The Most Critical Issue in the field of Culture and Development

I had a conversation the other day with a colleague from the Smithsonian Institution, in which we agreed that the most critical issue as we address culture and development is how to empower people within cultures to make informed decisions as to the directions of change of their cultures.

Cultures Change.

Even the most superficial view of history indicated that cultures change everywhere, and indeed with increasing velocity in recent times. Sometimes the change due to exogenous forces; the HIV/AIDS epidemic forced changes in culture as do global climate changes. Sometimes the forces driving change result from development; the increase in child survival drives a variety of cultural changes. Sometimes societies seek cultural change as a means to achieve specific development goals. Thus there is an increasing realization that economic development involves cultural changes that will drive and be driven by changes in economic institutions and policies, and that political development similarly involves cultural changes that will drive and be driven by changes in political institutions and policies.

Cultural Change Can Involve Loss.

We seek to maintain cultural heritage in the face of cultural change. How sad it would be to lose classical music or classical art in the process of modernization. More to the point, cherished cultural values are often challenged in the process of development. Thus, as technologies have been developed, introduced and widely disseminated to manage reproductive biology, there has been a revolution in sexual mores; that revolution has been profoundly disturbing to some people and has led to important dialogs on sexual morality in many nations.

Cultural Change is Often Imposed from Outside.

This is not a new problem. The world's most widely spread religions have often been spread by imperial powers. The world's most widely spread languages have been spread by colonization and the exercise of political and economic power. This fact raises the question of by what right do outsiders exercise the power to threaten a societies cultural heritage and drive changes in its values? For those of us who work in donor agencies, the problem is especially trenchant. By what right do we have to use the financial power of those organizations to drive cultural change?

Cultural Change Can Appear Autonomous.

The linkages between social and economic development and cultural change are complex and can be subtle. They are not well understood anywhere. but would seem to be especially difficult to understand in the least developed nations. Poorly educated people with limited access to information, spending all of their time in the effort needed just to survive and contribute to the survival of their families, are ill prepared to predict the cultural changes to which they are subjected, or to understand the processes that drive those changes, much less to exercise the power to control the factors driving cultural change in order to make those changes more acceptable morally and esthetically.

The Problem of Anomie.

Anomie is defined by Wikipedia as "a condition of malaise in individuals, characterized by an absence or diminution of standards or values. When applied to a government or society, anomie implies a social unrest or chaos." It would seem to be especially likely when traditional values and aspects of cultural heritage are replaced by a process which is not understood by its victims, and indeed when that process appears to be imposed by circumstances or forces outside of the control of the members of the society itself.

The Solution is Difficult.

It would seem that members of a society should be empowered with more control of their own futures, as those who emphasize grass-roots development demand. This would seem to be true, but it runs into the realities that those who have political and economic power tend to utilize that power to exert control of development activities. Participation in governance is not widely distributed in may societies, and indeed economic power is more and more concentrated in enclaves of wealth.

Even were power to be more evenly distributed, there is a need for much more knowledge and understanding of the linkages between social and economic development and cultural change. Would that UNESCO, which has the United Nations lead responsibility for both culture and social science would take on the development of a global network to create knowledge and understanding of these linkages and of means to make development more culturally benign.

There is also the problem of disseminating knowledge and understanding of the links between cultural change and development more widely, and of creating the institutions which would legitimate those with the greatest understanding of those linkages and the most valid claims to cultural leadershiop to help guide the paths of development and cultural change.

Conclusion.

I think that the issue is not to avoid cultural change, but rather to develop institutions and policies that endow legitimate cultural leaders in each society with the knowledge and skills needed to understand better the linkages between development and cultural change, and to empower those leaders to guide development and cultural change in ways that protect the most valued aspects of cultural heritage and the dearest cultural values. Where such institutions can be developed in ways that the legitimacy of the guides is widely accepted and their efforts are widely approved, then there should be much more acceptance of the the validity of the cultural changes that are occurring.