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Chapter 12 | Robin Higham
(continued)
Since the end of the war Japan has set itself a clear cultural diplomacy mission aimed at escaping an overly tenacious image of a closed and strictly traditional society. Theirs is a Mission modernisatrice (!), one which seeks to demonstrate (and to market) the remarkable Japanese competencies in “Western” technologies, western design, culture and the arts too. Rather than setting out to differentiate themselves from their neighbours, Japanese cultural diplomacy is bent on showing target audiences that, in terms of tastes and preferences “we are just like you... only we do it better in some very interesting ways.” And because they claim it abroad they set out to do it at home.
The Australians have just come out of a major cultural diplomacy blitzkrieg... the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics. The Australians capitalized on the once-in-a-century opportunity to demonstrate before a global audience their uniquely Australian National Style of self-confidence, enthusiasm and energy. That renewed Australian image will doubtless require an extensive and expensive long-term program of public-diplomacy maintenance and it will be interesting to see if that happens and if it can be made to work. Can they continue to make space for Australian voices outside Australia?
As for Canada, there seems to be less to say when describing our current mission abroad. So let me propose some policy clarification.
4. two arguments for an enhanced canadian cultural diplomacy priority
4.1 The first argument is in terms of Canada’s international affairs’ objectives. Shall we call cultural diplomacy what it is?... self-interested national-propaganda, distributed, broadcast or “narrowcast” internationally. From that perspective, objectives for our cultural diplomacy might include:
- generating more interest in Canada by foreign tourists, investors, importers, researchers, brain-gain immigrants, foreign students;
- generating more export business for our cultural industries, books, films, and tv productions, and professional artists services in all disciplines... the more Canada you sell, the more Canada they “buy”... and that can include Canadian ideas and perspectives;
- building “Soft Power”... with few guns and fewer $s, Canada’s international public image and consequent persuasiveness abroad is all we have to bring others to our point of view on major global issues;
- assisting the emerging democracies and helping bring peace in the world’s troubled regions. More justice and better human rights abroad saves costly peace-making and peace-keeping interventions (peace-keeping in the former Yugoslavia alone has cost Canadians $5 billion in the past ten years). In order to be convincing about a spending priority for cultural diplomacy, it is often useful to demonstrate net financial benefits to national accounts. Cultural diplomacy, which suggests, however subtly, how the Canadian model for governing its diversity might be employed to assist peaceful coexistence, could well be money in the bank for taxpayers... the peace-dividend argument.
- making us interesting. Others who have established themselves as “interesting” are pushing us off the screen and out of the news. Just like the other “niche” or small cultures in an overpowering national cultural environment, fighting for survival internationally means staking out space for Canada in the international media. Silence leaves us disenfranchised and without influence or legitimacy in the global arena. There is a persuasive argument along the lines that because Canadian culture is precisely non-distinctive, that it accommodates rather than excludes, our message requires not less effort and resources but much more, and more original, initiatives to make ourselves interesting, understood and influential. The arts and cultural diplomacy can deliver that message for us.
4.2 The second argument for an enhanced national project of cultural diplomacy can be made in terms of domestic Canadian objectives:
- to develop and strengthen our cultural and arts communities at home, our capacity to express ourselves as a people and be better able to understand the cultural expressions of the “others” amongst us;
- to make Canada interesting... to Canadians, through discovering what makes us interesting to others;
Chapter 12, continued > |
