Mapping Authority and Survival or Well Being.Source: R. Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization
Culture: The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.According to this definition, culture is the primary determinant of social and economic development, and cultural change is the inescapable outcome of development. I suspect that this is true, but it is perhaps not a very useful fact.
It is important, however, to realize that social, political and economic institutions and policies are aspects culture and outcomes of historical processes that occured within a cultural contex. Note too that the actual operation of nominal aspects of such institutions and policies are also culture dependent.
Culture and Development Objectives
In some cases, the objectives of social and economic development seem to be common across cultures, and relatively culture free. Thus, one assumes that people wish to live long and healthy lives; those societies in which large numbers of children live in hunger and sickness and die young are not happy societies. Yet development that increases child survival rates and improves the health of children will bring with it other cultural impacts on the nature of the family, the community, and other institutions.
It seems likely that a nation's culture will influence the objectives that its people seek from social and economic development. Consider cultural attitudes toward democratic self governance. Democracy for Americans is not only an instrumental value, leading to better governance and more equitable and faster development, but an intrinsic value. For theocratic cultures, the institutionalization of theocratic governance is apparently of greater value than democratic expression of individual preferences.
Yet we know that with social and economic development, values change. Indeed, the death of an infant in the modern, healthy Western world is a greater tragedy to the family than was the death of an infant several hundred years ago when such deaths were common and indeed expected. So should development respond to the current cultural values of the nation's people, to their future values, or to some values conceived of as universal by donor agencies from abroad (which are often naively assumed to approximate the future values of the nation)?
Our notions of sovereignty have dominated, suggesting that such questions should be settled within a country itself by the processes nominally authorized by the people in the acceptance of their governance. Yet as we consider Darfur, or Rwanda, or Nazi Germany, there is an increasing global opinion that in some circumstances human rights trump states rights. What is not clear is how severe the human rights violations must be to warrant foreign intervention, nor what institutions may intervene.
Cultural Diversity and Cultural Heritage
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights suggests that human rights at least are a universally recognized, if intangible, aspect of mankind's cultural heritage. However, the more obvious aspect of cultural heritage is cultural diversity. Mankind is divided into thousands of ethnic groups, and it appears that each ethnic group has aspects of culture inherited from its specific historical evolution that are valued at least within the group.
One result of this situation is that nations with multicultural populations must deal with a diversity of values in selecting national objectives and in choosing means to achieve its chosen objectives. Even in America, which proudly proclaims it has been a melting pot accepting the cultural diversity of its nation of immigrants, there continue to be serious problems of ethnic conflict. In other societies those conflicts can reach the level of genocide.
I value the diversity of cultural expression -- the chance to chose between Mexican and Chinese food, or to listen to salsa, jazz or classical music according to my mood and taste at the time. But I could live happily in a simpler, more uniform society. In that sense, I don't find cultural diversity a dominant value.
Much more important, I value the basic human right of the members of all ethnic groups to keep alive and evolving those aspects of their narrow cultural heritage which they themselves value and chose. Thus the promotion of cultural diversity and the diversity of cultural expression is instrumental in protecting a value which I do find fundamental.
Yet respect for the right to preserve cultural diversity can conflict with other rights and with the need to make changes in practice to achieve developmental objectives. In some cases the choice is clear. Thus most people will accept changes in personal and family hygiene practice, abandoning long established cultural norms, if they can be shown to have health benefits.
At the other extreme, efforts to preserve expression of cultural heritage can be very controversial. The United States Government, influenced by the American creative industries, was strongly opposed to the UNESCO Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expression -- a Convention that was strongly backed by the French and Canadian governments (apparently seeking to protect their indigenous cultures, especially the Francophone cultural expression) from a globalizing media industry dominated by American firms.
Culture and the Means of Development
We normally consider the key means of social and economic development to be investment in human resources (education and health especially), strengthening key institutions, and making and implmenting appropriate policies.
Schooling and other educational services are obviously not culturally neutral, even in the specific factual content they seek to impart. The American "culture wars" over such things as the teaching of evolution or creationism illustrate the fact. However, the impact is much broader than simply a few questions of factual content; changing the skills with which people face the world, changing their understanding of cause and effect in many areas, and indeed motivating changes in behavior may have profound cultural consequences.
Development agencies seek to do cultural analysis (often called social, political and/or institutional analysis) to determine which modifications of institutions and policies are feasible and which not, and estimating the practicality of alternative means of effecting policy and institutional change.
Increasingly, development agencies seek to use participatory planning processes in which the stakeholders of development efforts themselves are involved in their planning, affectively involving them in value decisions, tapping their understanding of their own culture, and enlisting their perception of their own ownership of the projects.
How then are development agencies to combine the expertise of professional knowledge workers (including social scientists, public health officials, educators, etc.) with the inputs of legitimate authorities such as government officials and donor bureaucrats and with the inputs of local communities of regular citizens? (Remember the old saying about how porcupines make love -- very, very carefully.)
It is also increasingly recognized that efforts to strengthen the production of local cultural expression -- including crafts, theater, music, and art -- can be effective elements in social and economic development strategy. The efforts include promotion of cultural tourism and development of exports based on craft industries.
Allowing ethnic groups to share expressions of their cultures with each other may help to bridge ethnic divides. Encouraging authentic cultural expression satisfies psychological and cultural needs. And I would accept that exposing people to great art, music, drama and design not only enriches their lives, but is likely to contribute to the formation of attitudes conducive to social and economic development.
Concluding Comment
"Culture and Development" is often used as a synecdoche. Indeed, quite limited efforts relating to commercialization or to the promotion of sport are termed "culture and development projects." If thinking about culture in a development context leads to successful projects of those kinds, well and good.
The more important approach to "Culture and Development" is to recognize that a broad understanding of culture is critical for success in development, and that development itself must be seen as a cultural activity, rooted in the culture which it seeks to change in order to achieve culturally defined objectives.
A respect for universal human rights, in this context, leads one to emphasize the rights of the development stakeholders to participate in the planning of those development efforts as well as in their implementation.
Some links that might be of interest are:
- The Development Gateway Culture and Development Community
- The UNESCO Culture Program
- UNESCO: Culture and Development
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