Handing Down of Culture | Chapter 1 | Fernand Harvey

Chapter 1 | Fernand Harvey

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In any case, it is obvious that the traditional agents for handing down of culture are not alone any more. To the school and the family, we have to add up now medias, publicity and a good deal of groups of adherence that are to be found in urban milieus and the new society of networks. How the new generations are going to appropriate the cultural heritage of their society? One is bound to believe that the handing down of culture will not be suspended, but that is may take new paths which will not be only vertical, between generations, but also horizontal inside the generations themselves, through the combined support of new technologies of communication and information and of the intensification of intercultural exchanges between nationalities and States.

3.2 the dialectics of local and global

If the process of handing down of culture has become problematical and uncertain, the territorial anchoring of culture is at stake. It has been amply talked about the network society initiated by the new technologies, and also about the recent trends to globalization of exchanges; they would accelerate the deterritorialization of culture and, henceforth, its delocation. This is a highly important question for the future of smaller societies and the upholding of their cultural autonomy.

It is possible that the phenomenon of globalization has been up to now exaggerated, as it is above all financial, and has a concern mainly with business milieus. Certain signs of uniformity attached to a minority of individuals travelling the world over and visiting the same airports and the same chains of hotels are not to be generalized. The cultural hinterland of the societies of the planet is far from showing a picture of uniformity, quite the contrary. The tourist who dares adventuring aside the beaten tracks can bear witness of it. Of course, it can be said that television, Internet and other means of communication can allow people of different parts of the world to be in touch with images and messages that may change their representations of the world and their ways of doing things. It should then be taken into account the fact that the Third World countries are not all having access to the same tools of communication as the wealthy countries. In 2000, 60 % of the users of Internet were living in North America and in Western Europe, and 24 % in Asia-Oceania (mainly Japan and Australia), compared to 6 % in Latin America, 6 % in Eastern Europe and 4 % in Africa and Middle East (Miège, 2001).

Whatever the way we look at it, it must be remembered that the relationship between globality and locality is not a one way process; the local, regional or national communities are not passive when facing the informations and the cultural models coming from authorities of globalization, whether they are American or from somewhere else. There is such a thing as the phenomenon of reappropriating and reinterpreting the cultural world fluxes at the local, regional or national level, through the filter of diverse traditions and cultural diversities (Tomlinson, 1999).

This new ability of cultural reappropriation and autonomy, in the context of globalization, has not been yet very well examined by researchers, as it would need a multitude of field work, is a sign of hope for the future. It is obvious that this ability can be very different between societies and social surroundings. We can support that a distinction should be drawned between penurious societies which will resist the cultural globalization in taking refuge in marginality opposed to the main streams, and the wealthy societies which will have at their disposal certain tools to develop their ability for cultural creation and its spreading internationally. The case of English Canada and Québec, whose some of their new literary and artistic creations are benefiting a foreign diffusion, are examples of smaller societies with human, technical and financial resources needed for such a diffusion, in spite of the neighbourhood with the American giant.

3.3 the role of cultural policies

During the second half of the twentieth century, cultural policies have had a growing importance in the Nation States. The relevance of those policies which, in the same time give privilege to the accessibility to general culture and to the protection of national productions, is now questioned under the rationality of freeing international trade, as culture has become also an industry, as the neoliberal supporters proclaim. It seems that it must be looked more closely at different dimensions of those policies, as they are not all directly linked to the actual economic dispute. I shall base my reflections on the cases of Canada and Québec. I am more familiar with them than with others.

Chapter 1, continued >