Cultural diversity: A European perspective

This affirmation of cultural diversity at the Council of Europe level is mirrored in the policy decisions of the European Union. Article 151 of the founding Treaty states that the EU will take cultural aspects of policies into account, ‘in particular in order to respect and to promote the diversity of its cultures.’2 And the practical expression of that commitment in media terms has been the MEDIA programme of support for European production and distribution and the provisions of the Television Without Frontiers Directive.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the EU, as a whole, led by France, was a strong supporter of the UNESCO Convention. The hard fought battle to establish parity between the Convention and other international instruments is of particular importance in helping to bolster the EU’s position around the WTO/GATS negotiations where it continues to insist that audio visual services, because of their cultural significance, remain exempted from trade rules.

This so called ‘audio visual exception’ is one of the keystones of EU communications policy and is a source of much irritation to the US government and lobbyists for Hollywood. This exception is particularly important in enabling Europe to maintain its support for public broadcasting and for the system of subsidies and quotas which help national cinema industries.

Different perceptions of cultural diversity

However, declarations of principle and fine words cannot escape the realities of political interest and calculation. The weight attached to cultural diversity as a concept not only varies greatly between the political cultures and states of Europe, it also has different echoes within national borders. As the Council of Europe Culture Ministers said in 2003, there is a distinction between ‘intra-state diversity which refers to the respect of cultural rights, tolerance, political and cultural pluralism and the ability to accept otherness, and the inter-state dimension of diversity which identifies itself with the principle of equivalence between cultures.’3 The EU was united in supporting the Convention as an expression of inter-state diversity, but not every EU state perceived what was at stake in the same way.

The UNESCO Convention was barely mentioned in the UK press and hardly adverted to by government or politicians. By contrast, the French press saw it as a major cultural victory and President Chirac called for its speedy ratification.

The difference in perceived importance might owe something to the fact that in media terms, at least, the British generally feel little threat to their own cultural identity. The emphasis on cultural diversity in European communications policy-making which occurred in the 1990s arose out of a sense that particular European cultural identities were threatened by the global reach of the US popular media. The irony was that in the previous decades within the European Union the stress had been on promoting a specifically ‘European’ identity.

The problem was that the strongest media industry in the EU was an English language one closely linked to the US. As Richard Collins put it in 1994:

‘The stress on diversity in… community policy reflects the failure of transnational broadcasting by satellite in the 1980s and the consequential recognition that Europe was culturally and linguistically diverse. It also reflects the threat that the single market appeared to pose to national audio-visual and broadcasting markets (and thus to national media industries): a threat which is mainly perceived to come from Anglophone services and productions.’4

Take the film industry, for example. In 2004, the top nine films seen in Europe were all Hollywood productions, a number with significant UK involvement (the top rated film was Shrek 2 with over 43 million admissions). Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, was the highest-ranked European film, but only 10th in the ranking with a total of 17.4 million tickets sold; the highest ranked non-Anglophone film was Les Choristes (a French, Swiss, German co-production) with 11.4 million admissions.5

In the English press the concern over English language dominance and the Americanisation of (global) popular culture is often dismissed as French paranoia, but French concerns are widely shared, particularly by smaller European countries. In June 1995, for example, the Norwegian Minister of Culture thanked the French for their ‘front line position with respect to emphasising, strengthening and developing European culture’ and stressed that ‘We must safeguard a broader artistic profile in film production, we must safeguard the national film-idiom - and we must promote film as an element in our defence of our own languages and cultures and thus create a necessary counterweight to the dominant Anglo-American influences.’6

European differences about cultural diversity have also surfaced in the debates about the revision of the EU Television Without Frontiers Directive. The UK government has taken a sceptical line on the proposals that would extend existing obligations on European broadcasters to ensure that ‘a majority proportion’ of their transmission time is reserved for programmes made in Europe, to programmes delivered over the web. The UK is generally not keen on programme quotas and inclined to deride many EU proposals as a product of an outdated protectionism.

On the other side, the majority of EU states and the Commission have argued that intervention in the market is still needed. In this position they were supported by prominent film-makers and actors led by the Dardenne brothers, who signed an international petition to back the Commission proposals. Citing the UNESCO Convention, they claimed that ‘It would be paradoxical and ultimately tragic for Europe to undo at home what it has helped elaborate elsewhere.’7

Cultural diversity, national identity and national policies

It would also be paradoxical, and certainly tragic, if European states were to pursue policies at a national level that contradicted their stance at European and international level. Unfortunately, though states are happy to cite cultural diversity in negotiating at the inter-state level in Europe or global fora, they tend to be inconsistent and ambivalent when it comes to internal policies. France, the strongest international defender of cultural diversity as an affirmation of the specific and unique identity of the state, has consistently promoted internal policies designed to promote a single ‘French identity’. Broadcasting was designed to strengthen that identity. The French state only reluctantly accepted the legitimacy of regional cultures and minority languages, Breton, for example, and their expression through local media. Even in a multi-national state like the United Kingdom, the BBC often appeared less the ‘British’ than the ‘English’ Broadcasting Corporation.

In many states public policy has often been marked as much by fear of cultural diversity as by its celebration. So within the European context we have a situation in which public broadcasting is seen both a national bastion of cultural identity vis-à-vis the outside world, but within the nation is often regarded as the purveyor of a dominant culture and thus a site of struggle in which different groups and traditions claim their identity and struggle to assert their diversity.

The benefits of recognising and celebrating cultural diversity were sometimes hard to see in the 1990s. The break-up of the Soviet Empire and the disintegration of Yugoslavia demonstrated that asserting cultural identity could also lead to bitter conflict. Where particular cultural (ethnic, religious, linguistic, social) identities were felt to have been suppressed, and where the political, economic and social system was unable or reluctant to accommodate cultural differences in a peaceful way, the result could be ‘ethnic cleansing’ or worse.

In such circumstances (particularly in the Balkans) demands for more local or regional autonomy, for the recognition of minority rights and minority languages or for reform of the state broadcasting system could be, and were often, perceived as threats to the integrity and presumed ‘identity’ of the state. Cultural diversity as a concept had and has a quite different resonance in London compared to Belgrade.

Nevertheless, local, regional and linguistic identities did find their expression in the media. Countries have given more support to broadcasting, and films too, in minority languages, for example, the growth of radio and television in the Celtic languages in the British Isles (Irish, Gaelic, Welsh). Minorities are increasingly able to see themselves and their concerns reflected on screen or on air. And at a more local level Europe saw the growth of so-called community media: non-profit media designed to serve the needs and express the views and values of diverse communities and groups.

However, the rise of community media was, and still is, a matter of controversy in some countries. At the meeting of Communication Ministers of the Council of Europe in Kiev, 2005, a proposal to affirm the specific value of community media within the context of support for cultural diversity, had to be dropped from the final declarations because it proved too difficult to find a consensus on what it meant.8

The political difficulties in Kiev centred around the question of what ‘community’ actually meant. There was fear among many participants that supporting community media might mean encouraging the growth of exclusive or sectarian media. The unspoken anxiety was that such community media might give a voice to ethnic or religious groups challenging dominant ideas of ‘national identity’.

The ‘return of the religious’

Such anxieties in public discourse about what it means to have a ‘national identity’ in increasingly multi-racial and multicultural societies have gained in intensity and prominence especially since the events of September 11. That shocking and violent ‘return of the religious’ into public consciousness and debate has had ramifications for all discussions about cultural identity. The combination of religion, questions of ethnic and cultural identity and terrorism has confused and bewildered the political classes, religious leaders, civil society and the media.

In current social and political debates across Europe, the reflection of the changing face of religion has become a hotly debated (and sometimes violent) argument. It has become a struggle about society in general and the limits of ‘diversity’. The symbol of the argument over identity and diversity might well be the Muslim headscarf and the ban on wearing it now in force in different countries. To the champions of secular values the headscarf is not simply an expression of a religious identity; it is a direct challenge to the spirit of the Enlightenment.

From the point of view of the media, the debate in France, in Germany, in the Netherlands and elsewhere, has been whether the Muslim face reflected in the media mirror has the right to be both present to view and, in some sense, hidden from full scrutiny. In choosing how and what (and who) they reflect in the media mirror, the media are implicitly articulating a vision of culture and society. They are on the front line of the debate about what cultural diversity means in practice. And it is noteworthy (if ironic) that one response to the riots and protests that took place in France in November 2005 was for President Chirac to call in the heads of the public and private broadcasting channels to ask them to ‘respect the diversity of French society’.9

Moreover, in the choices they make, the media will offer a perspective on diversity that has to engage, whether they like it or not, with the concerns and presuppositions of religion. And the interaction of the religious dimension with other aspects of cultural identity is an area in which few in politics, the media or the religious communities themselves know how to address. The complexity of the issue is well caught in this comment by Médine, (a Muslim rapper from Le Havre): ‘I’m not just a black guy or an Arab anymore; I’m a Muslim. And that’s a code word for alien, someone who’s determined not to fit in. But I was born and raised in France. I’ve been a citizen since birth. How more “French” can I be?’10

Diversity, conflict and the public square

The complexity and multi-layered cultural diversity of modern European societies challenges the ability of democratic systems to find balance between the integration of all groups into a broad consensus around core values, hence the increasing preoccupation with notions of ‘citizenship’. That debate in turn has led to a broader debate about how nations can express and celebrate the multiple cultural identities of their citizens.

Three years after it issued its Declaration, the Council of Europe’s Culture Ministers meeting in Opatija, Croatia, produced a Declaration on Intercultural Dialogue and Conflict Prevention. In that document, they asserted that:

‘In all its dimensions, cultural diversity gives rise to the enrichment of individuals and groups, and produces not only new forms of social relationships, fuelled by migration and strengthened by exchange processes, but also new forms of multicultural identity…. cultural diversity can bring about a strengthening of peace through knowledge, recognition and development of all cultures, including those originating in or existing in Europe, or arriving from geographical areas outside Europe.’11

If that ideal is to be put into practice, cultural diversity has also to mean, as the Council of Europe Declaration of 2000 says, real cultural exchange. As Jonathan Davis of the UK Film Council put it:

‘…We should be as interested in making sure that citizens across Europe get to know and engage with the lives of citizens from every other part of Europe, as we are in making sure that Europe’s citizens enjoy the fruits of cultures from all over the world, as we are that citizens throughout the world get to know what Europe’s cultures have to offer. The argument would be that, in order to have any one of these outcomes, you have to have all three.’12

In that vision the UNESCO Convention is one more important, if largely symbolic, affirmation that the market place is not equivalent to the public square and cultural exchange is more than the trading of consumer goods. But the UNESCO Convention does not address the challenge of a world in which cultural diversity is also expressed as the conflict between diverse identities, values, religions, traditions and languages. And that means that the challenge for European countries is to fight to retain and expand those spaces in the media environment (in broadcasting, the press, the Internet and the film world) in which people from diverse cultural identities and traditions have an opportunity to meet and interact.

Building cohesive but culturally diverse societies is no easy task, but without places of encounter and dialogue the project is doomed to failure. Europe will, in the words of the Opatije Declaration,13 have to create public spaces ‘for dialogue and cultural citizenship in which it is possible to express disagreement, which is not only part of the democratic process but also its guarantor.’

Notes

1. Council of Europe. (2000). Declaration on Cultural Diversity (December 7).http://cm.coe.int/ta/decl/2000/2000dec2.htm

2. European Union (2002). Consolidated Version of the Treaty Establishing the European Community. (December, 24) http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/lex/en/treaties/dat/12002E/htm/C_2002325EN.003301.html

3. Conference of the European Ministers of Culture(2003) Declaration on Intercultural Dialogue and Conflict Prevention (Opatije, Croatia, October 22)

4. Collins, Richard (1994). Broadcasting and Audio Visual Policy in the European Single Market.(London: John Libbey)

5. European Audiovisual Observatory (2004). Press Release(May 4).

6. Kleveland, Åse (1995). ‘Opening speech – seminar Europe - cultural diversity and audiovisual challenges’, (Oslo, June 9). http://odin.dep.no/odinarkiv/norsk/nedlagt/kd/1995/taler/018005-090042/dok-bn.html

7. Dardenne, Luc et Jean Pierre et al. (2005). ‘Revision of the television without frontiers directive. Let’s defend the cultural diversity’ (October 25).

8. 7th European Ministerial Conference on Mass Media Policy, (2005), Resolution No.2 Cultural diversity and media pluralism in times of globalisation and Action Plan Sub-theme 2. (Kyiv, March 10-11)

9. Dutheil, Guy et Béatrice Gurrey (2005). ‘Les télévisions devront accueillir les minorités’. Le Monde, November 24.

10. Médine. (2005). ‘How Much More French Can I Be?’, Time, November 14.

11. Conference of the European Ministers of Culture (2003) Declaration on Intercultural Dialogue and Conflict Prevention (Opatije, Croatia, October 22)

12. Jonathan Davis (2004). The challenges for European audiovisual policy: Note of presentation to the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education and the Media, European Parliament, (16 March)

13. Ibid.

Dr Jim McDonnell, MIPR, formerly Director of the Catholic Communications Centre, London, 1990-2002, now runs his own communications consulting and training business, McDonnell Communications. He also acts as Director of Advocacy for SIGNIS (World Catholic Association for Communication), and was President of its European region. He is a Trustee of the Churches Media Council and an honorary visiting Fellow of Trinity and All Saints College, Leeds. He has written and spoken extensively on communications and broadcasting matters. Contact: jimmcdonnell@blueyonder.co.uk