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Cultural diversity

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Culture and Diversity

   Cultural diversity is the variety of of human societies or cultures in
   a specific region, or in the world as a whole. (The term is also
   sometimes used to refer to multiculturalism within an organisation.
   This article does not currently cover that alternative meaning.)

   There is a general consensus among mainstream anthropologists that
   humans first emerged in Africa about two million years ago. Since then
   we have spread throughout the world, successfully adapting to widely
   differing conditions and to periodic cataclysmic changes in local and
   global climate. The many separate societies that emerged around the
   globe differed markedly from each other, and many of these differences
   persist to this day.

   As well as the more obvious cultural differences that exist between
   peoples, such as language, dress and traditions, there are also
   significant variations in the way societies organise themselves, in
   their shared conception of morality, and in the ways they interact with
   their environment. It is debatable whether these differences are merely
   incidental artefacts arising from patterns of human migration or
   whether they represent an evolutionary trait that is key to our success
   as a species. By analogy with biodiversity, which is thought to be
   essential to the long-term survival of life on earth, it can be argued
   that cultural diversity may be vital for the long-term survival of
   humanity; and that the conservation of indigenous cultures may be as
   important to humankind as the conservation of species and ecosystems is
   to life in general.

   This argument is rejected by many people, on several grounds. Firstly,
   like most evolutionary accounts of human nature, the importance of
   cultural diversity for survival may be an un-testable hypothesis, which
   can neither be proved nor disproved. Secondly, it can be argued that it
   is unethical deliberately to conserve "less developed" societies,
   because this will deny people within those societies the benefits of
   technological and medical advances enjoyed by those of us in the
   "developed" world. Finally, there are many people, particularly those
   with strong religious beliefs, who maintain that it is in the best
   interests of individuals and of humanity as a whole that we all adhere
   to the single model for society that they deem to be correct. For
   example, fundamentalist evangelist missionary organisations such as the
   New Tribes Mission actively work to reduce cultural diversity by
   seeking out remote tribal societies, converting them to their own
   faith, and inducing them to remodel their society after its principles.

   Cultural diversity is tricky to quantify, but a good indication is
   thought to be a count of the number of languages spoken in a region or
   in the world as a whole. By this measure, there are signs that we may
   be going through a period of precipitous decline in the world's
   cultural diversity. Research carried out in the 1990s by David Crystal
   (Honorary Professor of Linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor)
   suggested that at that time, on average, one language was falling into
   disuse every two weeks. He calculated that if that rate of language
   death were to continue, then by the year 2100 more than 90% of the
   languages currently spoken in the world will have gone extinct.

   Overpopulation, immigration and imperialism (of both the cultural and
   old-fashioned kind) are reasons that have been suggested to explain any
   such decline.

   There are several international organisations that work towards
   protecting threatened societies and cultures, including Survival
   International and UNESCO. The UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural
   Diversity, adopted by 185 Member States in 2001, represents the first
   international standard-setting instrument aimed at preserving and
   promoting cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue.

   The EC funded Network of Excellence "Sustainable Development in a
   Diverse World" SUS.DIV builds upon the UNESCO Declaration to
   investigates the relationship between cultural diversity and
   sustainable development.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_diversity"
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