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The Assessment of Cultural
Diversity
Challenges and limitations
Heritiana Ranaivoson, Senior Researcher, IBBT-SMIT, Vrije
Universiteit Brussel, [email protected]
1. On the importance (and risks)
of measuring cultural diversity
Why is measuring important?
• “when you can measure what you are speaking about,
and express it in numbers, you know something about it”
Lord Kelvin (1883)
• Crucial to build and evaluate policies (e.g. Bernier, 2003)
• Cf. Article 19 – Exchange, analysis and dissemination of
information of the 2005 UNESCO Convention:
“1. Parties agree to exchange information and share expertise concerning data collection and statistics on the diversity of cultural expressions as well as on best practices for its protection and promotion.”
Why is measuring risky?
• Objectivizing categories
• Getting a purely mechanistic view of diversity
• Goodhardt’s law: Once a statistic is created to address one problem, we tend to address the statistic in the simplest way, which does not necessarily solve the problem • E.g. in some countries, TV channels are required to broadcast cultural
programs. If an index assesses the amount of such programs in the whole programming, TV channels could circumvent it by broadcasting cultural programs in the middle of the night
2. The Stirling definition of
diversity as a mix of variety,
balance and disparity
A mix of variety, balance and disparity
• How to build a typology? (e.g. TV program diversity,
Farchy and Ranaivoson, 2011)
• Isolate a system (the programming of 6 TV channels over one month 24/7) the diversity of which you want to assess
• Identify its elements, i.e. its most basic units (programs)
• Group the elements by categories (genres): elements within a category can be different one from another but they are even more different from any element from another category
Variety corresponds to the number of
categories
A B
In terms of Variety B is more diverse than A
A mix of variety, balance and disparity (2)
Balance corresponds to the way the
elements are spread among categories
A C
In terms of Balance C is more diverse than A
A mix of variety, balance and disparity (3)
Disparity corresponds to the degree of
difference between the categories
A D
In terms of Disparity D is more diverse than A
A mix of variety, balance and disparity (4)
4. Measuring diversity: the
Stirling Index
Some common indexes of diversity
More unusual indexes of diversity
• A single diversity index or a set of diversity indexes? • A single index is more easy to use and facilitates comparisons
• A set of indexes facilitates the use of incomplete data and allows to keep more information
• Completeness and consistency (relative to the definition)
• Parsimony (i.e. simplicity of use)
• Transparency of the assumptions
• Robustness relative to the value of the parameters
• Not too demanding as for the necessary data
Properties of a good (set of) index(es)
Conclusion – A toolbox to define and assess
diversity
• Setting up a framework to define, discuss and possibly
assess the diversity of cultural expressions
• The definition is a basis to be tailored to the issue analyzed
• The index(es) should be chosen according to the issue analyzed and the data available
• A need for more empirical, comparative studies
• Too few international reflections about the regular measurement of diversity (e.g. KUL et al., 2009)
Conclusion (2) – What about the pitfalls?
• Objectivizing categories? • Categories of cultural content are always to some extent subjective
• The aim is to make explicit the subjectivity behind the building of categories
• Getting a purely mechanistic view of diversity? • Any attempt at measurement always implies losing some information
• Successful policies in favour of diversity cannot only be transposed from one country (or sector) to another but need to be adapted to the context
• Goodhardt’s law? • Any measurement of diversity should be scrutinized. The framework makes
explicit which categorization is used
• In addition the methodological framework proposed by the paper is flexible enough to allow the inclusion, or the dropping, of indexes while restrictive enough so that not anything can be said to measure diversity
