Tony Bennett, Differing diversities - Council of Europe

Cultural policies and cultural diversityPriorities for diversityI have suggested that, albeit in varying ways, the cultural policy frameworks inoperation in most jurisdictions are concerned to strike some kind of balancebetween three considerations: social justice principles involving, to varyingdegrees, the recognition of common cultural rights for all the members of a society;the recognition of the distinctive claims to difference of autochthonous, immigrant,indigenous and sub- or multinational communities; and the concern that allgroups need to be integrated into or cohered within a common national culture.While it is, for historical reasons, unsurprising that this should be so, there is, Ihave also suggested, much to be learned from the different ways in which thesethree issues are connected to each other in different jurisdictions.Here, however, I shall tilt the balance of my concerns in favour of the second ofthese policy foci. There are a number of reasons for this. The first is that it is likelythat this will prove to be the cutting-edge of cultural diversity policies for thefuture if – to recall a phrase of James Clifford’s – these are to provide an adequateresponse to the demand of “living inside” national cultures, but “with a difference”.Social justice principles will, of course, remain important as will questionsof social integration, inclusion and cohesion. It is, however, likely that these willprove more productive the more the kinds of practical cultural and civic skills andknowledge that the new members of any society need in order to be able to functioneffectively within that society are disentangled from nationalist requirementsthat acceptance into a society must depend on a process of cultural conversionrequiring the abandonment of previous cultural identities as the price of adoptingnew ones. The relations between cultural diversity and economic policies can alsobe expected to become more important. The crucial test for cultural diversity policies,however, will be the extent to which they are able to validate, sustain, anddevelop forms of cultural practice and involvement resting on distinctive claims todifference arising out of histories that are different from, and in some cases in conflictwith, dominant national cultural traditions and trajectories. At the same time,we can expect that national cultural policies will come under increasing pressureto reach cultural accommodations of this kind owing to the growing influence ofboth larger regional economic formations and international policy and legislativejurisdictions.The second reason for giving this bias to my concerns is that the development ofcultural policies of this kind is likely to pose the greatest challenge to the currentprocesses through which cultural policies are developed, put into effect andassessed. There are, of course, many policy instruments that have been developed55