Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Sahlfeld, Miriam --- "Commercializing Cultural Heritage? Criteria for a Balanced Instrumentalization of Traditional Cultural Expressions for Development in a Globalized Digital Environment" [2008] ELECD 332; in Graber, Beat Christoph; Burri-Nenova, Mira (eds), "Intellectual Property and Traditional Cultural Expressions in a Digital Environment" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: Intellectual Property and Traditional Cultural Expressions in a Digital Environment

Editor(s): Graber, Beat Christoph; Burri-Nenova, Mira

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847209214

Section: Chapter 11

Section Title: Commercializing Cultural Heritage? Criteria for a Balanced Instrumentalization of Traditional Cultural Expressions for Development in a Globalized Digital Environment

Author(s): Sahlfeld, Miriam

Number of pages: 31

Extract:

11. Commercializing cultural heritage?
Criteria for a balanced instrumental-
ization of traditional cultural
expressions for development in a
globalized digital environment
Miriam Sahlfeld

1. INTRODUCTION
Taking the term "development" literally, presupposes a speaker's attitude that
"developedness", progress and being developed is "good" and desirable and
that achieving little or none of this is "bad" and needs to be improved. The
term as used by representatives of the industrialized nations therefore has
always had a slightly condescending connotation that all who are not devel-
oped should develop.
It would, of course, be wrong to assume that development is understood as the
process of introducing western standards in developing countries in every aspect
of life, from the provision of running water to McDonalds, TV soaps, traffic jams
and representative democracy.1 There seems, however, to be agreement by repre-
sentatives of countries in different stages of development that a high rate of child
mortality, hunger and incurable diseases are dreadful and undesirable, and that
development towards a reduced death rate, sufficient food and healthier people is
desirable. Some of the conditions in third world countries are the result of colo-
nial influence and failed attempts at developing the occupied territories and the
people living in them. Whatever the cause of the prevailing circumstances, inten-
sified migration to western countries confirms that people from developing coun-
tries consider life to be better in developed Europe and North America.


1 Complementary to the ambiguous term of development is the equivocal defi-
nition of ...