Neo-Ottomanism

Originally posted by malizai_ Originally posted by Yiannis Originally posted by malizai_ � Dubai for example would be modernization and not westernization. + cultures can not be imported or imposed. � � Bad example. I have spend some time in Dubai and it looks like they have copied everything (apart for religion, nominally) from the west. � They have clubs, prostitutes, alcohol, theme parks etc, everything copied from the West. � Managers are all Europeans or Americans (a few Iranians and Arabs) and the workforce is either from Pakistan or from India, usually Pakistani workers and Indian clerical staff. � One cannot find an Arab in the workforce! � Alcohol and prostitution is hardly a cultural barometer, its existence is pre-islamic and�cross-cultural. Alcohol has never been denied to non-moslem people anyway(AFAIK). A lot of muslims consume it privately and some publically when abroad. None will declare it permissable for muslims to drink, neither is prostitution legalised.�It has yet to become a career choice. � I agree Disney Land is not representative of American culture, but just becasuse you have returned from it does not mean the American culture and sub-cultures don't exist. Using latest building techniques is modernization, and a lot of�the constructions�reflect architectural glimpses of eastern traditions as well as practcial building practices. � The�great influx of foreign workers is not the population sample that should�be under observation, but the host population.�

I was watching Dubai on the travel channel. The archtects used some Arab designs, but for other buildings they looked to Australia and Germany because those buildings look gorgeous.

Haha, wow. I look like an ass. Better take a look at some modern geography books...

, don't worry, all the maps I have in my house still have east germany marked.

Some Orientalists have said that the Orient begins East of Sarajevo.

I'd say those orientalists will make a lot of people angry at such a comment. It seems to me like this is more of an "oriental empirializing" then anything else. Especially considering the vast majority of those east of Sarajevo, before entering Turkey, wish to be associated with Europe.

This is certainly true with the place I am from.

Then again, I also do not like this cultural border-making. There are such things as cultural borrowings and infusions; the Balkans has always been a land between cultures, but in the end it was always defined with the west.

Edited by Theodore Felix - 11-Mar-2007 at 19:24