Dr. Olivier Roy, Professor at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies (left) and Dr. Abdelwahab El-Affendi, President of the Doha Institute during the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies' inaugural lecture for academic year 2023-2024 on October 31, 2023.
Doha, Qatar: The Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (DI) organized the inaugural lecture for the academic year 2023-2024 titled 'Globalization and the Crisis of Culture' on Tuesday, October 31, 2023. The lecture was delivered by Dr. Olivier Roy, Professor at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, and was introduced by Dr. Abdelwahab El-Affendi, President of the Doha Institute.
The lecture shed light on important questions about how the extension of a global “culture” undermines national or regional cultures, and whether this global culture has an effect in undermining the very concept of culture. It also discussed some important concepts and terms such as culture, authenticity, and globalization, with the aim of monitoring the interactions and intersections between them.
At the beginning of his lecture, Dr. Roy stated that he doesn’t consider culture to be separate from politics, but believes that each of them has different dynamics, logic, and ways of functioning. On one hand, culture is linked to social and religious matters, and on the other hand, there is a relationship between globalization, individualism, and culture pointing out that the crisis of culture affects politics and human mobility.
Dr. Olivier Roy, Professor at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies
He also touched on what he called the concept of cultural authenticity, clarifying that, in this context, there are communities claiming that certain material and non-material cultures belong to them and are possessed by them more than other societies giving the examples of Latin America, Europe, Africa and other parts of the world.
Dr. Olivier Roy raised the question of whether it is possible to return to real authenticity. He clarified, in this aspect, that globalization is inevitable and that it is a reality that cannot be avoided, escaped from, or ignored. Instead, it must be used and utilized in every possible way to do better things that serve culture and seek to resolve the successive crises that have affected it.
The faculty and the students of the DI as well as the researchers of the Arab Center for Research attended the lecture and participated with questions and inputs at the end of the lecture which were centered around the reactions to globalization by various countries around the world.
In addition to other current dialogues such as the attempts by certain countries to “nationalize” their communication and technology sectors, using dominance to circumvent the effects of globalization, as seen in China or Russia, for example, and how this reflects on arts, communication, and politics. However, Dr. Roy downplayed the effectiveness of these strategies in resisting globalization.
It's worth noting that Dr. Olivier Roy is a Professor at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies and is also an Adjunct Professor at the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute in Florence. He has authored several notable works including "Islam and Secularism," "The Failure of Political Islam," and "Holy Ignorance."
This inaugural lecture is the seventh in the series of annual inaugural lectures organized by the DI which has become a yearly tradition to host a distinguished academic figure every academic year.
The first inaugural lecture for the academic year 2017-2018 was delivered by Dr. Azmi Bishara, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the DI, titled "Challenges Facing Social Sciences and Humanities in the Arab Context". Dr. Fahmi Jadaan, a Visiting Professor in the Philosophy program, delivered the second inaugural lecture for the academic year 2018-2019 on "Foundational Principles for Sustainable Arab Lights.".
The third inaugural lecture for the academic year 2019-2020 was delivered by Dr. Ahmed Dallal, former Dean at Georgetown University in Qatar, with the title "Problematics of History for Arab and Islamic Sciences", while Dr. Wajih Kothrani, a Visiting Professor in the History program, delivered the fourth inaugural lecture for the academic year 2020-2021 titled "History and Philosophy: Epistemological Problematics Across Historical Contexts... An Attempt at Understanding and Questions".
As for the fifth inaugural lecture for the academic year 2021-2022, it was delivered by Dr. Abdelwahab El-Affendi, touching on the critique of critics in humanities and social sciences, and Dr. Henry Laurens, Professor and Chair of History of the Contemporary Arab World History at the Collège de France, delivered the sixth inaugural lecture for the academic year 2022-2023, on "Orientalism and Occidentalism, Five Centuries of History".
