[Lingtyp] Two terminological quandaries for the price of one: 'traditional' and 'non-Western' cultures

Fri May 30 03:47:53 UTC 2025

Dear Ian – I’m not sure where you’re going with this. I’m getting the sense that you want to have a different discussion from the one I was trying to have. When you have a country whose overwhelming majority language is European, which has a political and legal/judicial system of European origin, and the vast majority of whose citizens practice religions of European origins, then surely you don’t want to deny that that country is under massive European cultural influence?

Or perhaps you do want to deny that? Well, good for you. But, it so happens that that cultural influence is precisely the phenomenon that makes this whole topic relevant to my work.

If you’re trying to accuse me of erasing non-European cultural influences in the countries in question – that would be quite ironic to me, since the desire to avoid such erasure is part of my motivation for looking for an alternative to ‘Western’.

Best – Juergen

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus
Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
Phone: (716) 645 0127
Fax: (716) 645 3825
Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu<mailto:jb77 at buffalo.edu>
Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/

Office hours Tu/Th 3:30-4:30pm in 642 Baldy or via Zoom (Meeting ID 585 520 2411; Passcode Hoorheh)

There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In
(Leonard Cohen)
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From: JOO Ian <joo at res.otaru-uc.ac.jp>
Date: Thursday, May 29, 2025 at 23:23
To: Juergen Bohnemeyer <jb77 at buffalo.edu>, Lingtyp Linguistics Typology <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: Two terminological quandaries for the price of one: 'traditional' and 'non-Western' cultures
Dear Juergen,

"the dominant cultural framework of the countries in question is very much of European descent, in precisely the way Ilana points out. Which manifests itself perhaps most notably in the othering (and often enough downright oppression) that people of non-European descent routinely experience in these countries."

Isn't defining the culture of the European half of the population as the dominant cultural framework of the said countries precisely also an othering of the people of non-European descent? Why define only one half of the culture as the dominant framework?

"But the Min Nan speakers whose descendants arrived in the 18th or even 17th century (if memory serves) are an intermediate category. I could see people contrasting them against the Mandarin speakers as relatively more indigenous, although I wouldn’t personally use the term that way."

By the same logic, are the English migrants to America in the 17th Century also halfway indigenous?

Regards,

Ian

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朱　易安
JOO, IAN
准教授
Associate Professor
小樽商科大学
Otaru University of Commerce

🌐 ianjoo.github.io<http://ianjoo.github.io/>
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________________________________
보낸 사람: Juergen Bohnemeyer <jb77 at buffalo.edu>
보낸 날짜: Friday, May 30, 2025 12:17:14 PM
받는 사람: JOO Ian <joo at res.otaru-uc.ac.jp>; Lingtyp Linguistics Typology <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
제목: Re: Two terminological quandaries for the price of one: 'traditional' and 'non-Western' cultures

Dear Ian – I would say yes, the dominant cultural framework of the countries in question is very much of European descent, in precisely the way Ilana points out. Which manifests itself perhaps most notably in the othering (and often enough downright oppression) that people of non-European descent routinely experience in these countries.

In the case of Taiwan, I think most linguists and anthropologists would agree that the prototypical core of the notion of indigeneity applies to the Austronesian groups of the island. Nobody would treat the mainlanders who evacuated to the island at the end of the Chinese Civil War as indigenous. But the Min Nan speakers whose descendants arrived in the 18th or even 17th century (if memory serves) are an intermediate category. I could see people contrasting them against the Mandarin speakers as relatively more indigenous, although I wouldn’t personally use the term that way.

So, perhaps we can agree that indigeneity cannot be defined independently of some historic frame – there may be no such thing as absolute indigeneity. I do of course agree that that frame doesn’t have to be European colonization.

Best – Juergen

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus
Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
Phone: (716) 645 0127
Fax: (716) 645 3825
Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu<mailto:jb77 at buffalo.edu>
Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/

Office hours Tu/Th 3:30-4:30pm in 642 Baldy or via Zoom (Meeting ID 585 520 2411; Passcode Hoorheh)

There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In
(Leonard Cohen)

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From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of JOO Ian via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Thursday, May 29, 2025 at 22:41
To: Lingtyp Linguistics Typology <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Two terminological quandaries for the price of one: 'traditional' and 'non-Western' cultures

Dear Juergen,

I doubt Americans, Australians, Brazilians, etc., would appreciate being called ‘European’, yet their majority cultures/societies are ‘Western’ (i.e., of European descent).

The percentage of Americans, Australians, and Brazilians of primarily European descent are approximately 57.8%, 57,2%, and 48% respectively, so about half. Why define by them only by this half?

The problem is that the descent part of that definition requires some sort of temporal horizon, or some other framing perspective.

Didn’t the Han colonization of Taiwan – and many other non-European colonizations, such as the Japanese colonization of the Ryukyus – happen at the same time period as the European colonization?

Regards,

Ian

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
朱　易安
JOO, IAN
准教授
Associate Professor
小樽商科大学
Otaru University of Commerce

🌐 ianjoo.github.io<http://ianjoo.github.io/>
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보낸 사람: Juergen Bohnemeyer <jb77 at buffalo.edu>
날짜: 금요일, 2025년 5월 30일 11:32
받는 사람: JOO Ian <joo at res.otaru-uc.ac.jp>, Lingtyp Linguistics Typology <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
주제: Re: Two terminological quandaries for the price of one: 'traditional' and 'non-Western' cultures

Dear Ian – I doubt Americans, Australians, Brazilians, etc., would appreciate being called ‘European’, yet their majority cultures/societies are ‘Western’ (i.e., of European descent).

That was the easier of your two questions. The first one is trickier. I agree with you in principle that it would be appropriate to extend the concept of indigeneity to any communities that aren’t colonial or descendant from colonizers. The problem is that the descent part of that definition requires some sort of temporal horizon, or some other framing perspective. Bantu people colonized much of Sub-Saharan Africa, Tupians large swaths of the Amazon. Do we therefore treat Bantu and Tupian cultures as non-indigenous? I think it depends on the context – there is likely no universally valid definition.

Best – Juergen

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus
Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
Phone: (716) 645 0127
Fax: (716) 645 3825
Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu<mailto:jb77 at buffalo.edu>
Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/

Office hours Tu/Th 3:30-4:30pm in 642 Baldy or via Zoom (Meeting ID 585 520 2411; Passcode Hoorheh)

There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In
(Leonard Cohen)

--

From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of JOO Ian via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Thursday, May 29, 2025 at 22:23
To: Lingtyp Linguistics Typology <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Two terminological quandaries for the price of one: 'traditional' and 'non-Western' cultures

Dear Juergen,

By ‘indigenous’, I mean pragmatically that the presence of the community in the area they inhabit is not an immediate result of European colonization.

Why European colonization specifically, and not colonization by other forces (such as the Han colonization of Taiwan)?

‘(Non-)Western cultures/societies’: By this I mean any cultures/societies of (non-)European origin/descent.

Why not just call them European?

From Otaru,

Ian

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朱　易安
JOO, IAN
准教授
Associate Professor
小樽商科大学
Otaru University of Commerce

🌐 ianjoo.github.io<http://ianjoo.github.io/>
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보낸 사람: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>이(가) 다음 사람 대신 보냄: Juergen Bohnemeyer via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
날짜: 금요일, 2025년 5월 30일 11:01
받는 사람: Lingtyp Linguistics Typology <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
주제: [Lingtyp] Two terminological quandaries for the price of one: 'traditional' and 'non-Western' cultures

Dear all – I really need your help with this! I’ve been struggling for quite some time now with the terms ‘traditional culture/society’ and ‘(non-)Western culture/society’. Both concepts play significant roles in my work, but both labels seem problematic. I’m looking for better alternatives. (If you want to call this query an exercise in political correctness, I would plead guilty to the charge. I do try to avoid offending people unintentionally.)

Let me briefly try to explicate the concepts that I have been using these labels for:

‘Traditional cultures/societies’: Small-scale indigenous communities practicing predominantly non-industrial (or pre-industrial) modes of production in non-urban settings. By ‘small-scale’, I mean that stratification is predominantly in terms of age and gender, division of labor is low, and offices of power are largely non-hereditary. By ‘indigenous’, I mean pragmatically that the presence of the community in the area they inhabit is not an immediate result of European colonization. And the concept needs to be flexible enough to allow for the fact that the overwhelming majority of such communities are part of larger majority societies, are in more or less intensive contact with them, are under pressure by them, etc.

I suspect that objections to the label ‘traditional’ may be the result of associating that label with Social Darwinism. At the same time, I find the label acceptable to the extent that one accepts that modes of production, while not following a strict developmental sequence, are not distributed randomly throughout human history either, particularly in the sense that industrialization did not take place prior to the Industrial Revolution. So what I’m looking for is a label that occupies the sweet spot between Social Darwinism and completely ahistoric and non-evolutionary perspectives of social organization.

The sexiest currently available alternative to ‘traditional’ is ‘non-WEIRD’, in the Heinrich-et-al.-(2010) sense of ‘WEIRD’ (Western educated industrialized rich democratic). I don’t personally mind using that term, but it is awfully vague. There are many developing nations that I would not consider WEIRD (they may check neither of the five definitional properties), but that do not globally fit the ‘traditional’ concept either.

‘(Non-)Western cultures/societies’: By this I mean any cultures/societies of (non-)European origin/descent. The problem with the label ‘Western’ is the very misleading geographic association with the Western hemisphere: the vast majority of Europe isn’t even part of the Western hemisphere, and there are ‘Western’ societies (societies of European descent) outside Europe *and* outside the Western hemisphere, *and* of course there are many ‘non-Western’ cultures in the Western hemisphere. I’m well aware that the etymology of this use of ‘Western’ has little to do with the model of the geographic hemispheres, but my sense is that people make the association whether it belongs there or not – I know I do.

I suspect the best solution to the second problem is to just talk about ‘cultures/societies of (non-)European origin/descent’. That’s a mouthful, but sooner or later somebody will coin a handy acronym. But I wanted to make sure I’m not missing anything.

Anyway, many thanks in advance for your help! – Juergen

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus
Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
Phone: (716) 645 0127
Fax: (716) 645 3825
Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu<mailto:jb77 at buffalo.edu>
Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/

Office hours Tu/Th 3:30-4:30pm in 642 Baldy or via Zoom (Meeting ID 585 520 2411; Passcode Hoorheh)

There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In
(Leonard Cohen)

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