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Stop Generalizing About Europe

jonasbentzen.com

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Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#181

Post by cristianpascu »

jwr wrote: post #170
crazygringo wrote: post #34

This post feels awfully pedantic. While it may not be clear to non-Americans, when Americans talk about "Europe", they're generally talking about Western Europe, not Eastern, and are excluding the UK too. They almost certainly aren't including Russia. (Just like when Americans talk about Asia, they aren't usually thinking of India.) Of course, that's geographically inaccurate -- but it's what we usually mean. The Eur…

You just proved OP's point. What's "Eastern Europe"? I'm guessing you'd consider anything east of Germany/Austria/Italy to be "Eastern", right? Well, in Poland and the Czech Republic people consider themselves "Central Europe", which makes sense given that geographically Europe extends to the Ural mountains. Don't generalize.

I live in Romania, so I can tell what we consider West: Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, UK, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Belgium.

If one goes to one of these countries, one feels like going west. Otherwise, it's less and less.

So when Americans speak about Europe, it's safe to assume that they might refer to these countries.

Rock bands will always have a hard time to tell Bucharest from Budapest.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#182

Post by SheriffFatman »

[deleted] wrote: post #159
edj wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when Americans talk about "Europe", they're generally talking about Western Europe, not Eastern, and are excluding the UK too. They almost certainly aren't including Russia. Likewise, most people across the world seem to use "American" and "U.S. citizen" interchangeably, even though Canada and Brazil, for example, are in the Americas, making Canadians and Brazilians American , as well.

[deleted]

> but just like people don't consider India to be "Asian"

American people, maybe: in the UK, the word "Asian", referring to a person and without other qualification, will usually be interpreted as Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi.

> it sees unlikely that the world will suddenly include Brazil when they are talking about "Americans".

I'm fairly sure that, in at least some Spanish-speaking countries, "americano" means South or Latin American, with "nordeamericano" or "estadounidense" used for people from the U.S.

"People" != U.S citizens; "the world" != the Anglosphere.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#183

Post by jlgreco »

jonascopenhagen wrote: post #44
crazygringo wrote: post #34

This post feels awfully pedantic. While it may not be clear to non-Americans, when Americans talk about "Europe", they're generally talking about Western Europe, not Eastern, and are excluding the UK too. They almost certainly aren't including Russia. (Just like when Americans talk about Asia, they aren't usually thinking of India.) Of course, that's geographically inaccurate -- but it's what we usually mean. The Eur…

> When Americans talk about "Europe", they're generally talking about Western Europe, not Eastern, and are excluding the UK too. This doesn't hold true for any of the Americans I've met (and I've met a lot). Also, one of the countries Martin Varsavsky mentions in his examples is actually the UK. If it were true that the American definition of Europe doesn't include Eastern Europe, what part of the world do the many A…

If you asked most Americans who have visited Budapest where they went/what area they were in, they would say Budapest. If you to press, they would admit that they were on the continent of Europe, but wonder why that mattered.

Similarly, if they went to India, they would tell you they were in India. Upon further questioning, they would admit that they were in fact also in Asia, but would be puzzled as to why that mattered.

Similarly, if they went to Egypt, they would tell you they were in Egypt. Upon further questioning they would admit that they were in fact in Africa, but would again be puzzled as to why that mattered.

Now, on the other hand, if they went to France they would either describe themselves as having gone to France, or having gone to Europe.

The key theme here is that the casual American mind, contrary to popular belief, doesn't generalize based on continent boundaries, but rather at a finer (often)multi-country/sub-continent grain. The largest unit of generalization on any particular continent gets the name of the continent (be it Africa, Asia, or Europe (I suspect Americans do generalize South America, and include anything south of the US in that generalization)). That doesn't mean they are generalizing the continent itself.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#184

Post by Xylakant »

erebrus wrote: post #116
adventured wrote: post #98

The comedy to this is the extreme generalizing that goes on globally when talking about America / Americans. We're all cowboy surfer rednecks that love our guns and religion, are all broke with maxed out credit cards and overweight with a nasty case of diabetes.

Yes, that's a silly generalization, but it's not comparable to the one mentioned in the OP. If you want to compare thinking of all Americans as rednecks, you can compare it to thinking of of all french as sweet talking wine lovers, spaniards as lazy and always sleeping the siesta, or germans as rigid uptight and rude; and so on an so forth.

We are rigid uptight and rude. Call me, I'll prove that to you.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#185

Post by pelle »

benatkin wrote: post #150
pelle wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Denmark and grew up knowing that we and the rest of Scandinavia is part of Western Europe.

Yes, and I grew up in the town where Pluto was discovered. I present to you the United Nations geoscheme for Europe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme_for_Eu...

Never heard of it before and I suspect largely irrelevant outside of UN statistics.

As in anything in Europe these things are largely a product of history.

Those of us who grew up during the cold war talk about Western and Eastern Europe.

Within those sets there are various other deeper historical and cultural subsets and intersects, such as Scandinavia, Benelux and Balkan. Now there are newer political groupings such as EU, Schengen and Eurozone.

I expect anyone in Denmark and Scandinavia would include themselves in Western Europe where I would also include Italy and Spain. Danish people may have more in common culturally with someone from Estonia than from Spain. But it's just one of many historical intersecting and overlapping circles.

Attempts to ignore these circles and creating top down classifications in Europe, Africa, Middle East and probably elsewhere have historically not been a winning cause.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#186

Post by okal »

w1ntermute wrote: post #180
okal wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exclusion of Indians from "Asians" isn't a people thing. It's a very American thing, I suspect. EDIT: Formatting

It is different in the details. But in the general sense, this is true in other countries. For example, in the UK, "Asian" means "Indian" and what Americans would call "Asians" are just referred to by their nationality. This is because in the UK, Indians are the largest nationality from Asia. But in the US, where East Asians are more common, they got the blanket term "Asian".

To be fair that's true for my country, Kenya, as well. Asian here refers to subcontinentals. The Chinese are just that, the Chinese.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#187

Post by TeMPOraL »

And for the similar reasons I think it would be in the interest of fruitful discussion to try and not generalize India and China into... well, India and China, respectively. Yes, they are both single countries, but every one of them has a population greater than America and Europe combined. At this scale I'd expect that those countries have cultural substructures corresponding to european nation-states in size and diversity.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#188

Post by artimaeis »

erebrus wrote: post #107

It's amazing how many from the USA insist that the inner diversity in the USA is comparable to the one in Europe. I've heard this many times, namely here in HN. It is not comparable. PERIOD. Even if the poster goes a bit to the extreme of bringing Russia in to the conversation, even inside the EU, there is still no comparison on how how diverse Europe is (e.g. Portugal to Norway, Greece to France, Spain to Germany) c…

Perhaps the diversity of the USA is not the extreme of Europe, but I would be quick to point out that the regional differences in the US are quite notable even to an outside observer.

There are 5 major regions of the US: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, and West. Each of these regions has noted differences in: dialect, culture, food, general behavior, economy, and quality of life.

Now regardless of US or Europe we have to factor in the population density of a location. It's no secret that urban culture is very different from rural culture be it in Oregon or in France.

Granted: we mostly speak the same language, we all share a common currency, and we all answer to the same federal body which represents us.

There is more diversity in Europe, that much I am sure of. But there is no problem with a comparison of the two.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#189

Post by SheriffFatman »

antiterra wrote: post #155
jjio wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America/Americas is the entire land mass containing all North American countries and South American countries. It's just also slang for "The United States of America".

If that is true then "Germany," "China," "Russia," "Ireland," "Australia," et al. are all slang for their proper (sometimes anglicized) country names.

But there's a difference in that "America" or "the Americas" can include a much larger area than just the USA, while that's not true for the countries you list. China is agreed by both the PRC and the RoC to include Taiwan -- they just disagree over who is the legitimate government; "Germany" historically meant all German-speaking lands, but that usage is now, for understandable reasons, defunct; the Commonwealth of Australia is coterminous with the collection of islands collectively known as Australia; and "Ireland" is in fact the full official name (in English) of what is sometimes known as the Republic of Ireland to distinguish it from Northern Ireland, to which the former until recently laid claim.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#190

Post by rmc »

arethuza wrote: post #163
rmc wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 or 3 of the countries in the UK are not "Anglo-Saxon" countries, but would be "Celtic" countries. :P Additionally the UK does elect and choose EU legislators, in the European Parliament & Council of Minsiters, European Commission, etc. etc.

Not to mention there is a distinct possibility that the UK will itself break up in the next few years.

Very much depends on how you define "UK will break up". Remember Ireland seceded from the UK in the 1920s. The break up has already begun.
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