The Audiovisual Research Archives Program welcomes you to its online library devoted to the cultural heritage of the world’s various peoples.
This site currently includes 49 interviews (excerpts), 15 colloquiums (excerpts), 15 research seminars (excerpts), 21 special reports (excerpts).
The Portal
The “People and Cultures of the World” site is an audiovisual and multimedia portal – an online library – devoted to material and immaterial cultural heritage (according to UNESCO’s definition), as well as to the construction, maintenance, and evolution of peoples’ socio-cultural identity in the contemporary and globalized world.
By giving a voice to researchers, teachers, artists, professionals, journalists, political figures, civil society representatives and – of course – the actual people themselves, the constantly evolving “People and Cultures of the World” portal aims at being:
- A body of online multimedia resources (a “library”) for research and higher learning, but also secondary education;
- A place for personal learning open to all those who, for either professional or personal reasons, are interested in the social and cultural identities of various peoples, their traditions, know-hows and values, their material and immaterial accomplishments, their history, and their aspirations;
- A platform for collective work and reflection for researchers, teachers, specialists, and qualified students;
- A place for diffusing and promoting both cultures themselves as well as the research performed by researchers, teachers, or any other person having made contributions towards better understanding the diversity of the world around us and respecting it.
The audiovisual and multimedia collection is organized thematically around a few main topics, including:
- Socio-cultural identity and alterity (otherness);
- Cultural diversity, multiculturalism, interculturality;
- Interactions, socio-historical evolutions, and identitary aspirations;
- Cultures, beliefs, and traditions;
- Imagination and art works;
- Languages and non-verbal signing systems;
- Techniques and traditional crafts;
- Social space and habitat;
- Social time;
- Man in his natural environment;
- Man and personal destiny, history, and evolution.
The audiovisual collection found on the “People and Cultures of the World” portal is primarily enriched by the ARA Program’s (Audiovisual Research Archives) collection set up by the Cognitive Semiotics and New Medias Team (ESCoM), a R & D service of the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH)in Paris. But it also includes other audiovisual, visual, textual, etc. resources from collections of institutional and private partners from all over the world. The portal’s content is constantly evolving and improving.
