Paris, November 17 {No.2000-120}- Humanity should widen its concept of cultural heritage to bring in intangibles such as tradition and custom alongside great monuments and natural sites; so that traditional Japanese street theatre might be included with the Taj Mahal and the Grand Canyon and the thriving street life of Marrakesh's Djemaa el-Fna square be listed with Chartres Cathedral and the Great Barrier Reef.

This is one of the key ideas in UNESCO's just published World Culture Report 2000 --Cultural diversity, conflict and pluralism (English edition, a French edition is due to appear soon).

The report's nineteen chapters examine in depth a series of issues relating to culture, cultural policy and above all cultural diversity at a time of increasing globalisation. Among other topics raised: seeking a way to incorporate a cultural dimension into the way human development is evaluated; the extent to which Hollywood dominates cinema screens across the planet and what future for "cultural exception"; how cultural pluralism can be reconciled with a sense of national identity; and how to define cultural injustice and cultural recognition; how the citizens of different nations see themselves in relation to their neighbourhoods, towns and countries ; and what books people are reading. New tables analyse for the first time the languages, festivals, religions and most visited sites of UNESCO's member states.

In a foreword, UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura writes that cultural identity and expression are challenged in a number of ways by the processes of globalisation and that for some the result is a retreat into a narrow sense of cultural identity that rejects diversity. If that phenomenon is exploited politically or exacerbated by other factors, culture swiftly becomes entwined with conflict.

"The speed of social and economic change often goes counter to the rhythms of culture, which more often measure time in phases of experience, stages of life and even in generations than in the nanoseconds of the digital networks," he writes.

"UNESCO and its many partners have an urgent task in seeking ways of preserving the languages, customs, arts and crafts of the communities most vulnerable to sweeping change", he argues.

The World Heritage List contains 630 sites (480 cultural, 128 natural and 22 mixed). Such has been the success of the scheme that thirty or more cultural sites are proposed each year and most are accepted. But UNESCO recalls the danger that the list might be too biased towards traditional categories of 'classical' art history, centred around the study of major monuments and 'leading' civilisations.

"Regions which have no monumental heritage continue to be underrepresented even though they have traditional human establishments and ecosystems, methods of land and space occupation and non-built sites of great cultural and spiritual significance which could legitimately claim to feature on the list," the report says.

Contributors to the report suggest that hand-weaving in India (threatened by industrial production), traditional Japanese puppet theatre, age-old handicrafts such as the African use of calabash and wild grass straw and the cultural life of the Djemaa el-Fna square all have a right to be considered as part of humanity's cultural heritage.

The Human Development Index (HDI) is central to public debate when it is released each year, says the report. "The annual release of the new HDI ranking is a matter of widespread interest. It is indeed of some concern to many heads of state." Contributors to the World Culture Report 2000 argue that development policies are neglecting culture as a factor to be taken into account. "It is time for quantitative indicators to contribute to inserting culture in the development policy dialogue."

Hollywood's domination of the cinema industry is shown up in discussion of globalisation and cultural identity. In only three (China, including Hong Kong, Malaysia and Philippines) out of thirty countries surveyed, did US films account for less than half of box office receipts. (India, however, was not included.) Contributors discuss the 'cultural exception' which has proved so difficult an issue in international trade talks. "For cultural issues, at least, a new agreement will require that the primacy of a democratic state over a corporation be recognised: no legal order can possibly make them equal," writes Elie Cohen, director of research at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

"At the same time countries, such as the United States, which have made their cultural industry into one of the strong points of their specialisation, can hardly accept exclusion from conventional trade procedures", he argues.

Reconciling cultural pluralism with the nation state is considered in the section dealing with a series of six cultural debates. "As far as cultural pluralism is concerned, globalisation has introduced at least three major complications," writes Professor Arjun Appadurai of the University of Chicago "It has deeply intensified the tensions between migration and citizenship. It has exacerbated the national politics of identity. And it has intensified pre-existing tendencies towards nationalist xenophobia." The authors argue that the question of loyalty and attachment for the people living within any particular national territory must be separated from the question of their rights as citizens. Elsewhere in the report writers discuss the notions of "cultural injustice" and "cultural recognition."

The world speaks 6,700 languages and in thirty-seven states more than fifty languages are spoken. But only a little over 100 languages are official tongues. India has nineteen official languages and South Africa eleven. The report also lists the religions most widely practised as well as each country's chief folk and religious festivals and most visited cultural and natural sites.

Agatha Christie remains the world's most translated author (192 translations in 1996 in twenty-five languages) followed by Danielle Steel but Stephen King moves to number three and the Bible drops from that place to number sixteen. Pope John Paul (11 in 1994) drops out of the top 100 translated authors. In the 1996 table, Shakespeare ranks fourh (125 translations, 25 languages) overtaking Barbara Cartland (number five: 115 translations, eleven languages.)

The report's theme -- that of acknowledging, approving and even celebrating diversity in a context of cultural pluralism -- concludes: "Our choices in regard to our cultural heritages, in relating to others with different traditions and in drawing new three-dimensional cultural maps of the world, will shape the societies of the twenty-first century."

World Culture Report 2000. UNESCO Publishing, 7 place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP France. 470pp. Price 260FrF, 39.64 euros.

A media summary of the report is available on the Internet: www.unesco.org/bpi/WCR2000

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