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Culture and Development

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2. Culture as the romantic critique of modernity ... the romantic critique of modernity...we are critical of 'development' and notions of progress... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Culture and Development


1
Culture and Development
  • Lecture 1

2
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
3
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

4
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

5
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)

6
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
7
Course Outline
  • Nine weeks of lectures
  • Seminars
  • Readings (reading pack)
  • Assessment
  • Attendance
  • Learning outcomes

8
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

9
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.

10
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

11
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?

12
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?

13
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?

14
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

15
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

16
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

17
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

18
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?

19
CULTURE CULTIVATION
  • derives from nature Latin root colere, means to
    cultivate (crops, animals, and the mind)
  • Horticulture
  • Agriculture

20
Three meanings of the term culture
  • Culture as the ideal
  • Culture as romantic critique of modernity
  • Culture as different ways of life

21
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?

22
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

23
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.

24
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

25
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

26
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

27
Contact Details
  • Dr Rebecca Prentice
  • r.j.prentice_at_sussex.ac.uk
  • Office Hours 10am-12pm (directly after class),
    Arts C257
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