Open AccessCULTURE AS A PRODUCT: ISSUES OF BENGALI ETHNICITY IN NORTH-EAST INDIA
Author(s) -
Nidhu Kumar Dhar
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
international journal of engineering applied science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2455-2143
DOI - 10.33564/ijeast.2019.v04i05.042
Subject(s) - bengali , ethnic group , product (mathematics) , geography , sociology , anthropology , computer science , mathematics , artificial intelligence , geometry
Considered as a set of beliefs, values, social forms and material traits, culture is organised by an ideology. Ideology is the intellectual dimension of culture which has been famously referred to by Marx as “false consciousness” which justifies the power of the ruling class. However, Louis Althusser takes a different stance, for he argues for a materialist understanding of ideology. Rather than considering ideology as mistaken ideas about the world, for him, ideology is essentially practical, which does not simply exist in the ‘world of ideas’ conceived as a ‘spiritual world’. He believes that it exists in institutions and the practices specific to them. The theory of Cultural Materialism (emerged as an expansion of Marxist materialism) explains cultural organisation which is shaped by ideology within a materialistic framework. Unlike Marxist theory, cultural materialism views both productive (economic) and reproductive (demographic) forces as primary factors that shape society. Cultural materialists view society as being operated by the process of production and reproduction and this becomes the driving force behind all cultural development. Therefore, the systems like government, religion, kinship etc., are considered to be constructs that only exists for the purpose of promoting production and reproduction. It is in this context that the multi ethnic, multi lingual and multicultural construct of North East India deserves special attention in critical discourse. The paper attempts at situating the North East India in these theoretical paradigms and study them in the broader context of ‘Look/Act East Policy’. Considering above theoretical perspectives, the paper shall try to look at the ethnic cultures of North East region and how due to globalisation ethnic cultures are irrevocably converging for the sake of production and reproduction, thus losing their ethnic identity and uniqueness. Keywords— Culture, Ideology, Materialism, Ethnicity, Production, Reproduction.