The Drum Beat 281 - Engaging Culture in Development

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Warm wishes to all in The CI network for a positive and productive new year. Our thoughts are with our colleagues, friends and all those across the world affected by the recent earthquake and tsunamis in South Asia, South East Asia and East Africa.

"...when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings."
- Sogyal Rinpoche [teacher, author]

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This Drum Beat is one of a series of commentary and analysis pieces. Robin Vincent, a social anthropologist and the Deputy Director of the Exchange programme* considers the definition of culture as it has been referred to in social development discussions, how development projects are affected by culture and how culture is and can best be engaged in development projects. What follows is Robin's perspective - NOT that of the Partners collectively or individually.

*The Exchange programme, a Partner of The Communication Initiative, is a networking and learning programme in health communication for development funded by the UK Department for International Development. This commentary refers to a research study by Creative Exchange entitled "Routemapping Culture and Development", and draws on a recent Exchange "Findings" paper reviewing the role of culture in development - click here for the PDF version of this paper - where a number of the issues and initiatives mentioned here are more fully referenced. A quicklist of related resources is also available from Source International Information Support Centre.

We are interested in featuring a range of critical analysis commentaries of the communication for change field. These will appear regularly on the first Monday of each month and are meant to inspire dialogue throughout the month. Though we cannot guarantee to feature your commentary, as we have a limited number of issues to be published each year, if you wish to contribute please contact Deborah Heimann dheimann@comminit.com Many thanks!

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Engaging Culture in Development

"Culture is communication and communication is culture"
Edward Hall (1959: 186)

How does culture affect development and how can it be constructively engaged? Who wants to understand culture and why?

Development practitioners are increasingly asking these questions and recognising that culture influences development efforts in a variety of ways. Added impetus comes from work in HIV/AIDS communication, which has highlighted the links between communication on the personal level and social change, as well as the need to attend to social context and culture in supporting an effective response to HIV/AIDS.

There is still a tendency however, to see culture as 'what others have' (usually in the South). Where culture is addressed in communication strategies, it is usually to 'tailor' messages conceived and designed externally to local beliefs and traditions that are seen as fixed and unchanging. This misunderstands the complexity of culture and its role in social change. In fact, culture equally shapes the practices, methods and assumptions of international development work, where it is often assumed that rational, planned actors and agencies are unencumbered by cultural baggage. Culture influences the character of communication and social change at all levels - from the practice of elite organisations to the local beliefs and traditions in the North and South.

Culture?

Culture is elusive, perhaps because it is apparently everywhere, and yet cannot be reduced to one particular thing. A recent UNESCO initiative -'Culture and HIV/AIDS: a cultural approach to prevention and care' - draws on the Mexico Declaration (World Conference on Cultural Policies 1982) and defines culture inclusively as: 'encompassing traditions, beliefs, values, family structures, gender relations, personal and social relations' [click here for a summary of the UNESCO initiative]. An anthropological lens shows that culture is a dimension or aspect of all these things that relates to marking group-based differences and identities. Culture is not static or homogenous, but dynamic and contested, and cultural resources are selectively drawn on in any setting by particular interests, to draw distinctions and to mobilise people.

Anthropological studies have highlighted the communicative, expressive dimension of almost all aspects of human behaviour, notably; language and symbols, ritual, arts and crafts, music, buildings and monuments. Meanings and values are also embedded in the activities and practices of daily life and conduct. Studies of 'material culture' have shown how objects and things are put to use in the expression of social distinctions and values, and how even globalised resources, from designer clothing to cricket, are woven into the very particular expressions of people in particular times and places. Though communication is rarely separated out from the ebb and flow of life, indigenous cultures present a striking variety of means of communication - including dance, theatre, carving, painting, song and oral literature - and it is interesting to see such methods being 're-discovered' in contemporary communication for their power to engage people compared to writing and print.

Institutions and organisations also have 'culture' (something increasingly recognised in the field of organisational learning) and development organisations are no exception. Cultural assumptions shape both the public and explicit planning mechanisms of institutions and the private professional concerns and enthusiasms of powerful individuals and groups within development organisations. Anthropologists have explored the cultural dynamics of participatory development, the 'audit cultures' of monitoring and evaluation, and even the procedures and rituals of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) country visit. The Overseas Development Institute has similarly highlighted the very political processes among powerful groups of professionals that influence the making of development policy, challenging any assumptions that it rests solely on research and 'evidence'.

Culture and Development

So if culture is apparently everywhere, how does it make a difference in development?

Research by Creative Exchange, an international network of practitioners and organisations in the culture and development field, finds three main aspects of culture affecting development:

• Culture as context - the wider social environment and setting
• Culture as content - local cultural practices, beliefs and processes
• Culture as method - cultural and creative communication activities (such as popular theatre, music, dance, visual media, symbols) [Click here for more information]

Despite 350 examples from five development agencies over two years however, the research finds limited explicit policy on cultural issues, a lack of consistency in implementing projects, little understanding of how cultural processes work, and few examples of appropriate evaluation (currently Creative Exchange are working with Exchange and UNESCO to develop a holistic cultural approach to HIV/AIDS communication).

In the book 'Culture and Public Action', Amartya Sen's economic perspective includes culture as an important part of the 'capabilities' people bring to development. Culture influences development through: literature, arts and music - as valued forms of cultural expression in themselves; economically rewarding activities, like tourism; attitudes and behaviours related to work, reward and exchange; traditions of public discussion and participation; social support and association; cultural sites of heritage and memory; and influences on values and morals. The editors illustrate how taking local culture seriously can lead to more effective development. In one case, attention to the 'internal cultural logic' of a group of sex workers in Kolkata helped to involve them in a successful safer sex intervention that also catalysed efforts to organise a union of local women. In another case, misunderstanding of culturally sanctioned redistribution of aid through kinship networks exacerbated famine in Sudan. [For more on 'Culture and Public Action', click here]

But culture is not only a matter of local beliefs and traditions. Any local setting is affected by powerful external economic and social forces that set limits on the options for local actors. Catherine Campbell's recent work on peer education among sex workers and mine workers in South Africa illustrates this, showing the powerful constraints on what can be achieved in any one community. Wider factors such as gender norms and the economics of poverty conspired against sex workers and mine workers practicing safer sex. In addition, despite the project employing 'participatory' methods throughout, sex and mine-workers' input into the programme was limited by the power relations between the various stakeholders involved in the project and by hidden assumptions about who and what needed to change. [For more on Campbell's work in 'Letting Them Die: How HIV/AIDS Intervention Programmes Often Fail' click here] Attending to culture then, also means making visible the operations and assumptions of development professionals and other elite organisations.

Co-opting culture?

If it seems curious that something as ubiquitous as culture has been relatively invisible for so long in development, we also have to ask why the need to understand culture is suddenly a growing issue? Why now? Is it to strengthen communities' understandings of their priorities and values? Or to effectively 'translate' Northern derived messages? How is such understanding likely to be used?

Recent critical theory illustrates that increasing knowledge in a particular area - in the present case culture - may not simply be a neutral matter of deepening understanding, but may be linked to changing ways of governing social life. Critiques of anthropology have shown how its understanding of cultures has sometimes been used to administer colonial populations. More recently practitioners have highlighted the double-edged nature of participatory approaches to development. These can sometimes give people more control, but may also actually bind people to agency-driven development behind the appearance of 'authentic' local involvement. Ultimately, it is important to consider the specific setting and see how the prevailing dynamics of power and the detail of language, culture and practices of participation give people more or less self-determination. Here, the assumptions and rituals of development organisations also have to be scrutinised, not just the habits of the locals. Similarly, it is not only the poor recipients of development aid who may need to change their behaviour.

Complexity and social change

Another insight from anthropology is that communication and social and cultural change processes are complex, many-layered, and can not be reduced to the rational, transparent intentions of individuals. Systems theory and anthropology together suggest that social change may follow patterns that are complex and 'chaotic': local and global events may produce emergent and unpredictable outcomes, through cascades of feedback.

At the same time, studies of ethnic conflict and the media, show that certain symbols may galvanise people in ways that are not necessarily rational, democratic or transparent. The role of radio in the Rwandan genocide and newspaper reporting in sparking riots in Nigeria around the 'Miss World' contest provide two recent examples. In South Africa, the widespread belief that having sex with a virgin will cure HIV/AIDS may serve to mystify a range of social practices rooted in high levels of gender violence. Government inaction, high levels of male sexual violence, serial child prostitution, and the negotiation for influence of local healers are all practical factors which come to draw on and reproduce the myth in various ways for various reasons. Why certain ideas and symbols gain such a social momentum remains little understood, but the process is intimately bound up with the dynamics of culture and power.

It is important to remember that our world remains one of unequal access to the media and the means of cultural production that produce and sustain symbols, representations and images, both of which usually serve prevailing powerful interests. For many, this leads to an emphasis in development on strengthening the 'voice' and means of expression of people living with poverty. Not just a case of airing popular concerns on mainstream media, a concern for voice importantly includes supporting the novel forms of expression developed by people in their own self-defined struggle. In the case of Indian slum-dwellers, Appadurai describes the bawdy theatre of 'Toilet festivals' and 'Housing exhibitions' that transport dignitaries and officials into the world of slum sanitation and engage them in campaigns. [See 'Culture and Public Action']

Given the complexity of social change processes, the assumptions underlying much development communication - of individual behaviour change in response to 'messages' - look naïve or at least incomplete. This does not mean that people are not rational but that other dynamics are also at work in a more complex social picture. More explicit attention to culture in development is needed to understand and evaluate cultural processes and to sympathetically but critically engage culture in development.

The ethics of people's self-determined change also looms large. The complexity of culture and social change highlights that social life may be less amenable to planning or control from afar than has often been assumed. For some this means that development should focus on supporting the freedom and capacity for action of local actors - and what emerges should not be expected to follow prescribed patterns of western economic development. At the same time, issues of power appear at every level, from apparently taken for granted cultural practices, to global economic and political structures. Local actors who understand a particular situation are well placed to bring an informed knowledge of local conditions to their own development. But if our attention is only focused on the local, the wider cultures of communication and power that sustain global inequity will remain alive and well, both in our heads and under our noses. In which case, little will really change, as we search the horizon for the next development fix.

Robin Vincent
Social Anthropologist
Deputy Director of the Exchange programme
November 12 2004
Editor's note: Robin Vincent moved in 2005 from Exchange to the Panos Institute, London. His new email address there is Robin.Vincent@panos.org.uk

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Also see:

Culture and Public Action

Letting Them Die: How HIV/AIDS Intervention Programmes Often Fail

Cultural Approach to HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care [UNESCO]

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Please participate in a Pulse Poll on this same theme -

Explicit attention to culture - both of the implementers and the stakeholders - is crucial to the success of all development projects.

Do you agree or disagree?

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RESULTS of past Pulse Poll

Peace-building communication initiatives should prioritise building local communication platforms for dialogue and sharing over directing peace messages at the parties to the conflict.

[For context, please see The Drum Beat 278]

Agree: 95.24%
Disagree: 0.00%
Unsure: 4.76%
Total number of participants = 21

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This issue of The Drum Beat is meant to inspire dialogue and conversation among the Drum Beat network.

To read contributions please click here.

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This issue of The Drum Beat is an opinion piece and has been written and signed by the individual writer. The views expressed herein are the perspective of the writer and are not necessarily reflective of the views or opinions of The Communication Initiative or any of The Communication Initiative Partners.

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The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.

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