The Positive Side of Globalization

In the course of an exchange program four Arabic cultural publicists from the Middle East came to Germany this past summer. Now it was time for four German journalists to return the visit. Bernhard Hillenkamp reports

Skyline Beirut (photo: Larissa Bender)
Arts journalists from Germany and Morocco, Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt took part in the exchange programme. Both parties had stories to tell of their exchange experience

​​The participants in the exchange program met for a one day workshop titled "Exploring the City – Culture and Urbanity," during which they shared their experiences and collaborated with one another.

"In contrast to the negative term 'globalization,' we are trying to work with a notion of globality," says Thomas Hartmann, coordinator of the project.

"The negative elements of globalization are often criticized. But there are also positive elements of globalization, in this project we refer to this as globality and we want to make use of the idea."

Feeling at home quickly in Berlin

The city and urban experiences were the subject of the workshop. Three cultural journalists gave presentations on their various impressions, which served as the basis for discussion. Pierre Abi Saab, a journalist for Al Hayat who is also involved in the art initiative Zawaya, spoke about his experiences during his stays in Berlin and Tokyo. He quickly felt at home in Berlin.

He found the cultural codes easily accessible in Germany's capital city. This contrasted with his experiences in Tokyo. "In Berlin I quickly felt as if I were a part of the society." In Japan this did not seem possible to him due to "the reigning patriarchal dominance in that space."

This was followed by an amusing presentation by the Palestinian journalist Najwan Darwish about his subversive urban resistance in the cafes of West Jerusalem. He took his listeners on a journey through the urban landscape of the divided city in the "Holy Land."

A Jewish-Palestinian hospice for the terminally ill

He reported on Mar Louise, a hospice for the terminally ill where foreign volunteers attend to Jews and Palestinians so that they "can die in peace side by side. It's a bizarre perspective for me as a Palestinian to imagine spending my last days next to an Israeli soldier," said Darwish.

He also told about his regular visits to Café Roma in the Jewish west side of the city. With the support of the Arabic staff he and his Palestinian friends at the café bar reminded the other guests, mostly Jews, to be quiet. They wanted to continue work on their literary texts. Nonetheless they debated loudly about the image of Palestinians in CNN news reports visible on the television screen at the bar.

Darwish describes a comical and bold resistance tactic in the cafes and bars of an urban setting.

Stephan Schalk was in Cairo. He is a freelance journalist in the city of Berlin, to which he has now returned after four weeks in the Egyptian capital and which he says is in comparison like a sanitarium.

As a "promotor with relatively little experience in the Arabic world," he represents the target audience of the project.

This group of publicists, says Schalk, "is even more important since 9/11 because the relevance of the Arabic region has grown." He described in his presentation the efforts of local intellectuals to organize a demonstration for more freedom in the area of art for a poor district of the city. The alienating response that Schalk encountered was: "Why should these residents demonstrate for more freedom in art?"

The temples of global consumerism in Cairo

He contrasted this lack of solidarity on behalf of art, which seems to prevail across class boundaries, with the shopping malls in the suburbs of Cairo, where consumers stroll about with and without veils. Everyone has a car, however, because they would otherwise be unable to reach the temples of global consumerism.

"We are just journalists and don't have the same possibilities as the literati," said Daniel Bax from the Berlin daily Die Tageszeitung (TAZ).

"We can only articulate our ideas in the format available in our newspapers. During my time in Ramallah I did various reporting from Palestine on the usual topics. I hope I can write articles that have a more personal approach. Perhaps that's all one can do."

It seems that the encounters experienced by all eight of the journalists during the exchange trip and the globality they were exposed to will not necessarily find a way into their writing, or only indirectly. These are nonetheless important experiences with the world of the "other."

All options are open for the journalists as to how they may continue their collaboration in the future. But perhaps the exchange program was a first step toward building a network.

Bernhard Hillenkamp

© Qantara.de 2005

Translated from German by Christina M. White

Qantara.de

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