Culture, Religion and Civilization in Selected UN Documents on Cultural Dialogue

This report analyzes the various forms of interaction, conflation and distinction between the concepts of culture, tradition, civilization and religion in a selection of the principle documents produced on these topics within the UN community. Documents elaborated by UN General Assembly, UNESCO and UNAOC after 2001 are examined. The analysis shows that, although the concepts of “dialogue” and “alliance” are meant to counter contemporary representations of “Western” and “Islamic” societies as distant and incompatible wholes, the debate remains often conditioned by a static and a-historical view of cultural and religious traditions. Particularly, the frequent overlapping of terms such as ‘culture’, ‘religion’, ‘identity’ and ‘tradition’ and the use of the general notion of ‘civilization’ contribute to reproducing a view of culture and religion as closed entities, making the effort to overtake divisions harder.