The constituent relationship between culture and communication is becoming increasingly pronounced. At the same time, we are experiencing some of the most decisive cultural transformations due to transformations occurring throughout the technological communication network. These mutations affect the perception that cultural communities have of themselves, they way they exist, as well as the manner in which they build their identity and assume responsibility thereof.

The reconfiguration of local and regional cultures will henceforth be linked to the intensification of communication and to the interaction that communities have with cultures from other countries and across the world. From the point of view of local communities, the current processes of communication are perceived in two concurrent ways : as a threat to the survival of their cultures and as interactions that entail some risks but also lead the way to the future. As a result, the dynamics of traditional communities do not fit neatly into the frameworks elaborated by numerous anthropologists; in these communities, there is much less of a nostalgic attitude towards traditions than a greater conscience of the need for a symbolic re-elaboration in order to build their own future.

When considered as a constituent element of cultural globalisation, communication combines perverse effects and opportunities. The first perverse effect comes from the formation of a few large global groups whose economic concentration translates into an increasingly overwhelming power to fuse the two strategic components of communication, agency and content, and the resulting capacity to control world public opinion and impose aesthetic models (which become "cheaper" day by day). The second perverse effect is linked to the events of September 11th and, as a consequence of monitoring and threats to free information and expression, could pose serious risks for the most basic civil rights.

In other respects, communication is an intersection for strategic opportunities. The first is related to digitization. By establishing a common language for information, text, sound, image, and video, digitization deconstructs the hegemonic rationality of dualism which had until now opposed intelligence and perception, reason and imagination, science and art, culture and technology and turns it over to the audiovisual. The second opportunity presented by communication is the creation of embryos of new kinds of public spaces and the formation of a new citizenship through the mobilisation of a large variety of social actors, movements, and community-level associations.

Accordingly, the networks that are being created give us a hint of the new political cultures that would be able to take responsibility for a world culture. Beware: globalisation does not establish ONE world culture but rather redefines the conditions of existence and the daily practice of cultures, be they national or local. This does not mean that there are not some aspects of life that will not continue to be subjected to the domination of images and the make-believe of the large cultural industries. In terms of public policy, what is crucial is to accept the fact that we are confronted simultaneously with tendencies towards cultural standardisation as well as differentiation, the claim to be different at all levels and in all social spaces.

The new paradigm of communication leaves behind the uni-directional, linear, and sequential model for transmitting information. It launches us into a world of networks, interaction, connectivity and makes possible a new type of close communication that links territoriality with virtual space. This new paradigm translates into policies that favour synergies between various small projects rather than complex structures made up of large and heavy technology and management devices. It is precisely in the light of this new conceptual and methodological approach to communication that the redefinition of communication as intercultural exchange can take place. In other words, a relation between cultures that is not uni-directional or paternalistic but interactive and reciprocal.

List of topics for debate

The mediation of knowledge and information on the part of technology and its influence on the processes that reinforce the asymmetry of power between countries and cultures

The battle for cultural and collective rights to information and knowledge, not only in terms of audience access but also in regards to production, information and the creation of knowledge

The specificity of culture faced with the growing distortions instituted by trade agreements that increasingly deregulate the property and (activities) of cultural industries

Economic-political asymmetries - the digital divide - and the opportunities for education and work in the information society

The myth generated by the defence of "intellectual property" put in the same category as the "copyright", particularly in the framework of free movement and digital exchange

The connections between information and emigrant flows not only in economic terms but also political and cultural

The role of the audiovisual and digital industries in regional integration (European Union, Latin America)

The politico-strategic scenario created by the convergence of oral cultures and the electronic cultures of sound and image

The gaps created in the big multimedia conglomerate machines by the proliferation of cultural actors and means of communication - radio, TV, Internet - at the public and community level

The new public space being constructed by citizen networks that have found a decisive space for participation and political power in culture, in particular at the local and global level.

(Translated from the French version (Jean Tardif) by Paule Herodote)

<< Back