This House regrets the westernisation of the elites in post-colonial countries (e.g. speaking predominantly in English, going to schools/universities in the West, consuming predominantly Western Media) Arthur Lee | CO | MOMacau TOC BP IV 2018- Grand Final80+ | Society

Last Update - Thu Oct 17 2024


Introduction
What all other teams in this debate seem to have ignored is the fact that many post-colonial states are not organic but are the products of artifice. We are patchwork of indigenous cultures and identities that have been haphazardly cobbled together by the terrible project of colonialism. Our thesis unique the closing opposition is that the deliberate westernization of culture spearheaded by elites for example by speaking English by wearing suit and tie

to the finals of debate tournaments is important in creating a lowest common denominator that allows for more inclusive national narrative 


We've got a four three areas of extension

[1] Firstly explicitly the comparative we're going

to prove explicitly what happens on their side is that people default to ethnic ties and patronage networks within the domestic elite circles

[2]Secondly we're going to prove that westernized elites can actually spearhead a more inclusive national identity 

[3]last of all we're going to discuss why we create solidarity between various post-colonial states 


CLASH

a)BUT before that I'm just going to do a bit of your

clash coming from opening about legal systems sure we agree that there might be value towards indigenous conceptions of law but we can also agree

that there is a bare minimum of concepts such as fair trial and rule of law which are enforced generally speaking by Western institutions where these people are likely to be studying 

b)moreover having access to a pool of for example legal precedent and the legal cases and being able to engage in the language and the legal framework through this take place allows people to negotiate the limits of their indigenous culture and where it fits in with Western to your Canon we don't think this is a big problem and we don't see why indigenous culture it's precluded just purely on the basis of language from coming into law 


Rebuttal

“Then closing government tells us that indigenous industries are going to be quashed and Western powers will take advantage of them like for example in film”

=First of all they suggested that indigenous cultures can through some kind of organic process decide that they want to use English which it means the harms are fairly symmetric and also they're crossing the house 

Secondly, we think there's a countervailing incentive for local producers to use the colonial medium to make that culture marketable internationally by talking about things

like for example Hollywood films and actors that focus on indigenous cultures. So we don't think that westernization of elites is necessarily lead to the death of indigenous cultures if anything it makes them more internationally marketable in a manner that fuses indigenous aspects along with Western elements.


Comparative

Moreover the alternative on their side is that many of these local films will

just become consigned to irrelevance because they only maybe aren't marketable within their own countries

but ok even if we this results in fewer

like local institutions and local films we're happy to concede that because as I'll show the comparative harm on our side is that people define themselves sharply on ethnic terms which is harmful to the project of nation-building in many of these fledgling societies I'm

gonna move on to that now when I discuss the comparative but also explicitly deal of the arguments that they brought up about infinity on both opening and

closing government . 


REBUTTAL

The key underlying assumption in this debate thus far is that there's some kind of primordial indigenous identity that remains a unifying force in post-colonial societies CG tells us in particular that we can arrive an organic idea of what the national language or what the national narrative will be in the absence of westernization they never really gave us a reason why

especially given the tea leaves and majority races in many of these countries continue to hold power and decide national narratives and national history via in clearly undemocratic means this is just not true for the vast majority of polls corner States where

this debate happens many of them contain a patchwork of different networks and cultures with little connection to each other and here's some systemic reasons for this


Re-Framing

1)First of all because Western imperialists often drew arbitrary borders that were bequeathed the consequent post colonial states. Good examples include a state that has like 42 major ethnic groups none of which have any unifying history or substantial

unifying history to craft a national narrative 

2)Secondly and more insidious the Western colonial is deliberately played up ethnic rivalries in order to divide and conquer like the Belgians did in Rwanda by the way in opening gives us an POI  about whether or not Rwanda is a good example for either side. I would like to consider the alternative if Rwanda had remained under the governance of the Hutus and Tutsis that is a unifying framework of functional to unify both sides  


So what would have happened in nations without the westernization of elites 

A)first of all I think elites will default to their own networks of patronage and language and

communities instead of going to English universities for example the Chinese elites which constitute upto 60% of people the majority in Singapore would have defaulted to Chinese and dialect kind associations for community and support. It is not clear therefore that

national identity become organically determined in the event elites were not subjected to westernization this is a

comparative claim that individuals would default to their own patronage networks and their own sense of community and support 


Then they said Western institutions like Harvard after example (from closing government) will select for people in positions of power and therefore the process will be unmeritocratic.

=You know what is worse, letting local community select their own leaders because then they will choose people from the same race who have similar backgrounds as them and these are sharply divided even more so on ethnic grounds so the world they create on their side is a world where communities and politicians explicitly play up ethnic rivalries within these indigenous cultures for example 

only campaigning in a single language, trying to stir up rivalries because the National narrative remains fractured 


2ND ARGUMENT

Okay if you're going to say that we haven't proven to comparative I'll prove it now
Claim

Secondly, why does a westernized elite create a more inclusive national identity ?


Elites and the language they speak for example play an important role in shaping national identity via a number of methods

a) First of all as opening government concedes they often decide educational policies so for example we have more inclusive schools that don't teach particular ethnic languages but rather teaches the lowest common denominator language of the colonial power secondly because elites also control the language and norms of national service for example via the media reporting 


POI

yes so in in Rwanda French is merely serve as a fig leaf to cover up the ethnic tensions w diverse in Indonesia when the national ideology is based on more or more indigenous culture greater national reconciliation was actually achieved okay so obviously

=if the national language yes it might cover up certain underlying ethnic divides but having an

national language define either one of these languages well obviously make things worse because you explicitly favor one language above the other it is not clear to me what the alternative on their side is 

…..So we think that really it's also control for example the language and the norms of

national discourse bear in mind that for example English mediums can be adopted to a local context like news reports in Singapore for example can focus on local

politics rather than like the Queen of England so it's not necessarily true that this leads to a greater imposition of colonial culture what we create on

our site is a language and a series of norms that are the most inclusive and I think a great example of this is India where the common language of English sites that's the need to explicitly pick and choose which one of the many Indian languages becomes the national language

and a common history of resistance against colonialism and a common history of colonial institution sidesteps the fact that this nation is created largely by patchwork and by an accident of colonialism and a terrible project of imperialism embarked by these countries

3rd Extension

but my third area of extension will focus on solidarity between former colonial States note that this is very important and this is just as important

as creating a national identity because many of these fledgling democracies are still in the process of nation-building many of them are threatened externally as well as existentially. We admit that post communist states still have huge differences while we allow for more of

these countries and their citizens to find common ground 

a)First of all because obviously leaders speak the same language is fairly trivial but secondly

because of ease of migration between these countries which creates things like economic interdependence it actually helps that many of these former colonies are often once in the same geographical area colonized by the same European country because the geographical proximity allows if they share a common language for transference of elites between these countries one of the benefits-


Impact

[i]first of all it allows them to negotiate as a bloc if they have great economic ties 

[ii]Secondly, it reduces the risk of interstate conflict between these states if they are more economically interdependent


Conclusion

So the explicit comparative we point out it's not that everyone feels inferior

but particular vulnerable minority groups feel inferior dealing dealing directly with the extension from closing government the harms are

They talk about of inequality across the government exacerbated just in a concentrated on individuals which did not have the chance to be the majority ethnic group within these countries 


Misc   Lee Chin Wee(OW)
Now nobody gets what they want atleast one would…
1) As much as one particular language and culture is important and intimate to one group also carries the same historical baggage and trauma which predates colonial rule e.g Cantonese vs Mandarin in hongkong 

2)Entire communities feel fundamentally excluded when they have to engage with civic society on the grounds of the privileged group  

3) An indigenous language and culture lends closer affinity to ethnocentric communities over the artificial boundaries of the nation state. E.g tumbatas in Zambia see themselves as tumbaats first and Zambian second because there is no unifying forces to forge an national identity through
*West would steal resources through these elites
=Financial mismanagement, etc is a corruption problem which exists on both sides. The alternative is when