Thinking Ahead: Unesco and the Challenges of Today and Tomorrow (review)

Books 335 half of the book is on cultures as systems by the well-known biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy. I find that his perspective is more allied to functionalism than to structuralism. Despite the topical range suggested in the book’s title, its usefulness resides primarilyin the wayit collates a number ofstructuralist-semiotic approaches to the analysis of literary artworks. The essays of Jan Mukafovsky were written during the 1930s and 1940sand deal with general theoretical studies of art and of aesthetics. There are also specific analyses of examples of film, theatre and the visual arts. Mukaiovsky (1891-1975) was a member of the Prague linguistic circle and has sometimes been referred to as the initiator of ‘structural aesthetics’. Until this book was produced, the only samples of his work translated into English dealt with literary art. I must point out that his view of structure differs in several important respects from that elaborated by contemporary structuralists, a distinction that perhaps should have been noted by Peter Steiner in his extended introduction encapsulating Mukaiovskjh ideas. The assumption is usually made that cultural events and artifacts have an observable structure at the level of phenomenal/empirical reality and an unsuspected deep structure whose rules underlie the world of appearances. Mukaiovsky’s notion of structure, especially with referenceto the visual arts, isboth more explicitand more ambiguous. It is a holistic perspective, accommodating relations between the form of a work, anthropological constants, social organization, the intent of an artist and the response of audiences. The essays are written in a convoluted philosophical style, owing a considerable debt to the German idealist tradition. This fact, along with the paucity of examples cited (there are no illustrations) and the absence of a full-spectrum analysis of the historical contexts considered, will not, 1believe, endear him to sociologists of art. This is unfortunate, because he proposes several assumptions worth testing. 1 was especially struck by a relationship between his view of art as a social activity and the views of the early Marx, who is not mentioned. Although Mukaiovsky’s views are mainly speculative, and his essays contain much thick prose, thereareenough suggestiveinsights to make it worthwhile for anyone interested in theorizing about art to study them. Thinking Ahead: Unesco and the Challenges of Today and Tomorrow. Unesco, Paris, 1977. 363 pp. Paper. Reviewed by J. Lukasiewicz* This publication presents Unesco’s Medium-Term Plan for 1978-1982. In 10chapters it attemptsto address a wide spectrum of topics ranging from human rights and world peace to education, population and resources. Given the enormous scope and complexity of the problems addressed and the need to reflect the concern of some 142 Member States whose interests seldom converge, it is not surprising that Thinking Ahead is long on rhetoric and short on specific plans and recommendations. The issue of inequalities and of the widening gap between developed and developing countries underlies many of Unesco’s considerations. Reduction and elimination of disparities is viewed as a prime necessity, while at the same time the maintenance of cultural identities, of ‘deliberate, positively sought differences’is advocated. In a typical passage one reads: ‘Thus an essential problem appears to be how to remove disparities whilst maintaining differences, how to pass from a contingent interdependence, which favours certain elements to the detriment of others, to an actively sought solidarity. The problem is to replace a system submitted to as the inevitable outcome of uncontrollable forces by an axiologically guided system reflecting the broadest possible measure of agreement on the aims the human community should pursue.’ Such and similar exhortations do little to inform or to provide guidance on how modernization should be best accomplished. While stressing global interdependence of societies and problems , the Unesco report fails to confront the incompatibility of technology-based development, on the one har I. and pre- *Dept. of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa KIS 5B6, Canada. servation of cultural diversity, on the other. It is regrettable that development exacts trade-offs between traditional and new values and tends to erode the former while espousing the latter. In any event, economic equality must appear as a distant goal; the economic improvement of the Third World in...