Goldstone, L.

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21 Cultural statisticsLeo GoldstoneIndicators for the World Culture ReportFollowing the recommendation of the World Commission on Culture andDevelopment in its report entitled ‘Our Cultural Diversity’, the UnitedNations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)published two World Culture Reports, in 1998 and 2000.Culture or culture-related indicators were presented for 150 countrieswith a population of one million or more, as well as for ten regional group-ings. Nearly 200 data items were included and this chapter reviews thisexperience of collecting, compiling, analysing and presenting these indica-tors and discusses some of the implications and concerns that becameapparent as the work was carried out.The indicators for the first Report had to be drawn from material thatwas readily available. This clearly limited the depth and scope of the analy-sis, as many important cultural concerns are not adequately reflectedthrough existing statistics and consequently were not included in theReport.The culture indicators do not pretend to measure world culture, which istremendously complex and multifaceted. Rather, the Report presents thoseaspects of world culture that were readily measurable. One of the aims ofthe project, however, was to start a process of broadening those measurableand reported aspects of world culture so that subsequent Reports would beable to present a more complete picture.Many cultural concerns were omitted simply because too few countriescould provide comparable reliable data. Other cultural elements wereomitted because no satisfactory means of expressing them in tabular formhad yet been developed. The more important cultural omissions make a for-midable list. They include cultural freedom; cultural discrimination; rightsof and support to minority cultures; freedom of linguistic expression;freedom to travel; leading religions, religious attendance and freedom ofworship; cultural tolerance; ethnicity; official languages, spoken languagesand dialects; cultural education; cultural participation; the most-visitedsites and popular festivals; cultural prizes; art galleries; music performances;professional arts and crafts; cultural industries and cultural labour force;artists, writers and musicians; the condition of the artist; intellectual prop-erty and copyright; taxes and tax allowances on cultural goods and services;177cultural export controls; cost of paperback books and similar basic instru-ments of cultural diffusion compared to average income; public and privateexpenditure on culture and cultural heritage; parks, gardens and naturereserves; heritage institutions; professional and non-professional sports andgames; cable TV and videos; magazines and comic books; leisure time use;and traditions and practices regarding food and drink.The indicator tables of the 1998 Report were organized in seven thematicgroups: cultural activities; cultural practices and heritage; cultural tradeand communication; cultural trends; ratification of conventions; transla-tions; and cultural context. This last category covers the broad contextual,social and economic conditions which impinge on or materially affect cul-tural development and diversity.MulticulturalismIn addressing the question of which quantitative aspects of culture toemphasize and how to present them without showing a bias towards anysingle cultural pattern, one issue immediately arose. The production, con-sumption and exchange of cultural goods that can be priced in the marketis the area that is richest in indicators. Furthermore, the richer a country,the more cultural goods it usually produces and consumes. Not only do richcountries have more data, but they ‘score’ higher in the area of producingand consuming cultural goods through market mechanisms.We thus sought to balance the inevitable bias towards the rich countriesarising from their cultural production and consumption. While marketindicators reflect an important and measurable part of world culture, thechallenge was to broaden the scope of the indicators to include the multi-cultural features that exist in all countries, that can be provided by all coun-tries, and that can be presented in the indicator tables.Many of these multicultural features fall within the thematic group oncultural practices and heritage, including official and major spoken lan-guages, leading religions, national public holidays, heritage sites, and themost-visited sites and popular festivals. In this connection, a short ques-tionnaire was sent to each country on three of these missing areas: officialand spoken languages; leading religions; and most-visited sites and popularfestivals. In the case of languages and religions pre-filled questionnaireswere provided and governments were asked to amend them as appropriate.The response was excellent, with over 100 countries replying, and theresults can be seen in the 2000 World Culture Report.Whenever possible, the multicultural nature of the world was empha-sized. This included movements among peoples to study abroad, to tourabroad, to telephone abroad, and so on. In all these movements, the namesof the destination countries were listed when available so that the pattern178 A handbook of cultural economicsof cultural flows could immediately be discerned. The thematic group ontranslations was multicultural by definition, particularly concerning trans-lations by original language. This section lists and quantifies 90 of the over220 languages currently being translated.Coverage and reliabilityMany of the available indicators had an inadequate coverage and weresomewhat outdated. The indicators in the Report are based on dataobtained from nearly 20 international and professional sources. Indicatorsdeveloped from such a large number of sources will obviously have a widerange of data availability, particularly in the case of a first global report ofthis nature. As many as one-third of the nearly 200 data items in the indi-cator tables were not readily available in some comparable form for at leasthalf the countries. It was sometimes necessary to go back to the 1980s toarrive at a respectable number of countries for some indicators.Among the indicators that are missing for so many countries are somevery important ones: number of copies of books produced; registeredpublic library users; number of books in public libraries; cultural radio andtelevision programmes; recorded music; performing arts; cultural trade;archives; museum personnel; the trend data on book titles, cinema atten-dance; foreign visitors; translations and books in foreign languages; and themajor countries of origin of foreign students. This illustrates the cripplinglack of basic indicators of culture among countries. As might be expected,this lack is greatest in the poorest countries. The result is a strong culturalbias towards the rich countries which produce and consume cultural goods.In addition to availability, coverage and source, the issue of reliabilityraises important concerns. Cultural indicators like the number of radiosand televisions per inhabitant are reliable and fairly comprehensive, as aremany of the indicators found in the tables on cultural context. These indi-cators, however, reflect the wealth of a country as much as, if not morethan, its culture. Other cultural indicators, like the indicators on culturaltrade, are also reliable, but they unfortunately have limited coverage andalso very much reflect the wealth of a country. On the other hand, culturalindicators like cultural radio and television programmes provide onlylimited coverage and are not necessarily comparable among countries. Inthe case of cultural indicators like spoken languages, ensuring the qualityof the definition is difficult, although the coverage is complete and the indi-cator is independent of wealth.The wealth bias of cultural statisticsThe available cultural statistics clearly underrepresent or even completelyexclude many of the cultural activities of poor nations and of poor peopleCultural statistics 179in rich nations. Unlike the statistics of other social areas like education,population and health (but not disease), cultural statistics are not inclusive.On the contrary, they are patently exclusive, focusing primarily on the pro-duction and consumption of cultural goods, that can be priced in themarket. If countries do not produce marketable cultural goods, they arediscounted. If people do not consume marketable cultural goods, they areequally discounted. Because ‘culture’ as it is statistically defined is limitedprimarily to market activities and not life activities, people and countriesthat do not participate in the market are not considered ‘cultured’ from thepoint of view of the statistics that are currently available. In fact, culturalstatistics is as much a process of discounting as one of counting.This was borne out when we came to discuss the feasibility of construct-ing a composite Cultural Development Index by which countries could beranked. There was a strong wish to develop such an index, but a very pow-erful argument against trying to design such an index was that the relativeimportance of indicators on cultural consumption and production wouldinevitably create a ‘rich country cultural development index’. The richer thecountry, the more cultured it would appear, with a few inevitable excep-tions. A second, more important, argument against a single cultural devel-opment index was that culture is multifaceted and that cultural diversityshould be nurtured. A monolithic single cultural development index wouldrepresent the antithesis of that view.The decisive final argument against having a single cultural developmentindex was made when the international group of culture specialists advisingthe Paris-based United Nations agency concerned with culture was informedthat any index based on cultural consumption and production indicatorswould show the United States as the most cultured country in the world! The problem does not reflect a choice between ‘high’ culture and ‘popular’culture. There is nothing intrinsically high-culture about a television, a radio,a cinema, a newspaper or a compact disc. With most cultural indicators ofthis type, the statistical unit is the material means of communication, not thecultural content of what is communicated. In theory the various communi-cation instruments are neutral with regard to high culture and popularculture. Even when they are clearly not neutral, statistical data are usuallypresented independent of their biases. Interestingly, some high-culture activ-ities like theatre, opera, ballet and classical music concerts are often poorlyquantified for international purposes, perhaps because they are very muchminority activities even in rich countries.The cultural market bias works in a number of ways. Within countries,cultural activities that involve the market are more readily quantifiedbecause money is exchanged. Poorer people who cannot afford to partici-pate in the market, however, will naturally pursue their cultural activities180 A handbook of cultural economicsthrough non-market cultural practices like festivals, rituals, musical events,storytelling and so on. Very few of these activities are readily quantified.Among countries, the poorer countries have the weakest data collectionsystems and are more likely to treat the collection of cultural statistics as alow priority. This is very reasonable, considering the importance of otherareas of statistics and the countries’ very limited resources. It is precisely inthese poorer countries, however, that the majority of people engage primar-ily in non-market cultural activities. This means that cultural statistics, asthey are currently practised, exclude a minority of people in rich countriesand the majority of people in poor countries.The market place definition of cultureAnother, more insidious, aspect of the close association of culture and con-sumption is the extent to which living in poverty deprives people and, insome cases, whole countries of many cultural activities and opportunitiesas commonly defined. Market place culture is by far the leading culturalbrand, with a dominant share of the statistically defined culture market. Itis also identified mainly with the rich countries.If we look at the leading countries for each indicator, we find that Japanproduces the televisions, Canada, Germany and France buy the televisionsand Singapore trades the televisions. The United States produces the films,and New Zealand and Ireland buy the film tickets. Hong Kong and Norwaybuy newspapers, while Italy and Spain publish books. The United King-dom, Australia and Korea buy radios; Austria and Belgium buy recordedmusic; Sweden and Denmark visit museums.All these leading country examples are taken from the tables of the WorldCulture Report 1998. There are exceptions of course, like India in film pro-duction and cinema going, but market culture is essentially what rich coun-tries practise. And the culture that is practised in rich countries is alsopractised by the rich people in the not-so-rich countries and the rich peoplein the poor countries. This results in the creation of a self-perpetuating,value-laden, exclusive definition of culture, which is the culture of the com-paratively rich as expressed through the market place.This is the culture that goes with increased wealth. This is the culture thatprovides the badge of success throughout our increasingly homogenizedworld. People want a little piece of that ‘culture of the rich’ to have in theirown lives because it gives them at least the feeling of being rich. Inevitably,this market culture is increasingly seen as a modern, sophisticated, high-status culture, whereas the non-market traditional culture is seen as an old-fashioned, simplistic culture. This creates a self-perpetuating, value-ladendefinition of culture – the culture of the comparatively rich as expressedthrough the market place.Cultural statistics 181Being poor not only means not being able to participate very much in themarket culture and being deprived of the many stimuli that this culture pro-vides. It also means being considered and perhaps considering oneself asculturally inferior, as if it were an inherited characteristic. But the realreason that poor people are classified as culturally excluded or culturallyinferior is that they are poor. Their poverty acts as a barrier to their devel-opment as human beings. However, let a few poor people win the lotteryand go on a buying spree in the cultural market place and we will immedi-ately include them in our statistics. By definition, they will no longer be cul-turally excluded, no longer be culturally of no account. This is an untenableand unconscionable situation, and it is imperative that cultural statistics beredesigned so as to count the poor as well as the rich.See also:Chapter 31: Globalization.182 A handbook of cultural economics

Cultural statistics

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