Question/discussion: Cultural changes

[feuervogel]

One of the things I need to figure out for my world is how cultures will change once people have been in space for 300 years.

The way it's set up has each space station populated mostly by people from one vaguely geographical region (but mostly politico-economic associations a la the EU and ASEAN). After a hundred years, will people consider themselves, for example, German or English or Japanese or Indian or Nigerian, or Centauri/Eridani? That's the hard question.

One set of protagonists in The Novel are from Central European Federation space (Centauri 5, Eridani 1 & 2). The CEF resulted from the breakup of the EU after a land grab at Epsilon Eridani, in which a German-led coalition ... well, I haven't exactly worked this out yet, but it involves mining rights on the planet there. The other half of the EU became the Western European Alliance.

The CEF is basically Germany south to Italy (minus Switzerland) and east to Ukraine, including Turkey. (I'm optimistic, k?) So the CEF stations are initially populated by varying proportions of Germans, Turks, Poles, other Slavs, and the like. Based on actual human populations over the last 300 years, I'm assuming that initially, you'll get Little Istanbul, Little Berlin, Little Warsaw, etc, growing up as people settle in, then over time the enclaves won't be quite so enclavey, and you'll get some great fusion cuisine [of course I think of food first].

Then as time passes, the people think of themselves less as being from this geographic place 5 or 10 light years away, where they're highly unlikely to ever go, and more from the place they were born. The cultures will change in the process, obviously. They'll blend together some.

I don't know how realistic that is.

When I look at my experience (as a 3rd/4th generation German-American, depending on how you count), I see that we dropped pretty much everything German. The only remotely German tradition we have is opening presents on Christmas Eve, and my mom's generation got the last batch of srs German names (Paul, Karl, and Kurt).

But then, Great-great Grandma and Grandpa Heinrich came here with their son in 1908, and they moved to Pennsylvania, where there were a bunch of Germans. Then there was that little war that started in 1914, and that other one in 1939, so they didn't really want to advertise their German-ness (though with the names Max, August, and Bertha Heinrich, you're not really fooling anyone).

Then there's the Turks living in Germany. It's been about 50 years since the first Gastarbeiter were allowed in, and there's a raging integration debate -- on both sides. Witness the treatment Turks and German Turks gave Mesut Özil for picking the German national side, and the praise Hamit and Halil Altintop and Nuri Sahin got for picking Turkey. After the match on Friday, people left nastygrams on Mesut's fb wall -- you're a traitor, you're not a real Turk, we hate you now.

There's also a lot of discussion in Germany about the low proportion [DE] [EN] of "students with migration backgrounds" getting the Abitur and going on to college, and sometimes even finishing school at all. (The German education system is rather different than the US system, and too complicated to get into here.)

Since CEF space is going to look a lot like Berlin (at the outset, anyway), I can't imagine it without a lot of Turks. I don't know, and I'm certainly unqualified to guess, how the integration debate is going to work out. I can look at the trends -- Özil and Sami Khedira saying they feel German, yet still having ties with their ancestral homelands, Cem Özdemir as the first Turkish-German party leader (Greens) -- and project, but I don't want to [be accused of] cultural imperialism.

So, I don't know. Flist/dwircle, you're all smart people. Discuss. What am I not thinking of here?

Comments

[smarriveurr]

There's what I believe to be an Arab proverb I think of in discussions like this: "Me against my brother, my brother and I against my uncle, my uncle and I against the stranger."

When we talk about "culture", we tend to do it as though such a thing existed objectively, as opposed to comparatively. I had this debate in Cultural Analysis - "German Culture" exists only when you put a Bayer and a Preuss in a room with a Castillian. Put all three of them in a room with someone from Beijing, someone from Osaka, and someone from Seoul, you'll suddenly have "European Culture."

But if you put a Prussian and a Bavarian in a room alone, you won't get German culture. Put just some Germans in a room, and you'll get clashes of Ossi and Wessi, North vs South, etc, etc. So, I guess my point is, you'll see divisions largely by context. Even after three centuries, there'll be divides. You'll have assimilated families and individuals who feel more part of the local culture than their ethnic origin. You'll have folks with the sort of virulent ethnic ties you only see among people who've had no connection to their "home country" in generations (cf "Irish"-Americans). But when the conflict isn't motherland vs home, I think you'll find all but a vocal minority siding with whichever one is in the "fight" at the moment. I don't think any place will ever have a monoculture. Even after centuries, people will want to be different and maintain a divide, and ethnicity is an easy go-to. Meanwhile, the virulent expats will still maintain Little [Country], where the more-integrated individuals can go to feel the connection to a home culture light years away. They may have no idea what their home culture really was like, but the strange caricaturized version that has evolved over the centuries will speak to them, and they'll reach for that when they want identity (again, I think of plastic Paddys).

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

Urgh, I gots a migraine but I'm trying to push through it for youuuuu...

Three hundred years is a LONG time.
A LOOOoooong time.

Super long. Unless there's an active effort made by a community/family to preserve their cultural roots they will eventually fade out. You might even find that a family who DOES still know all that stuff about their roots would be sort of oddballs, especially in a society where most people identify with the place they were born into.

I'm from a pretty mixed ethnic background, I'm third generation Canadian by the newest immigrants in my family, and my family-specific traditions carried down from the 'old country' only include opening a single gift on Christmas Eve and eating 'granny pancakes' and rollkuchen.

Nothing from the Icelandic roots (5th generation) except my last name, nothing from the First Nations roots (great granny) at all, nothing from the English roots (no clue how far back)... really, the only traditions come from my granny who was first or second generation Canadian and whose parents were both pure Dutch.

Really, it's been less than 150 years and already I'm really not identifying with where my family came from.

Hope that helps!

[steuard.livejournal.com]

The question that comes to my mind is just how isolated these folks have been. If everyone you see 99% of the days of your life comes from a common heritage, it seems likely that many of the traditions of that heritage will be preserved (because they're universal, and thus unquestioned). If you routinely mix with people from a wide range of backgrounds (even just consuming "foreign" pop culture), that's much more likely to dilute individual cultural factors, I would guess. (But even then, pockets of cultural traditions would likely still persist in scattered celebrations or hobbies: my family's "Swedish Christmas Eve" tradition is still going very strong after well over 100 years, for example. Though come to think of it, I'd be surprised if that held up for another 200 years. When the people who remember the people who remembered the people who came from the Old Country are gone, there's probably not much of a bond remaining.)

Regardless of those details, though, I don't expect that after 300 years anyone would really think of themselves as "Central Europeans". They'd be "Centidanis" (or whatever their local label might be), and although a historian might well recognize very sizable cultural heritage from central European traditions, that old connection would only be a fact of passing personal interest to the locals. (Does anyone even visit Old Earth anymore?)

[feuervogel]

People still live on Earth, and they send ambassador-governors to the colonies. The colonies interact a fair bit, mainly through the trading ships, but also things like universities and corporations. And the future-internet.

That may be the difference between European countries and their immigrant populations and the US: we're so used to immigrants, we (eventually) get over it and move on, and shop at their ethnic grocery/eat at their ethnic restaurant. Their right-wing nationalists and ours are similarly assholish, though.

[steuard.livejournal.com]

Hmm. That wasn't really intended as a reply to your comment, but whatever. :)

[feuervogel]

I got pretty much the opposite opinion on DW! I don't know which way to go with it...