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The Unifying Aspects of Cultures

SECTION:

The European Information Society. A Cultural-Political Concept between Claim and Reality

Chair of the section/Suggestions, Abstracts, Contributions to:
Email: Markus Warasin (European Bureau for Language Minorities, Brussels)

"If I had it to do over again, I would begin with culture and not with steel and iron." So stated Jean Monnet, the father of the idea of European Communities, shortly before his death. The European Commission, meanwhile, did not make its first report considering cultural aspects as part of the activity of the Community until 1996. Actually since then there was supposed to be continuous investigation of how the cultural dimension could be taken into account in the Community's laws and in the individual policies. In practice, however, because of the slim budget that the European Cultural Policy made available, and because of the subsidiary principle, which delegated competency in deciding cultural questions to the national and regional agencies, little was done. A large part of the financial support measures flowed or flow into programs like Kaleidoscope, Ariane or Raphael or Culture 2000, which to be sure support artistic and cultural activities of European dimension and try to preserve a common European cultural heritage, but they show results only occasionally, often remain unnoticed and altogether give the impression that the means have assumed the character of the goals. Thus a European cultural policy is doomed to failure, for it cannot carry out its central task of collaborating in the building of a collective European identity and in the partial guidance of the meaningful and value-oriented reality of the information society.

The European Union - so one can read in the relevant literature - is essecntially an economic community of interests; it was still not possible to speak of a common cultural identity. Economic logic demanded its price and pushed the question about achieving a cultural community into the background. The European information society was thus banished into the realm of technological determinants.

With the founding of the EU, the aspect of a political and cultural identity is now gaining importance in the eyes of the philosophy of the state and the law. In this context the concepts "State territory," "State authority" and "State people" are the deciding points of orientation for making the idea of a common European identity visible. Ever since the treaty of the European Union came into force in 1993, a European sovereign territory has existed, essential areas of national sovereignty have been transferred to the European level and agreements between states have been taken over by the European central authority. While up to now citizens of the member states have been treated rather as consumers or participants in the economic and social life, they will from now on enjoy the status of citizens of the Union, which even includes the right of consular protection in a third country. The European emblem, on which twelve stars against an azure blue background form a circle as a sign of the Union, has become the symbol of united Europe and the European political identity. Yet, despite all efforts and all the euphoria, a common identity is developing only with dragging slowness -if at all. The responsibility for this is being attributed mostly to the lack of an actual European public.

The information society, as a comprehensive framework of social interaction, social relationships and communication, is also the field of the spontaneous formation of culture, whereby the culture of society can be understood as the developing life order. Society and culture are interdependent, and both are connected to the public to a decisive degree. However, precisely the lack of this total European public and in its place the existing fragmented structure of national, regional and local publics represents a central obstacle for the formation and further development of a capability for common perception, common experience, common expression and common understanding, that is, of a European identity or culture.

Along with these philosophical considerations of state and law, it is also rewarding to consider the perspective of a complex cultural theory, which under culture not only understands the calendar of events announcing exhibits, readings and performances, but also all intellectual and material values, which a society produces and also considers valuable. Culture thus understood as a common treasure of experience and as the totality of life forms of a human group, to which also language, symbolism, religion, morality, ideas of value or interpretations of meaning belong. In this connection culture may, of course, draw on the past, but it also must always be focused on the future. It influences individuals and forms out of them a community with a common fate, with a past and a future dimension. Culture thus becomes a unifying and socializing social factor. The cultural forms of societies, which have developed in the course of history and in which in Europe today the economy, politics, legal system, mass media and art hold the priority, can - presuming that they are aiming at a European dimension - contribute to the building of a collective European identity and to a common understanding of culture. Indeed, culture does not gain solely by enlarging markets and institutions, and also the cultural preconditions of social integration cannot be produced by the economy of economic union alone. The cultural interests of the information society thus occasionally run the risk of a chiefly perceptible economic reductionism and of becoming the central crisis center of the European unification process.

The greatest challenge, which the Union has to overcome in cultural-political terms, lies in the fact that, on the one hand, it must find and support the commonality of an already now uncommonly heterogeneous Europe, which after the coming expansion will become even more diverse, without, however, on the other hand, at the same time suppressing regional or national cultures. It will have to attract the community and in such a way that the members states and regions do not understand themselves as culturally self-sufficient but as part of a cultural whole, to which the citizens of Europe feel they belong. In this way the Union will become the most important cultural project of the coming century. It is not a question here of building a French, German or Italian information society but rather a European information area, in which French, Germans, Italians and all of the minorities are at home to the same degree.

The task of the European cultural policy will ultimately be that which is expected of the cultural policy of every pluralistic, democratic and open society: to support the unifying and not the divisive aspects.

THE UNIFYING ASPECTS OF CULTURES