Tony Bennett, Differing diversities - Council of Europe

Transversal study on the theme of cultural policy and cultural diversitybetween peoples, cultures, histories and territories that challenge dominant nationalistconstructions of these matters.Sub- or multinationalistHere, we have to do with claims to difference which dispute the homogenising tendenciesof national cultures, but do so on the basis of essentially similar strategiesby articulating a competing set of associations between a territory, its people andtheir culture. Quebec separatism and Scottish and Welsh nationalisms are the mostobvious cases in point, although similar principles are involved in the relationshipsbetween the French-speaking and Flemish communities in Belgium while, inSwitzerland, the strength of territorially-based cultural and linguistic communitiesis constitutionally enshrined in the federal structure of government.AutochthonousWith respect to the countries participating in this study, this term has an officiallyrecognised currency only in Austria where it is applied to the Slovenes inCarinthia and Styria, the Croats in Burgenland, or the Roma/Gypsies throughoutAustria. The term is a helpful one in distinguishing the situation and circumstancesof ethnically-marked communities whose minority and often subordinate status isthe result of earlier movements of peoples (or of national boundaries) withinEurope. The designation of such communities as autochthonous distinguishestheir situation from that of more recent immigrants and, in doing so, places theirclaims to difference on a different footing: their long, continuing history of maintaininga distinctive culture and identity within the nation locates them as a moreor less “natural” part of the national landscape. It also serves as a means of registeringthat, in many countries, cultural policies addressing these forms of culturaldiversity are regarded as quite distinct from those addressing the circumstances ofpost-war immigrant communities. This is true, in different ways, of Austria,Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.DiasporicIn recent debates on colonialism and post-colonialism, the concept of diaspora hasbeen extended from its initial association with the Jewish diaspora to apply to thecultures produced in association with the histories of displaced peoples in thecolonial and post-colonial periods. Its usage now also includes the mobile internationalcultural networks associated with the major international movements ofpopulation from less to more developed economic contexts: the Chinese diaspora;the Turkish diaspora in Europe; the Afro-Caribbean diaspora in the UnitedKingdom. Diasporic claims to difference constitute a profound challenge to theterritorial logic of national cultures. In blending together, as James Clifford puts it(1996: 287), both “roots and routes” – that is, accounts of identities shaped byorigins that are located elsewhere and subsequent histories of travel – diasporas29