Culture and Development

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Culture and Development

• You down there let us get the development
  going

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• Program
• Theme From economics to culture
• The history of culture
• Theories about culture Modernism,
  post-modernism, world system, complexity

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Culture and Development

• Danida No development without culture
• Def. culture is the sum of social practices
• UNESCO Our creative diversity
• Def. the total and distinctive way of life of a
  people or society
• Sen
• Def. Culture is only one among aspects of our
  selfrealization

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Cultural assumptions

• Culture determines (can be an obstacle)
• The Protestant etic Islam
• Culture is negotiable
• Skin-deep

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Economic Development

• Trumans vision
• Fourth, we must embark on a bold new program for
  making the benefits of our scientific advances
  and industrial progress available for the
  improvement and growth of undeveloped areas.
• - New economic developments must be devised and
  controlled to the benefit of the people of the
  areas in which they are established
• Increased welfare development

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The economic assumptions

• Development is a result of the economy (growth in
  GNP). If the economy is sound everything else
  will follow.
• Some contries are already developed, while
  others can follow if they choses the right means
  (which?)
• Development is a question of time and adjustment
  of the economic theories.

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The economic paradox

• Between 1950 and 1995 the Western contires
  contributed 1 billion in development aid (in
  1985 dollars)
• Development took place in those place that
  recieved least in aid Asia China, Korea
• Life exptancy in Zambia is 38 år

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Lack of results
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Disappointing development
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The social history of culture

• The Great Chain of Being
• Culture nature the supernatural

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Value transfer from The New World
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Culture

• Dobbel meaning
• culture - civilization
• Germany France/England
• (life-form) (process)
• Germany was isolated in the16-17 century
• German court culture was importet from France
  German bourgeoisie was impoverish self-respect
  as a vertue (Herder human practice the people)

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Two versions of culture
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Culture as process - modernism

• Bourgeois model state, market and civil
  society
• Result
• Culture
• Attachment to the material reproduction
• Society pass through similar stages

• Marx/Rostow
• Relations of Production
• ----------------------------
• Forces of Production
• Culture dominant ideologi/ bad faith

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General evolution

• Social form
• hunter/gather agriculture industry
  information society
• ------s1-------------s2----------------s3---------
  --s4
• Dynamic
• ------d1-------------d2----------------d3---------
  --d4
• Stoneage iron bronze
• (technology,
• Mode of production,
• etc.)

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Worldview of Modernism
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System of categories
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Implications

• Culture
• Traditions, customs, dressing, table manners,
  etc.
• Culture is a hindrence for development, can be
  circumvented by using the right means Talk
  lauder and clearer!!!
• Problems
• - Assume that underneath different attires there
  is the same (liberal) individual
• - ethnocentric (compare the organizational form
  of other people to Western standards
• - the others live in deficiency societies (we
  have what they need)
• Geography (space) is turned into stages (time)
  Pacific Ocean
• Development about transferring welfare
• Modernism show no results

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Culture as life-form

• E.g. Franz Boaz, Marshall Sahlins
• nature
• Objects a group
• other groups

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Implications

• Culture common system of meaning, common
  categories male woman rich poor relativism
• Society conditions people do not chose, and
  which they cannot escape, but which are
  negotiated locally provides shifting cultural
  configurations
• Development non-liniar, complex, and on local
  conditions

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False premisses according to Tilly

• How to make boundaries of the same unit
  consistent in time, space and personnel?
• How to determine whether the proposed boundaries
  do, in fact, delimit a distinct and coherent
  social entity

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Post-modernism

• State, market, civil society object of
  post-modernism
• To udgaver
• culture (meaning)
• Agency --------------------------
• Authentic individuals
• signifiers
• Discourse ------------ symbolic
  reconfiguration
• power
• Ideology hegemony anti-hegemony

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The Worldview of Post-modernism
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Problems

• Universal concept of power
• Development as discourse the others are
  accomplices
• Post-modernism no solutions
• Development disciplining The Third World

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World system theory

• Wallerstein, I. 1999 The End of the World as We
  Know it.
• Arrighi, G. 1994 The Long Twentieth Century
• Frank, A. Gunder 1998 ReOrient. Global Economy
  in the Asian Age.
• Friedman, J. 1994 Cultural Identity Global
  Process
• Bergendorff, S. 2002 Europas Udvikling
  skiftende livsbetingelser og individualisme

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World system model
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The character of development

• culture identity positions
• Development a systemic phenomena
• Welfare geographic luck (place in world system)
• Aid reorganization
• Liberal states part of the problem, not the
  solution

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Complex systems
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Complexity Theory

• Complexity Theory offers the following
  propositions that could fruitfully be further
  developed and synthesised into a social theory of
  social change and development (e.g. Nicolis
  Prigogine 1989, Taylor 2001)
• 1) A dynamic system is based on energy intake
  (resources), which is related to the behaviour of
  the system (praxis), producing an overall pattern
  (institutions) that in turn influences behaviour.
• 2) Interaction creates differences.
• 3) The sum of the interaction is different from
  its parts.
• 4) Dynamic systems are open (energy intake) and
  not in equilibrium (the same parameters can
  generate several solutions).

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Complex social systems

• Following Emmeche (199710) and Cilliers
  (20004-5) we can list the following
  characteristics of complex social systems
• Complex systems consist of groups and sub-groups
  that interact repeatedly according to simple and
  local rules, giving a distinct overall pattern
  e.g. forms of government.
• Groups interact in multiple ways through various
  forms of exchange, but these exchanges are based
  on individuals who have limited information about
  the system as a whole.

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Research task

• we should find out what strategies people pursues
  locally and how persistent interaction according
  to these interests generates properties in the
  social order and how this is converted into
  cultural categories.
• See cultural categories as experiential, flexible
  and multidimensional reflecting the properties of
  interactions which are systematic but
  unpredictable and open-ended (see Lakoff
  Johnson 1980).

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Change according to complexity theory

• culture does not change because categories cannot
  contain the new.
• Culture changes when new rules for strategies
  become feasibly and dominant in the social milieu.

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Conclusion

• Development is a question of how culture is
  conceptualized
• Different solutions according to which model is
  used
• Provides different development practices