Cultural diversity has emerged as a key concern at the turn of a new century. Yet the meanings attached to
this catch-all term are as varied as they are shifting. Some see cultural diversity as inherently positive, insofar
as it points to a sharing of the wealth embodied in each of the world’s cultures and, accordingly, to the links
uniting us all in processes of exchange and dialogue. For others, cultural differences are what cause us to lose
sight of our common humanity and are therefore at the root of numerous conflicts. This second diagnosis is
today all the more plausible since globalization has increased the points of interaction and friction between
cultures, giving rise to identity-linked tensions, withdrawals and claims, particularly of a religious nature,
which can become potential sources of dispute. The essential challenge, therefore, would be to propose a
coherent vision of cultural diversity and thereby to clarify how, far from being a threat, it can become
beneficial to the action of the international community. This is the essential purpose of the present report.
A UNESCO World Report In line with UNESCO’s conviction of the inherent value and necessity of the ‘fruitful diversity of the world’s cultures’, as
inscribed in its Constitution (1945), the objectives of the World Report on Cultural Diversity are:
- to analyze cultural diversity in all its aspects by attempting to show the complexity of the processes at work while at
the same time identifying a main thread among the wide range of possible interpretations;
- to show the importance of cultural diversity in different areas (languages, education, communication and creativity),
which, their intrinsic functions apart, may be seen as essential for the safeguarding and promotion of cultural
diversity; and
- to persuade decision-makers and the various stakeholders of the importance of investing in cultural diversity as an
essential dimension of intercultural dialogue, since it can renew our approaches to sustainable development, ensure
the effective exercise of universally recognized human rights and freedoms, and strengthen social cohesion and
democratic governance.
The World Report aims to take account of the new
perspectives opened up by reflection on the challenges
of cultural diversity and thereby to map out new
approaches to monitoring and shaping the changes that
are taking place. Thus, the World Report does not seek to
provide ready-made solutions to the problems liable to
confront decision-makers. Rather, it aims to underline the
complexity of these problems, which cannot be solved
by political will alone but usually call for better
understanding of the underlying phenomena and
greater international cooperation, particularly through
the exchange of good practices and the adoption of
common guidelines.
The World Report does not claim to offer a global
inventory of cultural diversity, established on the basis of
available indicators in the manner of UNESCO’s Education
for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Reports. While the World
Report does include a Statistical Annex made up of 19
tables spanning the cultural domains, as well as a
chapter devoted to methodological considerations,
compiled in close cooperation with the UNESCO
Institute for Statistics (UIS) in Montreal, the development
of indicators in the field of cultural diversity is only just
beginning. For the purposes of such an inventory, it
would have been necessary to carry out, with the
agreement of UNESCO’s Member States, a truly global
enquiry into cultural diversity – a task that would have
required far greater resources than those allocated to the
present report, but that could one day be undertaken by
a World Observatory on Cultural Diversity, whose
creation this report recommends.
UNESCO hopes in this way to play a part in the recent
renewal of thinking on cultural diversity, in keeping with
its work in the 1950s and the conclusions of Our Creative
Diversity, the report of the World Commission on Culture
and Development (1996). In the text entitled Race and
History written in 1952 for UNESCO, the French
anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss argued that the
protection of cultural diversity should not be confined to
preservation of the status quo: it is ‘diversity itself which
must be saved, not the outward and visible form in
which each period has clothed that diversity’. Protecting
cultural diversity in this view means ensuring that
diversity continues to exist, not that a given state of
diversity should perpetuate itself indefinitely. This
presupposes the capacity to accept and sustain cultural
change, while not regarding it as an edict of fate. The report of the World Commission on Culture and
Development had argued along similar lines that cultural
diversity is not simply an asset to be preserved but a
resource to be promoted, with particular regard to its
potential benefits, including in areas relatively distant
from culture in the narrow sense. The present report
seeks to build upon the earlier report’s main conclusions.
In recent years, the arguments UNESCO has developed in
its thinking on cultural diversity have been taken up by a
significant number of programmes and agencies in the
United Nations and Bretton Woods institutions. The
World Bank, for example, has on several occasions
followed UNESCO’s lead in the context of the World
Decade on Culture and Development (1988–1997) in its
enquiries into the links between culture and
development. The United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP) have likewise published important
reports. Subsequently, the Report of the High-level
Group for the Alliance of Civilizations has given
unprecedented prominence to initiatives promoting
dialogue between peoples, cultures and civilizations. The
present report is also intended to contribute to the
thinking and studies of UNESCO’s partner programmes
and agencies, particularly with regard to development.
What is cultural diversity? Cultural diversity is above all a fact: there exists a wide
range of distinct cultures, which can be readily
distinguished on the basis of ethnographic observation,
even if the contours delimiting a particular culture prove
more difficult to establish than might at first sight
appear. Awareness of this diversity has today become
much more widespread, being facilitated by globalized
communications and increased cultural contacts. While
this greater awareness in no way guarantees the
preservation of cultural diversity, it has given the topic
greater visibility.
Cultural diversity has moreover become a major social
concern, linked to the growing diversity of social codes
within and between societies. Confronted by this
diversity of practices and outlooks, States sometimes find
themselves at a loss to know how to respond, often as a
matter of urgency, or how to take account of cultural
diversity in the common interest. To contribute to the
devising of specific responses, this report seeks to
provide a framework for renewed understanding of the
challenges inherent in cultural diversity, by identifying
some of the theoretical and political difficulties that it
inevitably entails.
A first difficulty has to do with the specifically cultural
nature of this form of diversity. Many societies have
recourse to various proxies, particularly ethnic or
linguistic characterizations, to take account of their
cultural heterogeneity. The first challenge will therefore
be to examine the different policies pursued without
losing sight of our topic, which is cultural diversity and
not the proxies to which it is sometimes reduced. One
solution would be to adopt the broadest possible
definition of culture, along the lines of the consensus
embodied in UNESCO’s 1982 Mexico City Declaration on
Cultural Policies, which defined culture as the ‘whole
complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and
emotional features that characterize a society or social
group’ including ‘not only the arts and letters, but also
modes of life, the fundamental rights of the human
being, value systems, traditions and beliefs’. This has the
merit of neither adopting an excessively restrictive
definition of culture nor focusing on a particular aspect
(e.g. religion) in order to define a culture.
Another difficulty concerns the identification of the
constituents of cultural diversity. In this connection, the
terms ‘culture’, ‘civilization’ and ‘peoples’ have different
connotations depending on context, for example
scientific or political. Whereas ‘cultures’ refers to entities
that tend to be defined in relation to one another, the
term ‘civilization’ refers to cultures that affirm their values
or worldviews as universal and adopt an expansionist
approach towards those that do not (or do not yet) share
them. It is therefore a very real challenge to attempt to
persuade the different centres of civilization to coexist
peacefully. As conceived by UNESCO – a conception
remote from those ideological constructions that predict
a ‘clash of civilizations’ – ‘civilization’ is to be understood
as work in progress, as the accommodation of each of
the world’s cultures, on the basis of equality, in an
ongoing universal project.
A third difficulty concerns the relationship of cultures to
change. For it took almost seven decades of the 20th
century before cultures started to be understood as
shifting entities. Previously, there was a tendency to view
them as essentially fixed, their content being ‘transmitted’
between generations through a variety of channels, such
as education or initiatory practices of various kinds. Today,
culture is increasingly understood as a process whereby
societies evolve along pathways that are specific to them.
The concept of difference aptly captures this particular dynamic, whereby culture changes while remaining the
same. What is needed, then, is to define policies that give a
positive slant to these ‘cultural differences’ so that groups
and individuals that come into contact, rather than with -
drawing into closed identities, discover in this ‘difference’
an incentive for continuing to evolve and change.
These considerations argue in favour of a new approach
to cultural diversity – one that takes account of its
dynamic nature and the challenges of identity associated
with the permanence of cultural change. This necessarily
entails substantial changes to UNESCO’s role in this
context. For whereas the Organization’s longstanding
concern has been with the conservation and
safeguarding of endangered cultural sites, practices and
expressions, it must now also learn to sustain cultural
change in order to help individuals and groups to
manage diversity more effectively. For this ultimately is
the major challenge: managing diversity.
