The Misuse of Culture

An obstacle to applying cultural knowledge is the fear of misuse and misunderstanding. Histories of cultural categories becoming cultural stereotypes have left behind scars and sensitivity, and this has lead some scholars to abandon the concept of “culture” altogether. Applying cultural knowledge is also deterred by chronic tension between accepting cultures as they are (trait-taking) or trying to change them (trait-making). Either way, one faces criticism. What’s more, a scholar’s ethnographic nuances may be misappropriated in practice and, in some cases, be bowdlerized by fellow academics. A detailed example from South Sudan conveys the dangers of misuse and misunderstanding. No wonder many anthropologists (and others) shy away from policy design and implementation.

Culture and Development Reconsidered

This book shows how we can look at the intersections among cultural settings, local choices, and development outcomes. A success story from Nepal serves as a prototype. Data, examples of success, and frameworks for analysis were developed locally and internationally and then shared in ways that elicited local creativity and respected cultural differences. This story serves as a springboard for reconsidering how to generate and apply cultural knowledge. The guiding metaphor might be “soil science” rather than “social science.” The culture and development manifesto calls for more science and more listening, for boldness and humility. It recommends a new paradigm for policy analysis and evaluation, as well as for the application of anthropological wisdom, where the goal is not to provide a set of answers that decision-makers or citizens should adopt and bureaucrats should implement, but to share data, examples, and frameworks in ways that helps locals enrich their creativity and expand their sovereignty.

Is Culture a Key to Development?

In the late 1980s the economy of the small African country of Equatorial Guinea was foundering. Macroeconomic adjustment hadn’t controlled corruption or strengthened the institutions of property, credit, and taxation. As a result, so-called free-market reforms had made little difference in, of all places, the market. Do reforms need to take account of local cultural conditions—including the possibility that what outsiders call development is not a priority? The finance minister explained to me the relevance, in cultures like his, of dictatorship, forced labor, and restrictions of freedom of speech and assembly. Indeed, he argued that Westerners can’t understand apparent torture without an appreciation of his country’s history and political culture. If not so stridently, other Africans agree that culture is a critical variable in advancing, or resisting, various forms of development. Some say, “We need to change our culture to move ahead.” Others argue, “At least we should adjust our policies to our cultural specificities.” How to take culture into account becomes a crucial practical question in development policy and management.

La Problématique

An immersion in academic anthropology provides its own culture shocks. Anthropologists have long studied and celebrated indigenous ways of life, diversity, and endogenous change. Yet when asked how to apply that knowledge to make the world better, the question itself becomes the problematic. Whose knowledge, whose idea of better, and who exactly is doing the applying? At the same time, many development practitioners and economists wave away culture as beyond their purview and, anyway, not scientific. If culture is important for many practical reasons and people have been studying culture for many years in many ways, why have the practical applications been so meager and difficult?

Adjusting to Cultures

Cultures interact with policy choices in ways that produce unintended consequences (alas, often negative ones). On the positive side, better knowledge about the interactions between policies, cultures, and outcomes can lead to better outcomes. This chapter offers some exciting examples. The field of cultural ergonomics takes culture into account in the design of everything from stoves to truck interiors to housing for the poor. A successful agroforestry program in Haïti didn’t try to change local “cultures” but to include locals in culturally appropriate ways. Other inspiring examples of cultural knowledge in action include governance reforms among Indigenous nations in the United States, culturally attuned pedagogy in Hawai’i, and a remarkable rural development program in West Africa. They have in common the application of anthropological knowledge through processes that respect and empower local people.

Culture and Corruption

Corruption and culture interact in ways that shed light on broader issues of culture and development. New statistical analyses show how various measures of corruption are strongly associated with cultural indicators. These associations lead to fallacious inferences, such as that cultural patterns of corruption imply cultural causation or indicate the need for a wholesale change of culture. It is more helpful to think of clashes of cultural norms within countries. The practical challenge is to reform systems so that the norms opposing harmful corruption have more scope, the norms favoring it less. Also, some “cultures of corruption” can be understood with the help of game theory—and this approach leads to helpful anti-corruption measures. We don’t have to try to “change our culture” to reduce corruption, but we do have to take our culture into account in design and implementation of anti-corruption initiatives. Examples are drawn from Brazil, Niger, and South Sudan.

Cultural Texts

Anthropology is good at uncovering and deconstructing the “cultural texts” beneath behavior. An example is Raymonde Carroll’s analysis of cultural misunderstandings between French and Americans. Digging out cultural texts and repertoires and sharing that knowledge helped her cross-cultural marriage flourish (and a famous book get written). Similar ideas can be applied to misunderstandings between international agencies and sovereign governments—and to discussions about taking indigenous institutions into account. Sometimes “poisonous texts” preclude effective negotiations. Three steps of cultural criticism applied to cultural texts can lead to better understandings and improved intercultural partnerships. Examples are provided from Burkina Faso and Senegal.

Are the Scientific Problems Too Hard?

Underlying the resistance of many anthropologists to the amplification and application of cultural knowledge are worries about pseudoscience. This chapter reviews the scientific difficulties in studying culture and development. Concepts are fuzzy and contested. Measures are inexact and controversial. The chapter provides new analyses of some of the latest data on various measures of development (including a new construct measuring life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) and various cultural variables. The relationships are sometimes surprisingly strong. But they are only suggestive, as full causal models remain an impossible dream. Nonetheless, thanks to analogies from soil science, psychology, and medicine, the chapter concludes with a less grand but perhaps more useful way to apply cultural knowledge.

Culture? Development? Manifesto?

Culture and development are seemingly innocuous concepts that, in some quarters, have become dirty words. And yet, around the world people are clamoring for a better understanding of both. Some want cultural change, others cultural preservation—or in different domains both, as in the case of Bhutan. Some people want to accelerate “development”; others want to resist it; still others call for a radical and pluralistic rethink of ends and means. How might both the redefinition of development goals and the redesign of policies and processes take account of cultural diversity? This manifesto calls for a renewed focus on the interactions between culture and development, always on the side of the disadvantaged, the underpowered, and the indigenous.

Cultures Approaching Cultures

The field of social and cultural anthropology has evolved from the science of man to something more like cultural critique. Some have deconstructed and thereby dismissed both “cultural science” as well as “development.” Others deconstruct that deconstruction, finding within anthropology itself a culture of marginality. The chapter summarizes stereotypical differences between anthropology and economics, which resemble something like clashing cultures. Given them, how can we move ahead more constructively? As with cross-cultural work in general, we have to be attentive to the differences while at the same time being receptive to ideas and approaches that may at first seem strange or unhelpful. We should entertain the possibility of being both critical and constructive.