Innovations in cultural policy and development in Latin America

ABSTRACT

This essay looks at two major tendencies in cultural policy recommendations in Latin America: (1) the economic contribution of arts, heritage and especially the cultural and creative industries; and (2) cultural rights, with a focus on inclusion, access, empowerment, and the integral development/well-being of citizens. The two tendencies, which are part of cultural development policies, are not easily integrated into an all-encompassing policy because they follow different logics and management strategies. Nevertheless, both of these tendencies, which emerged in the heyday of neoliberalism (the 1990s), continue to provide the major justifications for cultural funding, although the current economic crisis has led to budget cuts. After a review of cultural development policies, this essay examines innovative strategies to compensate for scarce funding, including those that seek to bridge both tendencies. The cases examined below correspond to discussions of cultural policies in Latin American forums with hundreds of policy-makers and analysts over the past 20-plus years.

Abbreviations: BBC: British Broadcasting Corporation; CadenAgro: Centro de Apoyo para el Desarrollo de Denominaciones de Origen y Sellos de Calidad de Productos Agroalimentarios; CCI: Cultural and Creative Industries; CEDE: Centro de Estudios de Desarrollo Económico; CMD: Centro de Diseño Metropolitano; CVC: Cultura Viva Comunitaria; ECLAC: Economic Commission for Latin America; ILO: International Labor Organization; IMF: International Monetary Fund; MDG: Millennium Development Goals; MDG-F: Millennium Development Goals Fund; MICA: Mercado de Industrias Creativas de Argentina; MICSUR: Mercado de Industrias Culturales del Sur; MSME: Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises; SEGIB: Secretaría General Iberoamericana; SELA: Latin American Economic System; UCLG: United Cities and Local Governments; UNCTAD: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development; UNDP: United Nations Development Programl; UNESCO: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; US: United States of America     

Aid for trade and ecologically sustainable development in Australia’s international aid program

In September 2015, Australia, along with 193 member states of the United Nations, signed the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The facilitation of international trade and increasing foreign aid for developing countries were emphasised as crucial means for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. An important role was assigned to the international Aid for Trade initiative, which is about stimulating economic growth in developing countries through removing constraints to trade. Australia has been a strong supporter of the Aid for Trade initiative since it was launched at the World Trade Organization’s Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong in 2005. Aid for trade has become a central plank of the ‘new development paradigm’ of Australia’s international aid program. This article analyses the conceptualisation and practice of aid for trade in Australia’s aid, with a focus on how it links to ecologically sustainable development. It argues that Australia’s aid for trade is reinforcing the neo-liberal development paradigm in which environmental dimensions are overall neglected and private sector development and free trade are prioritised. In order to achieve international and national development goals of poverty reduction and sustainable development, environmental sustainability needs to be fully integrated into the growing aid for trade portfolio of Australia’s international aid.     

Economic and Social Thinking at the UN in Historical Perspective

This article begins to examine the history of economic and social ideas launched or nurtured by the United Nations (UN). In 1999, the United Nations Intellectual History Project was initiated, to analyse the UN as an intellectual actor, and to shed light on the role of the UN system in creating knowledge and in influencing international policy‐making: this article is based on the first five books and the oral histories from that Project. The starting point is that ideas may be the most important legacy of the UN for human rights, economic and social development, as well as for peace and security. For the authors, this ‘intellectual history’ provides a way to explore the origins of particular ideas; trace their course within institutions, scholarship, and discourse; and in some cases evaluate the impact of ideas on policy and action.     

Earth Mother Myths and Other Ecofeminist Fables: How a Strategic Notion Rose and Fell

The notion that women are ‘closer to nature’, naturally caring for land, water, forests and other aspects of the environment, has held powerful sway in certain development circles since the 1980s. Along with the rise in global environmental concern, ‘women, environment and development’ (WED) perspectives gained ground among many donor agencies and NGOs, complementing and sharing core assumptions with earlier‐established ‘women in development’ (WID) discourses. The materialist dimensions of WED were bolstered by fables about women's natural, cultural or ideological closeness to nature grounded in varieties of ecofeminist analysis. This proved a seductive mix for agencies wishing simultaneously to promote environmental protection and WID, as well as for certain forms of feminist activism and sisterhood‐construction, such as those around the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. This contribution revisits these narratives and the politics of this strategic fix in the development of international environmentalism and explores the sustained critiques of these ecofeminist fables by feminist scholars and activists from the early 1990s onwards. It provides a critical review of the approach to gender and the environment in some current donor, NGO and other policy documents, which draw little from the feminist critiques of the 1990s. The author reflects on how, and for whom, women–nature links might have practical or strategic value today.     

Cultural policies for sustainable development: four strategic paths

Abstract

In the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015, the role of culture is limited. We argue that culture’s absence is rooted in the longue durée of interplay among theoretical and policy debates on culture in sustainable development and on cultural policy since the mid-twentieth century. In response to variations in concepts and frameworks used in advocacy, policy, and academia, we propose four roles cultural policy can play towards sustainable development: first, to safeguard and sustain cultural practices and rights; second, to ‘green’ the operations and impacts of cultural organizations and industries; third, to raise awareness and catalyse actions about sustainability and climate change; and fourth, to foster ‘ecological citizenship’. The challenge for cultural policy is to help forge and guide actions along these co-existing and overlapping strategic paths towards sustainable development.     

Developmentalities and Donor–NGO Relations: Contesting Foreign Aid Policies in New Zealand/Aotearoa

In this paper we draw on the concept of governmentality to examine the relationships between donors and northern non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) during moments of policy change. Our case study comes from New Zealand/Aotearoa where a change in government has seen aid policy shift from poverty alleviation to sustainable economic development. We detail three mechanisms through which the government sought to normalise this change: changes in language and fields of visibility; institutional reform; and funding delays and cuts. Far from being complete, however, we also trace how some NGOs contested the new agenda through engaging in the practice of politics and how, at least temporarily, new more politicised development subjectivities were created. While our study raises awkward questions about the autonomy of NGOs within current funding environments, we also emphasise the productive possibilities and openings that emerge as one set of development ideas and techniques, or developmentalities, shifts to another.     

International development in transition

International development is in a period of transition. While the outcome of this is still unclear, this article argues that there are at least four areas in which the project of international development is changing. First, there is a debate, especially within the World Bank, about development strategy and how we think about development, particularly in terms of the balance between states and markets. This is evident in the debate over state failure and the new structural economics. Second, there is increasing evidence of a shift in lending, away from projects of ‘small’ human development, perhaps best encapsulated by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, towards more transformative ‘big’ development projects such as infrastructure. Third, ‘non‐traditional’ aid donors and new forms of private philanthropy are playing a more significant role in development financing and this, in turn, offers developing countries a new range of choices about what kinds of development assistance they receive. Fourth, aid relations are changing as a result of the renewed agency of developing states, particularly in sub‐Saharan Africa, and shifts towards increased South–South cooperation are growing as evidenced by increased funding from regional development banks and increased trade flows. The article reviews these changes and suggests a series of questions and challenges that arise from them for analysts of international development, developing countries and traditional aid donors.     

国际难民机制与战后初期全球难民治理——以“国际难民组织”为中心的考察

二战的爆发造成全球产生了大量的难民和流离失所者,国际社会围绕这一问题的解决进行了积极探索。国际难民组织作为联合国处理难民问题的专门机构应运而生,通过与各国政府、社团组织开展合作与互动,共同致力于战后国际难民问题的解决。该组织重点从难民的照护、失踪人员追踪、法律和政治保护等领域出发,参与到国际难民保护实践当中。同时,该组织通过遣返、重新安置以及本地安置等方式积极推动难民安置目标的达成。作为联合国对于战后难民问题的制度化回应,国际难民组织的实践本身体现了持不同立场的国家之间的合作,也逐渐显现出各国的合作意愿与冷战现实之间的矛盾。随着冷战在欧洲及其他地区的开启,国际难民问题日趋复杂且出现新变化,联合国难民署的成立标志着全球难民治理进入新的阶段。     

The United States, The United Nations and Iraq: 'Multilateralism of a kind'

Much is made of the need for any second war against Iraq (following Desert Storm of 1991) to be sanctioned by a resolution of the UN Security Council, approved necessarily by all five Permanent Members. Yet only two of the five, the USA and the UK, show any enthusiasm for renewed war in the Persian Gulf; and British policy is undeniably following rather than leading American actions on the diplomatic and military fronts. What are the sources of this American policy? Some critics say oil; the latest arguments of proponents invoke humanitarian concerns; somewhere between the two are those who desire ‘regime change’ to create the economic and political conditions in which so‐called western political, economic and social values can flourish. To understand the present crisis and its likely evolution this article examines American relations with Iraq in particular, the Persian Gulf more generally and the Middle East as a region since the Second World War. A study of these international relations combined with a critical approach to the history of American actions and attitudes towards the United Nations shows that the United States continues to pursue a diplomacy blending, as occasion suits, the traditional binaries of multilateralism and unilateralism—yet in the new world‐wide ‘war on terrorism’. The question remains whether the chosen means of fighting this war will inevitably lead to a pyrrhic victory for the United States and its ad hoc allies in the looming confrontation with Iraq.     

Climate as resource and challenge: international cooperation in the UNESCO Arid Zone Programme

ABSTRACT

Perceptions of climatic challenges have changed significantly during the twentieth century. In recent decades, the question of global climate change received more attention than regional climatic challenges and the problems of arid regions. Historians have shown that persistent misconceptions and a lack of understanding of arid zones rooted in misguided colonial ideologies were propagated by United Nations (UN) initiatives such as the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Arid Zone Programme. Alarmist narratives of progressive desertification proliferated and put the blame on destructive local practices such as deforestation and overgrazing. This article investigates UNESCO’s interests in natural resources (section 1) and takes a closer look at the development and scientific elements of the Arid Zone Programme (sections 2 and 3). It argues that the Arid Zone Programme offered an effective framework that helped develop and spread new interdisciplinary research approaches to improve knowledge about arid zones. The myth of progressing desertification and misguided colonial expertise characterized much of its political rhetoric, but not its scientific work, which reflected balanced and more critical appraisals of out-dated colonial expertise. In its conclusion, the article suggests that broader contexts need to be taken into account to understand a resurgence of alarmist narratives of desertification such as shifting interests in climatology from local climatic issues to the global atmospheric circulation and a neglect of the climatology of arid zones.     

UNESCO's doctrine of human diversity: A secular soteriology?

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was created in 1945, in the aftermath of the Second World War. Its principal mission, as initially defined, was to establish the conditions of peaceful coexistence between nations. This mission was equivalent to an experiment in social engineering on a global scale, which consisted in working out and disseminating a new worldview based on a revised vision of humankind. In this worldview an important place was granted to a particular vision of human diversity, both cultural and genetic. The paper reconstructs the main presuppositions of UNESCO's doctrine of human diversity and examines theirs historical transformations.     

分歧与协调:佐藤内阁对联合国中国代表权问题的政策选择

亲台反华的日本佐藤内阁在1971年联合国中国代表权问题上费尽心机,不仅是为台湾当局继存于联合国的“逆重要问题案”的始作俑者,甚至一度对美国将安理会席位交归中华人民共和国的主张持“保留意见”。但随着尼克松访华计划的公布,视日美关系为日本对外关系核心的佐藤内阁迅速调整政策,公开与美国政府在联合国图谋“两个中国”并存局面。佐藤内阁顽固追随美国在联合国中国代表权问题上的政策立场,不仅遭到日本国内要求调整对华关系的反对力量的猛烈攻击,同时也使执政的自民党在对华政策上的内部分歧越发难以调和,并最终导致佐藤内阁失去调整对华政策的历史契机。     

Securing Modernity: Towards an Ethnography of Power in Contemporary Melanesia

ABSTRACT Contemporary public discourses, which depict Melanesian nation states as weak or as having failed, serve to legitimize the imposition of external, neo‐paternal, regulatory structures on former colonies. Such discourses problematise the numerous local experiments that combine custom, state structures and religion so as to create modern Melanesian ways of governing. Starting with the colonial policy of indirect rule, Melanesia has had a long history of experiments that have sought to tie together different regimes of power in relays, which are meant to remediate, supplement and strengthen state structures. Today, those relays are pathologised as dysfunctional precisely because they can be used to subvert, contest and divert state programs. Current political problems arising from growing ethnic and economic divisions are producing new conflicts, new moral languages for figuring evil, and new tactics and technologies of power. Many of these new experiments seek to reconnect the nation state with the moral authority, pastoral regimes, and individualizing practices of Christianity.     

Human Trafficking and Online Networks: Policy,Analysis, and Ignorance

Dominant anti‐trafficking policy discourses represent trafficking as an issue of crime, “illegal” migration, victimhood and humanitarianism. Such a narrow focus is not an adequate response to the interplay between technology, trafficking and anti‐trafficking. This article explores different levels of analysis and the interplay between human trafficking and technology. We argue for a shift from policy discourses with a very limited focus on crime and victimisation to more systemic understandings of trafficking and more robust micro‐analyses of trafficking and everyday life. The article calls for an agnotological understanding of policy responses to trafficking and technology: these depend upon the production of ignorance. We critique limitations in policy understandings of trafficking‐related aspects of online spaces, and argue for better engagement with online networks. We conclude that there is a need to move beyond a focus on “new” technology and exceptionalist claims about “modern slavery” towards greater attention to everyday exploitation within neoliberalism.     

Revisiting the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): International Histories of Agriculture,Nutrition,and Development

As far as international organizations and their written histories are concerned, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, presents quite a paradox. Though in its early years, the organization itself as well as individual staff members were determined to document and narrate FAO's history, sixty years later many aspects of FAO's history remain largely unknown. The following articles re-examine the history of FAO through a range of new perspectives that shed light on the intellectual roots of rural development ideas within the organization and illuminate the context of specific development missions, as well as the transnational flows of knowledge and expertise.     

Beyond the ‘Trauma of Decolonisation’: Dutch Cultural Diplomacy during the West New Guinea Question (1950–62)

This article opens up new perspectives on the dispute between the Netherlands and Indonesia about West New Guinea between 1950 and 1962. Conventional historiography describes this episode as the ‘trauma of decolonisation’, with Dutch policy-makers clinging on to the last bits of their overseas empire in Southeast Asia. This article shows that some of them also attempted to formulate new principles to convince world opinion that their country was making a break from traditional forms of colonialism. Referring to Article 73 of the United Nations’ Charter, the Dutch government put the well-being of the local Papuan population at the centre of their policy and several key officials embarked on an international publicity campaign to propagate this policy. The imagery of this campaign was ambivalent in the sense that it showed both continuities and discontinuities with the colonial discourse, but nonetheless it appealed to various delegates in the United Nations, including some from newly independent nations in Africa. As such the following analysis of the international aspects of the Dutch policy on West New Guinea also contributes to the general debate on decolonisation by revealing its complex dynamics.     

“Bluewashing” the Firm? Voluntary Regulations,Program Design,and Member Compliance with the United Nations Global Compact

Voluntary programs have emerged as important instruments of public policy. We explore whether programs lacking monitoring and enforcement mechanisms can curb participants’ shirking with program obligations. Incentive‐based approaches to policy see monitoring and enforcement as essential to curb shirking, while norm‐based approaches view social mechanisms such as norms and learning as sufficient to serve this purpose. The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), a prominent international voluntary program, encourages firms to adopt socially responsible policies. Its program design, however, relies primarily on norms and learning to mitigate shirking. Using a panel of roughly 3,000 U.S. firms from 2000 to 2010, and multiple approaches to address endogeneity and selection issues, we examine the effects of Compact membership on members’ human rights and environmental performance. We find that members fare worse than nonmembers on costly and fundamental performance dimensions, while showing improvements only in more superficial dimensions. Exploiting the lack of monitoring and enforcement, UNGC members are able to shirk: enjoying goodwill benefits of program membership without making costly changes to their human rights and environmental practices.     

Consumption,Environmental Sustainability and Human Geography in Australia: a Missing Research Agenda?

‘Consumption’ is a central concept in the global environmental sustainability agenda. However, one important argument from Agenda 21 — that all social actors must now practise ‘sustainable consumption’— has been publicly and politically marginalised in high‐income countries such as Australia. Geographers potentially have a role in bringing consumption back onto the agenda by constructing a critical geography of consumption. Such research can help understand how the contextual use of natural resources is perceived and practised, and how consumption helps to shape contemporary social relations. This body of knowledge is vital for building sustainable development into everyday lives. Yet a focus on urban consumption perceptions and practices appears somewhat lacking in Australian geography. Ways forward can be drawn from international geography, such as in the United Kingdom where a substantial body of work has drawn a complex picture of contemporary consumption and environmental understanding. It has also challenged prevailing ‘ecological modernisation’ policy approaches, which ignore consumption's cultural facets. In sum, considering consumption in Australia can offer insights into cultural practices expressed through consumption; can challenge and add to European geographical literatures, and can also contribute to sustainability debates by offering alternatives to currently ineffective policy discourses.