Handing Down of Culture | Chapter 12 | Robin Higham

Chapter 12 | Robin Higham

(continued)

to build an improved identity awareness within Canada... to assist in the location of a national identity and in doing so to contribute to our own social cohesion (willingness to share, to act together);
to legitimize and build upon our diversity at home, through demonstrating Canada’s diversity advantage abroad;
to provide a stage for more French-English or two-solitudes collaboration in a national project abroad, through the low-risk medium of joint cultural initiatives;
to counter-balance the pressures of global homogenization. Under the hypnotic attractions of global commercial entertainment, as a nation we can lose the habit of self expression... and end up by having nothing to say. Some (Canadian) critics say we are already there, that we are so fully anesthetized by global commercial programming and by the culture of commerce, that we have become exclusively consumers of other peoples cultural expressions and productions;
to engage Canadians through our artists, intellectuals and entertainers in global conversations. Zero cultural diplomacy is not an option. Silence implies indifference and that we have nothing to say. That degree of disengagement from the global village is one of the few things which might merit the label of being culturally “un-Canadian”;
to provide the federal government with a window for facilitating the nation’s cultural expression. Cultural diplomacy is an international activity, on federal government turf. The provincial governments’ claimed monopoly on domestic cultural affairs (which may tend to compromise pan-Canadian cohesion) can be legitimately accompanied at the federal level through cultural diplomacy. The increased facilitation of cultural expression abroad is an under utilized low-risk technique for building Federal relevance in cultural affairs;
to capitalize on the phenomena of the “conditioning stereotype.” We may eventually become what we claim to be. Cultural diplomacy can have an important impact on domestic policies by instigating national compliance with our own image abroad. It is more difficult to sin while you are claiming saintliness. Some past conditioning stereotype examples which have inspired us to work to improve public policies include:

The impact which international criticism of our forest management practices has had on making policy changes at home. Our self-image as being environmentally responsible was offended and has led to better citizen monitoring of the forest industries;
Our claim to being champions of human rights led to extreme public discomfort when the living conditions of our First Nations became international news;
As self-proclaimed humanitarians, we have been mobilized to change practices with respect to leg-hold traps for trapping wild animals and the harvesting of seal pups;
As proud peace-builders the comportment of some members of their armed forces in recent missions abroad was devastating to Canadians. As a result the Armed Forces are now launched into a twenty year program to bring their culture into line with that of their citizen-shareholders.

These are all examples where a public desire to live up to our international and self-image has driven major policy changes at home. At a provincial/national level the Québec government has used the conditioning stereotype factor by mobilizing its own international cultural diplomacy program to demonstrate its “national character” abroad and to ensure that its remarkable success abroad is understood at home.

Chapter 12, continued >