Anthropology News ˇ December 2005
28
V I E W S O N P O L I C Y
RICHARD KURIN
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
The overwhelming vote by member
states of UNESCO adopting the
Convention on the Protection of
the Diversity of Cultural Contents
and Artistic Expressions over the
strong objection of the US government
is an attempt by most of the
world's national governments to
exert regulatory power over cultural
activity in the face of the perceived
global economic domination of USbased
cultural industries. When ratified
by 30 nations within the next
year or two, the convention will
become international law and its
aspirations will be tested on the battleground
of trade and commercial
negotiations. Such is likely to enlist
cultural communities, producers,
workers, scholars and advocates,
and affect the ways in which their
practices are framed and articulated.
governments can, by invoking the
convention, declare their own cultural
goods or services to be endangered
and thus restrict the importation
of outside products and practices
seen to threaten the ongoing
viability of home grown ones.
Hence, to preserve "cultural diversity"
a nation can stop television programs,
radio broadcasts, books,
magazines, newspapers, Internet
nities. Instead, it is a convention
that invests the state with power to
regulate cultural activity.
Advocates for this convention
hope it will help nourish home
grown cultural industries and provide
opportunities for many,
diverse people throughout the
world to economically benefit from
their cultural produce. But will government
subsidies, programs, promotional
activities and legal protective
mechanisms actually achieve
this desirable result? Detractors
Regulating Culture? Regulatory Tension
Given that UNESCO is an organization
of nation-states it is no surprise
that the convention reinforces the
power and authority of the state.
The vote could be read as a statement
of national self-interest--each
government choosing to back its
own cultural industries and ganging
up to oppose global corporate capitalism
supported by the US government.
But the almost lone stance of
the US government reflects a deeper
philosophical and historical reality.
In the US, federal, state and local governments
have little power to regulate
cultural activity. Most of that
activity is found in communities,
amongvoluntary,non-governmental
groups and in the private sector.
Regulating culture skirts the idea of
infringing upon individual freedoms
of speech, religion and association.
Unlike many nations, the US does
not have a minister of culture and
indeed, most citizens would find that
concept "foreign." Other nations,
which see the regulation of culture as
matter of government responsibility
and even pride or duty, do have ministries
of culture and see their role as
normative in supporting some activities
and discouraging others. For
them, government is a friend of local
culture and the big, global cultural
industries are the foreign enemy. For
the US government, global businesses
and corporations are seen as drivers
of democracy, individual rights,
liberal societies and economic regimens;
other governments are often
seen as the enemy--more chauvinistic,
more likely to favor repressive
rule and narrow interests, or simply
inept at providing what free associations
of individuals can do better.
Who's right? The proof will be in
the actual policy and programmatic
practice generated by this convention.
Given the data collection envisioned,
we should, over the course of
the next decade, be able to assess
how well governments actually do in
encouraging and nourishing cultural
diversity. At the same time, it will be
interesting to see how cultural communities,
workers and advocates use
the treaty to advance their own
claims to exert themselves, both culturally
and economically. IAN
Richard Kurin is director of the
Smithsonian Center for Folklife and
Cultural Heritage and acting director of
the Smithsonian's National Programs. He
is also a member of the US National
Commission for UNESCO. The opinions
expressed here are his own.
V I E W S O N P O L I C Y
What Does the Treaty Have
Governments Do?
The convention makes explicit
what most nation-states have by
now largely assumed--that the regulation,
support and protection of
culture is a responsibility of government.
It asserts the right of member
nations to make their own cultural
policy in order to protect and promote
their cultural expressions.
Governments are charged with
defining tangible products as cultural
goods and intangible social traditions
as cultural services and assembling
inventories of such cultural
goods and services so they may be
subject to national ownership,
guardianship or stewardship.
Government actions should then
encourage forms of cultural production
at home through programs and
subsidies, thus resulting in a richer,
more culturally diverse world.
French wines, Canadian magazines,
Ghanaian kente cloth patterns,
Bollywood films, Russian literature,
Cuban cigars and Bolivian music
can all be supported and subsidized
by their respective governments
and even an international fund
administered by UNESCO.
Furthermore, beyond the "cultural
exceptionalism" currently
allowed under world and many bilateral
trade agreements, national
sites, music recordings and other
cultural items from entering its territory.
Nations and UNESCO would
establish cultural observatories and
an international committee to
monitor the results of all the cultural
policies. The convention provides
a procedure for setting up commissions
to mediate bilateral disagreements
over the cross-border regulation
of cultural goods and services.
Efficacy and Issues
This is not a humanitarian convention.
No new rights are granted to
individuals or communities, nor are
any programs or procedures put in
place to assure the lawful and
respectful treatment of minority,
oppressed, disenfranchised or marginalized
populations within
nations. The treaty will not assure
that, for example, the Chinese government
enacts policies more
respectful of the culture of its
Tibetan population, nor will it provide
the means for Hutus and
Tutsis, Serbians and Albanians,
Brazilians and the Amazonian
Indigenes to reconcile cultural differences
in a more humane manner.
Unlike even the International
Convention for the Safeguarding of
Intangible Cultural Heritage, it
lacks a strong provision for consultation
and power-sharing between
governments and cultural commuargue
that the convention may
instead promote larger, more elite
nationalized forms of cultural
enterprise and could even undercut
internal diversity by encouraging
its own forms of standardized
national culture.
Further, the convention could
spawn a series of cultural protectionist
measures, whereby the movement
of cultural goods and services
around the world, among diasporic,
refugee and emigrant populations,
and even among unrelated cultural
others, becomes restricted. Austria
might find its national cuisine
threatened by Turkish food, and
thus undertake policies that encourage
the former and discourage the
latter. Saudi Arabia might restrict the
importation of feminist novels and
studies believing they compete with
locally produced literature, while
also undermining national cultural
values and practices. The treaty
could even become a cultural excuse
for getting around trade agreements.
Imagine Ford and GM claiming that
the automobile is an American
invention, plays a distinctive role in
US culture and is economically
endangered. Under the convention,
the US government could then
restrict Japanese, Korean and other
imports on the grounds that if it did
not do so, the diversity of cultural
products would be diminished.
French champagne, Cuban cigars and Ghanian kente cloth patterns: protected
by UNESCO?