Culture and Development

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Culture and Development

• Lecture 1

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What is anthropology?

• Recognise multiple rationalities
• Look at actions, not just words
• Compare, compare, compare
• Reconfigure the boundaries of the problem

Adapted from Lambert McKevitt (2002) British
Medical Journal
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Recognise multiple rationalities

• What is rational (what makes good sense) is
  socially and culturally specific
• Anthropologists try to see things from the
  natives point of view
• This reveals that our way of seeing things is
  neither normative nor universal

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Look at actions, not just words

• There may be a big difference between what people
  say and what they actually think and do
• Anthropologists do not just interview people, but
  also participate in the daily lives of the
  people they are studying usually for long
  periods of time
• Distinguish ideal from actual

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Compare, compare, compare

• Understanding a phenomenon in one site can be
  helped by comparing it with what has happened
  somewhere else
• Logical rather than statistical inferences
• When comparing, emphasise difference as much as
  commonalities (generalities)

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Reconfigure the boundaries of the problem

• Question familiar categories!!
• Not How can development become more
  participatory?
• But instead Where has the idea that development
  should be participatory come from? How has
  this been defined as a goal? Why? In whose
  interest?

Adapted from Lambert McKevitt (2002) British
Medical Journal
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Course Outline

• Nine weeks of lectures
• Seminars
• Readings (reading pack)
• Assessment
• Attendance
• Learning outcomes

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Learning Outcomes

• In this course, students will develop
• An awareness of different theoretical approaches
  to culture
• An awareness of the relationship between culture
  and development
• Knowledge of anthropological contributions to
  development

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Week 1

• Introduction
• Culture and development as concepts
• How we understand these concepts is framed by our
  own history, values, and ideas about the world.

• BUT also want to think about the way other
  cultures engage with development.

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Week 2

• Development and the Idea of
• Progress
• Developments intellectual heritage
• Max Weber

• Cultural conditions that facilitate development
  or take off
• Clifford Geertz, Peddlars and Princes

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Week 3

• NGO Cultures and Cultures of Consultancy
• What (cultural) ideas inform the way development
  consultants work?
• Why are we so attracted to the idea of NGOs? Is
  it justified?

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Week 4

• Actors and Brokers
• At the Development Interface
• Think about development as an arena in which
  different actors with a range of cultural
  backgrounds meet
• What does this tell us? Is it useful?

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Week 5

• Human Rights and Moral Issues
• (Gavin Weston)
• Different ways of seeing the world
• Can the idea of universal human rights be
  defended?
• On what grounds can this be done?

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Week 6

• Gender and Development
• Issues around representation of women
• Questions of cultural relativism (on what basis
  do we make judgements about other cultures is it
  justified?)
• Case of Muslim women

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Week 7

• Knowledge, the Environment and
• Sustainable Development
• How can we gain purchase on the idea of
  sustainable development?
• What can academics (anthropologists) contribute?
• Case studies Africa and Central America

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Week 8

• Information Communication Technologies
• (ICTs) and Development
• How do ICTs relate to peoples experiences of
  development?
• What is the technology gap and is bridging it
  as way to combat poverty?
• Case studies low-income mobile phone use

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Week 9

• Development, Developments,
• Post-development?
• Role of cultural politics in development what
  is cultural politics, how does it work?
• Contributions of Appadurai and Escobar

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Week 1 Introduction to Culture and Development

• What is the history (genealogy) of the concept of
  culture?
• What kind of meanings does it carry?
• Why is culture so complex?
• What is the relation between the culture concept
  and ideas about development?

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CULTURE CULTIVATION

• derives from nature Latin root colere, means to
  cultivate (crops, animals, and the mind)
• Horticulture
• Agriculture

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Three meanings of the term culture

• Culture as the ideal
• Culture as romantic critique of modernity
• Culture as different ways of life

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1. Culture as the ideal

• The best that has been thought and
  said in the world
• Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy 1869
• Cultivation of the self/mind improvement
• Class inflections civility
• To be cultured (art, music, books)
• Culture as progress?

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The Enlightenment

• workings of human society are subject to natural
  laws that can be discovered by scientific enquiry
• society can be moulded for individual and
  collective benefit

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2. Culture as the romantic critique of modernity

• Conceptualising culture as the opposite of the
  Enlightenment ideals of rationality and
  progress
• Celebrating aspects of human life that are though
  to be deeper and more eternal than technology,
  consumerism, etc.
• Rejection of mechanical rationality, replaced
  with sentiments, expression, beauty, etc.

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3. Culture as different ways of life

• Diversity of human groups
• Relativism
• Anthropology as an interpretive quest to
  understand cultural diversity
• Clifford Geertz and thick description

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Summary Culture Development

• If we define culture as
• the idealwe see development as improvement
  and human perfectibility
• the romantic critique of modernitywe are
  critical of development and notions of
  progress therefore we also critique
  universalism
• different ways of lifewe endeavour to see these
  different ways of life as valid on their own
  terms

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Summary Culture Development

• When culture is defined as shared, common
  meanings and values implies people inhabit a
  world with
• 1) clear boundaries
• 2) static, unchanging
• 3) traditional
• From one perspective culture then becomes a
  barrier to progress
• From another perspective culture provides grounds
  to criticise modernity progress

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Contact Details

• Dr Rebecca Prentice
• r.j.prentice_at_sussex.ac.uk
• Office Hours 10am-12pm (directly after class),
  Arts C257