Between Heritage and Markets, the Ambivalence of Cultural Globalization
Societies are constantly reinventing their cultures and traditions. Contrary to common belief, the cultural world is thus becoming more diversified than uniform. Since the 1990s, there has been a growing concentration of cultural industries and international organizations seeking to harmonize trade rules (WTO) or to protect heritage from market forces (UNESCO). Depending on the place, society, and political regime, culture is perceived as an element of identity and national cohesion and/or state power (soft power); as an asset to be protected or, on the other hand, as a source of danger from elsewhere (withdrawal and censorship); or else as a commercial product whose commodification is to be encouraged and at the same time protected from piracy. Consumption of cultural products is becoming globalized, but this does not prevent them from coexisting, being re-appropriated, hybridized or mixed with other cultural forms and practices. The two major film-producing countries are India and Nigeria, but the United States, in third place, boasts the highest box office figures. High culture is being democratized, whether this consists of large touring exhibitions, performing arts events or access to works in libraries, archives, and museum collections via the internet. However, if they are unable to consume, travel, exchange, have access to a computer, or lack education, a majority of individuals remain excluded from the extraordinary diversity on offer.
Since 1972, the Unesco Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (ratified by 193 states) has enabled 1,073 sites of outstanding universal value to be registered on the List of World Heritage sites. In 2003, protection was extended to intangible heritage, including oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals and festive events, and traditional craftsmanship, which relate to individual and collective identity as much as heritage.
UNESCO: World Heritage, 1978-2017
Comment: This graph shows the number of items registered by UNESCO, at the request of states, on the lists of cultural and natural heritage (1972 Convention) and of intangible cultural heritage (2003 Convention) for the purpose of protecting them. In both cases, the countries of Africa and Latin America have the lowest numbers, with slow development. Asia, on the other hand, occupies an intermediary position with a rapid increase, while North America and Europe together remain dominant (even though Asia outstrips them by a few points for intangible cultural heritage). These very substantial differences are partly explained by differences in the ability of states to identify, safeguard and protect their heritage.
- cultures > Culture
- Culture is what distinguishes human existence from the natural state, that is to say it denotes the processes through which humans use and develop their intellectual capacities. According to Clifford Geertz (1973), culture is a system of significations commonly shared by the members of a social community, who use them in their interactions. Cultures are therefore not immutable but change according to social practices, incorporating processes of both inclusion and exclusion. Culturalism is a concept which considers that supposed collective beliefs and membership of a particular culture predetermine social behavior.
- international organizations > International Organization
- In the words of Clive Archer, an IO is “a formal, continuous structure established by agreement between members (governmental and/or non-governmental) from two or more sovereign states with the aim of pursuing the common interest of the membership.” Marie-Claude Smouts identifies three characteristics of IOs: they arise out of a “founding act” (treaty, charter, statute), have a material existence (headquarters, finance, staff), and form a “coordination mechanism.
- national > Nation
- Political community based on an awareness of shared characteristics and/or a will to live together. It is common practice to contrast political and cultural concepts of the nation – which in practice are mutually influential and tend to converge. In the political concept, the nation is invented and produced by a state: the territory precedes the nation and defines its contours (this is known as the French concept, based on the republican melting pot and jus soli, right of the soil). In the cultural understanding of nation, a shared common culture produces the nation. The national project consists in bringing this population together on a single territory (the cultural or romantic or German concept of the nation, based on jus sanguinis, right of blood). The latter concept intrinsically produces conflicts and can lead to ethnic cleansing or genocide (Nazi Germany, Greater Serbia, etc.).
- commodification > Commodification
- A notion formed from the word “commodity,” used in economics to denote standardized goods available in large quantity on the world market (raw materials, basic agricultural and chemical products, electronic components, etc.). Commodification means the process of transforming certain common or immaterial goods, such as forests, water, genes, public services, and culture, into consumer goods. This trend has raised questions and concern among both individuals and NGOs, which organize in reaction to it.
- hybridized > Hybridization
- The phenomenon of hybridity or mixture, biological and/or cultural, may be happening at a faster rate in the contemporary world but is evident throughout the history of humanity. Only an obsession with the model of the territorial nation-state, closed to all circulation and homogeneous in terms of identity and culture (even of ethnicity or race in some cases) obscures a characteristic present in virtually all societies of the world. Some periods of increased population mobility have been drivers of hybridization (“discovery” of the New World, colonization in the 19th century and increased population movements since the late 20th century). Some political regimes have attempted to deny and resist it or are doing so now (obstacles to “mixed” marriages, marginalization, ghettoization, population displacements, ethnic cleansing, exterminations, genocide).
- mixed > Hybridization
- The phenomenon of hybridity or mixture, biological and/or cultural, may be happening at a faster rate in the contemporary world but is evident throughout the history of humanity. Only an obsession with the model of the territorial nation-state, closed to all circulation and homogeneous in terms of identity and culture (even of ethnicity or race in some cases) obscures a characteristic present in virtually all societies of the world. Some periods of increased population mobility have been drivers of hybridization (“discovery” of the New World, colonization in the 19th century and increased population movements since the late 20th century). Some political regimes have attempted to deny and resist it or are doing so now (obstacles to “mixed” marriages, marginalization, ghettoization, population displacements, ethnic cleansing, exterminations, genocide).
- internet > Internet
- Global interconnection of local IT networks facilitating the exchange of texts, images, sound and video by means of a standard protocol (TCP/IP). Invented by researchers and the military in the US in the 1960s, the network has been steadily growing, spreading and innovating ever since. At the start of the 1990s, browsers made the internet accessible to the general public. High-speed connections have permitted increasingly large data transfers, driving a proliferation of online activities and the transition from an information storage approach to a logic of continuous flows. The community-based and interactive Web 2.0 stimulates interactions between users, changes social behaviors and alters forms of engagement by giving them instant visibility. Internet censorship is regularly practiced by non-democratic states. The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the connection between this network and connected objects of various kinds.
- identity > Identity
- The concept of identity is ambiguous, multifaceted, subjective, and frequently exploited and manipulated. No identity is foreordained or natural – so it is better to talk of identity construction, or of the processes of constructing self-representations developed by an individual or group. These constructions are neither stable nor permanent, defining the individual or group from multiple perspectives: on its own terms, in relation or opposition to others, and by others. The way individuals and groups use identity varies according to their interests and the constraints inherent in their specific situation: identity, therefore, is a construct based on interaction. This combination of affiliations, allegiances and internal and external recognition is a complex process, involving various degrees of awareness and contradiction, constantly being amalgamated and reconfigured.