From ecopoiesis to autopoiesis

You might realise that these are not my wurdzz......

Today was the first day of the International Conference on the European Year of International Dialogue, in Vilnius. You'll notice that the acronym EYID (try it as E-YID) is a little unfortunate. Shame.

Attendance was not so great, maybe 100 people in the first half, when no lunch was provided, a lot of people left, including that poor old Lithuanian man who comes to all conferences (has done so since I've been here) I suspect simply for a feed. We rather put him on the spot at ours 7 years ago (I did not know him then), when we went round the table in our seminar, introducing ourselves. Since then I have often seen him thrown out, but he gets full marks for persistence. I see he had a digital camera and shuffled up to take some photos....He's not so good at the walking now.

Anyway. There were a variety of speakers from different European and national organisations, NGOs, you name it...

After the usual opening speeches by the Culture Minister, and two ambassadors of EYID (a curator and a film-maker who said that economy divides people, culture unites - hmmmmm - and that culture was more important than money - he signs my song, but....) we got into the meat of the morning, with a wonderful, enthusiastic talk by Vladimir Sucha, the Slovakian Director for Culture, Communication and Multilingualism at the European Commission. What a job to have!
He had lots of sound bites like 'in earlier days the economy came first and culture last, now it's turning in the opposite direction', what with the ageing workforce and a need for millions of migrant workers in the EU, many of whom may not come from European backgrounds. Another one - 'earlier it was about integration of states, now it is about integration of people'. And that's why the EU now has a cultural agenda, too - yeah! He mentioned that usually it was thought that rational thought was the most important part, but now it is seen that the spiritual (and emotional?) is just as important (imagine the team member who is not a people person....). Apparently 2.6% of EU GDP is produced by culture, which is more than the car industry. How about that for a balance??? The website is www.dialogue2008.eu. Go there.

The Lithuanian UNESCO rep was impressive in that she spoke without notes, but alas, also with not too much enthusiasm (do you notice something here - my music reviewer part is thinking of performance). But this was generally the way of the Lithuanian presentations, even when they were done by former actors. Is it something to do with lack of self confidence? UNESCO, according to her focuses on dialogue between civilisations (and it seems they tried to put together a cadre of commentators who would give well-reasoned comments on events rather than inflammatory ones), also on pure culture (you value mine, I value yours, and do you value your own? - at this stage I wondered about Lithuania and the Uzgavenes festival [carnival], where people dress up as Jews and 'Gypsies'), and on addressing the vexed question of returning artefacts stolen from one nation and displayed in the museums and stately homes of other nations.

The Lithuanian equality ombudsman came next, saying that Lithuania (now 85% Lithuanian, and there are more Poles than Russians among the rest) is not good on tolerance, with people only accepting the mainstream Christian faiths. And as for the Roma population (0.1%), well, they look just so different, and the Lithuanians don't like people who look different. (In the translation the emphases on the words made it sound even worse!). Not sure what's actually being done about it. I wondered if you could complain to her about Uzgavenes....

Gianluca Solera, a Lombardy Italian working for the Ann Lindh foundation in Alexandria (not Scotland, Egypt) startled us all when he greeted everyone with 'Salaam Aleykum'. (It says in the programme that he carries the name of a Sephardic name of the 15th century...). He's an architect, has been an actor, and a Green politician....The Ann Lindh foundation works on dialogue between North and South, especially round the mediterranean, and it creates partnerships between institutions. He wants to get a critical mass going to develop a mass movement in favour of dialogue and understanding between nations. He would like to develop an annual or biennial (two yearly) barometer of feelings about the others among us, and apparently there are small grants available for this. At times he flew up into the ether of cultural theory and I suspect he slightly lost the translators. But the words in the title were not his. This is the foundation website.

Finally before lunch (the lunch break...) a rather interminable talk by Marie-Christine Lorang of the French Culture and Communication ministry about cooperation with Asia and Oceania. She had a written script, which made it hard to divert from if you try to cut time. She reminded us that there are three levels of intercultural dialogue, within a country, between EU states, and between EU members and third countries. In terms of the first she reminded us further of the basic right for people to participate in the social and cultural life of a country (social inclusion, a fantastic French invention, even if it rather spectacularly fails in France from time to time). Then she outlined all the Alliance Francaise centres, the French Cultural Centres (I know the ones in Tbilisi, Istanbul and Vilnius). Every now and again cultural politics comes up against real politics - this year Israel was [supposed to be?] the guest at the French Book Fair, and all Arab states boycotted it. Currently they are dealing with requests for human remains from native Australians and New Zealanders. As she said 'What was politically correct 100 years ago, may no longer be correct today'. Indeed.

Now, if you ever want to know anything about Slovenia and wonder who to ask for a presentation, go, beg, borrow, steal Sonja Kralj Bervar of the Slovenian Ministry of Culture. She is just wonderful. WONDERFUL! What a presenter! What a presentation! The presentation on what Slovenia had done for EYID described their progress from 'Mission Impossible' to 'Mission Possible' to 'Mission Remarkable', with sound effects and everything, and the way she was telling the story - wow! It was like 'Now children, let's sit down and I'll begin'. It was like telling a fairy tale, a surprise round every corner, hushed voice when it needed to be hushed, looking round the room making sure everyone was engaged. We were all hanging on her lips, smiling at her, willing her on. Brilliant, brilliant stuff.

This was followed by the presentation by the Portuguese cultural attache at the embassy. Seems like the Portuguese are doing much useful work here, like supporting the teaching of Portuguese at the University, cultural exchanges and so on. He described the cultural exchange of the spread of the Portuguese language (the ocean of cultures), referred to writers from all over the place - not sure that the conquest of Brazil and other colonial places should strictly speaking be described as a cultural dialogue, though. Some people might have a different understanding.

The Director of Vilnius Capital of Culture 2009 talked about the plans for the project, which has four components, one is the arts events etc, then there is the admin side, the information side and something else. Depressing if arts forms only part of it. I was a bit shocked to hear that the Seimas has changed the focus of the Capital of Culture to 'Vilnius - gateway to Lithuania'. It's seen as creating Lithuania's image since not many people know about Lithuania. The culture should involve everyone and should be a bit of a moving target, akin to Fluxus. Right. I see the LSO and Gergiev will be coming for this - she shot past the cultural slides so fast, I could not take notes. I worry. Boy, I am worried.

Sacha Kagan of the Lueneburg University gave a talk about dance and dialogue. Now he was the one with the words in the title, and much of his talk was at a similar level. The Lithuanian beside me, with fluent English, took my headphones from me, but then reported that the simultaneous translators were totally flummoxed. Basically it is about diversity (cultural, bio, you name it) being connected to sustainability. He suggested that dance, and dancing other people's dances, helps you to get under their skin, and an understanding of how things look through their eyes - kinaesthesia? That's one word he did not use. The sequence of developments then is 'monocultural dance' where you dance your own culture's dance, multicultural dance where groups get together dancing their own dances and others watch, intercultural dance where people learn each other's dances, and transcultural dance (or post-modern dance) where new dance forms emerge from all these dances - 'melting pot' comes to mind. Interesting! Thanks to Giannandrea whoever who gave those wonderful talks at the Edinburgh Festival, I know about post-modern dance.

Whither Georgian social policy?

An article in 'Social Policy and Society' (October 2007) on the connection between Turkey's EU ambitions and its social policy developments makes me wonder where Georgia's social policy thinks it is heading?

The article by Nick Manning, of the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham, uses fairly old data to make his points - eg in the case of Eastern Europe he uses GDP data up to 2000, or he quotes from papers which see the 2004 accession as still in the future. Things move too fast out East to use such old data credibly.

But anyway. We lucky European citizens have, under EU law, entitlement to education, healthcare and insurance against life-time risks, mostly free (in the case of pre-university education) or covered by insurances one way or another (health care and lifetime risks like old age, unemployment etc), more or less generously. Countries like Spain have used the accession to the EU to push through increasingly generous welfare entitlements (though it has had to rein back its expenditure a little). In Eastern Europe where welfare entitlements were good under the Soviets, the pressure of the World Bank, who got at them first, lead to a severe dismantling of the welfare state, though the countries are now recovering (I'm told that in Lithuania women giving birth now get their full salary for the first year of the baby's life, and 80% for the second year). In Turkey such systems did not exist.

Manning quotes from another paper by Öniç that suggests that while within Turkey there is half-hearted support by the elite for EU membership, this applies less to the European elite outside Turkey nor to the mass society either within or outside Turkey. This fractional support then clearly makes it hard for anyone to push through changes relating to social protection, or other EU required changes. Since the article was researched I think that social protection has developed in leaps and bounds in Turkey, judging by what I have read in the media.

Georgia, a Christian country (I don't think that matters, but other people do), has huge ambitions to join the EU, with an EU flag outside every public building. This ambition was a bit shaken up by the events of November 7 last year, though now it seems to be motoring in the right direction, maybe? (Though my friend Wu Wei's report links to a paper that suggests that all was not well with the election process, despite what OSCE may have said publicly. And if you think that Saakashvili did not win in the large cities - which perhaps were more accessible to observers, but won in the snowbound and partly inaccessible countryside .....).

The problem with Georgia is that all those young blades who are in Government these days studied in the US. Hence they have the US approach to social policy, whereby everyone should take care of their own health and wealth. Hospitals are being privatised, they are talking of deregulating doctors...ok, they have promised to increase pensions, but that's due to the election. Social solidarity probably exists with the older people, but no-one has time to do something about this because they are all scrambling to survive.

Now, call me picky, but I don't think Georgia (republic of) could become the 51st state, especially if the others already contain a state called Georgia. But joining Europe, with this social policy outlook? It's time the EU put the boot in!