Culture and Development

You cannot escape culture when addressing development. Human beings, says Professor Tim Gorringe (citing Clifford Geertz, 1993), are “suspended in webs of significance they themselves have spun. Culture is the name for those webs” (Gorringe, 2004). A cultural approach sets out to systematically engage with the “webs of significance” that people create; it takes account the cultural context in which communities and groups exist; it negotiates with local social hierarchies and living patterns; and it draws on local forms of communication and expression to engage people.

A cultural approach engages what has been called the “deep” culture (after Gaultung) – the deep drivers behind a community or individual’s behaviour and reasoning, and the way they live and respond to life.

Culture has been described as a ‘lens’ through which the development sector needs to look in order to make development more effective. Why? Because, as Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton observed in Culture and Public Action: “A culturally aware approach to public action pays attention to factors which may be common sense to the intended beneficiaries, but are often exotic, irrelevant or irrational from the perspective of the policy maker.”

Some notable commentators now say that culture is a prerequisite for development: The Nobel Economist, Prof. Amartya Sen noted in 2004: “The issue is how – not whether – culture matters. What are the different ways in which culture may influence development?” In 2005, the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) Commission for Africa said: “We want culture to become an inherent component of all development strategies – not just in terms of cultural products, but also in defining the terms of the development debate and the actions that follow. Culture becomes a way of working as well as an end in itself.”

The challenge now is not in recognising the importance of culture, but making a cultural approach part of development policy by making available tools, evidence and processes.

The table below maps out the relationship between culture and different aspects of the Millennium development goals. For more detail on how culture can support these goals see Culture: Hidden Development.