Globalisation, cultural identity and conflict: Cross-cultural communication and media’s challenge in Asia

Most countries of South and South East Asia are culturally pluralistic societies, yet with rich cultural heritages/histories and traditions. Many communities have strong cultural identities that are linked to the identities of countries. For example, Sinhalese of Sri Lanka have a proud cultural heritage that is linked to the identity of the Sri Lankan state; while the Malays of Malaysia sees themselves as the "bumiputras" (sons of the soil) with a distinct Muslim cultural identity; and the Indonesians see a similar bond with the Malay-Muslim cultural tradition and the identity of the state.

In all these states the majority communities feel threatened by the advent of globalization. They feel their cultures are being overwhelmed by the more powerful forces of global media influences with its Western Judeo-Christian bias. In addition, funding criteria adopted by international donor agencies where media projects for peace-building usually focus on minority communities with a perspective that they are the victimized and the deprived, sometimes creates more resentments rather than contributing to solving the problem.

This workshop will look at specific issues where the majority cultural communities in these countries may be feeling disadvantaged, and how peace-building programmes vis-à-vis the minority communities could take this into consideration. In other words, should the majority cultural communities in Asia, who feel threatened and overwhelmed by the global media forces, be empowered by peace-building programmes via the media, rather than seeing them as the problem? Also by empowering them, how could it also lead to ultimately building better cross-cultural communications and absorbing the minority communities, into the communication links thus created.

While examples of some donor-funded media projects which may have gone wrong, would be examined and discussed. The workshop will also come up with certain ideas to help address these problems with ample time for discussion and even drafting some guidelines for future projects.

Moderator: Dr Kalinga Seneviratne, Head of Research, AMIC (Singapore)

Impressions