World Forum on Democracy

Mahnaz Afkhami

CULTURE, POWER, AND CLOSED SOCIETIES

Let me premise my remarks by stating a few basic assumptions about the topic of our panel. A closed society is a society in which individuals are not allowed a reasonably free and open individual space because of the existing structure of values and/or existing structure of power. In modem closed societies a significant number of individuals wish to express themselves in ways that are different from the established or ordained norms, but are denied the right to express themselves by the authority of the patriarchal order or the authority of the state. The basic moral question in these societies is not whether a particular type of behavior or a given set of opinions is superior, true, or redemptive. Rather, the fundamental moral question revolves around freedom's scope - or, stated differently, why should some individuals have the right to impose their will on others?

Traditional societies tend to be closed because culture in these societies almost invariably privileges law while it curtails rights. In the traditional society all individual rights are derived from preexisting law, mostly divine law, and are subservient to it. In an important sense, modernizing is to move from "law" to "right," that is, from a condition in which individual position and privileges are derived from community and tradition to a condition where individual men and women have rights because they are human beings. Though it is true that most third world countries, including Muslim societies, received this notion of rights through contact with the west, it is not true that the idea of individual right is a western fabrication or a peculiarly western concept. The evolution of the idea of individual human rights, i.e., universal rights, is geared to human nature and emerges as soon as individual human beings begin to question the facts of their physical and social environments critically. Conversely, whereas it is true that each society evolves within a cultural frame that defines the context of its development, it is also true that in all societies and cultures development involves changes in individual social consciousness and personal awareness. Moreover, societies evolve in interaction with each other, and thus values, norms, and mores, let alone new facts and theories that emerge from scientific discovery, move across societies and cultures, bringing them closer in their understandings of the world. Regardless of culture, development necessarily points to demands for individual space, human freedom, and equal rights.

There is, however, power, substance, and reality to culture. The contemporary history of third world women, particularly women in Muslim societies, testifies to the power of traditional culture as ideology and organization, and the impunity with which it confines women's space, limits their movement, kills them in the name of honor, and prevents them from gaining the knowledge and power they need to defend themselves. Their predicament becomes frightening when the state undertakes to solidify its power by recourse to arcane religion or traditional culture.

At the beginning of the 21st century we are at the threshold of a new world of human possibilities that is yet to be structured and enhanced. More than half of the population of the world lives under democratic forms of government. The world community has accepted that without people's participation in the choices that determine their destiny sustainable development and human security are impossible to achieve. The United Nations, in four world conferences on women, has accepted women's claims to rights and recognized that all issues are women's issues. Technology has made it possible to communicate, build consensus, mobilize for change, and participate in the Global dialogue with unprecedented speed and efficiency. Telecenters can bring training and information to the remote villages of the Global South, thereby making possible a context for international discourse where poor, insulated, and helpless people may conceivably participate. For the first time in history we are able to reach each other across physical, political, and cultural boundaries that seemed insurmountable only a few years ago.

We have gained much in our quest for democracy and open society. Still, not only do we have a long way to go, we must take care that we do not opt for the wrong way to go. We face deep chasms that separate the rich from the poor, the powerful from the weak, and the technologically advanced from the technologically illiterate. Access to knowledge and information is limited to the rich and the powerful nations. Of some 300 million Internet users, over 110 million are in the US. The Arab world, which has a population numerically comparable to the US, only 2 million have access to the Internet and of those merely 4 percent are women. Everywhere in the world, the most noticeable gap is that which separates men from women. Even in the established democracies a glaring discrepancy exists between men and women's level of participation in social and political decision making. Women hold less than 11% of the seats in the world's parliaments. Only 7% of the cabinet members in the world are women. Of the world's 1.3 billion poor and nearly one billion illiterate, 70% are women. The world I come from, the world of Muslim majority societies, has the lowest record of democratization and pluralism. Of the five countries of the world where women still have not gained the franchise, all five are in Muslim majority countries. It would be a great mistake not to mind the problems and obstacles that lie before us.

What means can we employ toward the opening of closed societies? Obviously, we need to find the ways and means of empowering the people in these societies. To do so, we need to communicate with the people, social leaders, and governments. The modem means of global communication--radio, television, CD ROM, and particularly the Internet--have ushered phenomenal possibilities for establishing dialogue, not among nations only, but among groups and individuals in and across different societies. In principle, everyone can get in touch with everyone. This possibility, simply because it exists, creates a force in favor of openness. The question is how can it be made to materialize over the barriers created by politics, economics, and culture.

To succeed in opening up close societies we need to pay attention not only to the characteristics of the peoples of the global south, where most of the closed societies are, but also tto the possibilities and limits that mark the modern technologically advanced world. We have enough evidence across the globe to know that in many of these cases we cannot depend on bilateral solutions, essentially because for most countries, including rich donor countries, political realism defined as national economic and political interest supercedes upholding moral standards or promoting human rights. The international community and the NGOs, particularly NGOs in the developed countries, will have to join together to bring political pressure on such organizations
as the World Bank and IMF as well as on rich and powerful western governments to integrate human rights and political democracy in their economic and diplomatic policy decisions. We need to mobilize the international community--the UN system, international economic organizations, regional cooperative systems, NGOs, and others--to bring political, economic, and cultural pressure in the name of human rights, sustainable development, or international peace to force or cajole closed societies to open up their systems.

From a cultural viewpoint also it is important for the international governmental and nongovernmental agencies to seek common value and linguistic grounds for establishing dialogue and communication between the developed and developing world. It is, of course, difficult to communicate inter-culturally without establishing some common ground of understanding. However, it is not too difficult to establish this common ground because people everywhere, particularly women, wish to have choices and to participate in decisions that affect their lives. Beyond that, common grounds may be established because so much is shared among cultures due to human nature, and commonality of human achievement in science, philosophy, and the arts. Moreover, there exist in every developing country critical masses of women in various fields of endeavor relating to human rights, sustainable development, family relations, children's needs, and the like, that can participate as significant and constructive contributors to a global network of dialogue on leadership, rights, empowerment, and democracy. Indeed, they are ideally suited to the task of providing cultural mediation in the communication process. But we must bear in mind that because technology, power, and money reside primarily in the west, the responsibility for establishing conditions favorable to the development of such networks also lies primarily in the West. On the other hand, unless western individuals and institutions agree that western security as well as long term economic and political well-being depend largely on a world in which people everywhere are free and have an opportunity to grow, it would be difficult to sustain reciprocity and justice in the future global communication systems.

Modern information technology, then, will help us communicate more easily and efficiently across the world. The evolution of the Internet in particular has provided us with the means of establishing an equitable and free multi-path communication system among ourselves and with others. But, unless the leaders and the people in the west, who are politically free to choose and who have access to technology and money, take practical steps to integrate promoting openness with reciprocity and inclusion, technological breakthrough may exacerbate conflict and tension between the haves and the have-nots, and thus furnish those leaders who use the threat of western cultural hegemony in order to curtail individual freedom with further ammunition to prop their power.

Let me end by stating that what we are doing here today is a step in the right direction. We do possess the means and the method to bring together those who know technology and those who know culture. We can devise a number of scenarios for promoting democracy not simply in terms of the state-society relations, but also, and perhaps more importantly, in the area of opening up the individuals' space and assuring individual's human rights. The second point is particularly germane to the project we have ahead of us because of the plight of women and children in so many societies across the globe. We will achieve open societies that allow human security and human dignity for everyone only if we integrate concepts of individual freedom and empowerment, gender equity, and social justice with the concept of global technological and economic development.