The West (as a concept)

boundaries and prototypesPeople can categorize things in different ways. Two main ways are by boundaries or by prototypes.I would like to reference a book here, and because it may not be available to everyone online, I will quote the relevant paragraphs. Blount is discussing an influential study in the field of cognitive anthropology, which investigated the way cultures partition and label the color spectrum differently."Each individual was shown the color spectrum as illustrated on a chart containing "chips" (small squares), and was asked to draw on an acetate overlay a line around the range of the chips for each color term in their language, thereby illustrating a boundary. In addition, they were asked to identify the chip that was the best representative of the color indicated by the term, giving a focal point. The results were interesting. Individuals speaking the same language did not draw boundary lines consistently, and across time the same individual did not replicate accurately ther original boundary line. By contrast, the agreement on the focal color was much more consistent, both across individuals and by the same individual at different times. Cultural influence was on focal salience to a considerably greater extent than on boundaries.The result of immediate interest here is that the reliance of speakers on focal salience raises the questions aout how domains and their classification are to be characterized. If they are not defined by boundaries, then what is the basis or bases for domain identification? Focal salience indicates that the color domain is partitioned...by focality, a relationship to central representative "objects" in this case focal color. This type of object and domain relationship eventually came to be called prototypes, in which a prototypical object becomes the focal point for domain membership of other, related objects." [1] pg.16Thus, people may have a good idea about what "green" and "blue" are, but there is variation (even individual variation) in exactly where the boundary is drawn so that blue is on one side and green is on the other. There is a band of bluey-green and greeny-blue shades in between. This does not mean, as Pro suggests, that green and blue are "fundamentally subjective" ideas. It just means that we define color in terms of closeness to a prototype rather than in terms of distinct boundaries.In the same way, we recognize India, Pakistan and China as real countries that exist, even though the dispute over the borders in the Kashmir region have been going on for decades now. [2]drawing boundaries and making formal rules about categoriesImagine we worked in some kind of industrial environment where items needed to be categorized as "green" or "blue" and we wanted to reduce variation and confusion in the way this categorization was done. The simplest way is to make a rule, such as wavelengths bigger or equal to 500 nm are green, smaller than 500nm are blue. And all the workers are obliged to comply.In a different context, say, if we were concerned about color purity, we could define the wavelength ranges for blue and green more narrowly, cutting out entirely the cyan range in the middle.These rules about boundaries are to some extent arbitrary, but nevertheless blue and green are real concepts, and there is a real difference between them.the West is a prototype categoryWhen people talk about "western society" they are talking about the beliefs, habits, norms and behaviors that are common to a particular and large group of people, and which correspond to particular geographical territories. Some members of this group are more obvious than others. For example, people in the US and UK are definitely part of western society. Others are less obvious. What about people in Greece and Brazil? Are they western or not? Harder to say immediately, (although I think not). As I said before, those boundaries may shift, but the prototypes do not.the resolutionIn the resolution, Pro does not set out a prototypical definition of "the West" but rather defines the boundaries: "the nations of the western half of Europe, plus the Anglo-Saxon part of the Americas and Oceania."He has called on me to justify these boundaries. As I said in the previous round, they are consistent with Western Europe as defined by Eurovoc, as well as any colonies or ex-colonies of Western Europe where the occupiers have imposed and maintained cultural domination and a racial majority.Because the concept of The West is prototypical rather than bounded, there may be disagreement over the exact placement of the boundaries. However, by no means does this "challenge the widespread belief in the existence of something called 'western world'" as Pro claims in round 1.[1] http://books.google.com.au...[2] http://www.economist.com...