Cultural Diversity
Common Heritage Plural Identities

Published in 2002 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 7, place de Fontenoy - 75700 Paris Coordination and revision: Michèle Garzon Graphic design, composition and printing: Jed Graphic & Multimédia © UNESCO 2002

• CULTURAL DIVERSITY •

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Preface

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n these troubled times with the world in search of its bearings, and wayward minds using the terms “culture” and “civilization” in an attempt to turn human beings against one another, there is an urgent need to remember how fundamental cultural diversity is to humanity itself.

ever-increasing gains in diversity – had opened it up to still living forms of that creative genius, to embrace what we call the “intangible” heritage. So the goal of achieving universality that governed the notion of the common heritage of humanity is now accompanied by cultural pluralism. Indeed, the latter to a large extent sustains the former and helps avoid the pitfall of particularism. Since the Mexico City Declaration in 1982, the World Commission on Culture and Development and the Intergovernmental Conference on Cultural Policies for Development (Stockholm, 1998), culture has come to be regarded as “the whole complex of distinctive spiritual, materiel, intellectual and emotional features that characterize a society or social group. It includes not only the arts and letters, but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of the human being, value systems, traditions and beliefs”. Cultural diversity is a prime constituent of human identity. By that token, it is humanity’s common property. Far from seeing it as a concession to variety on the part of some imaginary singular identity, we must bear in mind the thought that diversity is the very essence of our identity. One strand cannot be set against the other, for they are intertwined. Cultural diversity basically means having to recognize and promote cultural pluralism in the