'This paper investigates the image of the insurance industry in society, at a time when it is confronted with new challenges in the context of globalisation. It notes that while the insurance industry brings numerous positive contributions to society, the industry also suffers from a negative public image.'

'Piracy constitutes a disregard for legal rights and obligations towards the intellectual creators upon which the society itself is guided for future aspiration and that is why respect for law and order in an important sector of human society is seriously undermined by the activities of pirates. It has clearly become the duty of the State to take steps to combat this serious public mischief.'

'Piracy puts cultural industries in jeopardy. UNESCO therefore aims to contribute to the fight against piracy in order to curtail its damaging consequences on the creation and dissemination of cultural goods and services. Its activities in this area are developed largely through innovative public/private partnerships, within the framework of the UNESCO Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity whose main objective is to foster the development of sustainable cultural industries through capacity-buil more...

'The World Digital Library makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English more...

The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, archi­tectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-Eng more...

Artists were among the first to buy the art that explorers, missionaries and colonial administrators brought back to Europe and America from Africa more than a century ago. Pablo Picasso is the most famous of them. Jacob Epstein was another well known artist-collector. Before the First World War, he also advised Helena Rubenstein as she built a formidable collection of her own. The market remained keen but fairly small for decades.

'Through different types of media, people adopt behaviors, assume attitudes, and build stereotypical images that affect their actions in real life. The issue of the portrayal of women in the Arab media has been under examination for many years due to its negativity and its ability to aversely affect the image of Arab women in society at large. Although some positive models are beginning to appear, the movement in this direction is quite slow. This Policy Brief discusses the image of women in the more...

'Pimachiowin Aki Corp. is a non-profit organization working to establish a World Heritage Site within an area of about 40,000 square kilometers of intact boreal forest on the Ontario-Manitoba border. The non-profit group asked IISD to provide an estimate of the economic value of the services provided by Pimachiowin Aki’s natural environments to both residents and non-residents.

While some spiritual and cultural benefits could not be easily valued in economic terms, ecosystem services such a more...

The Linguists, a 70-minute film by Professors David Harrison and Gregory Anderson, documents how smaller ethno linguistic communities and their systems of speech are often marginalized by the dominant cultures around them. Many languages and cultures are on the verge of extinction.

What a difference a raised hand makes. At Sotheby’s evening sale of contemporary art in London on February 5th, bidders eagerly put their hands up. An exciteable German collector even waved both arms to ensure he secured the two Gerhard Richter paintings on offer, a smoky grey-and-green landscape and a red abstract, for a total of £2.3m—£2.65m ($3.8m) including commissions. Of the 27 works on offer at Sotheby’s, 25 sold, just over half of them within the pre-sale estimate.

The top lot more...