ABSTRACT
The loss of cultural diversity has accompanied the dominant market-based, growth-driven development paradigm, especially through the globalisation and commercialisation of mass media. Neither capitalist nor state-centered socialist countries have been willing or able to cede power to the grassroots or to be fully responsive to local self-governance. Efforts to decentralise control over natural resources are an important feature of localisation efforts. Such a state, in theory, accommodates channels of communication and delegation that enable empowered grassroots communities to influence provincial and national decisions, and it respects the identity and voice of a plurality of cultures and peoples within the country. There is a need for new economic theory and frameworks for ways to assign value (including the intangible and unquantifiable) and to achieve sustainability and equity through steady-state economies, as well as practical applications of new indicators and measures of well-being going beyond GDP.
