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Chapter 1 | Fernand Harvey (continued) We are back to the initial question: what future for smaller cultures at the time of globalization? The fact for smaller societies to have lived under the shadow of powerful countries or empires is a constant phenomenon throughout history. We could pile up examples where smaller societies succeeded expressing their own vision of the world in reappropriating their history and in filtering or in amalgamating foreign influences. The original character of the present situation is not to cope with a powerful neighbour geographically well identified, as in the past (Vietnam and China, Bulgaria and Russia, Belgium and France, Canada and Québec and the United States of America), but to wrestle with economic forces which operate at the level of the world or of a continent, and whose activities may render common place cultural expression, as well identity s esthetics, to the sole profit of mass consumption culture, regardless the refined marketing techniques used for multiplying crenels or targeted publics. We have to distinguish between cultural diversity, the only way for maintaining humanism at the core of culture, and diversity of cultural supply, which is nothing else but a profit seeking strategy. If cultural diversity and its legitimacy are not taken into account in the process of globalization of exchanges, it may lead to an explosive situation, especially when considering the relationships between the West and the Third World. The future is going to be a fearsome challenge for smaller cultures — this includes the whole of Canada in spite its geographical dimension. They cannot rest only on cultural policies coming from the second half of the twentieth century. A time of reflection is necessary. This could benefit from the lights of research: the one interested in cultural practices of individuals and communities, also the one made of comparative analyses between regions of the same country or between smaller societies at different steps of economic and cultural development. This reflection should come out with the sketch of a new cultural democracy, world wide, in weaving, in a first row, networks of alliances between smaller cultures pursuing similar objectives. From that point of view, smaller cultures of wealthy countries have a duty helping the smaller cultures of poorer countries, taking into account the great civilizations which gave birth to each of them. references
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