THE 5,000 CULTURES OF THE WORLD

The member states of the United Nations number 188. Many people think that state borders correspond to cultural borders. No-one explains to them that there are thousands of peoples in the world and that most of the 188 states that exist are multi-ethnic, multicultural and multilinguistic. At the beginning of the nineteenth century progress in communications and the democratic spirit allowed a new appreciation of the great diversity of the human species. In the same way that we have discovered the value of biodiversity and that an ecological awareness is emerging that will help to preserve the diversity of living species, cultural diversity is beginning to gain favour and many associations are appearing whose object it is to protect the more vulnerable cultures. However, a great intellectual effort must still be made to fight against the old prejudices that favoured cultural uniformity.

Perhaps the most dangerous prejudice is a belief in the superiority of some cultures over others. In the so-called Western countries, many people believe that the cultures of the other continents are inferior. They think that scientific and technological culture and their countries' political and social systems are better than the others and that other countries ought to copy Western models. In the religious aspect this prejudice is expressed in the belief that religious truth is only to be found in the Christian tradition or in a belief in the need to do away with all religious confessions. Christians and agnostics often look down on the faithful of other religions. In questions of lifestyle prejudice is expressed in the conviction that only the economy-centred, consumer orientation of rich societies is worthwhile. In the political and social aspect, individualism and low-intensity political participation are defended with rhetorical talk of human rights and democracy but which hardly takes into account the decisive force of economic power and the media. It should be recognised that other cultures are also valuable. It should be possible to affirm the value of the cultures of Western countries without making them absolute and without looking down on the other cultural traditions.

Another very frequent prejudice is that of crediting Western cultures with a monopoly as regards progress or modernity. People overlook the fact that all cultures can develop without limits. All languages can be used for highly sophisticated knowledge and for forms of coexistence of a high quality. In fact, cultures have a prodigious capacity for coming up with new replies to new challenges. It is true that until now many cultures had only developed in rural settings or in areas poorly connected with other networks outside themselves. This does not mean that they can not evolve to adapt to other environments and take their place in new networks of intercommunication. Furthermore, much apparently ancient wisdom has linguistic repertories and social practices far ahead of countries considered advanced as regards ecological, economic, psychological, ethical, aesthetic and political challenges. Western societies are being forced to revise the model of civilisation they have built up and tried to impose on every continent during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The new modernity will probably have to be built on serious intercultural dialogue. The marginated cultures could become essential references in the construction of a more human world. The present fractures between rich and poor, between the human species and nature and inside each individual call for cultural novelties that could come through intercultural dialogue.

A third prejudice is that of the ungovernability of a multicultural state and, even more, of a multicultural world. Some say, as a result, that cultural diversity ought to be reduced for practical reasons. It is probably true that complex situations are difficult to manage, but the consequences of opting for cultural uniformity have to be taken into account. A world that tends to uniformity impoverishes humanity. Each culture offers an original perspective on knowledge, something which in philosophy is called epistemology. Each culture offers a system of values, myths and symbols that makes it possible to live with a specific orientation. Cultural diversity is the ultimate guarantee of pluralism. It expresses the legitimacy of the different ways of being human. No culture can claim to have a monopoly. Human progress leads in the direction of diversity. Cultural diversity is humanity's most valuable heritage. This statement is perfectly compatible with the recognition of the negative aspects carried in each and every culture. All of them must evolve through self-criticism and through intercultural dialogue. And the range of cultures is the greatest treasury human history has created.

It is important to mention the prejudice that relates cultural diversity with violence. In any country or city, violence is not the consequence of cultural diversity but the result of poor management of diversity. A large part of the conflicts that arise in today's world are caused by states that do not recognise the cultural rights of their minorities. Specialists in conflict resolution are agreed that the recognition of linguistic, cultural and national pluralism is a factor of political stability and one of the conditions for peace. An advanced democracy consists in simultaneous respect for the wishes of the majority and the rights of the minorities. In the twenty-first century, the exercise of the right to self-determination of peoples will have to be recommended precisely as a mechanism of conflict prevention. In a world tending towards globalisation in economics, communication and politics, it will be very important to create conditions for freedom and for participation in the management of globalism. The old political borders of states will probably be relativised and assertions of cultural identity will carry increasing weight. New political structures will have to be created, operating on new criteria of a confederate type and implementing principles of subsidiarity. If democracy progresses, we could end the twenty-first century with a new recognition of cultures and of ethnic groups or nations.

In the West, there are still a lot of deeply rooted prejudices. Some people say that they do not belong to any culture and that they are, directly, citizens of the world. This statement has a positive side because no-one in fact ever reduces their identity to their ethnic group, nation or culture. Everyone ought to play their part in the global management of the planet. What happens is that it is always done from specific places to which people specifially belong. Everyone lives in a town, has affinities with the members of a nation, speaks a language, uses certain symbols and forms part of a system of values, and all this leaves cultural signs that, however open and changing they may be, are what give people their individual or collective personality. There are people who feel it is an unfortunate limitation. Perhaps it is better to live it with sympathy for the groups one belongs to and with good cheer. Concealing cultural identities may be a disproportionate pretension.

It is surely good to fight against identities that imprison us and bad not to feel at home with the identities that personalise us on an individual and collective level. Self-esteem is surely better than self-hate. Most of the world's citizens, realistically and through conviction, love their cultural communities without the need for bigotry or fundamentalism. Languages, cultures and nations are there to be enjoyed and relativised. Thanks to them we do not live alone and we can enjoy exchanges with people from other languages, cultures and nations.

The newspaper Avui has asked for the collaboration of the NGO Cultures of the World to report on a number of cultures that are rarely spoken of. Each week, the Sunday supplement will be offering valuable information on a specific culture. If we had to speak of the approximately five thousand cultures there are on the planet today, it would take more than ninety years to present them all. Our aim is more modest. It is to present some examples of cultures from each continent with the intention of arousing the reader's interest in this treasury, which is the heritage belonging to the whole of mankind. We felt that the announcement of the celebration in Barcelona of the Universal Forum of Cultures in 2004 called on the public to take a closer look at our diversity of cultures, overcoming the barriers and prejudices that so often get in the way. We have tried to pick out valuable aspects of each culture. In other words, what we want, over and above the attraction of exoticism, is to provide an approach to a series of cultures as valuable experiences of the human condition. In some cases we single out moral or religious values, in others the originality of their political or legal culture or their contributions to the field of knowledge or the arts. Cultures of the World can help those readers who wish to enlarge on the information offered in the series published by the newspaper. Luckily, in Catalonia there are many specialists in the understanding of other cultures. Some work in universities and others act in the framework of specialised NGOs. We hope the publication of this series will help to increase the interest in cultural diversity and will lead to more extensive collaboration.

Fèlix Martí
Director of the UNESCO Centre of Catalonia
General secretary of Cultures of the World