Culture as a Commodity
How the U.N. tries to save civilization.

By Eric Gibson
April 1, 2005
Wall Street Journal
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006498

Almost 20 years ago, the U.S. withdrew from Unesco, the United Nations' humanitarian wing, citing mismanagement and political tendentiousness. Two years ago, the U.S. decided to rejoin. Laura Bush even traveled to Paris to lead the American delegation in its official rapprochement. 
Was this rejoining such a good idea? Perhaps not. Unesco has still not learned to devote itself merely to long and tedious conferences. It wants to do more. And so it is now proposing an international treaty called The Convention on the Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Contents and Artistic Expressions. The U.S. inevitably finds itself drawn into the negotiations, required yet again to resist nonsense. 
The origins of this curious document are not far to seek. In the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, Unesco adopted the Universal Declaration of Cultural Diversity in order to reaffirm [the] conviction that intercultural dialogue is the best guarantee of peace, as the organization's director-general, Koichiro Matsuura put it at the time. 
The first article of this declaration stated--in the prose style one has come to associate with these bureaucracies--that cultural diversity is embodied in the uniqueness and plurality of the identities of the groups and societies making up humankind. Such diversity is a vital source of exchange, innovation and creativity--as vital as biodiversity is for nature. As such, cultural diversity is the common heritage of humanity and should be recognized and affirmed for the benefit of present and future generations. The current treaty is an attempt to give these sentiments the form of international law. 
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It all sounds innocent enough--along the lines of Unesco's celebrated 1970 convention recognizing the importance of the world's cultural heritage and calling on all nations to preserve their cultural treasures. Only the treaty now being debated is trying to do something more vague: to recognize the multiplicity of cultural voices world-wide, including indigenous voices, and to guarantee their survival. Perhaps the vagueness is one reason that the treaty is shifting its emphasis as Unesco tries to codify such a grand design: The thing looks more and more like a mandate for economic protectionism. 
Take the term cultural diversity. It has almost disappeared from the discussion, even from the title of the document. Now the debate centers on cultural goods and services--culture has become a commodity. At the insistence of France and Canada, the draft treaty calls for import restrictions on certain types of cultural production, particularly movies and music. Protecting culture seems to be more about holding onto market share than about intercultural dialogue. 
The French minister of culture, Renaud Donnedieur de Vabres, has expressed the matter candidly. He wants to make sure that each country can maintain its cultural and artistic expression, that these are not threatened either by a marketplace that is too uniform and too constricting or by the behaviour of individuals. 
In short, keep foreign stuff out. Canada, for instance, is concerned about its film industry being overwhelmed by Hollywood. It wants to establish limits on the number of American imports, enlarging the protections it already enjoys under World Trade Organization agreements. There is a precedent for this. At the last WTO round, France had asked for a cultural exception that would have allowed its own film industry to bypass free-trade agreements and limit the number of Hollywood imports. It was turned down. So what it couldn't get in one forum it is now seeking in another, with Canada joining the effort. 
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And the U.S. response? Our perspective, says Robert S. Martin, a member of the American negotiating team, is that there are ways to do that without limiting the free flow of ideas and culture. The proper approach is to find ways to nurture indigenous art and culture. It boils down to promote vs. protect. 
If this all sounds a bit technocratic, it is. But it is not without legal force. The convention's Article 19 allows the treaty's provisions to trump all other international agreements--in effect vacating WTO free-trade requirements and allowing France and other countries to indulge their protectionist impulses. 
An argument can be made that the U.S. does itself no favors when it opts out of organizations like Unesco. Trouble builds unchecked, and countries like Canada and France assume inordinate power. Says Dana Gioia, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and another member of the American team: I don't think the resulting convention would have been anywhere as bad if America had been involved from the first. Maybe Laura Bush arrived just in time.
Mr. Gibson is editor of the Leisure & Arts page of The Wall Street Journal.
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