Words like “civilisation”, “primitive”, and “developed” lose their anthropological value and importance when charged with the emotive bias of political or journalistic agendas.
“Primitive” is associated with technological progress, with societies primarily centred around kinship and custom; it has instead come to refer to a place that lacks democracy, Netflix or a free press.
“Civilisation” is inherently associated with being “civilised”, but is scientifically used to differentiate a society that is governed by laws rather than kinship. (Taking this singular notion to an uncomfortable extreme, ISIS states were by definition civilised, since residents within them fell under the rules of Sharia law.)
Of course, as with any science, a definition hinges on multiple factors and characteristics, changes over time (within reason) and I am by no means suggesting that the ISIS conquest of the Middle East was in any way a civilised affair.
Anthropologically, there are always theories, case studies and countless debates surrounding the use of these broad terms for otherwise specific, indefinable constructs when exploring the multifaceted complexities of society and culture, which are made up of more than ‘civilised’ or ‘primitive’ elements, particularly today.
But all of these words have been used with such abandon throughout coverage of the Ukraine-Russia crisis that it reflects more about Western perspectives and inherent social division than it does about how strongly people feel against war.
They are all terms that, if nothing else, create the idea of ‘the Other’, which, while valuable for and within the definitions of scientific differentiation and research, is geopolitically and socially destructive.
Where the ‘Otherness’ ought to be socially approached as something simply different and unfamiliar to be understood, it is instead weaponised as something to resent, fear and eliminate — particularly where the Middle East, Africa and Asian regions are in the position of observation.
When Western journalists, politicians, even some activists, use words like “civilised” to describe Ukraine, explain their mourning for the tragedy of how Ukrainians are just “like us”, what they’re actually saying is “we feel a greater solidarity with a familiar culture that is not the other, since we share the same ideals, social similarities and cultural parallels that you are not the other”.
It is possible that war, then, becomes a prism through which we reveal our own cultural insecurities. Particularly when any conflict against — even led by — democratic countries is immediately portrayed as defending democracy, what begins as politics becomes social, since it is societies that vote democratically, and societies are made up of people. It is through people that the we uncover ideas of what culture should be and how societies should look.
Western democracies have structured societies and the way interactions and behaviours take place within them in such a way that anything outside of the boundaries of familiarity are the ‘other’. So through war, it should look like offering asylum to refugees; only, there is a hierarchy that spans from “like” to “other”, with the greatest concern and acceptance coming from the greatest association of familiarity.
It has always been instinctual to associate and congregate according to kin. The meaning of kinship however continues to take on many different forms as societies develop, values change, circumstances influence and awareness broadens.
Nonetheless, it has been an immense disappointment to see how, particularly after the emphasis on global solidarity throughout the pandemic, the Ukrainian crisis has exemplified how we have not come as far as we thought.
The way the we speak of refugees, and the reasons behind those differences, still reveals a racially, socially and culturally primitive way of thinking in the Western mind.
