The question of identity should not have a single answer. This statement by a Danish friend, a seventy-year-old professor of cultural linguistics living in Saudi Arabia for 30 years, triggered questions and reflections in my mind. While we were engaging in a serious discussion about identity, she assertively said that “the path is not to go down to the root, we are not plants.” Such a view means that our destinies as humans are not ‘rooted’ in one spot or place.
This deep insight into the nature of human beings has helped her live happily and openly with a balanced integration into Saudi culture. It prompted her to try to establish a Saudi-Danish non-profit friendship association, seeking to bridge the relationship between the two cultures. If it were up to her, she would bring in the entire world into this association based on the principle of the necessity of difference, while acknowledging its impossibility without mutual and common recognition.
Japanese writer Nobuaki Notohara mentions in his book, Arabs: A Japanese Perspective, that the Arab world is preoccupied with the idea of uniformity, so people try to have similar clothes, homes, and opinions. Under these circumstances, the individual's independence, privacy, and difference from others all dissolve.
Despite the validity of this hypothesis that coincided with the publication of the book in 2003, things seem different in our time. We no longer have to cross geographical boundaries to meet, influence, or be influenced by others. Before, immigration was the only way to participate in cultural communication, but nowadays we can be introduced to new cultures and interact with them while inside our offices or even in our private homes.
We are living in a time when the existence of ‘the other’ has become inevitable and the “immigration era”, as psychologists and sociologists used to call it, has turned into the “globalisation era”. Thanks to the latter, we no longer need to travel long miles to meet others as the internet has presented them to us on a golden plate.
In fact, there is no way to avoid interaction with others, be it individuals or groups, as the Bulgarian-French philosopher, Tzvetan Todorov, sees that this relationship is not the result of personal interests, it rather precedes them. Todorov also makes the point that knowing ‘the other’ is not one of the ways to know the self; it is the only way. Even German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer, the philosopher of pessimism, also acknowledges the necessity of the existence of this ‘other’ because no existence is possible without the other.
The psychoanalytic school explains the lack of affirmation of the presence of ‘the other’ in terms of an inferiority complex. Denial and displacement clearly express the lack of recognition. Recognition, in turn, comes in two forms, either as a recognition that is based on conformity and an attempt to imitate the other or as a recognition of differentiation and difference. These are two successive stages and one cannot be reached without the other. First, we acknowledge the existence of the other, and then we feel our own unique selves.
Cultural psychologists allocated this dialectical relationship between the self and ‘the other’ to a special field of research: acculturation psychology, which is a branch of cross-cultural psychology. Having said this, it is not possible to create a state of recognition without a real acculturation experience — whether it happens through reading books written by others or moving to live in the crucible of this ‘other’ through immigration, asylum, work, or study.
It is natural then to say that acculturation based on acknowledging the other human being rather than denying and excluding him is the best way to boost psychological and societal health. It can only be achieved by posing these questions: How does an individual act when he changes his society and lives within a new culture far from his original culture? What are the effects of this change on his psychology? What are the identity strategies that he resorts to in order to integrate into his new society? Is he inclined more towards social integration or psychological identification with the host society? What are the subjective, objective, and contextual factors that contribute to the selection of these identity strategies?
Opening the doors for immigration is an option for Arab societies, including Saudi Arabia, that seek to increase their populations in order to become a more powerful economic power. However, there is a need to consider the lessons learned from previous experiences, including the American one.
Around 1788, when immigration to the United States was at its peak, the country was described as a “melting pot” whereby people from different cultures joined together to form a common society where unity prevailed over differences. However, when this concept of ‘melting pot’ is scrutinised, it seems that it is an American invention that wears the outer clothes of ‘democracy’ while it is actually and primarily intended to achieve a certain type of
domination that inevitably entrenches on the dignity of minorities and immigrants in America.
On the contrary, French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss points out that there is no culture without a specific identity that distinguishes it from others. An undistinguished culture might as well not exist. This means that any proper talk about culture is a recognition of cultural identities. Nevertheless, Lévi-Strauss does not ignore what he called the “common human base”, which is the essence of recognition of the other and the intent for a cultural integration that guarantees equality and the right to a dignified coexistence among all and for all.
