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Chapter 2 Language and Power

2.3 Language and Globalisation

2.3.2 Africa, Languages and States in a Globalising World

2.3.2.2 State, Identity and Culture: New Challenges

Many authors argue that globalisation has dispossessed states of their central role in the international system. The dimension of many activities nowadays is bypassing the considered traditional domain of the state (a sovereign territorial entity providing security, freedom, order, justice and welfare to a population). These include:

ever-increasing international trade and investment, expanding multinational business activity, enlarged NGO (non-governmental organization) activities, increasing regional and global communications, the growth of the Internet, expanding and ever-extending transport networks, exploding travel and tourism, massive human migration, cumulative environmental pollution, expanded regional integration, the growth of trading communities, the global expansion of science and technology, continuous downsizing of government, increased privatization and other activities which have the effect of increasing interdependence across borders. (Jackson and Sørensen 2007, p.24)

However the world we live in is still a world of sovereign states, albeit one where sovereignty has changed due to more intense cooperation: “countries bargain about influence on each other’s internal affairs” (Jackson and Sørensen 2007, p.269). The states do form numerous associations, some of which are integrating them quite closely, as is the case of the European Union (EU) (a political and economic union of 27 countries), but sovereignty, as the supreme power of a collectivity to decide its destiny, has been preserved.

At the same time globalisation has eroded the concept of sovereignty, it has also devalued national identity, by increasing de-spatialisation and deterritorialisation of identities. National borders may be less relevant for a whole range of people: intellectuals, scientists, arms and drug dealers, footballers or financiers. For instance some people, such as activists of the ecological movement may see themselves as owing their main allegiance to the defence of Planet Earth rather than any national identity, international terrorists, such as the British nationals that perpetrated the

London bombings in 7/7/2005, were also motivated by their own religious causes, regardless of national identity.

Citizenship of the world is created by a global consciousness that runs through a variety of issues: the perils facing humanity and the environment (overpopulation, global warming), a global consumer society, the international finance flows and economic markets, international labour market, cyber communication, transnational media, migration. At the same time, since national identity is no longer constrained by territory, diasporic communities create with their original homelands, through transnational media (television, internet) and communicative social spaces. Appadurai (1996) calls these diasporic public spheres or translocal communities. These imagined communities create new ways of living national identity.

Globalisation besides freeing national identity from territorial boundaries, has freed other individual attributes, other individual affiliations, such as gender, religion, skin colour, etc, of localisation. They are now lived in a global space through the transnational networks of money, travel and communication. As Billig (1995, p.133) notes, national identity must compete on a free market of identities. Supra and sub- national identities are challenging the state and the very definition of national identity has been affected. As Rassool (1995, p.95) points out that “the [relative] homogeneity of national cultures is increasingly being challenged by the large scale social displacement of large groups of people across the world”. The inescapable reality of linguistic and cultural diversity in the world, reinforced by the processes of globalisation, has forced major changes on the state and in the ideas about nationhood, consequently common languages as symbols of national identity will have to be renegotiated. The freeing of the attributes of the self with globalisation and the bypassing of the state in many activities has also had important consequences in the traditional representation of ‘national’ culture and in the relations between ‘national’ cultures.

Changes in the way cultural relations operate are certainly underway, given the simple fact that they cannot escape the processes of globalisation. The popularisation of the concept of public diplomacy clearly marks the shift from a formal government-to- government approach to one that identifies the foreign public as the target audience for foreign policy. Additionally, besides states and their agents (in which I include the national cultural institutes even if at arms’ length as is the case with the British Council), other actors have acquired a significant role in cultural relations ranging from arts organisations themselves and the individual practitioners, international

organisations, transnational corporations sponsoring or getting directly involved in cultural relations, to a variety of groups and organisations (including private foundations and NGOs) that work transnationally.

A shift in paradigm from cultural diplomacy to a “more genuine” cultural cooperation has been tentatively advanced by Fisher (2009, p.2). He identified a series of challenges that impact in the development of ‘traditional’ cultural diplomacy: globalisation; geopolitical change; migration flows raising questions about whose culture is being represented in the international promotion of culture by nation states; the exponential growth of non-state actors sharing the ‘cultural space’ traditionally occupied by Foreign Ministries and national cultural institutes; conflicting government objectives (diplomacy/cooperation/international market development of culture); difficulty in some cultural diplomatic communities to adapt to the new environment (communication with foreign publics rather than peers) and territorial tension (EU/state/region/local); conflicting agendas between the national agents - Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministries of Culture - delivering foreign cultural policy; research into the foreign policy objectives and geographical priorities of some states suggest that they are more aspirational rather than realistic; foreign policy objectives and priorities are not always matched by sufficient resources to deliver the ambitions stated, and the economic crisis was beginning to have a serious impact on international cultural relations budgets.

Fisher (2009) in his analysis of policy shifts in international cultural relations claims that cultural diplomacy policies are showing signs of being less encumbered by foreign policy agendas. He (2009) identified Austria, Germany and Slovenia as some of the countries where the paradigm shift had taken place. In others, such as the UK, Finland and the Netherlands both currents - traditional cultural diplomacy and the cultural cooperation policies - seemed to be present. In France, for instance, there was an active discussion of policy. It should be mentioned that Fisher’s (2009) research, in which I was personally involved supporting and collecting data, was a general exercise, mainly based on the stated policy objectives and select projects and it was mostly concerned with the relation between European Union countries and developed economies in Asia and Americas as well as the EU’s immediate neighbours to the East.

The relations that most concern this study, those between developed and developing countries, were not covered by Fisher’s (2009) study, some of the research conclusions are relevant because they give an idea of what is happening in the source

countries of external LSPs covered in our study - I will come back to these in more detail in the findings. In general the study concluded that there were mixed messages, with some countries showing clear signs of policy shifts and others just good intentions; it was also evident in research that there was some convergence of policy interest between foreign affairs, culture, trade (creative industries) and development involving the need to develop transversal governmental strategies; cultural policy was becoming more structurally integrated in foreign policy objectives; cultural organisations, in particular the larger ones, were developing their own international networks, with or without government support – the same was happening with other actors, such as regions (for instance in Spain) and cities.

However there is one particular conclusion in Fisher (2009, p.3, information in square brackets added) that I find of extreme relevance to this study and that provides a good context for all the above observations:

Among other conclusions were that co-operation between NCIs [national cultural institutes] was likely to increase in third countries [non-European Union countries], whether on economic grounds or to demonstrate ‘European’ credentials, but this was less likely in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries because individual governments were keen to have a cultural stake in potentially large markets.

This shows the continuing importance of the export of culture in national terms, particularly in contexts where economic and political competition is important. Government still very much use culture as a way to advance their national identity and interest – although state action and the definition of their identity and interests and the measure in which they are acted upon may vary with influence “by “structure” (anarchy and the distribution of power) versus “process” (interaction and learning) and institutions [collective stable set of identities and interests often codified in rules and norms]” (Wendt 1992, p.393, information in square brackets added).

Additionally the trends tentatively indicated by Fisher’s (2009) research towards cooperation, common interest projects, sharing of premises, mutuality and multilateral relations have to be interpreted in a particular context of relations between EU countries and particular developed economies. That does not mean that they cannot be taken as an indication of change affecting the whole spectrum of international cultural relations. A paradigmatic example is the work developed by the Goethe Institute. This national cultural institute, besides the teaching of German, has diversified its action to encompass all the arts, society, knowledge and development. It has become a powerhouse for the dissemination of German language, culture and society while

increasingly serving as a channel for foreign cultures in their own countries and abroad (see case studies in Chapter 4).

However, changes in terms of how the relations are enacted in cultural diplomacy, such as the diversity of areas in which they operate or the opening up to mutuality of relations, still do not change the direction of the majority of the flows and their purpose. The equality of cultural relations still depends on the relative power and interests of the actors intervening. For instance, in the case of relations between developed and developing countries, although desirability for mutuality in relations is often expressed in official discourse, and marginally practised, I do not see the relations becoming equitable.

As I have pointed out in section 2.1.3.3, cultural relations are moving away from a national base. Apart from the participation in cultural relations of an increasing number of actors, the media plays nowadays a fundamental role in the mediation of relations between societies. Tardif (2004d, p.4) maintains that “Cultural industries are now largely created by media detached from territorial constraints and in trade in cultural goods and services. This is why, as with all oligopolies, large inequalities in cultural exchanges are unacceptable.”

In this section I have briefly analysed the impact of globalisation on the role of states and in the development of cultural diplomacy. The next section discusses Africa’s struggle towards independence and development in the light of some globalisation processes.