A friend wrote an article about the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. Yes, I know, boring, but bear with me, it will get very interesting.
In her research, she established that after the collapse of the USSR the traditional heavily patriarchal structures of Azerbaijan came back in full force. The Soviets had driven them underground, to an extent, but after the Soviets went away, Azeris jumped headlong into what was their traditional way of being: women were beaten, treated like cattle, forced into arranged marriages yet were fully complicit with this way of life.
Nobody wants to publish this article because it contradicts the fantasy life of well-fed American academics.
It doesn’t matter if you spent a lot of time in Azerbaijan doing research, interviewing actual human beings, and analyzing your findings. American academics have decided that cultural differences don’t exist and everybody is a miniature American, wanting what Americans want and doing what Americans do. So the only publishable thing you can write about Azerbaijan is that Azeri women are fighting for their liberation from patriarchal strictures even when you know for a fact they are doing no such thing.
I mean, if Americans are into affirmative consent, the rest of the world can’t possibly not be obsessed with it.
The stubborn refusal to believe in the existence of cultural differences puts humongous limitations on research.
Clarissa's Blog 
I disagree with this conclusion completely. American academics (and feminists and liberals who think that they’re intelligentsia) are well-aware that cultural differences exist, but they either look the other way or make excuses for the abuse of women in foreign lands, because to criticize would be not only “judgmental,” but that greatest of all sins — “racist.”
In other words, most American academics aren’t nearly as stupid as they act. They’re just cowards.
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Everything I describe happens in the discussions of lily-white people and their cultures, too. I can tell an identical story of how research on Ukraine is being silenced. Surely, it isn’t the fear of racism that prevents Americans to accept the existence of cultural specifics of blond blue-eyed Russians and very white although not always as blond Ukrainians.
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I am not sure it is about the fear of being called “judgmental” or “racist”. I think it is a cowardice of a slightly different sort – of questioning any prevailing wisdom of the respective field. Progressive rhetoric may or may not be hijacked in service of something more ancient – clique mentality.
The original reasons why some paradigm prevailed in American academia may vary, and may be good, progressive, whatnot… but IMHO by now the key is not in the content. If prevailing paradigms were different, most scientists would be equally afraid of questioning them. (100 years ago science believed women are not equal to men… These days there are many societies where, for example, nationalism is mainstream, and there it is equally hard to question nationalism if you want to be a recognized as a part of the “intellectual elite”.) And it is hard to blame those people who get overly cautious – not conforming to whichever paradigm currently prevails can ruin one’s academic career. One will just be blamed for being an activist, not a scholar…
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“I think it is a cowardice of a slightly different sort – of questioning any prevailing wisdom of the respective field.”
Here is the question, though. Why is it this particular idea that became so widely accepted? Why isn’t it instead something like “different cultures exist, they are different and that’s fine, not everybody has got to be the same”?
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I’ll add that those in charge of the EU are betting the house on the idea that culture is a trifle that doesn’t matter at all in the face of the utter fungibility of human beings.
Putin and a few others are betting in the other direction and I think they’re going to win.
The thing is, within …. mainstream Europe (roughly the EU borders) the indigenous cultures are largely compatible and people now have no problem co-existing since they’ve mostly accepted the same basic principles (the importance of secular education, the legal equality of the sexes, the importance of rule of law, separation of religion and politics and some others).
Within this context most national disagreements are now personal and trivial (like the Germans alienating people at hotels with their weird towel behavior).
But when you bring in populations that don’t agree on these basic principles (as the EU is trying very hard to do) you’re just asking for trouble if you haven’t found a way to ameliorate the differences.
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“I’ll add that those in charge of the EU are betting the house on the idea that culture is a trifle that doesn’t matter at all in the face of the utter fungibility of human beings.”
“(like the Germans alienating people at hotels with their weird towel behavior)”
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“What do they do with towels?”
They get up at 5 or 6 in the morning to drape their towels over the prime poolside chairs (which they don’t get around to actually sitting in until sometime after 2 in the afternoon).
They’re not the only ones who do it but they’re the most unstoppable (despite signs in German specifically put there to keep them from doing it). I think it’s actually kind of endearing (since I’m not the pool side type) but it really exasperates many people….
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Oh right! I’ve seen that but not at the pool. They do that at the beach, too. Very annoying!
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If there are signs saying that chair-claiming via towel isn’t allowed, why don’t other pool patrons just toss the towels aside?
Or would that behavior be too “un-European”?
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They are not shy about surfacing at 2 pm and clamoring loudly for “their” seats.
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…so tell them the wind blew their towels off and the chairs were vacant! 🙂
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