Tony Bennett, Differing diversities - Council of Europe

Transversal study on the theme of cultural policy and cultural diversityThere are, however, also ways in which such a broadened perspective is of moreimmediate relevance to cultural policy development. One concerns the relevanceof techniques of cultural planning which, unlike the sectoral or arts-specific focusof more traditional forms of cultural policy, are concerned with how culturalresources are used in the contexts of the varied arts of living which jointly constitutethe texture of everyday life in specific spatial contexts. Applied to perhapsgreatest effect as parts of urban development projects, cultural planning promptsthe development of new skills on the part of cultural administrators in requiring i.that they draw up a complete inventory of the cultural resources which – if theytake a spatial rather than a sectoral perspective – they are responsible for, and ii.that they develop plans for the use of those resources that aim at their integrationwith the other areas of planning (economic, traffic, architectural) which have to betaken into account in preserving and enriching the diverse cultural ecology ofcomplex urban systems. 1 The evidence from the United States and elsewherepoints to the risk that, unless cultural planning is integrated into urban planning inthese ways, cultural diversity will take the form of increasingly marked patterns ofracial segregation as “white flight” to edge-cities and gated communities isolatesblack communities in under-resourced and decaying city centres.Equally compelling issues are raised by the close interdependence between questionsof cultural diversity and those of biodiversity given the extent to whichknowledge of, and the ability to manage, many endangered natural environmentsis locked up in the languages and ways of life of indigenous and traditional peopleswhose futures are also insecure. The issues considerations of this kind posehave been given international prominence through the Convention of BiologicalDiversity which obliges its signatories to respect, preserve and maintain theknowledge innovations and practices of indigenous and local communitiesembodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable useof biological diversity, and to ensure that their intellectual property regimes supportthese objectives. 2Assessing for diversityAssessing the effectiveness of cultural policies is a notoriously underdevelopedpractice compared with many other areas of policy evaluation, and still very muchmore of an “art” than a “science”. If this is true generally, it is even more true ofthe methods that have been developed for assessing the impact of cultural diversitypolicies. There are a number of reasons for this: the hostility of many forms ofarts management to quantitative forms of assessment; the lack of precision thatcharacterises many cultural diversity policies, and their sometimes controversialand contested nature; the difficulty, in many countries, of collecting data that__________1. See research position paper 4: “Cultural planning and cultural diversity” by Lia Ghilardi for a fullerdiscussion of these issues.2. These questions are discussed by Rosemary Coombe in research position paper 7: “Preservingcultural diversity through the preservation of biological diversity: indigenous communities, localcommunities, and the role of digital technologies”.61