The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Convention on Cultural Diversity marks a wilful separation between the issues of trade and culture on the international level. The present article explores this intensified institutional, policy- and decision-making disconnect and exposes its flaws and the considerable drawbacks it brings with it. These drawbacks, the article argues, become particularly pronounced in the digital media environment that has impacted upon both the conditions of trade with cultural products and services and upon the diversity of cultural expressions in local and global contexts. Criticizing the strong and now increasingly meaningless path dependencies of the analogue age, the article sketches some possible ways to reconcile trade and culture, most of which lead back to the World Trade Organization (WTO), rather than to UNESCO.
Journal of World Trade