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Facts and problems of society / History & Politics
Intercultural mediation and the policy of the European Union
“Euro-Mediterranean partnership has two clear components: “political and security” and “economic and financial”. But “partnership in the social, cultural and human fields” is far more ambiguous.
Te concept of culture is problematic everywhere: in Lebanon, that remained obsessed by its “vocation” as trading place between cultures and ended victim of their confrontation; but also in Europe (Turkey, immigration, terrorism, extremism, etc.).
We all gain in not looking at culture as a stable and irreducible given, specific to a community but rather as something that always looks as “already here” but that evolves and has vague boundaries, that only exits through its actualisation in behaviours and discourses, in the use of violence and in the functioning of institutions.
Cultural confrontations are political confrontations that have gone into a stage of block. There is need for courage to address problems where they arise and to avoid their sliding, because of impotence, towards identity clenching.
