ABSTRACT
Introduction The effect of culture on development has been a subject of interest for a long time. It is increasingly acknowledged that culture matters as much as economics or politics to the process of development, but some confusion remains about precisely how it matters. The absence of collective agreement on the meaning of the terms ‘culture’ and ‘development’ undermine attempts to shape a clear framework for understanding the effect of culture on development processes.2 The concepts of culture and development may mean different things to different actors, and like the issues they seek to clarify, they have been subject to various controversies. Consequently, over the past 50 years the relationship between ‘culture’ and ‘economic development’ has been, and can be viewed variously as, causal, correlative or relatively autonomous. This chapter does not claim to be exhaustive. It offers some critical considerations on this theme.3 Taking into account the fact that there is no single approach concerning the role of culture on development, we seek to examine the work of some key thinkers in order to shed light on the different ways in which culture has been considered, and the different underlying assumptions about culture that have been taken into consideration by development strategies. Thus, our focus is on whether – and how – culture matters. What are the different connections by which different culture-defining assumptions can influence diverse aspects of development? We start, in the first part of the chapter, by critically examining how both modernization theory and its critics have shaped the framework within which culture has been deployed and debated in development thinking. We will highlight how the tradition/modernity dichotomy has polarized views, leading to opposing conceptions of culture as either a positive instrument for development or an obstacle to overcome. Then, after considering new ways of thinking about development and culture that have emerged within the context of globalization, we will attempt to analyse the extent to which they have challenged earlier models associated with the tradition/modernity framework. As an illustration of these general considerations, we will emphasize in the second part of the chapter how culture is said to affect economic performance
through its ability to create and manage institutions, through the creation of social networks and through its impact on organizations. In fact, as globalization drives rapid changes in the nature of the business and organizational environment, development thinking is urged to provide the insights that can facilitate both an understanding of the role of culture in economic performance and meaningful cross-cultural comparisons. After tracing the connections that are found between culture and economic performance, we will highlight the persistent difficulty in reconciling what is considered part of tradition and culture and the universalistic assumptions underlying the economic literature’s approach to development issues.
