Culture Of Belgium
A discussion of Belgian culture requires discussing both those aspects of cultural life shared by the Belgians, regardless of what language they speak, and the differences between the main cultural communities: the Flemish people from Flanders and the French-speakers from Brussels and Wallonia — although the grouping of Brussels and Wallonia as one cultural community is sometimes rejected, for instance by the Manifesto for Walloon culture as well as certain regionalists from Brussels.
Most Belgians tend to view their culture as an integral part of European or Western culture. Nevertheless, both main communities tend to make their individual and collective cultural choices mainly from within their own community, and then, when going beyond, the Flemish draw intensively from both the English-speaking culture (which dominates sciences, professional life and most news media) and the Netherlands, whereas French-speakers focus on cultural life in France and elsewhere in the French-speaking world, and less outside.
A truly scientific discussion would also include discussion of the different cultures of Belgian ethnic minorities, such as the Jews who have formed a remarkable component of Flemish culture — in particular that of Antwerp — for over five hundred years.
Read more about Culture Of Belgium: Music, Gastronomy, Folklore
Famous quotes containing the words culture of and/or culture:
“To be a Negro is to participate in a culture of poverty and fear that goes far deeper than any law for or against discrimination.... After the racist statutes are all struck down, after legal equality has been achieved in the schools and in the courts, there remains the profound institutionalized and abiding wrong that white America has worked on the Negro for so long.”
—Michael Harrington (1928–1989)
“... we’ve allowed a youth-centered culture to leave us so estranged from our future selves that, when asked about the years beyond fifty, sixty, or seventy—all part of the average human life span providing we can escape hunger, violence, and other epidemics—many people can see only a blank screen, or one on which they project fear of disease and democracy.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)