Wed, Jul 13, 2011 page8

• Taiwan needs clear cultural policy

  • By Sabina Sun 孫瑞穗
  • • 
    • 
    • 

  The Egret Culture and Education Foundation and Taiwan Thinktank recently held a seminar titled “The Democratization of Culture.” During the lively discussion, experts raised many interesting points, among them the contention that the government lacks a systematic, comprehensive policy on culture and the arts.

  Should a democratic country have a national level policy on culture and the arts? Should the government allocate public resources to cultural development? Also, located as it is next to China, with the prodigious cultural capital that country possesses, should the government attempt to conserve the relatively weak and marginal Taiwanese culture, or should it take the perhaps more pragmatic approach of incorporating Taiwanese culture into the broader Chinese-speaking cultural community and take advantage of the regional economic benefits of doing so? These decisions demand careful consideration, but during these particularly culturally and economically turbulent times, there is a conspicuous lack of public debate about the issue in Taiwan.

  In his book Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson discussed how nations are formed through the propagation of a shared cultural body built upon the culture and ideology of a defined ethnic entity. Within the closed borders of a given country, the government tries to maintain order and a discrete code of ethics within the community, guiding the process by virtue of the policy it has on arts and -culture. This is a top-down approach of applying checks to ensure the continuation of the shared narrative the population lives by.

  In Taiwan during the Martial Law era, for example, we were all formally schooled using primers on Chinese culture, incorporating Confucian teachings, a situation in which the collective culture of one country, China, was magically laid on top of the territory of another, Taiwan.

  That was then, and this is now: Such national inculcation is no longer really possible, mainly because of a couple of recent developments. The first was the advent of the globalized economy, which has seen easier movement of people and ideas alike across national borders, meaning that a given culture is no longer sealed within certain borders. The second is the development of democracy, under which people now have more freedom to express their own ideas in a greater variety of ways, such that states no longer have exclusive command over the ideas circulating within civil society.

  This comes with the admission that it does seem Taiwan — since its adoption of the democratic system and the arrival of the globalized economy — is becoming somewhat Americanized and market-oriented, discarding the national cultural policy that formerly guarded the shared culture of the past and opening up instead to the culture and economics of Big Business. The emphasis on cultural value and creativity has given way to the primacy of the product, with culture expressed in purely economic terms, just as people are becoming ever more preoccupied with brand and competition to the detriment of the survival of marginal or less pervasive cultural phenomena.

  Should we, in these conditions born of a new historical period, adopt a new approach on our cultural policy? Should we be redressing the past preoccupation with progress over culture that has been driving East Asian countries, and get the vibrancy and development of the arts in this land of ours back on track?

  Any considerations of a future policy on culture and the arts must involve a redefinition of the role of the state, which, in Taiwan’s case, should at the very least address the issue of achieving normalized status. Implicit in this is the idea that the state should, for the time being at least, step back from its role as an ideological state apparatus, and engage in a substantial reallocation of national resources within the cultural sphere. It is all the more important during the democratic period that such a policy allows for the inclusion of individuals, the propagation of the right of participation and the right to self-determination. This would finally make possible the actuation of “cultural citizenship,” something that East Asian authoritarian states continuously tried to avoid in the past and never succeeded in implementing.

  There is no reason economic interests and cultural -diversity can’t go hand in hand. We could learn much from Australia’s example of promoting Aboriginal culture to the global tourist market, highlighting cultural differences and, in so doing, giving itself a competitive edge. This has allowed it to preserve the culture of indigenous tribes while simultaneously reaping considerable economic benefit.

  The question of how to nurture artistic and creative talent lies right at the heart of a policy on arts and culture. The UK’s approach serves as a good example of this, and has been imitated by many other countries. The Labour Party in the UK understood the economic potential of the creative industries and the necessity of encouraging people working in the sector to organize trade unions that would fight for sensible working conditions and salaries for their members.

  The government has also set up a forum in which artists and entrepreneurs can come together to ensure that creative people can get financial backing to actualize their creative vision. London’s municipal government also has a hand in promoting outstanding talent, giving young artists a stage on which to display their work and help form the unique London brand. Just imagine how much more meaningful it is for a “brand” to be forged in this way through the nurturing of talent.

  Sabina Sun is a researcher at the National Chengchi University Center for Creativity and Innovation Studies.

  TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
• Most Popular

  • 1

    Palmeiras hopes for club cup win

  • 2

    US to deliver 10 new F-16s, source says

  • 3

    Taiwan blacklists Huawei and SMIC

  • 4

    Ma Ying-jeou’s forum speech regrettable, MAC says

  • 5

    Barring of Chinese officials justified, MAC says