QUADERNS DE LA MEDITERRÀNIA, 1
Los retos de la interculturalidad en el Mediterráneo

PROLOGUES

Considering the Mediterranean
Andreu Claret i Serra

Mediterranean notebooks
Maria-Àngels Roque

1. THEMATIC DOSSIER: Interculturality in the Mediterranean

Elements for Intercultural Reflection in the Mediterranean Area
Joseph Maila and Maria-Àngels Roque
In this article, Joseph Maila and Maria-Àngels Roque highlight certain elements that could encourage reflection on interculturality and thereby introduce the thematic dossier presented by the magazine. Is it possible, from the point of view of our Mediterranean societies, to think about interculturality? Although Anglo-Saxon thinking has a strong presence, the complexity of the societies we are concerned with and the diversity of the points of view present allow us to glimpse the appearance of new tools of approximation to the concept of interculturality, linked to culture, the management of societies, while bearing in mind the conflicts and indifferences, but also the exchanges that historically have come about in the area.

The End of Instrumental Culture
Alain Touraine
This article proposes a recomposition of cultures from the point of view of the individual and the system of political guarantees. We are in a process of decomposition of culture, due to the separation of the world of instrumental reason and the symbolic world. On one hand, cultures are disappearing and becoming markets, and on the other hand, identities. The tendency in the world of today is not intercultural communication but the affirmation process faced with others, eliminating the public conscience, the political definition that allows the integration of different groups. The means through which this situation should be recomposed is the individual; the affirmation of the subject (on the basis of political guarantees) as the intermediate terrain between instrumental globalisation and the fragmentation of the identity.

North American Multiculturalism in the International Arena
Will Kymlicka
The dominant model of American multiculturalism, with an open, fluid and voluntary conception of multiculturalism, has very frequently been defended as the antiTHESis to minority nationalism. The criticisms of minority nationalism by the theoreticians of American multiculturalism have not been in agreement with the practices of other western democracies or even the practice of the United States of America itself. These criticisms start from the conceptual error of setting up minority nationalism against cosmopolitan multiculturalism, when, in reality, both concepts operate on different levels. The influence of THESe debates in other countries has been beneficial in some aspects but in others it has been used to exacerbate even more important injustices.

Building Identities
Amin Maalouf
This article presents a reflection on cultural diversity, and raises the question whether the differences between communities of a same country should be ignored or be taken into account. The example of the Lebanon shows how an option of the formal recognition of diversity has been perverted by its own deficiencies. In spite of this, it is clear that democracy is the only possible path, bearing in mind that what is sacred for democracy are values (respect for the dignity of human beings), not mechanisms. Within a context in which tensions of identity are growing, the acceleration of communications has also provoked feelings of the menace implied by a conception of the "tribal" identity that does not adapt to present day reality. Fear of similarities, increasingly real, favours the vindication of this vertical identity; however, to promote diversity, the road that should be taken is the recognition by each person and each society of their own diversity, and not the aggressive defence of tribal identities.

The Umma , Foundation of Muslim Societies
Wijdan Ali
The countries of the Arab Middle East are going through a period of change; with a past of greatness and security they now find themselves in an uncertain present. From this viewpoint, this article proposes a historical revision of the treatment and consideration of the minorities in this area. The Muslim tradition serves as a backdrop to express the non-existence of the concept of the minority or majority population group until recent times. The historical evolution of the Near East has made this area one of the richest regions of the world with different minority groups that coexist in an ethnic and religious multiplicity.

The Lebanese Multi-community Model: an Organisation of Religious Pluralism
Joseph Maila
The plural political model of the Lebanon, although it is not considered a successful intercultural model, is unique insofar as it takes the cultural differences in the Arab-Muslim zone of the Near East into account. In the first place, this article deals with the historical evolution of the Lebanon to analyse the foundations of its political and social system, to later present the principal working rules of Lebanese interculturality. The Lebanese system, based on the autonomy of the communities, community representation in political office and in consensual decision making, guarantees the principle of representation in the Arab Near East where authoritarianism and exclusion dominates. However, it has weak points, like the fragility of the state before the communities, the crisis of the Lebanese identity before those of the different communities or the stagnation in a formula that does not contemplate anything beyond communitarianism.

Israel, a Mediterranean Society in Formation
Elie Barnavi
This article tackles the way in which the development of the state of Israel, through historical, demographic and geographic circumstances has taken a different path from what was initially intended by Zionism. Israel emerges as a Mediterranean nation from many points of view: cultural, urbanistic, political... The "Mediterraneanisation" of the state of Israel appears as a mechanism that includes the traditions that are in conflict at the core of a model that is respectful to differences.

The Coexistence of Different Cultures: Religion and Politics in Israel
Ilan Greilsammer
In this article, the author seeks to reflect on the reason for the fracture that separates the religious world from the lay world in Israeli society. The rupture of understanding between the religious groups and moderate lay groups that characterised the beginnings of the state of Israel is analysed through three key dates: 1967, 1977 and 1987. The first, with the Six Day War, which radicalised the postures of the moderate religious groups, weakening the Israeli political centre. Aside from the electoral victory of the Likud, 1977 brought the entry into politics of the ultra-orthodox Jews, acquiring a position of force in Israeli society. Finally, 1987 was not only the date of the beginning of the Intifada, but it also marked the beginning of the post-Zionist lay tendencies that seek to free the state of its specifically Jewish content, which is increasingly distancing religious and secular groups.

Islam and Politics: the Case of Morocco
Mohamed Tozy
This article is set in the debate on the concepts of political culture and their capacity for the appropriation of models of government and political thinking external to this culture. In this sense, it does not deal with an adaptation to a dominant culture, but instead of the adaptation of new ideas to the local situation. Specifically, it centres its argument on the Moroccan political system and on how it seeks to combine a large number of traditional and modern points of reference that will maintain the historic Islamic tradition and allow acceptance by international organisations. In this sense, the article analyses the position of the monarchy both in the political, social and religious ambit and as a figure that existed before the constitution.

Interculturality in the Maghreb. In the Shadow of Geopolitics
Ridha Tlili
The dream of the Maghreb as a unit vanished because of the political conflicts that emerged after the respective countries gained their independence. The article deals with the impact of the political, territorial and geo-strategic conflicts on the idea of the Maghreb and the role that the challenges of interculturality can play in the future of the area. The idea of the unity of the Maghreb reached its zenith in the struggle against colonialism; nevertheless, after the creation of the national states the conflicts among them dissolved this concept. Not even the Union of the Arab Maghreb has managed to emerge from the stagnation in the relations. In this context, the challenges of interculturality in the Maghreb, include, on one hand, considering the different facets of the area: the Berber-Arab culture, Islam and also the Arab-Latin culture, and on the other hand, updating the challenges with Mediterranean Europe as a necessary interlocutor beyond the issues of security that the majority of encounters concentrate on.

The Catalonia/Spain Model of Interculturality: A Political Approximation
Enric Fossas
This article presents a political approximation to interculturality in Catalonia from a dual viewpoint: on one hand the multinational pluralism of the Spanish state and on the other the pluralism represented by immigration. The article presents the political-legal framework in which the two viewpoints develop. In the first the autonomous process is presented, seen as a new historic attempt for the integration of the pluri-national nature of Spain. As for the second, it highlights the fact that it is the framework of the statal legislation that determines political principles, and that Catalonia does not have the political capacity to adopt its own policies of accommodation to cultural diversity.

A Socio-cultural Approximation to the Catalan Model of Interculturality
Andreu Domingo, Isidor Marí, Miquel Porta Perales i Maria-Àngels Roque
From a socio-cultural perspective, this article presents the Catalan model of interculturality. The historical evolution, the economic situation, Catalan demography have configured Catalonia as an intercultural collective (marked by peaceful coexistence in diversity) rahter than a multicultural one (coexistence without sharing). The future of Catalonia is inseparable from the intercultural perspective, to which the changes of the end of the century will oblige a redefinition in an increasingly evident tendency in democratic processes. A redefinition of the models of intercultural articulation in which the Catalan model can make its contribution both to Europe and the Mediterranean countries.

2. MISCELLANY

Paul Balta's Interview with Tahar Ben Jelloun: Migration and the Experience of Two Cultures
Paul Balta, Tahar Ben Jelloun
An interview that the journalist and great connoisseur of the Arab world, Paul Balta, held with Tahar Ben Jelloun, a Moroccan writer resident in France, and winner of the Prix Goncourt. The writer reflects on the Mediterranean from his personal experience, a point of view which is both social, cultural and imaginary, at the same time as he expounds on his opinions in relation to current burning issues, such as identity, interculturality, cosmopolitanism, migrations or civil society in this common field.

Imagination-Attitudes-Migration in Greece
Cristina Papadopoulou
The article by this Greek journalist, a specialist on the Middle East, sets us in Greece's reality as a country that is in a full process of transition from being a country that was traditionally an emitter of immigration to becoming a new receiver of immigration. From this perspective, the author analyses the construction of images referring to both the "I" and to the "Other", as well as the beginning of the development of certain xenophobic reflexes and of "fear of the immigrant" in the Greek population.

An Approximation to the Social Sciences: Algeria as a Metaphor
Pierre Bourdieu
In this article, the well known French ethno-sociologist and thinker deals with the socio-historical context in which his own work, which is mainly sociological and anthropological, has developed on Algeria, to come, finally, to an up to date reflection on various problems in this area. He thereby undertakes an analysis on the intellectual problem characteristic of an epoch, situating his studies in a specific context -strongly marked by the orientalist tradition-, in the search for reflexivity, a concept that, according to this author, is one of the imperative conditions for the practice of the Social Sciences.

Mediterranean Aesthetics: Rilke in Spain
Rafael Argullol
At the beginning of the 20th century, the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke visited and travelled in Spain for a period of four months. Through the impressions of this personality, Argullol analyses the different and successive German perspectives with respect to Spain and "What is Spanish". At the same time, he sees this journey as the need for the great poet to achieve a spiritual metamorphosis.

New Strategies of Urban Re-development and Important Intervention Projects in Mediterranean Cities
Andreu Ulied i Andreu Esquius
The urban planning of Mediterranean cities has undergone a period of unusual turbulence and contradiction, very especially since the sixties. From the perspective of urbanistic revision, the article tackles the issue of Mediterranean cities as a whole in relation to their re-urbanisation projects and strategies, both during the second half of the 20th century, and from a perspective point of view, in the coming decades, analysing the new planned urban projects and establishing a proposal for the definition of new urban development strategies.

Contemporary Moroccan Art
María José Corominas i Anna Bàrbara Cardellà
This article presents an up to date panorama of contemporary Moroccan art. Starting from the fact that there is a great vacuum of knowledge on the culture of the southern shore of the Mediterranean, the article approaches the artistic proposals from Morocco that have been inaccessible to date. From this perspective, the authors highlight the great ethnological and geographic diversity of Morocco, which is reflected in the impossibility of making reference to a unitary contemporary art in Morocco.

3. BOOKS

Three Points of Present Day Reflection on the Mediterranean: Politics, Free Trade and the Environment
F. Xavier Medina

Morocco in Spain
Gema Martín Muñoz

The Mediterranean, People and Books
Claudine Rulleau