UNESCO Courier articles from September 1996

UNESCO Courier archives from September 1996

Javier Perez de Cuellar. (former UN secretary general and head of the World Commission on Culture and Development)(Interview)
September 1, 1996... Our Creative diversity Mr. Javier Perez de Cuellar, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, headed the independent World Commission on Culture and Development which spent three years (1993-1995) rethinking the notions of development...

A matter of choice: is culture merely an adjunct to development?(Culture and Development: A Life Worth Living)(Cover Story)
September 1, 1996... There are two ways of looking at development in the contemporary world. One, deeply influenced by growth economics and the values that underlie it, regards development as essentially a rapid and sustained expansion of gross national (or domestic)...

Back to the drawing board. (telecommunications and culture)
September 1, 1996... The shifting of cultural boundaries is an inevitable consequence of the globalization of communications For the first time in history, the global market and telecommunications have brought people of all the cultures of the world into permanent...

The age of the migrant artist.
September 1, 1996... Our globalizing world seems to be marked by rapidly increasing chaos, a profound crisis of the ideas of order, coherence and limitation that long prevailed and whose legend we are still addicted to. Linear systems in the sciences are slowly...

The resurgence of religion: interview with John L. Esposito.(Interview)
September 1, 1996... Religious revivalism often has political and social overtones. What is its role in modern pluralist societies? * The resurgence of religion is one of the most powerful forces to have influenced culture and development in recent times. When...

A recipe for dispossession: interview with Smitu Kothari. (founder of India-based Lokayan center)
September 1, 1996... Current development practice is a threat to both cultural pluralism and biological diversity * You believe that current patterns of development are inimical to cultural pluralism in the Third World. Why is this? Smitu Kothari: In most...

A vicious circle. (cultural preservation as a component of environmental preservation)
September 1, 1996... Modern technology and management techniques cannot begin to correct the problems they create until they question their own dominance The accomplishments of technology have been the text of a hymn to progress that has been loudly sung for the...

Unequal partners. (threat of new communications media to non-Western culture)
September 1, 1996... How can vulnerable local cultures survive media globalization? In the second half of the twentieth century, the industrialization of the production of material goods, closely linked to the industrialization of culture, gave rise to new concepts...

Culture in the city. (cities as cultural centers)
September 1, 1996... Shaped for centuries by their cultural aspirations, cities are unique witnesses to the history of the arts The arts and culture have long been associated with cities. It was there that people congregated to exchange ideas and stimulate one...

Living in tomorrow's cities.
September 1, 1996... What will tomorrow's cities be like? Above all, will they be decent places to live in? The city is a focus of far-reaching changes in our time. By the year 2025, an estimated 83 per cent of the population of the industrialized countries and 61...

The last days of Chan Chan. (includes brief description of Chan Chan, Peru)
September 1, 1996... Capital of the great Chimu empire in what is now Peru, Chan Chan was one of the great cities of pre-Columbian America On the sandy reaches of Peru's northern coast, lost in the wilderness a few kilometres from the Pacific Ocean, lie the...

Sonora, a living desert.
September 1, 1996... Straddling the borderline between the United States and Mexico, the Sonoran Desert stretches on the American side from California to Arizona and on the Mexican from Baja California to the state of Sonora. It is home to the world's largest cactus,...

Doudou N'Diaye Rose. (Senegalese musician)(Interview)
September 1, 1996... Praise-singer, musician, and living repository of oral history, the griot is an important figure in West Africa. Doudou N'Diaye Rose, chief drum major in Dakar, is the most famous Living Senegalese griot. He has revolutionized the language of...