3 The Mediterranean: Marrying the Future without Divorcing the Past
Partnerships between the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean used to envisage a large free-trade zone. However, we must accept disillusionment in this project. Dictatorial regimes and religious-political groups of a fundamentalist and obscurantist nature both constitute threats to the relationship between the two shores. From an economic and managerial point of view, firms often appear at the top of the list of examples not to follow. In management handbooks full of canonical practices and principles, Mediterranean methods are rejected. The cultures of the southern Mediterranean are understood through an optic of archaism, folklorization or even inferiority. These descriptions produce the image of a Mediterranean condemned to marginalization. Caricatures, common assumptions, stereotypes… Such is the information conveyed by most media when discussing cultural relationships between the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean.
Behind this slippage or semantic prudence, it is relations between Islam and the West which are being stigmatized. Aggravated by the events of September 11, 2001 in the United States, this phenomenon of radicalization of the discourse inevitably leads to conflicts and clashes. Violence is fueled by binary thinking opposing good and evil! These visions are reductive. So, how do we understand the Mediterranean? How to contest this false evidence?
We think that the Mediterranean ...