Cover caption(s)
Heritage Protection
Created in the aftermath of World War II, UNESCO was mandated to engage in a worldwide educational campaign aimed at establishing the conditions for lasting peace. This involved working out and disseminating a new world view based on a revised conception of human diversity. The founders of UNESCO argued that prejudice relating to human diversity is the main cause of war, and hoped that a radical modification of the existing vision of that diversity would help to guarantee of peace.
Over the 60 years of its history UNESCO’s doctrine has been subject to numerous modifications. Initially, cultural diversity was often described in terms of unequal economic progress and presented as an obstacle to be overcome. But in the 1960s ‘progress’, and the resulting cultural homogenization, began to be considered a major threat to human diversity, particularly diversity of culture. Co-ordinated by UNESCO, the international salvage of the Abu Simbel temples, threatened with submersion in Lake Nasser, became a symbol of a new moral obligation, incumbent upon all humans, to safeguard a common ‘world heritage’ (exemplified in the images on the back and front covers of this issue).
Over the last decade, the notion of common heritage of humanity has been extended to all expressions of cultural traditions, thought to be endangered by the deleterious effects of globalization. UNESCO has chosen to put its support behind local identities and the right of the minorities to conserve their traditional differences. Alongside the principle of the equality of individuals, UNESCO now also upholds the equality of cultures, suggesting that the charter of human rights needs to be supplemented by a charter of cultural rights.
The major challenge to UNESCO’s current ideology is the compatibility of universal human rights with particular cultural rights. If all traditions deserve to be protected, should this privilege be bestowed equally on masterpieces of the past as on traditional practices. Wearing the burqa need not be controversial, but what about practices like genital mutilation or ‘honour killings’? As Wiktor Stoczkowski argues in his article, such issues are intensely anthropological challenges deserving our attention.
The front and back covers by artist Sean Weisgerber.
Contents
Sophie Day 1
Renewing the war on prostitution: The spectres of ‘trafficking’ and ‘slavery’
John Sharp and Rehana Vally 3
Unequal ‘cultures’? Racial integration at a South African university
Wiktor Stoczkowski 7
UNESCO’s doctrine of human diversity: A secular soteriology?
Agustín Fuentes 12
A new synthesis: Resituating approaches to the evolution of human behaviour
Max Carocci 18
Written out of history: Contemporary Native American narratives of enslavement
Karen Valentin and Lotte Meinert 23
The adult North and the young South: Reflections on the civilizing mission of children’s rights
Conferences
Nayanika Mookherjee 29
The ethics of apology: Open meeting at the joint international conference of the ASA, the ASAANZ and the AAS, Auckland, 9 December 2008
NEWS 29 CALENDAR 30 CLASSIFIED 31
