Does Multiculturalism Spread Culture?R S Musgrove. Published May 2005 Summary.One of the central claims of multiculturalism is that it spreads culture. This is an odd claim in view of the numerous other ways of spreading or instilling culture, and the sheer amount of time spent on them: schools, universities, books, television, newspapers, the internet, radio, foreign holidays and so on. Advocates of multiculturalism seem to deal with the latter numerous methods of cultural transfer by ignorning them, and hoping no one notices the oversight. This study is an attempt to remedy this failure, by measuring in a very rough way, the relative importance of the two methods of cultural transfer: multiculturalism and the rest. This is done here first by some empirical research. This consists of taking two UK cities with very different Muslim populations, to see how this influences local white Anglo-Saxons' knowledge of the date of birth of Muhammad. Bradford is 16% Muslim and Carlisle 0.2% Muslim. If multiculturalism is a significant vehicle for cultural transfer, then "white Anglo-Saxons" in Bradford should know significantly more about Islam than those in Carlisle. It seems they don't. At least it seems that Anglo-Saxon's knowledge of Muhammad's date of birth in the two cities is much the same. However it cannot be claimed from the sample sizes here (around 50 in each city ) that levels of knowledge are exactly the same or even within 10% of each other. On the other hand it can be claimed that probably a good two thirds (and possibly 99%) of Anglo-Saxon's knowledge of Islam in Bradford comes from TV, newspapers, books etc rather than from multiculturalism. Second, an attempt is made below to estimate the amount of time people spend on the above two methods of cultural intake (amongst other things by asking residents of Carlisle and Bradford how much time they spent talking to ethnic minorities about the latter's culture). The amount of time spent on serious cultural acquisition from books, TV, school, etc greatly exceeds the time talking to ethnic minorities. This, no doubt, helps explain why Carlisle residents know about as much about Islam as Bradford residents. This study does not claim to be up to the highest standards of social science ( or anywhere near such standards ). It is a quick, low budget piece of work. Also the interviews were carried out by the author, who is very skeptical of the benefits of multiculturalism. Obviously this might have influenced interviewees' answers. Hopefully this study will induce others to do some better work along the same lines. Or, just as likely, it will transpire that someone else has done similar and better quality research, in which case the author will have egg on his face. A third possibility is that it will turn out the advocates of multiculturalism have expended ten years and ten billion words lauding the fact that multiculturalism spreads culture without actually bothering to find out to what extent it does. Contents Definition of multiculturalism APPENDIX FILE: To access, Click here (It's in Microsoft Word) Minutes per week of cultural TV viewing. Definition of multiculturalism The word multiculturalism is used here in the sense given in most UK English dictionaries, which in turn is much the same as the every-day usage of the word in the UK. That is the word is used to refer to the mixing of people of different nationalities or races. This is in contrast to the other main use of the word (common in North America): this is the idea that different cultures should be afforded equal respect. Background and reasons for the research.Ascertaining the central merit claimed for multiculturalism is not the easiest task, since a large variety of merits are claimed for it, some of them patent nonsense. But probably the main merit claimed is that multiculturalism "enriches" a so called monocultural society. Type the words multiculturalism and enrich into a search engine and the latter finds thousands of relevant sites. "Enrich" is a worthy sounding word which in this context presumably means different racial or national groups learn from each other. Or as the Guardian leader of 28th Jan 2005 puts it, different ethnic groups should have "meaningful interchanges". And the above is essentially the merit claimed for multiculturalism by one of the few recent full length books advocating multiculturalism ( Parekh (2000). ( Parekh is Professor of Politics at Hull University in the UK and chairman of the Commission on Racial Equality ). Parekh's definition of multiculturalism (p. 3 & 4) is much the same as the above dictionary definition, that is, he refers to the mixing of people of different cultural backgrounds, examples being, newly arrived immigrants, Gypsies, Jews, the Amish, Basques, Catalans, Scots, and French Canadians. Parekh's central claim is that different countries or cultures each have their own strengths, thus mixing the peoples of these different cultures enables them to learn from each other (e.g. see p. 167 and concluding chapter). Parekh refers to multiculturalism's ability to expand our "categories of thought", to bring us "new forms of human fulfillment" and to promote the "good life". Thus the exchange of ideas (including religious ones) is one of the more important alleged merits in multiculturalism, hence his aspect of multiculturalism warrants testing. Indeed, in view of the fact that the UK has taken far more immigrants than are necessary for staffing the industries where immigrants have had a large impact (cuisine and foreign languages etc), the advocates of multiculturalism clearly have to find some justification for immigration other than the cooking and language skills of immigrants. The claim that multiculturalism is an important vehicle for the exchange of ideas is an odd one in view of the numerous and arguably more efficient ways of transferring ideas or culture: schools, universities, books, television, radio, newspapers and so on. Indeed Parekh "deals" with the latter methods of cultural transfer by the simple expedient of virtually ignoring them. There is no mention of them in the crucial paragraphs (p.167 onwards) where he sets out his claims as to the central merits of multiculturalism. Nor are they mentioned in the conclusion / summary chapter at the end. Parekh does briefly mention the written word on p.168, but he gives the impression this form of communication is only to enable "creative writers" to communicate with each other. Apparantly "ordinary men and women" communicate mainly via direct contact with each other. The fact that ordinary men and women might be able to read or turn on televisions or radios does not get a mention. Even more bizzarre, on page 167, having set out the central merit in multiculturalism as he sees it, the first example he gives of its merits is that awareness of primitive or Borneo "cave-man" societies gives us some sort of slant or angle on our own society. Of course it does, but our awareness of such societies is no thanks to multiculturalism: there are no "primitive Borneo cave-men" anywhere in the UK. Our awareness of such societies comes from the other above mentioned methods of cultural transfer: television, books and so on. To summarise, multiculturalism's claim to be an effective vehicle for the transfer of culture or ideas warrants testing or comparing with other methods of cultural transfer: books, TV, etc. The need for this testing is warranted even more by the failure one of multiculturalism's leading lights, Parekh, to give any significant credit to books, TV etc and his failure, mentioned in the above paragraph, to distinguish properly between the two methods of cultural transfer.
The Carlisle / Bradford studyAccording to the 2001 census Carlisle is 99% white and Bradford is 78% white. As to religious affiliation, Carlisle is 0.23% Muslim, 0.14% Buddhist with 7.7% not giving their religion. Bradford is 16% Muslim, 0.11% Buddhist with 8% not giving their religion. I.e. Bradford has 70 times as many Muslims per thousand of the population as Carlisle. Carlisle is geographically relatively isolated: it is a good hour's drive to the nearest cities with significant ethnic minority populations, Newcastle and Preston. And even the latter two's Muslim population is nowhere near Bradford's. This means the contact that Carlisle residents have with ethnic minorities, Muslims in particular, will be far lower than is the case for Bradford. The proportion of the population in Bradford with degree level qualifications is slightly higher than in Carlisle (4% higher), while school results are a bit worse in Bradford. Around 50 people in each city were asked various questions ( 49 in Bradford and 52 in Carlisle to be exact). The first question was thus. 1. Are you currently: learning another language or reading a book about another country or reading anything historical? The reason for this question is that there does not seem to be any existing and easily available research that answers the above question. ( To be more exact, the research probably does exists, but the author cannot find it). Figures are available on the time people spend studying at schools and universities. Thus where interviewees were of university age, and / or were spending significant amounts of time per week reading / studying they were asked to confirm that this was not part of any college or university course. Plus there is research (mentioned below) on the total time per week that people spend reading books, but this does not answer the above question. Of the hundred people interviewed, two were learning another language, and sixteen claimed to be reading something about other countries, cultures, or history. Examples of the material being read included The Illiad and related literature, a book on Portugal, an historical novel, one of Micheal Palin's travel books, and books on Egypt. The reason for including history in the question is thus. Where people read about the history of other countries, they are studying a culture different from their own. Even if they study the history of their own country, the culture of any country more than a century or even half a century ago is substantially different from today. And, one of the central merits of learning about other cultures is that it gives insights into one's own 21st century culture, thus studying history is about as beneficial as studying other present day cultures. 2. Those who answered "yes" to question No 1 were asked how much time they spent on the above reading / study. 3. The third question was: did you spend any time in the last week talking to a member of another ethnic group about their culture? For example did you talk to a Muslim about their religion, or a Chinese person about Chinese cooking ? Those that answered "yes" were asked how much time they spent in the above discussion. In Carlisle, after this question had been asked twenty times, with no positive response, the question was not asked again. Bradford, with about a hundred times as many Muslims per thousand of the population, is clearly a different kettle of fish, and the question was put to all interviewees in Bradford. The average time people claimed to spend in this way in Bradford was 15 minutes a week. There did not seem to be any obvious tendency for those who spent time taking to Muslims to know about Islam. Indeed more than one interviewee specifically said they avoided conversations about religion because of the sensitive nature of the subject. 4. People were asked their age. About 95% gave it. In the case of those that did not want to, their age was guessed. The reason for asking peoples' ages was to ensure that the age profile of respondents in both cities was similar. In the event this worked out at a roughly similar number of people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s in both cities. 5. People were asked to make a guess, as near as they could, at the date of birth of Muhammad and Buddha. Roughly a half did not want to even make a guess. The absence of any figure in the Muhammad and Buddha columns in "raw data" section means no guess was attempted (click on the link above for access to the raw data). The reason for asking for the date of Buddha's birth is that it arguably gives some sort of angle on whether peoples' knowledge of the date of birth of religious leaders (Mohammad included) derives from local members of the relevant religion or from other sources: television, books, and so on. The Muslims to Buddhists ratio for the UK as a whole is around 10:1. The equivalent ratio for Bradford is about 100:1. If people are about as clued up (or clueless) on Buddha's date of birth as they are on Muhammad's, this makes it look as though the above 10:1 or 100:1 ratio is of limited influence. This in turn suggests people get their information on religious leaders from school / books / television and so on, rather than from local Muslims or Buddhists. People were given a score depending on how near they were to getting the dates of birth right. Those out by a thousand years or more got nothing. Exactly the right answer would have scored a thousand. And one point was knocked off for each year out. These scores appear in the "Muhammad points" and "Buddha points" columns in the "raw data" section (see "Click here" above ). There is general agreement amongst scholars on Muhammad's date of birth, but not Buddha's. There seem to be two popular dates in the case of Buddha, about twenty years apart. A date half way between these two was assumed to be the right one. Obviously the above system for judging peoples' knowledge of Islam and Buddhism by just one question, the date of birth of the founder of each religion, is questionable. But in any exam, people are judged on their knowledge of the subject by questions on a very small portion of the subject. An attempt was made to ensure that the socio-economic profile of interviewees in both cities was similar by the following method. About ten people living in small, old terraced houses were interviewed in each city. About twenty people living in owner occupied semi-detatched houses were interviewed in both cities. About ten in detatched houses were chosen. Large, smart, obviously upper middle class semis and terraced houses were counted as detatched. About ten small shop employees or proprietors were chosen. The latter were asked the council tax band their houses and this turned out to be a reasonable assortment of houses from A to E. In addition to shop owners or employees, one other "at work" individual was interviewed in each city: a bus driver waiting to get on his bus and a manual worker mending a road during his lunch break. The reason for the above "ten:twenty:ten" ratio is that the ratio of terraced houses to semis to detatched houses in the UK is about 1:2:1. The occupants of detatched houses were not obviously more knowledgeable about Islam or Buddhism than those in terraced houses, thus getting the "1:2:1" ratio exactly right is probably not important. The areas from which interviewees where chosen in Bradford were not in the Muslim concentrations, nor in the very outer fringes of Bradford, which are mainly white. There are two Muslim concentrations in Bradford local authority: the centre of Bradford city and the centre of Keighley, north west of Bradford city. Keighley is within the Bradford local authority. Interviewees were "chosen" by walking along streets knocking on front doors or "accosting" people in their gardens. In Bradford, the areas chosen for this exercise were mainly half way between the above two Muslim concentrations, plus a few from other areas including Keighley. Total scoresCarlisle residents got slightly more "Muhammad points" than Bradford residents (see appendix file). Though the sample sizes are much too small to say that Carlisle residents really know more about Islam than Bradford residents. A better way to interpret the results might be as follows. The knowledge that people have about a religion in the absence of any significant number of adherents to the religion in their city is obtained by adding the Buddha points for Carlisle to Buddha points for Bradford to to Carlisle's Muhammad points and dividing by three. The above points respectively are: 3610 + 6420 + 8270 = 18,300 / 3 = 6100. This figure, 6100, is not quite as good as Bradford's Muhammad points, 7180. In as far as this has any statistical significance (and it does not have a huge amount) this might be taken to show the influence of Bradford Muslims on local Anglo-Saxons. Or it could be the result of the large amount of material in the media on Islam as a result of Septermber 11, other Muslim "spectaculars", or the recent Iraq war. An alternative way to look at the results is to count just those who got Muhammad's date of birth right to within 500 years. The result is seven for both Carlisle and Bradford. Time spent on various forms of cultural intake or acquisition.As pointed out above, people absorb culture from a variety of sources: newspapers, television, books, foreign holidays and so on. The rest of this paper is an attempt to quantify the time spent on these various activities, and compare this to the time spent absorbing culture from members of other ethnic groups in their locality. This quantification exercise is subject to wide margins of error: for example how much television consists of a serious look at other cultures? How much of the time that people spend on foreign holidays consists on absorbing foreign culture? These questions are impossible to answer with any accuracy. Nevertheless, making an attempt to answer the above question is better than making no attempt at all, or worse still, pretending, when convenient, that books, televison etc do not exist. Even though the quantification exercise is crude, it may throw some light on the matter. For example if it seems that people spend a thousand times as much time on quality books, TV etc as they do learning about other cultures direct from members of ethnic minorities, this puts a big question mark over multiculturalism. As it turns out, the ratio according to the calculations below is about eight to one. If this is anywhere near right, it helps explain why Carlisle residents know about as much about Islam as Bradford residents. But, to repeat, this is a long way from proving that people get eight times as much culture from books, TV etc than they do from ethnic minorities. Apart from the crude amount of time people spend on different forms of cultural acquisition, there is also the question as to how efficient each form is. The normal procedure when attempting cultural acquisition of a serious quality and quantity is to use books, lectures, TV programs produced by people who are experts on the subject. In contrast, chatting to the nearest available member of the relevant ethnic minority is likely to be inefficient. And even if the relevant ethnic minority member is well qualified in the subect it is still debatable as to what advantage there is chatting to them as compared to consulting books, decent newspaper articles, etc. For example UK schools make no special effort to get French nationals to teach French in UK schools. It is thus arguable that the above eight to one ratio greatly underestimates the amount of culture acquired via books, TV etc relative to the amount acquired to multicultural way. Certainly this would help explain the fact that Carlisle residents are about as clued up about Islam as Bradford residents, despite the extremely small amount of material in British TV programs, newspapers etc on Arab history. At a wild guess Arab history makes up no more than one percent of quality TV output or quality articles in newspapers. (There were no quality programs on Arab history (post birth of Muhammad) that the author could find in the first 4 to 5 months of 2005 on the main five terrestrial TV channels.) Time people spend learning other languages, reading about other countries or history.The result of the first above question gave a result for the average time per week spent reading and studying in Carlisle and Bradford of 54 minutes a week. This 54 minute figure seems to clash with some other research which claims people spend less than half an hour a week reading books. ( see http://www.presspack.com/artman/publish/printer_3.shtml ). Of course there are complicating factors here, for example not all the time spent learning a language involves using a book: there are audio tapes, video tapes and classes at local colleges (which one interviewee was attending). Nevertheless the 54 minute a week figure still seems out of line with the "under half an hour" figure. For example since the majority of the literature in the "under half hour figure" is presumably trash literature, and since the above 54 minute a week figure supposedly refers to quality literature, the 54 minute a week figure could be a big overestimate. Also the people interviewed in each city were probably biased towards the more cultured section of the population, since no one in the obviously run down council estates was interviewed. The above 54 minute figure will thus be halved: 27 minutes per week. Time spent by school children studying other cultures.The total number of hours children spend studying per year is 1045 according to "The National Debate on Education" (Scottish Ministry of Education (2002) p.9). According to Harrison the figure is 1200 hours. Let us take the average: 1120. The table below shows the number of students sitting various GCSEs connected to a greater or lesser extent with non-UK cultures. The number is expressed as a percentage of the total number of students sitting all GCSEs. The source is Joint Council for Qualifications, National Provisional Results - 2004. (www.jcgq.org.uk/Exam_Result_data/GCSE_stats_2004.pdf ). Where 0.5 appears after the subject, the figure in the source document has been halved because students may be studying something other than another culture or aspects of another culture. For example the percentage doing Welsh has been halved on the assumption (for which the author has no evidence) that about half the relevent students are in Wales and are thus studying their own culture, not a foreign one. Hence the "0.5" after "Welsh and Welsh literature" below. Similarly the figure for religious studies in the source document has been halved on the grounds that about half of religious studies consists of Christianity which is part of UK culture (though it could be argued, of course, that it is Middle East culture).
0.3 Classical subjects 14.55 Total Thus the total time children spend per year studying other cultures is 0.1455 x 1120 = 163 hours a year, which works out at 188 minutes a week. Assuming people spend one sixth of their life in school, the contribution that schools make over the average person's lifetime intake of culture is 188 / 6 = 31 minutes a week. Newspapers.The average amount of time people spend reading newspapers in the UK is 2 hours a week, i.e. 120 minutes a week. (Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2009746.stm ). This clashes with another source (http://www.presspack.com/artman/publish/printer_3.shtml ) which puts the figure at half an hour a week. Let us take a rough average: one hour. Foreign news takes about 10% of newspapers. Assuming the population spends as much time per page on foreign news as it does on domestic news, sport, financial pages, foreign news intake comes to 6 minutes per week. Radio.People spend 21.5 hours a week listening to the radio according to the Radio Joint Audience Research Limited's web site (Dec 2004). At least half the composers on both classical and pop stations are non UK, thus it could be argued that people spend at least 10 hours a week (600 minutes a week) absorbing "foreign" culture via the radio. This is such a large item, that it will not be lumped in with the final total, but is itemised separately below. Television.The calculations for television are in the appendix file, and the time people spend on serious or cultured TV watching per week works out at: 20 minutes per week for serious cultural programs and 32 minutes a week for the foreign news content of two terrestrial TV news programs. Foreign holidays.Let us assume everyone goes on one one week foreign holiday a year and that they spend a tenth of each 16 hour day absorbing foreign culture. Time spent absorbing foreign culture is: l6 x 0.l x 7 (days per week) x 60 (minutes per hour) / 52 (weeks per year) = 13 minutes per week. University students.A calculation has been done in the appendix file as to the time students spend studying other cultures. This cultural intake is obviously enjoyed by students and not by the rest of the population, thus averaging this time over the population at large is problematic. On the other hand the intake of foreign culture by students cannot be ignored altogether. The total time students spend taking in information about other cultures and averaged over the population as a whole comes to 4 minutes a week. Total time exposed to foreign culture other than via multiculturalism.This is a summary of the above sections which attempt to estimate the time people spend exposed to or taking in foreign culture in minutes per week. Mins.
27 Reading books, studying other languages 128 Total Plus there is the above mentioned 600 minutes a week minimum spent listening to foreign composers' music on the radio. Plus there is a fair amount of non musical serious material on Radios 3 and 4 about other cultures. Another source of information on other cultures not included is the internet. Conclusion.The above 128 minute per person per week figure for the amount of time exposed to foreign culture makes the 15 minute per week figure that Bradford residents spend talking to ethnic minorities about the latter's culture look relatively unimportant. Thus it is not desperately surprising if white Anglo-Saxon residents of Carlisle know about as much about Islam as those in Bradford. The number of people interviewed in each city ( around 50 ) is not nearly enough to support the claim that Muslims in Bradford have no influence on local Anglo-Saxons' knowledge of Islam. If the reality is that the 16% Muslim population of Bradford boosts local Anglo-Saxon's knowledge of Islam by say 10%, that is perfectly consistent with the findings of this study. However if we take into account that residents of Bradford and Carlisle know about as much about Buddhism as Islam despite the near total absence of Buddhists, it looks very much as though the knowledge is acquired largely from books, television, newspapers and so on, rather than from local ethnic minorities. That is, it is very unlikely from these results that Bradford Muslims double local Anglo-Saxons' knowledge of Islam. Even if it can be established that multiculturalism is an effective vehicle for cultural transfer, the multiculturalist philosophy still faces large hurdles as follows. First, absorbing items of foreign culture often just results in abandonning a similar number of items of home grown culture. How much is gained in the process ? For example, the English language is "enriched" (to use the fashionable word) by numerous additional words every year, yet the number of words used by the average UK citizen remains constant. Second, if a UK city is to be genuinely multicultural, it is no use its population just being made up partially of Muslims. It should also have Buddhists, Sikhs, Germans, French, Russians, Chinese, Japanese, Phillipinoes, Eskimoes: the list is a long one. Which means no one group can make up a large proportion of the population. And if the 16% Muslim population of Bradford does not have much of an influence, what influence will a group with say 2% of the population have? Not much. Third, given that the average UK citizen has not got to grips with more than a fraction of one percent of their own national culture, it is very hard to see why they are any more "enriched" by looking at other national cultures, rather than absorbing more of their own national culture. Attempting to concentrate on foreign culture because it is politically correct is a nonsense, and concentrating on UK culture because it is patriotic is equally a nonsense. In practice people should and will indulge in whatever grabs them or whatever interests them regardless of the country of origin. Fourth, the assumption that when cultures are mixed, they adopt each other's best aspects is naive. They may adopt each other's worst aspects. Traditional Muslims are horrified at the way their children pick up some of the less desirable aspects of Western culture. References.Harrison, Rosemary, www.essex.ac.uk/guest/ auanetherlands/Report/chapter3.pdf Ch 3, p.20. Parekh, Bikhu, (2000), Rethinking Multiculturalism, Palgrave Contact author: ralph at fram dot ndo dot co dot uk |