This study aims for the research of the regional discourses regarding cultural diversity and cultural identity, as well as the examples of various cultural strategies that are carried out in major areas of the world: France, Germany, Russia, Latin Ame ...
This study aims for the research of the regional discourses regarding cultural diversity and cultural identity, as well as the examples of various cultural strategies that are carried out in major areas of the world: France, Germany, Russia, Latin America, China and Japan.
Firstly, France is a country that has produced the widest and most sincere attitude and discourse regarding the particularity and originality of the field of culture. In the field of language, France is promoting support and preservation policy for minority languages within its borders together with a broad protection strategy for the preservation of the identity of the French language. In the fields of visual communication and media, France puts strong emphasis not only on the support system for French culture but also on support for the introduction and development of minority cultures. This shows that the French argument for cultural diversity do not rest at a simple declaration or slogan but is a practical movement open for dialogue. Also, France, as one of the leading countries in the regional union of the European Union and the linguistic union of ‘International Union of Francophone Countries (OIF)’, is forming a cultural strategy different from the unilateral centralization of culture forced by globalization.
In the case of Germany, the main focus of research lay on German original discourses such as cultural discourses and the world citizen society discourse argued by Habermas. Within the frame of the particularity of German history, the study is a multi-angled regard into the problems that most sensitively show the changes coming from globalization and the widening of the European Union, such as the anglicalization of the German language, linguistic identity problems regarding local languages and minority languages, and the fields of visual communication and media.
In the case of Russia, the transitional situation of the collapse of the Soviet system after the reform-opening policies symbolized by the perestroika and the rapid incorporation into the capitalist economic system has brought a total identity crisis especially in the field of culture, such as the fragmentation of traditional values and the influx and expansion of Western values. The main focus of study lay in the ‘New Urasian Community project’, a sort of local alternative culture discourse, and the Russian films that pursue the disappearing ‘Russianness’ in the flood of Hollywood films In the field of cultural discourse. A possibility of a new cultural world community could be discovered in the movements that search for a local union through culture with former Soviet states called the ‘Near Abroad’.
Through its geographical closeness with the United States, and the experiences of ‘Westernization’ through Spanish colonialization, Latin America carries a special experience regarding globalization. Its experience, tied with globalization, has produced a multi-layered, complex ideological discussion and discourses. Also in the course of globalization there is not only the unilateral process of the center occupying the region, but also a reverse regional strategy in opposing this process, in the form of a movement to strengthen localization. In this context, the ‘localization’ or ‘regionalization’ movement in Latin America is a very important research example in the discussion surrounding globalization.
If globalization is a general tendency characteristic of the present world order, the problem of cultural identity is a problem of world-wide dimensions that surpasses the units of the individual, the nation or the region. The cultural discourses and strategies that are undertaken to strengthen a cultural identity against globalization that forces the uniformity of diverse states/regions and nations is the first step towards the search for building a true ‘human community culture’ based on cultural diversity. This study has covered such efforts in a Korean viewpoint.