Development and Culture

Culture has been defined as the sum of all the resources – material, intellectual, emotional, or spiritual – on which people draw to give meaning to their lives. All models of development are essentially cultural, in that they reflect perceptions of and responses to the problems faced by human societies. Yet despite international recognition of their interconnectedness, represented by the 1995 report of theWorld Commission on Culture and Development, published by UNESCO, most development policies and interventions are based on an assumption that ‘modernisation’, in the Western sense, is the ultimate goal. Culture is therefore regarded either as an impediment to progress, or as something to be kept outside the economic and political spheres and consigned to the areas of religion and ritual. This anthology, written by a variety of aid practitioners and scholars, shows the need to go beyond viewing culture merely as an important dimension of development, to seeing development itself as a cultural expression, and culture as the basis upon which societies can develop through self-renewal and growth.

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CONTENTS

Preface
Deborah Eade

Introduction: Cultures, spirituality, and development
Thierry Verhelst with Wendy Tyndale

Culture, liberation, and “development”
Shubi L. Ishemo

Globalism and nationalism: which one is bad?
Siniša Maleševic

Faith and economics in “development”: a bridge across the chasm?
Wendy Tyndale

Spirituality: a development taboo
Kurt Alan Ver Beek

Communal conflict, NGOs, and the power of religious symbols
Joseph G. Bock

Ethnicity and participatory development in Botswana: some participants are to be seen and not heard
Tlamelo O. Mompati

Women, resistance, and development: a case study from Dangs, India
Shiney Varghese

Gendering the millennium: globalising women
Haleh Afshar

Stressed, depressed, or bewitched? a perspective on mental health, culture, and religion
Vikram Patel

Responding to mental distress in the Third World: cultural imperialism or the struggle for synthesis?
Jane Gilbert

Research into local culture: implications for participatory development
Odhiambo Anacleti

Some thoughts on gender and culture
Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay

Annotated bibliography
 

© Oxfam GB 2002. First published in association with World Faiths Development Dialogue.
ISBN 0 85598 472 4
All rights reserved.

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