Reviews

Culture has a central role to play in global development and human affairs. Not only is it the key to individual and institutional development, but also it is the foundation for community, regional, national and international development.

Culture: Beacon of the Future draws on many disciplines - the arts, anthropology, sociology, ecology, politics, history and economics - as well as the thoughts, ideas and research findings of numerous scholars and practitioners - to make this case. It will be of interest to people in a variety of fields and professions, including public and private organizations, business, government, educational institutions, and international agencies.

Contents in this 280-page publication include: The Centrality of Culture; Culture as a Concept; The Character of Culture; Culture as a Reality; The Cultural Interpretation of History; The Cultural Personality; Community Cultural Development; The Cultural State; International Cultural Relations; The Art of Cultural Development and Policy; and Towards a Cultural Age.

The author - D. Paul Schafer - has worked in the cultural field for more than four decades as an advisor, administrator and educator. He has taught cultural policy at York University and the University of Toronto, undertaken a number of missions for UNESCO, and is Director of the World Culture Project in Markham, Canada.

Culture: Beacon of the Future is published by Adamantine Press and Praeger/Greenwood in their 21st. Century Studies series. It can be acquired in hardback or paperback from Amazon (www.amazon.com); Praeger/Greenwood (www.greenwood.com); Barnes and Noble (www.barnesnoble.com); and the World Culture Project (www.WorldCultureProject.org).

This valuable and timely publication constitutes an ideal resource for people working to advance the cultural cause and committed to the central role culture is capable of playing in the world.

Some Comments by Reviewers and Publishers

D. Paul Schafer, who is director of the World Culture Project in Markham, Canada, speaks to the world, focusing on the concept of culture. He reviews a wide spectrum of perspective on culture - anthropological, philosophical, aesthetic, historic. His quest is for a holistic perspective that serves and perhaps saves humankind in its global future, already rife with division, inequality, and excess… (T)he implications of what Schafer argues are powerful. He take the logic of some of our own ideas, notably “culture,” and works out implications for life - for the individual, the community, the nation, the world.

Schafer’s Culture - Beacon of the Future is a noble attempt at defining a new paradigm for thinking about human potentialities and prospects. Schafer suggests we need to go beyond traditional and restricted definitions of human nature drawn from economics, political science, religion, psychology, and so on, and try to see humans, instead, in the broader context of culture as a whole. A more systematic, refined, and advanced view of culture, drawing on insights from many scientific and artistic disciplines, may, Schafer argues, help point the way toward a future in which human potentialities are more fully realized.

D. Paul Schafer asserts that a viable world system can only be erected by recognizing the centrality of culture… Making culture and cultures the centrepeice of global activity would enable creation of a world system according to culture’s highest, wisest, and most enduring principles (the quest for equality, justice and truth; the love of beauty, knowledge, and wisdom; the need for order and diversity; the importance of cooperation, caring and sharing; recognizing the rights and freedoms of others; harmonious association with nature and other species). Chapters discuss culture as a concept and as a reality, the character of culture, the cultural interpretation of history, the cultural personality (a more compelling prototype than “economic man” or “specialized man”), community cultural development, the cultural state, international cultural relations (proposing a federation of world cultures in contrast to a single world culture), and the art of cultural development and policy… (Culture - Beacon of the Future) is challenging, high-minded, and obviously the opposite of the commerce-minded single world culture based on the Internet.

This volume by D. Paul Schafer expands the decade-long academic attention given to the problem of culture, and sheds much additional light on this subject. It is a valuable contribution in this regard, and specifically in offering an exhaustive and penetrating analysis of the idea of culture itself, stressing its heuristic and normative potentialities towards the construction of a new world order…(T)his work…has merits that transcend the purely technical aspect. It can stimulate and enrich discussion in sociology, anthropology, and social philosophy courses that examine the nature and role of culture in the modern world, and its utility for global welfare and salvation in the future.

“Culture” is indeed a “beacon of the future,” a new paradigm that promises ways of using dynamic artistic and cultural understanding as a means of finding new paths for the future… It (Culture - Beacon of the Future) should be in the briefcases of political and business leaders and even more in the consciousness of the public at large. We need an understanding of the whole cultural environment and a realization of how attention to cultural matters could be an asset in discovering the paths to survival as a species and as a civilization. The book deserves promotion and wide readership.

Culture is essential to everything we do and is going to play a significant role in the world of the future. In spite of this, most of us have only a hazy understanding of culture and do not realize how it will affect individual, institutional, community, national and international affairs. This volume delves deeply into the domain of culture - both as a concept and as a reality - and proposes a formulation of the world system of the future according to culture’s highest and most enduring principles. The author draws on many disciplines - anthropology, sociology, philosophy, cosmology, history, economics and the arts - to make his case that culture and cultures should be accorded a central position in global development and human affairs in the future.