Global Policy Forum

by Jean Tardif *

Is it possible to have a common understanding of culture especially between people of different cultures? On something so closely linked to values, can a discussion lead to realistic proposals for balanced relationships between societies and cultures as globalization creates new interfaces between them? Can we do justice to the economic dimension of culture and the concrete political consequences of its fundamental role for all societies? Could the main challenge of globalization be finding ways to organize relations between societies defined through different cultures and different, evolving cultural entities that go well beyond existing economic or interstate frameworks?

How can we conceive and organize genuine intercultural dialogues if we refuse to accept culture as the source of clashes of civilizations or as an instrument of power?

To reach mutual understanding and act effectively, especially between persons of different cultures, we need minimal agreement on the basic concepts for interpreting our rapidly changing world.. Following on our previous discussions on "Globalization and Cultures", we hope now to foster debate on three series of questions about such concepts. First, how important are dialogues between cultures? Next, how should we conceive of cultures and relations between cultures? Finally, how can one to organize balanced intercultural dialogues?

1- THE IMPORTANCE OF BALANCED INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUES: CULTURAL SECURITY

Is the very notion of intercultural dialogue an empty formula or a tautology?

Is there anything resembling real dialogue between Japanese and German culture, between Arab and American culture, for example? Can such dialogue be something more than limited artistic, literary or philosophical influences and exchanges?

There is no such thing as a closed culture. Cultures grow and change from constantly changing interactions. Does "cultural dialogue" involve anything more than putting a positive spin on this multiplicity of difficult-to-understand interactions?

The expression, albeit ambiguous, underlines the fact that human relationships occur not only between individuals and that they cannot be circumscribed by relationships between states. They happen between groups with values, norms, models, behaviors, and ways of representing others that are more or less formalized in institutions. Relations between human groups thus carry huge cultural weight. Traditionally these relationships have been bounded by geographical limits, even if human history has also been built out of distant relationships and an expanding segment of the "elites" has been in continuous exchange with foreign cultures. The rapid evolution of transport and communication has brought the globalization of cultural flows. Today the media, even more than transport and elite mobility, play a growing role in interactions between societies and cultures. In this context, the large media conglomerates are persistently criticized from those in other cultures who see them as instruments for promoting the success of western values and ways of understanding and establishing a profoundly unequal "dialogue."

This situation raises one of the most important questions of our time: how are we prepared to understand other cultures? How have American or European media presented Arab, Asian and African cultures to us? Do these cultures perceive European and Latin American cultures otherwise than through foreign media productions? In which countries, if any, are there places regularly devoted to presenting other cultures in newspapers, reviews or on screens? Can we speak of dialogue between cultures if there is insufficient mutual knowledge? Given that the big powers spend more and more on promoting their "images," is it not time for the media to become places for genuine intercultural exchange? Shouldn't the media, whose main concern is profit, of course, use their great weight more positively to make intercultural and intersocial dialogue less of a one-way process?

The previous working paper on Globalization and Cultures has underlined the deeply unequal conditions of intercultural exchanges and the recent establishment of today's audiovisual oligopoly. One could judge this situation unacceptable for economic or commercial reasons alone. It is unacceptable also because societies affected by this unbalance can see it as threat to their cultural security that even industrialized countries deem so strategically important for themselves.

Security can be defined as: "the capacity of a society to conserve its specific character in spite of changing conditions and real or virtual threats: more precisely, it involves the permanence of traditional schemas of language, culture, associations, identity and national or religious practices, allowing for changes that are judged to be acceptable. This notion of security is rightly seen as a fundamental concern for every society, including for cultural matters, as well as a central question of international relations that must be addressed in present conditions.

It is very important to recognize that the need for security in this broader sense is the basis of any idea of "national interest," as Samuel Huntington notes. Should this lead us to accept the implicit overlap between identity and the nation that is taken for granted by the international system founded on states, even if reality has never completely conformed to it. Is it true that cultural identities can only be recognized when they correspond to a national framework? How can we ignore the concrete significance of what some call the "Arab Nation," for example, or old and new diasporas to choose but two examples of cultural entities that do not coincide with Nation-State? The many references to values in political discourse following September 11 illustrate how important the place of values has been in justifying responses to the attacks. Could it be a concern only for economic powers without other countries taking necessary steps to protect their cultural security? Those who speak of values speak also of culture. In matters of culture, however, can openness be dissociated from a minimum of real reciprocity? The equal dignity of cultures would be a vain principle if we could not succeed in inventing conditions for dialogue and real exchange between them that take into account the full weight of cultural capitalism in its recent developments.

2- HOW TO THINK CULTURE AND INTERCULTURAL EXCHANGES?

The relations between societies and cultures can be conceived in different ways. Whether culture is seen through its artistic expressions and products or in its fundamental social function, intercultural relations will be thought of differently, either within the Nation-states (multiculturalism), or at the extranational level (source of conflict or case for mutual respect).

2.1- CULTURE

Behind the multiplicity of definitions of culture, Dominique Wolton has focused upon three conceptualizations. In his words, "the classical French notion of culture is centered on the idea of creation, of the ‘work.'[…] The German notion is closer to the idea of civilization and includes values, representations, symbols and patrimony as shared by a community at a moment in its history. The Anglo-Saxon sense, more anthropological, includes modes of living, lifestyles, common knowledge, images and myths…" But what about Asian, Arab or African notions? For culture, more than in any other area, we must assume an "… obligation to decenter oneself essential to understand problems of identity and security."

At the 1982 Mondiacult Conference in Mexico City as well as in the Universal declaration on cultural diversity, UNESCO has tried to reconcile different conceptions in defining culture as follows: "In the largest sense culture today can be considered as the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group and that it encompasses, in addition to arts and literature, lifestyle, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs." UNESCO was clear on the role of such a culture. " Culture gives humanity the capacity to reflect on itself. It is culture that makes us specifically rational, critical and ethically engaged human beings. It is through culture that we perceive values and make choices…through it that human beings express themselves, are conscious of themselves, perceive themselves as unfinished projects, call their own creations into question, look tirelessly for new meanings and create works that transcend them."

Culture is not an abstraction, it is a living, open totality that evolves by constantly integrating individual and collective choices that are taken in interaction with other, similar wholes. It expresses itself in diverse ways without being reducible to "works". Culture is the product of a complex inheritance constantly submitted to critical scrutiny and the need to adapt, a constant conquest to achieve.

That cultures are embodied in particular identities should not hinder the quest for common values. Each culture is an effort to reach the universal, but none can claim to have a monopoly on it. Universality is not synonymous with uniformity. No society could work without a system of representation and action common to its members that distinguishes it from others. Relations between societies, either within a Nation-State or at the extranational level, begin with the representation one has of the other.

2.2- MULTICULTURALISM: A NATION-STATE INTERNAL AFFAIR

It is important to make a clear distinction between cultural diversity and multiculturalism. This term first appeared in Canada in the 1970s as an expression to describe policies promoting public recognition of cultural diversity and plural ethnicities. It was conceived in opposition to a policy of assimilating immigrants

The issue of cultural identities is significant in more and more countries. It is fundamental to the future of large contemporary democratic societies of which several are multicultural either because they began that way or because they became so as a result of the migratory movements characteristic of open societies. Short of opting for a policy of reducing pluralism, Such societies have to find ways to ensure coexistence and mutual recognition between different cultural components within their territories. Even if they are linked to the international evolution, such policy choices are the prerogatives of national politics that can vary greatly, as demonstrated by examining the USA, Germany, Great Britain, Sweden or Canada. It is these specific policies that are designated by "multiculturalism," to the degree to which they include some legal recognition of different components of national cultures.

This Forum on cultural pluralism focuses upon transnational concerns. It is not intended to include issues of multiculturalism understood as an internal concern of states.

2.3 INTERCULTURAL RELATIONS AT THE TRANSNATIONAL LEVEL: "CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS" OR "MULTIPLE MODERNITIES"

At the transnational level, relations between cultures can be conceived in two different ways: as causes for clashes of civilizations or as positive factors in the world dynamics.

The debate about clashes of civilizations begun in a 1994 article by American political scientist Samuel Huntington was renewed after September 11. An influential advisor to the American authorities, Huntington, whose outlook was that of a committed strategist, did not claim to set out precise limits between great "civilizations." It was more modest, proposing that after the disappearance of an ideologically divided and bipolar Cold War world in 1989, new cleavages and sources of tension would be cultural and not only conflicts of interest between states. Who would today deny that "interactions between peoples belonging to different civilizations are growing" and that they carry with them confrontations between value systems and visions of the world?

Manuel Castells contends that identity and the need for recognition constitute, along with technological change, are among the constants that creates history. Is it possible to conceptualize relationships between societies and cultures otherwise than as confrontations following "fracture lines?" Shouldn't we begin by recognizing the reality of geo-cultural entities and their role in contemporary global dynamics?

Can we do that if western societies claim to be the bearers of "modernity," on the one hand, and are seen by others as imposing their own ideas that they claim as universal, on the other? Counteracting these hegemonic temptations and dangerous tendencies to create defensive identities, Shmuel Eistenstadt has abandoned the model of convergence of the civilizations towards the western system and questions the West's appropriation of modernity. Instead he proposes the idea of "multiple modernities" to recognize the reality of different valid ways of understanding and living modernity critically, while accepting that each version of modernity has both its strong points and destructive potentials. Might this concept lead to open dialogues between different groups with their different ways of experiencing modernity that flow from their different cultural traditions.

These questions have practical implications besides clarifying concepts: do those who defend multiculturalism, the "cultural exception" or «cultural diversity» have the same goals as those who promote what is here defined as «cultural pluralism» ?

3- HOW TO PROMOTE BALANCED INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUES?

Is it possible to protect cultural diversity, a necessary condition for intercultural dialogues, by removing the exchange of cultural products and services out of the WTO's common regime and by guaranteeing the right for States to adopt their own cultural policies? Against the ultraliberal policies that would have us see cultural products and services as common merchandise, can there be a different regime that would depend not only on public action but also allow sufficient place for the roles and responsibilities of the multiple actors concerned with the promotion of cultural pluralism?

3.1- THE "EXCEPTION CULTURELLE" AND "CULTURAL DIVERSITY": EFFICIENT DEFENSIVE MEASURES?

The struggle for cultural diversity began recently during multilateral trade negotiations. The concept "exception culturelle" appeared at the end of the GATT Uruguay Round negotiations in 1993 and its meaning is ambiguous at best. While trying to counter the dominant economic logic of the moment it unwittingly seemed to accept that markets establish "normal" rules which should govern all exchanges. "L'exception culturelle" does not clearly signify the important fact that considerations of culture ought to have priority over market rules in cultural exchanges. As Marc-Olivier Padis asks "Is this a way of placing ‘outside the market' goods that grow out of other universes of value, or of organizing the market in such a way that the French cultural industry can remain competitive?"

Considered by many as having a too defensive connotation, the "exception culturelle" was replaced by "cultural diversity" to advance the goal of preserving different cultures from threats of standardization. Recently, in order to achieve this objective, some governments started promoting a new international convention that would maintain the right for states to adopt their own cultural policies protected from liberalization trends under WTO negotiations.

These approaches are based on a doctrine that cultural goods and services are something more than commercial objects. This doctrine holds that if cultural industries were governed exclusively by market rules they would be unable to compete against the products of the large media conglomerates. Thus states should reject trade liberalization in cultural goods and services - film and audiovisual materials in particular, and remain free to adopt their own internal cultural policies, including subsidies for the production and distribution of cultural products. Against the ultraliberal trend of the 90s, "l'exception culturelle" or "cultural diversity" which have no legal status because they are not formally mentioned in agreements, have been useful and effective tools to counteract trade liberalization in cultural goods and services following the logic and dispositions of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).

Even if one agrees with these ideas and with the need for guaranteeing the right for States to adopt their own cultural policies, it is essential to question how effective they will be in the longer run. Did this existing right prevent Hollywood of taking more than 80% of the world audiovisual market? Presently the objectives of protecting cultural diversity are backed by several countries plus the EU, but will this situation persist indefinitely as countries line up to liberalize their "cultural markets" largely under American pressure? Moreover, if these matters continue to be raised within the WTO under the rubric of "exception", it would eventually lead to the triumph of general trade principles. Finally, technological developments that allow direct communications disregarding borders, together with upcoming multilateral negotiations on telecommunications where convergence between large multimedia groups with global production and distribution capacities and strong interests in all available profitable markets may be decisive, could render illusory the search for effective control of "contents" and diversity. As existing, duly ratified, treaties on the environment demonstrate clearly, state regulation, even when international, is not enough. The strategic dimension of geocultural issues, the current international situation and the need for effectiveness should lead us to draw the practical consequences from these facts and develop new measures to promote «cultural pluralism».

3.2- CULTURAL PLURALISM: A STRATEGICAL APPROACH

Drawing a distinction between these two expressions often taken for one another is not a matter of intellectual hairsplitting. Here the term «cultural pluralism» is intended to put emphasis on a different analysis leading to different, if complementary, political strategies.

Diversity is a condition of life, including human life. It is given by nature that constantly produces it. We may consider important to preserve species diversity or the environment as global public goods. "Cultural diversity" is often seen as designating the goal that "l'exception culturelle" pursues, the valorization and protection of the world's cultures confronted by the danger of "uniformization."

Related to culture, pluralism underlines the fact that culture is not just a natural fact, but results from individual and collective human choices. Cultural pluralism is thus neither a global public good nor a reified object. As it is proposed here, the promotion of cultural pluralism not only protects the freedom to create and exchange cultural works with a special status in the world of commerce and it does not imply only the guarantee for States to adopt and conduct their cultural policies. We might say, following the definition of cultural pluralism in Chapter 1, that it involves defending the basic conditions for dialogue among cultures that accept each other as equal in dignity and are able to question themselves about their values, practices and adaptation to contemporary global conditions. No culture has ever been isolated and none will ever be so. But no cultural dialogue can succeed when inequalities are too great or when it is controlled by the most powerful. By defining the objective of struggle for cultural pluralism as the defense of individual and collective freedom to choose while respecting universal values, affirming rights to difference, and underlining the political dimension of this struggle. «Cultural pluralism gives policy expression to the reality of cultural diversity» (UNESCO).

Promoting "cultural pluralism" as seen here implies three elements:

1) It calls first for the recognition of the strategic dimension of relations between geocultural entities in a globalized world. If we admit that security is an issue that not only concerns individuals and the physical territory of states, but that it also has fundamental cultural dimensions, geo-cultural issues should be dealt with the same importance as geo-politics geo-economics. Shouldn't geo-cultural entities, largely absent from the current international system, play a role similar to the one assumed by "regional entities" for certain kinds of international issues, and can be areas of privileged cultural exchanges?

2) Because geo-cultural entities do not necessarily overlap states, and because what is at issue for culture and identity is not simply private, we need to create a new place between societies and cultures that is irreducible both to the present international system and to the market. It could be a regime adapted to the specific conditions of cultural exchanges and that would try to reconcile the needs of the logic of identities with the logic of markets, by adopting measures coming out of 5 principles governing such a regime: managed market opening, multi-functionality, precautionary principle, responsibility and reciprocity.

3) Because the interstate system is no longer sufficient to deal with geocultural issues, it is necessary to conceive a new kind of political body, for concertation, proposition and supervision, open to different actors concerned by cultural dialogues and who will try to reconcile their interests to establish, by co-decision and co-regulation, in a place where they will have to assume their respective responsibilities. Such a World Council of Cultures (WCC) would be the counterpart of the Security Council as well as of the Social and Economic Council proposed by Jacques Delors in 1998 and been mentioned in Monterey and Johannesburg by French President Chirac.

The objective of such a World Council of Cultures is also to defend the concept of culture as an interactional and compositional process to ensure that basic human choices can be exercised in conditions of freedom without determinant external constraints. This is not to defend an acquis or fortress, or some kind of cultural apartheid that will raise borders between cultures to create some kind of fictitious territorialized status quo. This place must also be open to different actors and allow peoples to reconcile the many ways to living modernity and the human condition.

The world- as- market creates neither a world community nor a world culture. What is at stake in cultural pluralism is how to live together respecting differences, a basic challenge to civilization and managed globalization. To cope with it, we need not only guarantee the right of states to support it by their national policies. There is need at the transnational level for conditions leading to more balanced intercultural dialogues and exchanges. This is in the interest of everyone. Can the present proposals under discussion help toward some progress?

*This paper has been written by Jean Tardif in cooperation with Pierre-Jean Benghozi, Gerd Junne, George Ross and other members of PlanetAgora's scientific comity.

1 Ole Weaver, Social Security: The Concept in Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe–1993. Kenneth Waltz argues that the central concern of international relations is not – or no longer is–a search for equilibrium through military power, but for security in a broader sense. The idea of security more closely resembles that of "public good." It includes economics writ large, to the point where President Clinton put economic security on the same level of priority as military security.

2 Huntington, "The Erosion of American National Interests," Foreign Affairs, 78,5, Sept-Oct. 1997.

3 de Montbrial, op.cit. 220.

4 Penser la communication, 1977.

5 Thierry de Montbrial, L'action et le systí¨me du monde. (Paris: PUF 2002), 221.

6 Alain Renaut, "Multiculturalisme, pluralisme, communautarisme" in Université de tous les savoirs, Le Pouvoir, L'í‰tat, le Politique. Vol 9 (Paris : Odile Jacob, poches, 2002). 9.

7 The Canadian author Will Kymlicka has even talked about "multicultural citizenship." See Multicultural Citizneship, in French La Citoyenneté Multiculturelle (Montréal-Paris: Boréal-La Découverte, 2001).

8 Esprit, mars-avril 2002.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C íŸ 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.