Cultural Diversity
In today’s society, during a new millennium, one can observe exceedingly great differences between cultures and lifestyles. All across the world there are, in fact, many various cultures that should be tasted by those who are eager to understand the whole universe. Though people can vary to the extreme, it is differences, but not the similarities that form strength. The thing is that the beauty of the world consists in the diversity of its people.
Diversity is not just a characteristic of life, but an integral part of human existence such as air and water. On the one hand, diversity may be seen as the hardest thing for a society to live with. On the other hand, it can be very dangerous for the society to live without it. Finally, every culture is surely unique manifestation of the human spirit and the diversity as a whole looks like the art of thinking independently together.
First of all, diversity can be defined as a group of people, organization or community that includes representatives of different races, nationalities, religions as well as sexes. Such diverse organizations appreciate differences in people and are always full of fresh ideas and conceptions due to multiform skills, attitudes, backgrounds and experiences of their members.
At the turn of new century, the question of cultural diversity has appeared to be the one of the biggest concern. Some people consider it as naturally positive phenomenon as it serves to share wealth between various worlds’ cultures and at the same time unites the entire universe in different processes of exchange and dialogue. Moreover, diversity presented people the opportunity to experience different things outside of what they habitually got accustomed to. However, for others, cultural diversity has a more negative effect.
They believe cultural differences not only entail people to lose their general humanity but also are the main reason of numerous contraventions. With the increase of interaction and arguments between cultures caused by the process of globalization, the second diagnosis at present time is even prevailing over the first one. The identity-linked tensions, claims and withdrawals, especially those of religious nature should now be seen as quite appreciable sources of dispute.
Cultural diversity is in reality very important in today’s world and we will try to prove this majority opinion. Apart from being a danger, it indeed can turn into really wholesome component of the international community.
According to Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, cultural diversity is determined as one of the most consequential characteristic of humanity that constitutes its habitual heritage and therefore should be esteemed and preserved for the advantage of all (Macdonald 78).
In our modern world cultural diversity plays rather significant role as it most certainly shapes everyone’s national character. Without cultural diversity today’s world will not be so rich and varied as we used to see it.
Diversity at first teaches to treat everyone equally and give value to each human being in spite of all differences and shortcomings. It resembles some sort of superpower that is capable of uniting different pieces of a puzzle, each unique and even discrepant but though so essential to get a complete picture. Thus, there is no need to hide people’s differences or try to imitate other cultures because every culture is a key to understanding the particular country and lifestyle of its habitants.
Cultural diversity is such motivating force that enlarges the limits of choices and rears human values and capacities and as a result presents steadfastly development for people, nations or communities (Singh 64).
The necessary conditions of the flourishing of cultural diversity are those of tolerance, democracy, social justice and mutual respect between people and cultures that are at the same time requisite for peace and security at the local, national and international levels.
According to Macdonald cultural diversity should be generally accepted and recognized, especially through innovative use of media and ICTs, as simple but still very productive way of creating dialogue among civilizations and cultures as well as presenting the atmosphere of respect and mutual understanding (Sawyer 35).
The main reasons of the communication gap between various races, sexes and cultures are connected with the non-confidence, stereotyping and within-culture conversation and language problems to some extent.
It is important to take those problems into consideration in order to avoid an inability to approve ideas, incapacity to find a middle course and agreement on decisions and finally the ineffectiveness in taking united actions.
The presence of a wide range of diverse groups in the classroom is a desirable and even very essential need of today’s educational system. A diverse student body will not only create a realistic environment but furthermore will stimulate other people to develop far from their limits and learn a lot of interesting information about a culture they may not even be aware of. In such inquisitive way children will obtain quite useful experience of learning the diverse culture around them except those customary things they got used to notice in their own country and society. Moreover, it is always much exciting to communicate with people to hear their customs and traditions and share own, in real than just learn material from textbooks. Sometimes such recurrent conversations may even grow into fast friendship.
Very often in life most people like to judge others or make ignorant decisions just because of the lack of knowledge of things they are not used to at all or only taking into account unreliable rumours or stereotypes. The same can happen with the question of diversity. One should fully understand that diversity is not an insulting thing to be afraid of, but on the contrary something to learn from and share these knowledge and experience with others.
Nowadays the promotion of cultural diversity as “the particular humanity heritage” has definitely become one of the most urgent and vital questions according to the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity and at the same time the most important one to the Organization’s mandate (Thomas 16) .
Article one of this Declaration, that consists of twelve articles, is titled “Cultural diversity, the common heritage of humanity” explains the principal role of such issue (Ponzini 81).
It is considered to be the source of exchange, creativity and innovation that is actually as essential for mankind as biodiversity is for the nature. In other words, cultural diversity is the principal heritage of humanity that should be appreciated and carefully preserved for the convenience of present as well as future generations.
The UNESCO Convention by that Convention was claiming general rules, principles and pints of reference at global level. This was also the first time such universal questions were upheld on the international level.
The UNESCO was trying to design the Convention in such a way that contributed to protecting and promoting of cultural diversity as well as accepting the necessity of international cooperation. The agency of the United Nations did its best to deal with cultural sensitivity, particularly in developing countries, and set up respective links with other international instruments in order to implement the Convention in an appropriate and effective way. Ultimately, this Convention was a new platform for raising culture in the bigger context of sustainable development.
Speaking about the question of diversity, one should understand that museums there played rather important role. They were perceived as sites for connecting all significant “culture objects” and were the places of memory were history of the past could be easily solved (Kirshenblatt 56). Museums were able to present a particular national trajectory as well as articulate the nation as a final triumphant stage of successive progression. We can even talk about some kind of magic of such places.
Their culture actually was transforming into different material things or objects that people always understood in its original aspect. The ability to present culture and identity in this way made museums seem mere matters of fact. Especially important, for example, are two immigrant museums, one in Paris and the other in Ellis Island. They prove that cultural heritage is indeed precious knowledge that people should keep in mind and pass from generation to generation.
Works Cited
Kirshenblatt, Gimblett, Barbara, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums and Heritage, Berkeley. California University Press, 1998. Print.
Macdonald, Sharon. Museums, national, postnational and transcultural identities. London: Routledge, 2006. Print.
Ponzini, D. Competing Cities and Spectacularizing Urban Landscapes. Cultures and Globalization Series, Vol. 5, Sage, London, 2012. Print.
Singh, J. P. Cultural Globalization and the Convention. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015. Print.
Sawyer, Stephen & Rouet, Mathias. Paris: A Process of Metropolitanization. Helmut K. Anheier & Yudhishthir Raj Isar, 2005. Print.
Thomas, Julie. The Manipulation of Memory and Heritage in Museums of Migration. Helmut Anheier & Yudhishthir Raj Isar, 2005.
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