ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 analyses how the UNDP envisions the future by focusing on how the term ‘culture’ is articulated in the human development framework. The inquiry shows that the UNDP echoes Fukuyama’s theses on the end of history, and that the HDRs construct a symbolic identity division between the liberal West and the rest of the world. Such a representation of the world presents the West as the expression of the universal future and the rest as examples of past particularisms. Hence, one of the main contradictions of the human development reports is that the UNDP explicitly defends the notion that diversity is positive for human development. However, it implicitly assumes that the West – more specifically, its allegedly ideal and universal cultural values and principles – is the example that should guide the evolution of humankind.
