Sunday, June 26, 2005

Cultural Diplomacy, Development of Culture, Culture for Development

Federico Mayor, the former Director General of UNESCO, said the following in a recent interview:
Q. UNESCO is the cultural and scientific wing of the United Nations—what do you see as its role in today’s embattled world?

A. During the time that I had the honor to run UNESCO, I was very little concerned with museums. I’m really only interested in human beings. Frankly, I deeply regret that the current UNESCO is making more noise about things like the looting of Iraq’s museums than about the number of people being killed in the conflict.

UNESCO’s work is to “construct in the minds of men the defenses of peace.” It is a mistake to exclude UNESCO from current world problems, as if its only competencies were art and museums; it is a way to silence major international institutions.

UNESCO is the conscience of the United Nations. Its charter states: “UNESCO must foster the intellectual and moral solidarity of humanity.” When I heard about the looting in Iraq, my first comment was: “Shame on the invading countries, which did not place proper guards at the entrance of museums.” Frankly, for me the looting is a technical issue, and I never paid much attention to these things. Some years ago, someone told me: “Federico, [the Sphinx at] the Giza pyramids has a broken ear.” “Well,” I answered, “Don’t worry, we’ll put it back some day.” Fortunately, stones can be restored, and the end result is wonderful. But we cannot restore a lost human life.


I have great respect for Dr. Mayor, but this comment really annoyed me. I will address it in this posting. First, I think the criticism of museums is a cheap shot, and that museums can be great institutions, including great institutions for promoting the interests of the poor. Second, the concern for museums is no more representative of cultural programs than is the concern for astronomy representative of science programs, or are “gut” courses for intellectually challenged college athletes representative of education programs. They form one, responsible but small part of the UNESCO culture program.

Culture is more than Museums

I find that there is some lack of clarity as to the meaning of the term “culture”. It is often used in the context of high-culture, implying art and music, literature and drama. It can be used similarly in the context of popular-culture, which would include those elements, as well as computer games, television programs, etc. The term is used much more broadly in the context of “culture and development”. UNESCO’s Declaration on Cultural Diversity considers
“that culture should be regarded as the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs.”

I think generally, a society’s science and technology are part of its culture in this context, and by extension, so too are the society’s other knowledge systems. Strengthening education in a society is then a critically important cultural intervention.

Culture and UNESCO

I recently attended a service honoring Jack Fobes, perhaps the most visible and prominent advocate of UNESCO in the United States during the last fifty years. Fobes knew UNESCO well, and saw its focuses of education, science, culture and communications as intimately connected, forming a synergistic cluster of critically important approaches to achieving UNESCO’s mission: “to build peace in the minds of men.”

I was especially intrigued by the following:
On the broader context, he indicated his overarching belief that UNESCO’s crisis had its origins in a crisis of civilizations, felt with special acuity in “that part of the UN system which deals with the heart, mind, conscience and learning capacities of human society.”

Remembering Jack Fobes, Richard Arndt, AAFU Link No.92, April-June 2005, page 13.

The following comments are based in part on my growing knowledge of UNESCO, and my thoughts about the role of UNESCO in the United Nations systems, and more generally in international development and international affairs.

Arndt’s Book

I have been reading Dick Arndt’s book, “The First Resort of Kings.” It passes that most important test of good books – making you think fresh thoughts. The book tells the history of U.S. cultural diplomacy in the 20th century.

The book is worth owning for the riff on embassy architecture alone. In the aftermath of World War II, the State Department embarked on a building program. At the time Washington was building neo-classical buildings of monstrous proportions, that would have been at home in Albert Speer’s Berlin. State, however, commissioned the best architectural firms in the U.S. to design its new buildings abroad, and used an advisory board of distinguished architects to help. The result was a series of distinguished buildings, their glass and steel construction representing the international style of the time, while their architects strove to build in references to U.S. and host country culture. The buildings were often beautiful in the day, and appeared as beacons in the night. The were located in prime real estate in city centers, and projected an image of a confident and open America.

Increasingly, since the 1990’s, caution has controlled U.S. embassy architecture. Embassies are built in the outskirts of capitals, separated from the street by vacant land, fortifications, and blank walls. They now appear as fortresses such as would be constructed by an imperial power to maintain control over areas populated by rebellious peoples. Arndt describes the change better than I can.

I am about one-third through the book, and here I am simply giving some of the reflections that it has occasioned in my mind related to the theme of this blog. The reflections

Cultural Diplomacy

Cultural diplomacy for the United States grew out of the experiences in World Wars I and II, and I suppose was based largely on the assumption that if peoples knew each other better, they would be less likely to go to war with each other. Perhaps the idea was even more simply, if people knew us better, they would be less likely to go to war with us. It is part of a touching faith, taught in U.S. schools during most of the 20th century, that the U.S. sought freedom and democracy for the peoples of the world, and that the people of other nations would be glad for the opportunities we provided.

During the cold war, facing nuclear destruction if a World War III were to break out between democratic and communist nations, U.S. cultural diplomacy must have been conditioned by efforts to contain Communism and to “win the hearts and minds” of peoples of countries likely to adopt a Communist form of government.

Today, the people of the United States are extremely concerned with terrorism, and thus likely to see cultural diplomacy in still another light. The emphasis in the short term is the relationship with militant Islam, and in the long term with modifying the conditions that produce and support a fringe of militant, anti-American Moslems. Perhaps there are larger fish to fry?

The means of U.S cultural diplomacy have included education, educational and cultural exchanges, language instruction, distribution of books in English, translation into local languages and distribution of books by U.S, authors and about the U.S., creation of libraries, and distribution of films, and radio and TV broadcast material. Whatever their objectives, these efforts have probably had a long term impact of helping the spread of English and familiarity with U.S. thought throughout the world.

Reading Arndt, it seemed to me that cultural diplomacy, as practiced by the United States, has been elitist. It has focused on an educated elite, and on a high-cultural elite. I suppose that such a focus is realistic, since the elites are so influential. Coopting the elite of a country to U.S. views is likely to influence the country’s national policies (although the case of Iran also illustrates the potential danger in focusing too much on an existing elite to the exclusion of those revolutionaries who will eventually overthrow the established order). Similarly, our elites are likely, when given the opportunity to work in another country, are likely to be .influential. Sending intellectuals, writers, and others who have achieved global status takes advantage of their legitimate intellectual authority.

Dealing with the cultures of entire populations of foreign nations is a longer term, more costly enterprise than has been envisioned for U.S. diplomacy, but seems to me to be necessary. Contrary to those who await the imminant "Second Coming", I think the U.S. must plan to live in the world for centuries to come, and we would be better able to do so were the peoples of all countries (including China, India, Brazil, Indonesia and other developing and transition nations) better educated and better disposed toward the United States.

I was impressed by how bilateral the thinking has been in U.S. cultural diplomacy. Many of our national concerns really deal with the relations among foreign nations themselves, and not their bilateral relations with us. Were Isreal and its Arab neighbors to understand each other better, U.S. interests in a large portion of the world would be advanced. Indeed, in the aftermath of World War II, the issue was not only mutual understanding between the Soviet Union and the United States. Mutual understand between the Soviet Union and its neighboring countries, including those of Western Europe should have been seen as important. Promoting such understanding via cultural diplomacy would have made sense, and in the immediate aftermath of the war, the United States had the resources to finance cultural diplomacy between (say) Western Europe and the Soviet Union.

I come from a Development background rather than a Diplomacy background. I am interested in the development of culture and the use of cultural change as a tool of economic and social development. I see diplomacy as an important tool for the promotion of development, as I see international development as both an intrinsic goal of U.S. foreign policy and an instrumental goal on the way to achieving other security, economic and political goals. These ideas too seems distant from those typical in the Department of State's view of cultural diplomacy.

Development of Culture

UNESCO maintains a “culture portal”. It is instructive to consider its facets, which I have divided into several categories:
Protection of Cultural Heritage: World Heritage, Tangible Heritage, Intangible Heritage, Cultural Diversity, Museums, Normative Action (with the exception of the Copyright Convention, the Conventions for which UNESCO is the guardian agency all deal with cultural heritage).
Intercultural Dialogue
Culture and Development
Economic Exploitation of Culture and Cultural Products: Cultural Industries, Cultural Tourism
Promotion of Living Culture: Arts and Creativity, Copyright.


First, contrary to the impression that might be left by Dr. Mayor’s comment, museums and protection of tangible cultural heritage represent a relatively small part of UNESCO’s cultural program.

Second, the emphasis on the preservation of cultural heritage is striking. These programs appear to be very much appreciated. Indeed I value them highly. I love historical places and historical objects, and I feel too many of them are threatened. Their preservation is important to me. While spending money on the preservation of such things might seem hard to justify in the face of the billions of people in the world living in crushing poverty, it is easy to justify as a use of the funds of rich countries and peoples – far better than their military expenditures, most of mass entertainment, cosmetics, etc.

But there is a more serious issue. We live in a time of relatively rapid change – technological, economic, social, political, and cultural. People find many of the changes are counter to deeply held values, and find that the values themselves are changing, often in ways that are threatening. Understanding and protecting ones cultural heritage helps to maintain the most important core values, and to control change to reduce the insults to such core values.

Third, there is relatively little emphasis in the UNESCO cultural program on the arts and creativity, and their protection through copyright. This too is an area that I personally value. Indeed, I suspect that this is what UNESCO refers to as “a jewel in the crown of development.” Again, while it may appear hard to justify funding the arts in competition with efforts to reduce the grinding poverty of millions, it is easy to justify funding UNESCO’s support for the arts in competition with the huge cultural expenditures of rich nations and peoples. UNESCO, as a result of decades of changes in international policy, now focuses primarily on programs that benefit the poor majority of the world's population, but it remains the only vehicle for multilateral action in some scientific and cultural areas of primary concern to rich nations.

Fourth, the economic exploitation of cultural products has a modest, but significant role in economic development. E-commerce in arts and crafts is increasingly attractive in the promotion of international trade. Tourism is also an important generator of hard currency for many nations, and cultural tourism offers great growth potential for many countries richer in culture than in money. Indeed, getting people to each others countries, if only as tourists, seems to offer opportunities to foster mutual understanding, and eventually to promote peace.

Finally, there is “Culture and Development”. The UNESCO website notes,
Development models produced since the 1970s have clearly failed, despite constant revision, to live up to the expectations they raised. Some would claim that this is because development has itself been defined far too exclusively in terms of tangibles, such as dams, factories, houses, food and water, although these are undeniably vital goods. UNESCO defends the case of indivisibility of culture and development, understood not simply in terms of economic growth, but also as a means of achieving a satisfactory intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual existence. This development may be defined as that set of capacities that allows groups, communities and nations to define their futures in an integrated manner.


Culture for Development

Larry Harrison’s books (e.g. Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress and Underdevelopment Is a State of Mind) make the case that culture is a key determinant of the developmental success of nations. Thus Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Hispaniola. Haiti, once the richest colony in America, is now one of the poorest nations. The Dominican Republic, while no model of development, has achieved much higher levels of social and economic development. It is hard to account for the differences, other than by the fact that the two peoples are different. The critical difference must be in their institutions and more generally, their cultures. These cause the differences in policies, and in turn the historical differences in development paths that have lead to such different social and economic outcomes today.

The “Culture for Development” movement (cf. UNESCO’s program, or the Development Gateway topic page) then focuses on how cultural changes can be promoted that will encourage faster, more equitable social and economic development, while preserving critical cultural values and preserving cultural diversity.

Global International Objectives

UNESCO is currently negotiating a Cultural Diversity Convention. It is based on the belief that cultural diversity has intrinsic value. I suppose that I share that belief, but for me it is a lesser value. Certainly there is more beauty in the world as there are more cultures producing it to their own esthetic standards. History suggests that cultural growth does not always come from the most advanced cultures; the contemporaneous imperial Chinese certainly would not have expected the peoples of Medieval Europe to develop a cultural innovation as important as modern science or the modern market economy. Thus we need the cultures that contain the seeds of future cultural advances, even though we may not be able to specify which they are among the many.

The major problems in the world are well known. They include poverty and disease. War threatens to increase both. So too does environmental degradation on a global scale. Environmental problems include the loss of biological diversity, which I value highly as an intrinsic as well as an instrumental value. I would be quite willing to give up some cultural diversity to reduce poverty, improve health, protect the environment, and prevent war.

Would I give up 1,000 of the worlds endangered languages if in the balance it would bring to one billion people living in extreme poverty into a more decent life? Like a shot! Would I give up ethnic costumes in exchange for the lives of the millions of children who die of preventable causes each year? Like a shot!

Means of Achieving The Priotity Objectives

The movement toward “knowledge and understanding for development” has been largely based on the assumption that the solution to these global problems lies in the minds of men – that people who think better, with more knowledge and understanding, will help their societies achieve these important goals. Knowledge and understanding are valuable as goals in themselves, and as means of achieving other goals.

In its more thoughtful incarnations, K&U4D recognizes that the ability of a society to apply knowledge and understanding to development depends not only on the levels of knowledge and understanding of its individuals, but on the institutions that affect the way that knowledge and understanding can be brought to bear on its problems.

I recently read the remark somewhere, I think in remarks by Paul Wolfowitz, that genocide when it occurs can always be traced to a gang of thugs who have seized control of the machinery of a state. I see some truth in the remark. But I would also note that the German people were among the most educated when their country committed genocide. The high level of knowledge and understanding in the general population, and the very high levels enjoyed by some in that society, did not keep the society from terrible mistakes – in large part because the institutions failed to bring that knowledge to bear.

Arndt points out that cultural diplomacy begins in U.S. experience with the teaching of language. I understand that some people think in images, but I personally think in words almost exclusively. In any case, I agree with a point that Arndt makes that the language one thinks in affects the way one thinks. Cultural diplomacy perhaps begins with assuring that one has a common language with those with whom one wants to conduct diplomacy. I suspect that speaking a common language does not necessarily lead to mutual understanding nor to peaceful relations between people, but it probably helps in those causes.

Let me also suggest that as people of a nation learn other languages, they learn new concepts, and new ways to thinking. These indeed eventually reflect back into their original languages. Languages change and grow to meet the needs of the concepts they handle. Moreover, as English has become the language of international commerce, science and technology, command of English has become necessary to participate fully in commerce and international knowledge systems.

While on the subject of learning, the classical education tradition stressed the trivium ("the three part curriculum": grammar, logic, rhetoric) and the quadrivium (the "four part curriculum": geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music). This was a curriculum that emphasized teaching one to think and communicate, not only to know and to understand. (Recall that in the classical tradition, astronomy was not only the study of facts about the heavens, but built on the belief that the stars could be used to help one to understand and predict events.)

John Dewey said it well:
Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only that particular thing that he is studying at the time. Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes, of likes and dislikes, may be and often is much more important than the spelling lesson or the lesson in geography or history that is learned. For these attitudes are fundamentally what count in the future.

A recent book, Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter by Steven Johnson, suggests that games help develop analytic and other important thinking skills. Not news to anyone who was brought up on chess, go, or other analytic games. Incidentally, the book is much better than the title would suggest.

Two Cultures versus Consilience

C. P. Snow’s book, The Two Cultures, highlighted the existing gap between two cultures in modern Western society – that of those trained in science and technology versus that of those trained in humanities and the arts. This is a gap that UNESCO provides a tool to help breach or heal.

Ed Wilson’s much more recent book, Consilience : The Unity of Knowledge, is a broad study that encourages scholars to bridge the many gaps between and within the cultures of science, of the humanities and of the arts. (“Consilience” means "a jumping together, " in this case of the many branches of human knowledge).

Steven Johnson, in his book Everything Bad is Good for You, seeks to utilize a number of disciplines to understand the way in which new media are affecting culture and ultimately training people to think in new (and better) ways. Thus he draws on Narratology and Semiotics to analyze works in the media, Media Theory to analyze the platform, Economics to analyze market forces influencing media content, Sociology to analyze characteristics of the audience, and Neuroscience to discuss learning and motivation. (page 207) His text is an example of the benefits of Consilience!

The point here is that the divergence between science and culture is a problem, not just a fact of life. Increasingly, we need to find ways toward Consilience. There have been suggestions in the past that UNESCO’s tasks should be divided among U.N. agencies, even if it is necessary to create a new agency to do so. Such an approach would seem counterproductive to me. Indeed, I applaud current efforts to promote cross disciplinary programs in UNESCO to bridge the existing gaps among programs.

The Synergies Among UNESCO’s Programs

Thus UNESCO focuses on Education, Science, Culture and Communications. It does so reflecting the general view at the time of UNESCO’s founding that formal education was the keys to necessary cultural changes. Improving formal education systems was the most important way to mold men’s minds toward peace and toward developing positive change in societies. Not a bad view.

I have in this blog repeatedly stressed that scientific knowledge is of special value, given the utility of scientific institutions for validating and organizing knowledge and understanding. It deserves a special place in the pantheon of UNESCO concerns. UNESCO has quite properly stressed both social and physical sciences in its programs.

I note with some concern that UNESCO has not treated social sciences as I would most prefer. I think it imperative that nations build capacity in economics, sociology, anthropology, political science, the organizational sciences, etc. UNESCO has the legitimate authority to help in this effort, but does not seem to do so specifically.

UNESCO’s communication program has two different aspects: one seeks to promote openness (e.g. pressing for freedom of the press) while the other seeks to encourage the more rapid diffusion of communication technologies and development of information infrastructures. The communications program has in the past been the most controversial, and today lags the others in terms of resources.

One of the key findings of the social sciences is that different aspects of culture are interrelated. If you change scientific and educational institutions, other institutions are changed; and indeed, other cultural institutions will stop or transmute your efforts to change scientific and educational institutions. Moreover, the arts like museums can be powerful instruments for education. Essentially, UNESCO’s cultural programs completes the picture (although, it leaves UNESCO with the job of coordinating with WHO, FAO and other U.N. agencies, since all interact together through the “black box” of the cultures of the nations affected).

Thus the four programs are complementary in that they all focus on cultural change (in the broad sense), and specifically on changing the way in which people in societies think. The programs together promote what was called “modernization” in my youth. That is, they promote recourse to a broader exposure to information and ways of thinking, to more rational thought, to open discussion, to a more rapid and free flow of information.

The Humanities and Development

The “C” of UNESCO – culture - must include the “humanities.

What are the fields other than science that teach us about the world? History, philosophy, geography and area studies (e.g. American Studies, Asian Studies, African Studies) seem to be curricula fundamental to the understanding of the world. Indeed, while UNESCO has a program in philosophy, it does not seem to support programs in history or geography (not even in its Human and Social Sciences program).

Literature and theater (in all of its forms – live, film, television, radio) provide an attending public with models of how people behave and live. The higher the quality of the work, the greater the value of the information it makes available. And providing a body of works from many countries provides the public with accessible views of how people live and behave in other cultures and countries. How better might one learn to understand others, except by traveling and living in those cultures and countries. These media also provide the audience with insights into the operations of political, economic, social and cultural institutions. Making literature and theater available and accessible in the languages of the audience seems to have an important role in development.

Indeed, how better might one learn how to modify one’s own behavior so as to better promote economic, social and other kinds of development than through stories of others who have succeeded (or failed). The story-telling arts seem a critical complement to formal education if one seeks to promote cultural change conducive to development.

How about the other arts and sports? I don’t know. Teaching art and music in the schools achieves not only the nominal purposes, but improves student performance in other subjects. Representational art surely provides information, and for those who think in pictures it may be very useful. As the art of the Catholic Church (and Nazi and Socialist Realism) demonstrates, representational art is as often used for story telling and education (as well as propaganda). Surely music and sports exchanges have value in convincing people that other cultures and nations have things of value to which they can relate. The old dictum that “British wars were won on the playing fields of Eton” suggests that sports, like games of strategy, have lessons to teach relevant to solving the world’s problems and getting along with others.

The point of this riff is that focus on knowledge and understanding for development is fine, and that science and technology must be included in the effort, but a broader view is needed. Education is a key, but the education should be broad, including the humanities, games and sports. Language arts are also important, especially the teaching of English (to provide access to the best international sources of information and knowledge). And one must build institutional capacity to see that knowledge and understanding are brought to bear on the key issues and problems facing a country and the world.

Unidirectional, Bidirectional and/or Multidirectional

Cultural diplomacy, like development assistance, is often assumed to be unidirectional. In U.S. experience, the focus is too often we help them, we educate them, we inform them. Yet the reality is clearly that the people of the United States have as much or more to learn about and from other peoples as those peoples have to learn about and from us. Perhaps, as an ex-Peace Corps volunteer, it is easier for to see this. I don’t think I ever met a returned volunteer who did not recognize that he had learned more from the experience in the Peace Corps than he had been able to teach others.

I think part of the problem is that there are gradients in the many dimensions of international relations. Americans may often be dealing with cultures older and more complex than our own, with people who speak English less well and their own language better than we do, who are more or less educated and experienced in the world than we are. But America is almost always richer than the countries with which we are conducting cultural diplomacy and always with countries to which we provide development assistance. The unidirectional economic gradient, for a people who say “he who pays the piper calls the tune," leads naturally to a unidirectional mindset.

We think of foreign relations as binational, but often U.S. foreign policy is very much concerned with the relationships between and among other nations. Thus the relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors have been critically important to American foreign policy for half a century. In the 20th century, America was involved in World Wars that developed primarily out of the relationships among other nations. Global systems problems (such as the emergence of new infectious diseases on a global scale , or global environmental problems) are also to be solved largely by the collaborative efforts among other states.

Cultural diplomacy and development assistance have considerable power as tools for enhancing the relationships among other nations. My own experience in scientific diplomacy has focused often on building linkages between Israel and other nations to achieve U.S. long term objectives. The efforts to spread English have not only allowed others to communicate with us, but for other nations to communicate in English better among themselves. Arndt describes a USIA program that enabled Shiite Iran to share its dance traditions with peoples of other Sunni states, contributing to regional cultural relationships.

Cultural Diplomacy versus Cultural Development

The State Department and Arndt’s book focus on “diplomacy”, with the implication that the efforts described are intended primarily to promote U.S. interests abroad. My experience has been in “development”, with the implication that the efforts are intended primarily to promote the interests of the country in which they take place. Of course, U.S. bilateral foreign assistance is predicated on the idea that the development of poor nations is in the U.S. interest.

Americans have historically sought to help disadvantaged neighbors, and experience in the rebuilding of Europe after World War II demonstrated that the development of client states was very good for trade, for the economy of the United States, and for security. In some cases, and in some minds, development assistance programs have provided more immediate and tangible benefits for segments of the U.S. economy. More recently, it has become clear that through assistance to other nations, the United States can achieve national purposes, such as protection of U.S. citizens from disease and the long term domestic threats of other global problems.

Arndt is clear in differentiating the long and short term goals of cultural diplomacy, and in differentiating objectives of “information” and “cultural diplomacy” that had been mixed in the charter of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA). The more recent focus on “Public Diplomacy” has apparently deleted emphasis on cultural diplomacy altogether in favor of information, or indeed propaganda.

Arndt’s book makes clear that (whatever the objectives defined in the legislature and executive in Washington) USIA, USAID and the Peace Corps often collaborated in the field, and together they had a long term impact on the educational systems, language abilities and mutual understanding of nations.

To this mix, one might add multilateral diplomacy. As the United States seeks to change the way people outside its borders think, multilateral concerns must be considered. We have allies, and those allies share many of our objectives; they should share the costs, and (hard as it may be for some to believe) will often understand better how to achieve our common objectives that do we. Multilateral agencies, such as UNESCO and the international financial institutions, also share many of our goals. This should come as no surprise since the United States was instrumental in their founding and remains powerful in their governance. A focus of U.S. diplomacy should be to continue to assure that these multilateral organizations help achieve our common purposes.

Of course, it is always important to recognize that formal organizational goals and objectives are distinct and separate from the effects and impacts of an organization’s activities. People who work in organizations have their own objectives, and act accordingly. Those working in international relations don’t necessarily share the goals and objectives of their governmental decision makers. Moreover, activities often have unintended consequences – consequences unintended either by the individuals or the organizations carrying out those activities. “Cultural Diplomacy,” “Cultural Development,” "Culture for Development," and “Knowledge for Development” efforts may all contribute to helping the people oft the world deal more effectively with the fundamental problems facing our societies, whatever the intentionality. Indeed, men of good will should work together for the common welfare, overcoming the man-made institutional boundaries that appear to separate them.

Federico Mayor’s comment, which triggered this riff, implied a false contrast between the cultural programs of UNESCO and its educational, scientific, and communications programs. I would suggest that all four are complementary, and together can help to promote important and appropriate cultural change. The categories of cultural diplomacy, cultural development, and culture for development are also complementary.

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