What is social cohesion?
Culture is at the heart of contemporary debates about identity, social cohesion and the development of a knowledge-based economy. It takes diverse forms across time and space. It is the glue that brings people together. UNESCO defines culture as “the set of distinctive spiritual, material and emotional features of society or a social group, and encompasses in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs”. The UNESCO declaration on cultural diversity gave states the opportunity to reaffirm their conviction that intercultural dialogue is the best guarantee of peace and to reject outright the theory of the inevitable clash of cultures and civilization. The declaration aims both to preserve cultural diversity as a living and thus renewable treasure that must not be perceived as being unchanging heritage, but as a process guaranteeing the survival of humanity and to prevent segregation and fundamentalism, which in cultural differ
