialogue (dialogical space) which the researcher can use in order to test the quality of solidarity and intimacy within the (immigrant) community:

۱-Small scale home businesses for cultural products of their own culture;

۲-New socio-cultural networks for secondary socialization of families and their youth through the dialogical space that mentioned above;

۳-Socio-cultural care by bringing about contacts between neighborhood residents of immigrant colonies;

۴-Cultural exchange based on the concept of cultural diversity.

– Analyzing which combination of participants (e.g. women immigrants) is best able to reach unanimity on their problems;

– Write up findings.

۶-Reference

Highmore, Ben (2002), Everyday Life and Cultural Theory, London & New York: Routledge.

Pusey, Michael (1987), Jurgen Habermas, New York: Ellis Horwood Limited and Tavistock Publications Limited.

Todorov, Tzvetan (1984), Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle, Translated by Wlad Godzich, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

۱- Highmore

۲-With help from three linguistic terms of Bakhtin (1922-24):

i)’I-for-myself’,

ii)’I-for-the-other’, and

iii)’other-for-me’ (Todorov, 1984)

۳-Pusey (1987)

۴-Distorted thesis no.1

۵-Distorted thesis no.2

۶-Distorted thesis no.3

۷-These antitheses are renamed “speech acts” because of the close similarity with the concept of speech act that was first introduced by Austin & Searle in ordinary language philosophy especially in How to Do Things with Words by Austin (1975) and Speech Acts by Searle (1969).ore (­۲۰۰۲)

منبع عکس: http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/02/25/will-immigrants-built-america-redeem