Whether you stand closer to the trade side or the culture side in the trade and culture debate, or if you have not yet decided where your sympathies lie, you would do well to read Dr Voon's informative and insightful book on Cultural Products and the World Trade Organization. The trade and culture dilemma is not new, but Dr Voon's proposed solution is.

‘Trade and …’ questions tend to pit one side against the other, and the literature so often promotes only one view, while undermining conflicting approaches. The virtue of Dr Voon's study is that it avoids this tendency and instead provides a balanced and thoughtful view of the highly complex issues surrounding the challenge of protecting and promoting culture and cultural diversity, while at the same time pursuing the goal of further trade liberalisation among States. The key to addressing this debate is to acknowledge, as Dr Voon does, that cultural products have cultural as well as commercial value, and to understand, as Dr Voon so clearly explains, that cultural value is highly prized, just as is the multi-billion-dollar industry that produces cultural products.

Dr Voon explores what she describes as ‘a particular notion of culture’ as it relates to defined cultural products – film, video, radio, television, sound recordings, books, magazines, and periodicals – that are created or provided by cultural industries – audiovisual, printing, and publishing.