Sarah White
Sarah White
Culture …. however important it may be as an instrument of development (or obstacle to development), cannot ultimately be reduced to a subsidiary position as a mere promoter of (or impediment to) economic growth. Culture’s role is not exhausted as a servant of ends – though in a narrower sense of the concept this is one of its roles – but is the social basis of the ends themselves. Development and the economy are part of a people’s culture.
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (UNESCO 1995, p15, emphasis added)
From a position of relative neglect, there has been a recent explosion of attention to ‘culture’ in international development. The period 1988–1997 saw the United Nations World Decade for Cultural Development, culminating in the report of the World Commission on Culture and Development led by Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (UNESCO 1995). Interest within the World Bank in the significance of culture was promoted under the presidency of James Wolfensohn, and is expressed in the collection Culture and Public Action (2004), which was edited by two of the Bank’s economists (Rao and Walton 2004) and includes a chapter by Amartya Sen. In the human development and capability approach, a similar pattern can be observed: 1995 saw the first explicit engagement with culture with the publication of Women, Culture and Development, a collection of essays edited by Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan Glover. This was followed by the 2004 Human Development Report on cultural liberty, and a later book by Sen (2006), in part paralleling ideas in the report, entitled Identity and Violence.
The growth of interest in culture has also marked a shift in the way it has been positioned in development debates. The oppositions between tradition (or culture), on the one hand, and development, on the other, once a central preoccupation of modernization theory, while by no means absent in contemporary writings, have now been joined by a different voice. Rather than inhibiting progress, culture is now being celebrated as a resource for development. Religious institutions such as churches, mosques and temples, formerly seen to be diverting investment into ‘unproductive’ activities, are now welcomed as potential partners in development. Moreover, understanding (other) people’s cultures is seen as being critical if development effectiveness is to be enhanced (Rao and Walton 2004). While this ‘rehabilitation’ in the perception of culture is in many ways very welcome, it should not simply be
TOPICS
taken at face value. It reflects the more general tendency within globalization to re-inscribe the value of the ‘local’. It is also part of a broader disillusionment with (and ideological opposition to) state-led development, combined with the aim of fostering more ‘participatory’ forms of development intervention. Finally one could also read against the grain of development discourse itself, observing in this new celebration of culture the shadow of a perceived threat that still needs to be neutralized. Depicted by Samuel Huntington as a ‘clash of civilizations’, embodied in street protests against globalization and in the destruction of the Twin Towers – culture has become a major site of struggle for those who wish to preserve (or challenge) the hegemony of the present international order.
The first part of this chapter explores how the relations between culture and development have been enunciated and how the human development approach has contributed to this discourse; this part concludes by offering a few principles that bear further scrutiny.
Parts
» Economic growth can be sustained without considerations for human flourishing
» A bird’s-eye view The idea of human development has been circulated in policy circles and public
» 1 The Basic Needs Approach The best shorthand way of describing basic needs is:
» Innovation systems Innovation systems can be defined as ‘the network of institutions in the public
» The relationship between economic growth and human flourishing
» Rawls’ theory of justice in a nutshell
» Rawlsian justice versus the capability approach
» What do we need for a capability theory of justice?
» From theories of justice to just practices and policies
» The importance and limitations of measurement
» Income poverty measurement: Identification
» Measures of multi-dimensional poverty Measures using aggregate data: The Human Poverty Index (HPI)
» Measuring freedom Most frequently, when trying to measure multi-dimensional poverty or
» Testing the theory This view, which suggests that economic development is determined in part by
» 1 The embeddedness of a microfinance market in gender relations in Kenya
» Institutions and markets in the human development approach
» A mechanism for exercising agency in the public sphere
» Instrumental value The intrinsic value of democracy, that the ability of people to take part in
» 3 The democratic construction of social welfare-related values in Costa Rica
» From democratic theory to practice
» Political participation at global level
» 7 Gender equality in education: Human capital, human rights and capabilities
» Health as output The reverse has also been argued, where wealth is seen to be a necessary input
» Health at the heart of inter-locking deprivations
» 2 Fatima’s story: The coincidence of health deprivation, illiteracy and material deprivation 4
» Anthropological perspectives
» Cultural freedom The 2004 Human Development Report asserts the importance of culture as a
» Religion as a dimension of well-being
» The possibility of reasoning
» Randy Spence and Séverine Deneulin
» Macro-policy Constitution and legal system
» Policy in the private, non-profit and international sectors
» A human development perspective
» Technical assistance programme
» Post-conflict policy in Liberia
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