The Perils of Global Cultural Promotion: (Re-)Presenting “European Culture” in Asia through Spanish Cultural Promotion in the Philippines

For the last few decades, European cultural organisations such as the Alliance Française de Manille, the British Council, the German Goethe-Institut, and the Spanish Instituto Cervantes have been working actively in the Philippines by establishing and promoting a whole range of cultural and educational activities, related to their particular languages and cultures. In the Philippines, the fact that arts funding is limited, has encouraged the development of a web of intercultural relationships and encounters. This article examines two problematic aspects of the global promotion of Spanish culture in the Philippines, namely the unidirectional approach to cultural promotion, and the politics of arts funding. Inspired by Anthony Giddens’ understanding of globalization as a web of distant relationships, in which local events can be influenced by others occurring miles away, the concept of “rough cultural promotion” is proposed to discuss the unidirectional movement of cultural products. When European countries, such as Spain, select and promote specific cultural products as ‘universal’ referents of “Spanish (or national) culture” in the Philippines, “rough promotion” is achieved. This paper argues that this process establishes several disjunctures in both countries, such as the perpetuation of cultural stereotypes, and an imbalanced situation in which European cultural events are in direct competition with local arts. This imbalanced situation is further explained by exploring the politics of European arts funding in the Philippines. In this context, and following Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production, this paper argues that Spanish cultural producers in the Philippines are establishing an authority in the definition of what arts and culture should be in the Philippines.