Take a leaf from Maslow. Some needs are common to all people—at all times and in all places. They are the need to make a living, the need for social organization, the need for knowledge and learning, the need for normative and metaphysical expression, and the need for aesthetic manifestation. These nuts and bolts of everyday life work through the coevolving realms of environment, economy, society, polity, and technology to make up systems of mutual sustainability or (in opposition) mutual vulnerability.
Alone, cultural theory pays simultaneous and even attention to these needs and makes possible a focus on the whole and the parts, on contexts and contents, on values and value systems, and on strategic relationships between key variables. So, it yields conceptual insights and practical benefits. It enables us, for instance, to deal better with complexity and fragmentation—the emphasis is on systems rather than on parts of systems. And it helps to ensure that economies are contextualized properly and pointed in the right direction. For those reasons, among others, economies can be constrained and enriched by the larger cultures in which they are located. Consequently, they stop functioning as self-governing entities.
Culture, defined in its broadest sense, is the totality of a society's distinctive ideas, beliefs, values, and knowledge. Since people (not economies) are the main object and ultimate purpose of endeavors to progress, a society's culture is not just an instrument of development cooperation: it is its basis. The marriage of economy and environment was overdue and has spawned a world agenda for that purpose. Likewise, the relationship between culture and development should be clarified and deepened. In ways that are authentic, indigenous, self-reliant, sovereign, civilized, and creative. (June 2001)
Copyright ©2002 Olivier Serrat |
