In a homogenised world there is no imaginable group to identify with in a multicultural world there are too many groups among which

In a homogenised world there is no imaginable group to identify with; in a multicultural world, there are too many groups, among which yours might get lost. Ethnic conflicts over the last decade have reflected a desire to withdraw into more particular groups, driving out those who are different. Those who are made anxious by the threat they perceive in some of their neighbours are sometimes slow to recognise the shared roots that cross cultural divides. This need for group identification can lead to insularity and a retreat into bankrupt forms of nationalism. Which is why cultural pluralism within nations and cultural dialogue across nations is more urgent than ever before.All major geopolitical issues are, in the broader sense, cultural – from processes of regional assertion in the Balkans to the inheritance of culturally unusable democratic systems in Africa, from the ramifications of world Islam to the interface of national self-determination and religious heritage in Northern Ireland, from resistance to American globalisation to the rights of the dispossessed in Australasia, from the growth of federalism in Europe to the counter-impulse of secessionism (including Britain) in the same region. Culture is “about” ballet, novels and soap operas; it is also “about” genocide and ethnic cleansing.So in answer to the question – are we seeing a homogenisation of culture, I think people in all their glorious diversity assert their own culture, and develop new cultural expression even in the face of attempts to homogenise.

I do not believe that a global MacDonald’s identity will ever supplant the deep-rooted diversity of cultures that marks out the human endeavour.Culture is what distinguishes us as nations, one from the other, but it is also through culture that we can understand each other as individuals. It enables us to break down the borders – both real and imagined – that keep us apart. Living in a diversity of cultures, we must understand each other not simply as different but as bearers of a common humanity. We come to recognise not only the ways we are different but also the ways we are the same. We come to realise that what triggers the beating of our hearts sets pulses racing in others too. We come to see that the very things that distinguish us are the things that make us one This is the power of cultural relations..

It does not take long on arriving in Nepal to appreciate Kipling’s spot-on observation: “And the wildest dreams of Kew, are the facts of Kathmandu.” Look around. A living goddess, the Kumari, is glimpsed through a carved window; e-mail booths by the great Buddhist stupa at Bodnath are busy with robed monks surfing the Web; the 10-year-old guardian in Patan’s Golden Temple sleeps on the threshold of an ancient gilded shrine, beside him venerated tortoises and foraging rats. The village schoolmaster I lodged with recently in the hills was, it was whispered, also a local shaman. My genial host was equally at ease with the cold logic of his English textbooks and the healing mysteries of plants and charms.But not all the contradictions are so beguiling.