a-Culture, Economic Development and the Third World # b-Metaphors of Global Inequality. part 1

1 - Iulia Nechifor [Studies and Reports of the Unit of Cultural Research and Management - No. 6]

2 - Michael P. Marks Department of Politics Willamette University [Paper prepared for the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association Seattle, Washington, April 17–19, 2014]

a- INTRODUCTION

In 1949, Harry Truman started the search for economic growth and technological progress for the Third World by including all of humanity in the paradigm of development - which he considered to be a condition shared by everyone. The perfect model was offered by Western society. Since then, despite the efforts of the “developing countries” to reach these objectives, the gap between their standard of living and that of the “developed’ countries remains very wide: 43% of the world’s population still belongs to the “very poor” States, while one third of humanity suffers from food deficiencies.

Rigorous structural adjustment programmes should have meant the disappearance in the early 1980s of the demands of the New International Economic Order. However, the new ideologies (basic needs strategy, development with a human face, sustainable development, human development, etc.) of the international and the non-governmental organizations, themselves in search of legitimacy, were unable to offer a viable solution which could significantly and permanently improve the standard of living of most of the population.

Belief in development, once “hostage” to the Cold War, is now faced with the challenges of globalization. With the demise of previous models, existing global theories are again being questioned; development has become an ambiguous concept, with contradictory interpretations. For some, it is synonymous with the vast movement which has expanded the system of commerce; for others, it covers all the measures which should make for a fairer world, despite its capitalist rationale. Or again - it is pure Utopia, as the infinite growth it presupposes would be impossible. 

Whatever the situation, it is clear that today no country in transition, whatever its history, its antecedents and its traditions, can ignore the concept of development. Based on the notion of human progress, the objective is to improve the standard of living of the whole population, on the Western model. However, the question asked in every country is how to find the best means of achieving this, as national strategies and various external programmes and projects have often been unsuccessful. 

In fact, for a great many countries which gained independence in the 1960s “made in the West” development has faced the general, multidimensional problem of obstacles inherited from the colonial period. These include economic and technological dependence, break-up of sociocultural and socio-economic systems, loss of traditions, etc. Although these problems are various and complex, for over three decades economic specialists have been the ones called in to solve them, and to find the miracle solution guaranteeing economic growth and technological progress. 

The main lines of development laid down by the United Nations have gone through various stages: “industrialization”, “human beings” and “the environment”,1’ for example. However, the means of reaching them remain the same: investment for profit, considered a guarantee of economic growth and a mandatory precondition for progress in every area of human activity. The backers, bilateral or multilateral agencies, have come to play a basic role in the process of development, as their methods are necessarily based on optimized calculations of profitability and of economic and financial rationality.  

_______________________________

[1] Referring to the main tendencies of development assistance and theories of development: 19.50-1970: quantitative approach (period of bulk assistance), financing of infrastructure and industrialization of industry; 1970-1990: qualitative approach, period of fundamental needs, priority to food self-sufficiency, education and health; 1988: sustainable development (Brundtland Commission); 1990: human development (United Nations Development Programme). 

External aid has been primary method of financing these investments. Its declared aim has been to contribute to development of “poor” countries, over time, in various ways, it has always effected major transformations in political, economic, social and cultural life of these States. The procedure used has often been contested, but remains valid: the imposition or transferral of “models” which correspond to the Western concept of development: democracy, a market economy, economic growth, etc. Aid is conditional upon the adoption of these “models”. But it often happens that various unexpected factors cause these processes to fail. Two examples might be significant in this respect: 

• At the La Baule Summit, President Mitterrand made aid to sub-Saharan Africa conditional on the establishment of democracy in the States concerned. The technical bases on which this climate could develop were then established: multi-party politics, the right to vote, freedom of the press, etc. The concrete results of these changes are still very far from those hoped for in 1990. The failure of the democratic process in many sub-Saharan African countries has often led to serious internal tensions, and should prompt discussion of the effectiveness of the Western political model in these States. The behaviour of the political actors there are ruled by laws different from those of the developed countries.  
• According to official statistics, 33% of the World Bank’s projects are failures; the funds invested in the name of development, billions of dollars, have not attained the goals for which they were allocated. In the face of such realities, certain questions must be asked: What causes these failures? Can links be established between political and economic failures?  

In fact, the difficulties and problems often encountered at the conclusion of many development programmes could be explained by fact that while they were being worked out and put into practice, one obvious aspect was ignored: the lasting impact on the populations of the developing countries of the practices and conceptions of the industrialized world. The former have their own economic, political, social, cultural and religious models, which have arisen from their own particular way of living and perceiving the world, while the practices and ideas of the latter are foreign and often incomprehensible, but attractive by virtue of their promise of eventual well-being and material ease. The influences and consequences of this ongoing interaction on the success of development objectives are significant, and should be the starting point of any action to improve the standard of living of the countries of the Third World, whether economic, legal, social, cultural, environmental, etc.

In the body of the text, we will develop our discussion around the multiple aspects of these contradictory or non-contradictory contacts. But before moving further into the debate, perhaps we might recall here the existence of a plain fact.  

Culture, or cultures, are based to a considerable degree on spirituality, immateriality. Culture is the set of signs by which we “recognize” a society, although admittedly with difficulty, owing to its diversity. Cultures are the successive “strata” which have forged, fortified and drawn the outlines of a society, if not of a State, and here we are not talking about the usual stereotypes. Culture is both “all-pervading”, and specifically, social, religious, artistic, economic, etc. 

Development, at least in some of its aspects, is in fact much more material and quantitative, while favouring “leaps” in quality. The reader should not believe that we are contrasting what is “useless” (all social, human and behavioural links created by the historic development of the society) with what is “useful” (operational economic development, based on technical, financial and human capacities, which in theory move society ahead towards a better state).  

We simply wish to say that the one (culture) and the other (development) are either complementary or they are not. This is a crucial issue, and should be addressed, despite its difficulty. It should be borne in mind that the decisive interdependence between culture and development has often been affirmed and defended by the populations of the developing States. It has also generally been recognized as valid by those making outside decisions, in this case the “donor” States, and been taken into account in the creation of development “projects”, “programmes” and “strategies”. But the distance between positions and analyses is striking, for various reasons. Here are a few: 

• There is contradictory position between various participants in development, developing States and organizations or “donor” countries. This is based on way they see means of resolving the problems. The developing States feel that adapting new methods to local specificities is the role of States receiving the aid. However, within latter, the elite in power, great consumers of luxury goods and therefore believers in “modernity”, find it easy to uphold and accept any changes in the direction of Western models of development. Seen from this point of view, culture acquires political dimension, relating back to the power relationships which structure particular social or regional differences in each country, as well as international relations.  
• Another important obstacle is complexity of problems, and fact that, unlike economic theories, there no ready-made “recipes” which would allow the distinctive features of society or of social group, their cultural characteristics, to taken into consideration when development process is devised and implemented. As result, culture, notion particularly rich in meaning, with dozens of definitions, has invariably been left off list of development concerns. It always been considered different, “intangible”, in comparison with economy, which represents “tangible reality”, as we suggested earlier. 

However, given both the industrialized countries and States of Third World going through a crisis at present, need for of overall concept of development being discussed more frequently. The complexity of interacting factors, until recently considered only from economic point of view, need progressively to taken into consideration.  

This reassessment of present strategies, the importance of cultural dimension is beginning recognized, at international level,in particular by certain bilateral and multilateral agencies which committed in practical terms to development projects, policies and strategies. Thus, few years, new expressions created by international organizations, most of all UNESCO, such as “self-directed development”, “endogenous development” and “integrated development”. At least these expressions make reference to the goal of process. They emphasize the importance of autonomous initiatives of populations, based on values, traditions and ways of life, on their own dynamic qualities. 

In context, thought it both stimulating and important, in first phase of research, to consider role of culture in development. also consider the importance of taking cultural factors into account in development strategies, as well as impact of development on particular local factors. In second part of study, tried to describe how international and regional organizations begun taking culture into account within framework of development programmes and projects, what the future of new approach may be. 

approach not aim initially at entering into problems of cultural development, which is fact one of key elements in development a society. Rather, intend ask questions about advisability and necessity of mainstreaming cultural dimension in development, which still controversial idea.

task in all more difficult when linking two themes usually considered by economists separate & distinct, no link or reciprocal influence whatsoever: “culture” and “development”. UNESCO publications dealing with subject, attempt to reflect truth of assertion that culture represents not merely one dimension among many, but fundamental factor of development, which a benchmark for measuring other factors. Without it, development cannot be truly successful or sustainable.  

Clearer picture of various forms impact of multiple endogenous and exogenous factors, given concrete examples, significant ones, our opinion. Suggest a interdependence close links which created between interventions external to certain sociocultural groups and kind of transformations which interventions engender in way of life target populations. Demonstrate influence of actions on success intended objectives. 

Part I

Culture and Development:The Process and The Interactions; What is at Stake

Introduction The heterogeneous and incompatible nature of the concepts of culture and development is taken for granted in economic theory.  

Culture, in today’s accepted usage, is defined as being both the perfect expression of a society, with its distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional characteristics, and the result of its history, the creative heritage of a society in its literary and artistic forms. By virtue of its various strands, culture is not a “quantifiable” reality for which recipes for growth or progress can be prescribed. Culture is immaterial, “intangible ” and qualitative, formed over time by successive “strata”. Culture is dynamic, constantly changing and in permanent contact, with varying degrees of significance, with other cultures. “Cultures” are more or less split, depending on the importance of ethnic differences, and do not therefore necessarily contribute to national unity or to the cohesion of a society.

Development, on the other hand, is the result of the transformation of Western society at the beginning of the nineteenth century, under the simultaneous impact of economic liberalism and scientific and technological progress. The latter is considered to be the systematic application and most remarkable “product” of the former. Development is therefore quantitative and quantzjiable. It can be concretely analysed, and can give rise to well-defined procedures and techniques, the aim of which is to reach a level of economic growth which engenders social progress and human fulfilment.

Development also evolves, but its “movement” is more dynamic than that of culture. Its immediate effects are “material” and “tangible “, and it is easy to evaluate them by mathematical calculations of economic and financial profitability and by eventual solutions obeying a priori rules, applicable to any and most remarkable “product” of the former. Development is therefore quantitative and quantzjiable. It can be concretely analysed, and can give rise to well-defined procedures and techniques, the aim of which is to reach a level of economic growth which engenders social progress and human fulfilment. Development also evolves, but its “movement” is more dynamic than that of culture.

Its immediate effects are “material” and “tangible “, and it is easy to evaluate them by mathematical calculations of economic and financial profitability and by eventual solutions obeying a priori rules, applicable to any sociocultural context. Unlike culture, development is a unifying force and creates social cohesion, despite the disparities and inequalities (rural/urban, rich/poor, etc.) which it also helps to create.

These are some of the differences which have meant that, over time, theories about development have been created without taking into consideration a possible reciprocal influence between cultural factors and economic progress or failure within a certain society. The existence of a close interdependence between these two aspects has nevertheless been shown, or at least presented as a determining factor, by anthropologists, sociologists and economists who have looked at religious factors and the basic cultural characteristics of a given society to explain the roots of its economic growth. We have labelled these studies “humanist”, given that this approach puts human beings and sociocultural contexts at the heart of its preoccupations.

On the opposing side, there are theorists of capitalist economics who argue that development is independent of culture. It must be specified that this “division” is not radical, as the conclusions of specialists on both sides often overlap, or are identical.

The debate on these questions, and the impact of culture on the level of development will be the subjects of the first chapter of this section, while the second chapter will be devoted more particularly to the changes and consequences which development, in its present form and accepted sense, can effect in the cultures of countries of the “South”.  

I. Relations between Culture and Development

1. The “cultural dimension of development”: a point in dispute  

By “the cultural dimension of development” or “cultural aspects of development”, is generally meant the manner in which the cultural factors characterizing a certain society are taken into consideration when a development strategy for that society is being framed. For the first time, the basic role of culture in world development strategies has been recognized and explicitly expressed in an evaluation report by the United Nations Joint Inspection Unit, concerning the implementation of the New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s.

This report affirms in particular that only when the process of development is truly rooted in the thinking of African populations will they really become fully involved in mastering the mechanics of modemization. “One of the most fundamental issues to Africa’s modemization efforts concerns the indigenous cultural factor, more precisely the interplay between traditional sociocultural values and practices and modem development imperatives.“ [3] UNESCO has played an important role in this recent change; the cultural dimension is one of the major themes of its doctrine, which has taken shape since the Venice Conference (1970) and has today become the most basic factor of development, serving as a benchmark for measuring all the other factors. This change in awareness was a long, slow process, as development strategies adopted by newly independent countries were supposed to reproduce the model of highly urbanized and industrialized Western societies. After several decades, during which development was reduced to a strictly economic dimension, and after the many failures of the strategy, questions began to be asked about the causes of this situation. It was thus that studies by anthropologists and sociologists (Taylor, Levi-Strauss, Max Weber, Durkheim, etc.), and by certain economists, such as Francois Per-roux, for example, became the point of departure for explanations of the effects of the transformations undergone by traditional societies during economic development. 

1.1 The anthropological and humanist approach  

The anthropological heritage [4] 

 The “cultural dimension” is a relatively new approach in world development strategies. Its supporters consider it to be the only approach capable of offering a viable solution, given the events and crises that have been part of development policy and which have periodically forced the re-evaluation of the importance of the cultural factor. The basic idea is that sustainable development can exist only if the “sociocultural context in which development is to take place, as well as the specific conditions that relate to the particular culture” [5] are taken into consideration. 

From this perspective, culture is considered, in the anthropological sense of the term, to be the “whole complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features that characterize a society or social group. It includes not only the arts and letters, but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of the human being, value systems, traditions and beliefs”. This definition appears in the preamble to the Mexico City Declaration in the Final Report of the World Conference on Cultural Policies, Mexico City, 1982, and constitutes the starting point for “integrated” development strategies. 

Two basic features of this definition are significant for development: its collective character (since culture is characteristic of a society or a group, it is social and defines a way of being together with others) and its comprehensive dimension (culture consists of all the activities by which a society defines and identifies itself).  

This definition is applicable to all societies, Western and non-western, “developing” and “developed”, but “it applies with special force to many communities in the developing world, where the identity of the group still has priority over any sense of individual identity in structuring to the psychological reality of its members and determining their ability to act confidently in their own names.[6]

In fact, the definition of culture is a thorny problem in anthropological and sociological analysis, as there are almost as many definitions of culture as there are authors; hence its ambiguity. 

First of all, we seem to persist in confusing at least three or four very different meanings of the word “culture”:  

(a) a narrow meaning, the direct result of a Western, elitist conception of society: it applies to works of the mind, or in other words “the fine arts” and “literature”;

(b) a wider, sectoral meaning: a culture is whatever results from a “cultural system”, as opposed to other systems (political, economic and bio-social), and which includes language, mentalities, opinions, information, education, scientific research, philosophy and religions;[7]

(c) an overall or anthropological meaning: a culture is defined as being all the institutions, techniques, behaviours, beliefs and values which characterize a given society, considered in its specificity and its distinctiveness; hence the expression “dialogue of cultures”; 

(d) and finally, a dynamic, diachronic meaning, perhaps the most important, because it includes all the others: culture, whether individual or collective, in its original metaphorical meaning (to cultivate the earth): at the same time a return to one’s roots, the recognition of a common identity and heritage, and a project, a continual process of creation moving towards the future. In this sense, “culture is the means of transforming this heritage and is the key to real development.[8]

These various shifts in meaning, and the complexity of its “components”, make this a difficult concept to define. American ethnologists A.L. Kroeber and C. Kluckhohn have put together a typology of definitions of culture. According to them, the term “culture” had seven different definitions between 1871 and 1919, and 157 between 1920 and 1950. They have identified various types of definitions: enumerative (following the example of Taylor, culture is seen as a whole made up of “knowledge, beliefs, art, law, morality, customs and all the other aptitudes and habits which human beings acquire as members of a society”),’ historical (culture represents a social heritage, a sum total of learned behaviours), normative (culture is a way of life common to the individuals making up a given society, and a group of rules and ideals devised to perpetuate social interactions), psychological (culture appears as a “learned manner of solving problems”), structural (according to L&i-Strauss,” culture is a coherent network of meaning into which all sectors of social life fit (relationships, religion, politics, etc.), genetic (every lasting social interaction implies the setting up of a means of communication - culture - uniting all the acts and situated at a much more abstract, inclusive level than explicit behaviours, which, according to the situation, may be complementary or divergent) and semiotic (culture presupposes a “code”, that is, a system of meanings which the members of a group know and use in their interactions).

Study of the operative range of these definitions reveals their complementary character. Thus, while conceiving of culture as being all recurrent productions of social action, definitions of the enumerative, historic, normative types in fact suppose that these productions are coherent and form a unit. Structural and semiotic analyses offer a different explanation for this coherence, namely, their belonging to a single code, a single system of meanings. As for the genetic definition, it emphasizes the dynamic character of culture, its development and transformation through interactions with other cultures, that is, with other systems of meaning. 

Culture and the sociological explanation Theories of political and economic sociology can take credit for having shown the complementarity of the different components that feature in the anthropologists’ definitions. They have made a major contribution to explaining the links between the system of meanings of a society, and hence its culture, and the factors which contribute to the economic transformation or the modification of its social structure.

Thus, setting out to analyse the relationships between action and meaning, Max Weber, one of the “founding fathers of economic sociology”, set himself the goal of “knowing the cultural meaning and the causal relationships of concrete reality”. In the very first pages of Economy and Society, the author defines activity as “human behaviour (. . .) when and to the extent that the agent or agents give objective meaning to that behaviour”. Activity becomes social when, “according to the meaning intended by the agent or agents, (it) relates to the behaviour of others, in relation to whom the activity is directed”.[13] By bringing together the analysis of human activity and that of meaning, Weber claims a cultural dimension for sociology. Taking this approach, the author considers that “strictly traditional” and “strictly affective” behaviours are at the limit of meaningfully oriented activity. Tradition, affective reaction and reasoning concerning values all bring us face to face with activities which clearly reveal the plurality and discordance that history has assigned to cultures.

Thus we come closer to the anthropological construction of culture, while enriching it with several supplementary elements. First of all, the conditions that give rise to cultures are determined not by social systems, but by the actors, by the competition between them and by their creativity, faced with given challenges. These conditions are indissolubly linked to action, to social relations, and above all, to the repeating pattern of the latter. 

It is through power, domination (relations of force create competition between status groups with particular “ideal and material interests”, and this competition will lead to the domination of one of them, whose models of behaviour and values will become sources of personal commitment for each individual within the society) or custom (human action is not constant creation, but usually imitation, the re-use of established meaning) that the meaning of the action shifts from being individual to being collective. Thus it creates the “network of meanings” which imprisons and constrains all the individuals within the same social interactions. This culturalist attitude is very clear in the work of the German sociologist; he notes, for example: “What we find interesting, we economists, is the analysis of the cultural meaning of the historic situation that has made exchange nowadays a mass phenomenon”.

Thus the interactions between the different actors in contact with one another forge a certain system of meanings with which the actors will identify. If power struggles impose “dominant models”, this interaction risks bringing about the loss or destruction of the “dominated’ models. If we refer now to the modern tendency of the capitalist economy to become universal, it may be deduced that the success of this process would inevitably depend on the power of the “dominant” model to impose itself on local customs; their disappearance, total or partial, would thus be inevitable in the long term. 

Culture and its operative range

But beyond the difficulties encountered in defining culture, recourse to this concept also creates methodological problems which incontestably limit its operative scope. By raising questions about the relationship between culture and politics, Bertrand Badie draws attention to the complexity and the limits of the operational analysis of culture in the following terms: “The concept is first of all a victim of its own pertinence: although it allows each group’s particular system of meanings to be understood, it is already a product of the constraints that weigh upon the observer, who in turn belongs to a culture which leads him to perceive the cultural characteristics that he is studying according to his own meaning system. Several methodological presuppositions could be made at this stage: is it possible to perceive one culture through another? Is it possible to preserve the identity of a meaning system by describing it and expressing it through the use of a different system? Is the simple act of translation not already a considerable source of reduction, not to say perversion, of meaning?“  

One explanation of the slowness with which Western political and economic sociology has begun to consider the cultural problems of development resides perhaps precisely in the fact that it refused for many years to ask this type of question. This has been one of the major methodological difficulties concerning the dimension of cultures. Everyday language is already responsible for many misunderstandings, referring indiscriminately to “French culture”, “Breton culture”, “Western culture”, “working-class culture”, but also to “dominant culture”, “subcultures” or “microcultures”. Scientific language generally oscillates among this variety of uses, keeping up an interminable debate concerning whether it is appropriate to speak of “an Islamic culture” or “Islamic cultures”, “a Christian culture” or “Christian cultures”. 

From this point of view, one obvious point is clear: a map of cultures cannot be established in the same way as a chart of economic growth. The latter refers to reality and to concrete criteria; culture, on the contrary, refers to a complex construct, the limits of which vary according to the subject being studied, and which therefore implies a decision, or a choice, by the sociologist.  

One well-known example in this connection is the analysis made by Max Weber, who believes that the essential characteristics of the Puritan ethic can be found at the root of the creation of modem capitalism. Indeed, since he observes culture to be a “social fact”, Weber sees the creation of modem capitalism not as a universal category of social action, but as a “historical individual” which implies a precise cultural meaning. By contrasting Protestantism and Catholicism, the sociologist is identifying the existence of an obvious interdependence between the values of the Puritan religion and those of modem capitalism, which breaks with medieval capitalist practices, thus distinguishing itself from non-western types of capitalism and creating a singular action model. By drawing attention to the importance of predestination, Weber considers Puritans to be under permanent stress, always seeking actions that will give them the certainty that they are the elect, seeking performance rather than luxury, and cultivating asceticism rather than the desire for money. Their actions on earth are organized in the most rational manner possible, so that, by succeeding in their work, they can be assured of salvation. 

Three essential characteristics of the Puritan ethic might explain this attitude: 

First of all, Protestantism refers constantly to a strong tension between “cosmic” order and “earthly” order. Human action acquires a goal-oriented meaning which sets it apart from resignation and from religious ecstasy, thus already ruling out Catholic monasticism.

In the same way, Puritanism goes further than any other culture in “disenchantment with the world’, leaving magic behind and abolishing the sacramental functions and thus the religious institutions forged by Roman Catholicism. Finally, social action takes on a purely individualistic meaning, as, by acting within society, individuals act to find their own salvation, but without the intermediary of any institution, and therefore alone before God.”

Thus Weber asserts and demonstrates that there exists a direct causal link between culture, in the anthropological and semiotic sense of the term, and the behaviour of the social actors, which leads to and explains the choice and the definition of an ecorzomic model.  

This is how the birth and the spread of Western development is explained. It is based on the cultural values of European society, and spread over almost the whole planet in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, through colonization and trade. The Western development model is not a culturally neutral concept; it is rooted in the Western idea of progress. This, added to individual independence, the first signs of which appeared when European feudal society disintegrated, has evolved since the eighteenth century into individualism and a sense of competition applied to the accumulation of wealth. 

There exists, therefore, a close relationship between Western culture and the development model of the West. The latter is an “endogenous model”, which evolved out of the development of social relations in Europe; once again, this shows the complementary character of these two concepts.

By taking into account the contribution of anthropological and sociological studies to a definition of culture and the role it plays in the structuring of a society, we can better understand the increasing interest in culture that has been observable for several decades. This change is part of the history of ideas and of the policies followed with regard to development in the Third World. 

  1.2 The economist vision

Scientifically constructed by anthropologists, the concept of culture has a special status for them, as we have seen above. It is seen as the central subject of analysis and the identifying mark of that science. In the domain of economics, on the contrary, the concept of culture has been reduced to a banal reality, one variable among many others, in relation to which it must be situated. This refers to the fact that culture is more often than not taken in its most narrow sense, reduced to the Western conception of society, and designating works of the mind, or the literary and artistic production of any society or social group.

Economists also try to use it as an instrument of comparison, to perceive and interpret the gaps that separate different economic systems. They are thus constantly tempted to place cultures in universal categories which show up the differences or similarities. In this way the “Asian miracle”, for example, is recognized in terms of the values of the Confucian ethic.

Adopting these principles, certain theorists believe that development that respects the cultural values of various societies is meaningless and cannot constitute a possible or desirable solution to the present problems of the Third World. Their arguments are based on the fact that the capitalist development model is one-dimensional, the only one which is viable and capable of offering the eventual improvements hoped for by the populations of the “underdeveloped” countries and the only way of reducing such calamities as overpopulation, famine, war, disease, etc. “Respecting cultures is not a value in itself. If respecting cultures means maintaining misery, poverty and contempt for the elementary rights of human beings, there is no reason to regret deculturation and Westernization.“

The cultural dimension in preoccupations concerning development is thus considered to be a pure illusion, a utilitarian conception of culture introduced into development for no good reason. The typical example, often quoted in this context, is that of the informal economy, which has developed and which functions in these countries on the model of the market economy, and the creation of which is independent of the cultural identity of these societies: 

 . . . true cultural recognition in this case seems to be cancelled out by the one-dimensional economic model”.

In the same way, in a paper’ on economics and ethics, Benjamin Higgins holds that classic economic thought is more and more pertinent as regards development, while emphasizing the limits of economic analyses when it is a matter of understanding present development problems and tackling them: “Macro-economics analyses the overall functioning of national economies. It studies the behaviour of households, companies, workers and investors in order to explain the price-structures, the allocation of resources and the distribution of income. As regards politics, the main task of the macro-economy is to ensure sustained growth [of income per inhabitant] as well as full employment and the prevention of inflation. It is basically neutral as to the distribution of income among social categories, regions of one country and countries themselves. It is based on a single value judgement: sustained growth, full employment and stable prices are good things”.

This kind of analysis is in line with the theories of economic specialists that have marked the main tendencies in development assistance in post-war history.  

Stapes in the growth of awareness

In the first stage, which corresponds closely to the 1950s the originally Marxist model predominated, giving priority to infrastructure and to “industrializing industry”, as well as the narrow elitist concept of culture. The latter was identified with works of the mind, that is, “fine arts” and “literature”, as can be seen from the specific role played by Ministries of Culture, which were created during this period, and even in the name UNESCO, in which culture is appended to science and education. Development projects, whether in terms of international multilateral or bilateral cooperation, completely ignored cultural aspects.

From the 1960s onwards, there was a tendency to question the primacy of economics, and to put politics first. The importance of the idea of power in the interpretation of any societal system was stressed, with the contrast between dominator and dominated. At the same time, the colonial powers recognized the independence of many countries which thus acceded to political sovereignty on an international scale, that is, to the right to have a cultural policy in a systemic sense.

With the 1970s a new phase began, during which it was increasingly recognized that economic conditioning and the way authority and politics were organized were not the most important elements; rather, ways of thinking, the situation of the individual in the world, i.e. ontological and philosophical concepts, were paramount. The ideologies of a society themselves imply, in large measure, not only mentalities, behaviour and opinions, but also political institutions, economic life and social relationships. The basic idea behind these observations was that societies organize themselves around the networks between individuals and groups, between groups and society y as a whole, and therefore between nature and culture, taking the latter in its overall anthropological meaning. 

During this period, the same movement could be seen in the Third World countries, which were now demanding decolonization and cultural independence. Peoples and ethnic groups began the quest for their own identity by returning to the roots of their own culture, while UNESCO began to emphasize the cultural dimension of development. This implied that there could be no true development unless it was rooted in the way of life, the beliefs and the world-view of the community concerned. It was understood that development comes about through the understanding of the deepest impulses of societies, and the traditional values of those who had previously been the “silent peoples”.

International organizations, and above all UNESCO, affirmed that an imposed development model - a Western one - must give way to what was called “integrated endogenous development”, with the populations concerned taking charge of themselves and of their own future. Culture, rather than being a “surplus” or a “plus”, was to take on the status of a basic condition for development.

This new position has been affirmed in recent decades in many speeches and conferences of regional and worldwide scope, and multilateral and bilateral cooperation and development organizations have in turn endorsed it. 

On a practical level, the financial crisis of the States and the numerous problems which appeared in economies dependent on outside capital, aid or loans, led the theorists to revise their approach to economic take-off. Accordingly, the qualitative approach to development began to take over from the quantitative: the theory of basic needs (training people through vast education programmes and then satisfying their food needs) and of structural adjustment plans (allocating lump sums to States, paid in stages, on the condition that the latter apply certain economic measures, such as export incentives, budgetary and fiscal reform, the downsizing of public services, privatization of some sectors of the economy, modification of agricultural prices, etc.) were to form the priorities of development assistance from the start of the 1980s. 

But the move from speech to action is far from having been accomplished. The difficulties of the operative range of the concept of culture, and the fact that many economic specialists denied the utility of this approach to the development process, explain the fact that the application of these principles has often remained stagnant.

Study of these great theories in the history of development reveals the existence of a dominant ethnocentric ideology, based on the following: 

1. A linear, mechanical conception of history, which presupposes that all societies must pass through the same stages of development to reach a stage at which the economic apparatus is capable of assuring the same level of income as that of the populations of countries considered to be “developed’. This model is most explicit in the theory of the “mass impulse”, and is most flagrantly invalidated by the economic history of the oilproducing countries. 

2. A technocentric method of reasoning, according to which the main aim of any society is to acquire the values that are characteristic of “developed’ societies: a spirit of initiative, profit, competition, material security and above all a determined effort to possess certain goods and services typical of highly industrialized societies.

3. A point of view strongly influenced by economic theory, namely that the appropriate use of instruments of economic policy is enough to allow a country to achieve the above objectives. 

A summary analysis of the effects of the application of this ideology points to some obvious observations:

First of all, the results of mimetic development were very often partly or wholly disappointing, given the number of failures. Thus, although structural adjustment, for example, first tried in Asia and Latin America (in countries deep in debt, but having begun a process of economic diversification and endogenous industrialization), enabled major financial balances to be re-established, and the confidence of foreign investors to be restored, the “social cost” was high. In Latin America it has been called “the lost development decade”.** In the same way, applied in Africa in the middle of the 1980s structural adjustment did not achieve the expected results. The causes were said to be of a different type: the poor functioning of infrastructures, severe deterioration of agriculture, absence of integration between cities and countryside, etc.

Second, the application of this ideology in fact created a mechanism of cultural transfer (understood here in the anthropological sense of the term), from the industrialized countries to the developing countries, from the centre towards the periphery. Thus societies without sufficient resources adopted a lifestyle accessible only to a minority of the population, which in fact mortgaged their economic future and compromised the preservation of their cultural identity.  

Without denying the extent of some economic progress which resulted from development, or the positive impact of science and technology, it must be remembered that these changes generally took place without taking into account two essential factors: the “social cost”, in terms of violence and collective and individual distress arising out of transformation judged to be “positive”, and the obstacles to development processes endogenous to the societies in question. 

The need for and usefulness of development is not challenged by taking these factors into consideration, but goals should be adapted to the means and the needs of the populations concerned, without creating negative repercussions on their standard of living or on their cultural identity.  

It is from this point of view that the cultural dimension could provide a solution, among others, for the success of the development process. To that end, we must consider why culture could offer such solutions and what might be the effect of the needs of a Western economy on developing groups.

2. Building cultural factors into development strategies

Basic economic elements - resources in the form of raw materials, capital, the workforce, production ratios, investment, exchanges, distribution, growth rates, etc. - have hitherto been, as we have seen, at the centre of explanatory accounts of development. The most immaterial characteristics of a civilization - religion, prejudices, superstitions, historically based reactions, attitudes to authority, taboos, motivations for activity, behaviour in response to change, individual and collective morality, values, education, etc. - were relegated to the rank of minor satellites, spinning around the central structure.

But if development “is . . . a process which extends beyond mere economic growth and to incorporate all dimensions of life and all the energies of a community, all of whose members are called upon to make a contribution and can expect to share in the benefits”, such a process is impossible without the active and dynamic participation of the target populations. However, this implication is based on an underlying factor that identifies and determines the way a society behaves, namely, its culture.  

2.1 Culture, the root of all human activity

If culture is “the whole complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features that characterize a society”, thus forming a “system of meanings” decipherable only by that society, the result is that all human activity undertaken by that society is directed and dictated by its own specific, deep-rooted characteristics. Culture, in the anthropological sense of the term, is at the root of all human behaviour, whether in “modem” or “traditional” societies. This relationship has been represented in the following chart.

This chart (the number of sectors has been chosen at random), clearly shows the fact that all human behaviour, all productive activities developed by human beings, integrated into a certain society, are profoundly rooted in this whole, which constitutes both the heritage and the spiritual and conceptual development of the social group to which it belongs. It is this set of characteristics which forges the identity of a society and which determines its own particular characteristic activities, in relation to which the society defines itself.

Culture, taken in the restricted sense of the term, as a distinct category of activities, becomes a specific domain towards which the choice of a number of people can be directed, depending on their preferences. But this understanding of culture as a sector of activities is, in reality, valid only for the populations of developed countries. In non-industrialized countries, “in mining villages, inner city ghettos, shanty towns and remote rural communities around the world, the survival of the group has always been and still is the best policy, even the only policy to choose from, to ensure the survival of the individual. The individual who is able to put him or herself first, before the interests of his or her community, is for most societies a comparatively recent historical invention, and at best only an intermittent and partial reality even today, derived from their mercantile philosophy and from the later evolution of Christianity.“

Recourse to “traditional” forms - and all societies carry within themselves their own traditional forms - acquires a new dimension in developing societies, since the sense of the private life of the individual is subordinated to that of the community. The demands made by the latter can always take priority over personal wishes, at any time, without warning.

A significant example of the differences between the way culture structures and defines human behaviour in “traditional” and “modem” societies might be the following:

“Doctor Terry Ryan, Secretary for Economics in the Ministry of Finance of Kenya, says that he is waiting for the day when a local economist will propose an analysis based on the real motivations of Africans and will show a real grasp of the means of increasing social capital in the present African context. For example, few foreigners, it would seem, easily understand how an African can, by wasting time (for example, by drinking a beer with a friend in a local ‘pub’), be increasing his social capital, because personal relations can often be a better guarantee of security for an individual than the meagre salary earned by working. Ryan attributes the lack of consideration for local cultural and religious values to the Western way of thinking about social privileges and individualism. Rich Westerners cannot understand that even slaves have an advantage over the poor. Slaves have an identity; they belong to someone, whereas poor people today, particularly in Africa, do not belong anywhere, and have no links to anyone.“ 

according to their own “models”, which are the result of inheritance and the development of the societies in which they are moulded as individuals. Their behaviour thus reflects the internal logic of the social group to which they belong, and this coherence is explained by the fact that it corresponds to the same system of meaning to which individuals belonging to the same society subscribe. Hence the fact that “Westerners” feel “out of place” in Africa and do not understand the attitude of the inhabitants of this part of the world as regards “work”, while rural Africans find it difficult to adapt to activities with fixed timetables, since in traditional societies, time has another dimension. It is cyclical, repetitive; it is measured from the sunrise to sunset and according to the ripening of the crops, to the rhythm of the seasons. This perception is totally different from that of “modem” societies, which perceive time as linear, irreversible and inescapable.

The indications of the way in which specific cultural characteristics (religion, tradition, customs, etc.) influence, structure, coordinate and determine the life and the behaviour of members of a society are obvious in every area of the latter’s activities: political (type and internal organization of political systems, decision-making mechanisms), economic (workprofit relations, production technology, distribution of the final product), town and country planning (model and zoning of dwellings in an urban or rural setting), etc.

Outside interventions in any group in society that wishes to modify itself in one way or another, in its own particular internal order, risk overthrowing the system, and the repercussions are usually negative for the future of the individuals or social groups involved. Their reactions to exogenous factors are different and complex, and often reveal, when it is a matter of “development”, a rejection of the “graft” imposed on them.

Studies concerning possible solutions, aimed at an adaptation of local working methods to the demands of a modem economy, show that taking cultural factors into account could yield useful answers: “African workers are known for their high absenteeism. Why not develop temporary jobs? For Africans, time is divided into fairly variable periods, and their way of life gives a rhythm to the days according to several sequences (hunting, working in the fields, eating, rest). It would be judicious to adopt flexible, personalized working hours. There is no need for Africans to take long holidays, as they take leave every time there is a ritual or occasional celebration. This would seem to call for flexible, personalized working hours, and the formal recognition of holidays taken over very short periods”.

2.2 Local distinctive features faced with outside intervention    

Taken for the most part in its most limited sense, as one sector of human activity among other sectors, such as the economy, health, politics, etc., culture becomes an area which, in development strategies, is secondary, as the belief is that it will flourish only if the economy does so. The economy is capable of boosting activity in all the other sectors. It is in any case with this in mind that the expression “cultural development” is used.

This position is specific to the economic theories of development, as conceived by specialists from industrialized countries. They are a “product” of “modernity”. But this “modernity” is in its turn the result of successive transformations and the development of Western society, which, by its aspirations, its way of acting, its beliefs, its prejudices, etc. - its culture, in other words - has arrived at the stage of development towards which so-called “underdeveloped’ countries are moving. It could therefore be considered that there exists a direct relation between the Western development model and the culture of the industrialized countries. Schematically, this relationship could be represented in the following way:

culture <------> development  

The ongoing reciprocal influence between culture and development marks and defines the development of “modem” societies. There exists, therefore, a perfect compatibility between Western culture and its product, industrial development, culminating in the nineteenth century.

The same model, transferred to “traditional” societies, shows that this concordance cannot be maintained, as two incompatible elements must be reconciled: the “culture” or “cultures” of poor countries (still deeply rooted in their traditions, customs and religious beliefs), and unfamiliar ways of life and behaviour, which are sometimes in conflict with the deepest convictions of these societies.

II. Economic Development and its Impact

It has often been seen, not least in “developed” countries, that even when difficulties of an economic nature are solved and living standards are raised, social problems break out. Technological and economic progress, the dynamic of societies in flux, has sometimes created obstacles that did not previously exist. These are what have been termed the “human costs” of development, one of these costs being biological in nature - pollution and destruction of the environment (contamination of water and the air, noise, destruction of fauna, vegetation and soils) - while the other is sociaE and cultural and takes the form of urban decay and social disintegration (overpopulation, the creation of shanty towns, the loss of cultural identity,31 the break-up of communities and families, the isolation of social categories and age groups, etc.).

If social progress is the primary objective of development, these consequences are extremely undesirable, as they have a destructive effect on life. In other words, the current crisis of development is having an impact on people as biological, individual beings within society; it is a psychobiological crisis as much as a sociocultural one. This situation has been brought about by the simultaneous workings of a number of factors:

the failure of development planners to find methods and solutions that are appropriate to the situations and needs of the countries concerned; the attitude of the elites in power;  the impact of different forms of development transfer (transfer of legal systems, technical and economic know-how, technologies, etc.) on the living standards of the target populations.

If these transformations are effected without reference to the cultural dimension of these societies, the social costs can become extremely high, and “development” can no longer be accomplished, or at least “launched” irreversibly. It can prove far more costly to make up for these dysfunctions than to produce strategies and initiatives, right from the outset, that foster development and take account of the traditions and sociocultural characteristics of the societies concerned. 

1. The issues raised by economic development

1.1 . The culture clash and its consequences

Today’s world is characterized by ever-increasing contact between different nations. One effect of this ceaseless movement is to alter the properties that define those nations: their culture, their socio-political and economic systems, etc. If we confine ourselves to studying the processes that arise when two cultures come into contact and act upon each other, the phenomenon that most frequently receives a mention is that of acczdturation, the definition of which generally concentrates on the following aspects: “Since a cultural system is determined by the internal balances among the forces making up the group, if a hegemonic outside system intervenes, the balance of the old system.

breaks down, to the advantage of the dominant values of the dominant system. Thenceforward, new alienating and alienated cultural signs, detached from the hegemonic system, are introduced into the old culture. As these signs and productions are no longer produced by the group concerned, they are outside their control, and thus produce a typical alienated culture situation. This is what is called acculturation.

It should be pointed out that there are contacts which are not necessarily hegemonic. In Cordoba, for instance, Jews, Christians and Muslims lived together for some time without the domination of one group crushing the cultures of the others. What acculturation refers to, however, is the whole range of phenomena resulting from direct and continuous contact between groups of individuals from different cultures, when this leads to changes in the cultural types of one or both groups.

Through study of the changes produced in the course of colonization, another concept, that of controlled acculturation, began to be introduced into the research field of human sciences specialists. Thus, since Malinowski, colonial anthropologists have sought to create a science of the interpretative phenomena of civilizations, so that colonization can “succeed” and imperial administrators can avoid the mistakes of the past. 

With the formation of independent States in Asia, Oceania and Africa, and with different economic or ideological “imperialisms” competing around these new States, there emerged the notion of planned and rationally oriented acculturation. This involves, on the one hand, having the governments of countries that have recently appeared on the world map take charge of acculturation, which in this case means Westemization only, and, on the other, making use of scientific theories to further interests that are left far too ambiguous; this is why a new vocabulary has been invented - development instead of acculturation - with consensus being built on the primacy of the politico-economic perspective.

Two types of “domination” factor, and thus two types of planning system, have been identified, one in the “West” and the other in the “East”. Planned acculturation in the West lays stress on the cultural aspect, and consequently on the ideas of adaptation (of native traditions to modem values), maturation (the more time is allowed for change the better it will succeed; you cannot force nature) and function (any cultural institution is performing a function, so it can only be replaced by another, deemed better because Western, if the latter performs the same function). The strategy for achieving these ends would be to employ two postulates of the theory of cultural anthropology:  

1. Any culture is composed of a set of cultural traits; these traits are linked to one another by networks of reciprocal action and reaction. 
2. Culture dominates the life of society, so any change to institutions, structures and behaviour will be pointless unless the system of values has previously been adjusted and attitudes have also progressed.

With this ideology as the starting point, a whole series of changes have been brought about, during and since colonization, in the countries of the Third World. The measures taken have been determined, broadly speaking, by the following strategies: changing just one feature (for example, dietary habits) in the knowledge that, because cultural phenomena are interconnected in networks, a chain reaction will take place, but one that the experts will be able to monitor; acting first on people’s attitudes, through literacy training; or fostering the emergence of new needs that did not exist in the old culture, for example by introducing money and launching previously unknown goods on to the market; lastly, avoiding xenophobic reactions by choosing leaders in each community that is to be “acculturated” and then “acculturating” them so that they become members of the “in” group and not the “out” group, turning them into defenders of change and Westemization. 

As regards the countries of Eastern Europe, which were subject to a communist regime for almost half a century, acculturation (which is not acknowledged as genuine) rested on the following two postulates:  

1. The Marxist distinction between infrastructure and superstructure: if methods of production are changed, cultural systems will automatically change with them, or old cultures will turn into mere “folklore” that no longer represents any danger.  
2. As these cultural undertakings depend on modes of production, among the political conflicts that involve force and revolution (struggle against feudalism, religious orders, etc.), there will be another shock, a cultural one between the cultures of socialist countries and the cultures of those around them, i.e. between the “proletarian culture” and the different “national cultures”. Relying on nationalist ideologies, while maintaining national values as “colouring”, proletarian culture ultimately proved to be external and invasive. 

The two examples show that in reality the same phenomena are to be found in the different types of planned acculturation, and that there is ultimately an identity of substance beneath the differing concepts. The reason for this identity is that this phenomenon derives from the idea that certain Western values are superior, at least in the technical and economic spheres, and often in the political one as well, and that these values should therefore be imposed by those in power (whether they are part of a given ethnic group or outside it). 

The creation of independent nations with power over their own destiny was to create conditions in which adaptation phenomena could come to prevail over tension phenomena. Some examples of this are provided by the situation in Africa, with “Negritude” (i.e. the desire to maintain African traditions within acculturation processes) ceasing to have a polemical form and taking on a syncretic form, in which both types of culture coexist while simultaneously a search goes on for new, original formulae that suit the circumstances of each society. What has been called “African socialism”, which seeks to be a “community socialism”, based therefore on the identity values of the populations concerned, is opposed to the “societal socialism” of the West, and at the same time represents an attempt to “mould’ the contributions of European culture to the specific characteristics of African cultures. 

Yet this process of creating, transforming and adapting new models and forms of organization in the economic, political, social and other spheres is far from having been completed and from having found the appropriate solution for each situation. The most common situation in today’s world, one that all societies are confronted with, is that of heteroculture, a term that refers to “the dualist structure of a society that is organized on the basis of two cultural patterns: tradition and modernity, these two sources being considered at once indispensable and mutually contradictory”.

As a rule, all the populations of “traditional” countries feel some attachment to these two sets of opposing values. “Modernity” means access to progress in all spheres: effective technologies and rising living standards, but also hospitals, roads, schools, radio, cinema, etc., and nobody will willingly agree to forgo these spectacular innovations. Yet at the same time people are deeply attached to their traditional values, and their respect for these is all the greater in that technological progress is generally non-native, foreign in nature, something that it is often impossible to do without, but that can generate frustration or inferiority complexes. It is so as not to “lose their souls” that people in Africa, for example, return to their roots and seek to revitalize their own heritage in order to preserve their cultural identity. 

The situation of heteroculture gives rise to profound changes in the life of the countries that experience it. This state of tension, which often brings with it internal conflict and dysfunctions in all areas of activity, is the main consequence of the development transfer process, in all its manifold forms. 

1.2 The problem of knowledge transfer

With its aspiration to bring well-being and progress to the world, development consists in enabling the entire planet to benefit from modem techniques and new scientific discoveries. Theoreticians maintain that economic growth in developing countries, which is now considerably higher on average than in the industrialized countries, is partly due to the fact that these countries have had direct access to modem techniques and technologies through training and importation, without having to pass through the intermediate stages required to invent things and then improve on those inventions. Substantial economies have thus been obtained, in the form of time and capital savings.

This has been possible thanks to what is known as the transfer of knowledge or know how. The extent of the domains in which these “transfers” take place is very large, encompassing all knowledge about human activities, which it is difficult to divide up into clear-cut “fields”. It seems that, generally speaking, the transfer of knowledge is carried out in the following areas: culture, education, lifestyle, models of social organization, information, science and technology. By producing major alterations in the habits and know-how of local populations in all fields (agriculture, fishing, traditional industries, legal system, etc.), this process contributes to the creation of other areas of activity, hitherto unknown (tourism, for example). 

The transfer is effected in specific ways through “carriers of knowledge”:36 people (personal contact between individuals), audiovisual media (radio, cinema, records, television, tape recorders and their technological derivatives), artistic productions (various literary and documentary productions, works of art, exhibitions, festivals, performances, etc.) and “things” (highly organized spaces and ob.jects used in daily life for communication and production purposes, etc.; these are transferred from one country to another by trade or international aid, or they are produced locally, but following ideas or plans, and using raw materials or technologies, imported from abroad). 

The knowledge transfer mechanism brings with it unavoidable ideological effects, which appear to be subproducts inherent in the whole of the knowledge transfer process and which, at the world level, derive from the dynamic of development. Non-industrialized countries are obliged to “import” the knowledge that is indispensable to them if they are to modemize their economies, teaching, etc., but the infiltration of cultural tendencies, ideas and doctrines, new models and techniques threatens their value systems, their traditional socialization mechanisms and their social structures.  

Given these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that technology transfer, for example, is initially given a very warm welcome by some countries, as it is seen as a forerunner of growth and wealth. Yet this period of enthusiasm is often followed by a stage of violent criticism, which is accompanied by restrictive measures, attempts at rigorous selection, and even isolation or rejection.  

In fact, solidly entrenched pre-existing cultures have often proved to be powerful and skilful enough to repulse the assaults of modem technology and preserve at least some aspects of cultural and technological diversity. Arnold0 K. Ventura quotes a typical example: 

“In the Ganges delta, thirty underground water pipes were installed and then fitted with pumps imported from abroad; people did not use the drinking water piped in this way, however, but carried on drinking the water from their muddy tanks. They had discovered that the pumps were fitted with leather valves, which meant they could not be used, as Hindu tradition forbade them to drink water that ran through a cow’s hide.“

What this example clearly shows is that there is a risk that what may seem to suit the needs and experience of developed countries may not be appropriate in other circumstances; for technology to succeed, it needs to be harmonized with other cultural standards in society. If an attempt is made to sacrifice quality to quantity, without establishing solid cultural ties with technological products, there is a danger of going too far and coming up against inflexible resistance. Often regarded as “idle” and “incompetent”, the “natives” are in fact capable of dedicating many hours to religious rituals and practices that demand extreme accuracy and great mental concentration, simply because cultural values establish a hierarchy among actions. 

It should be pointed out, though, that in most developing countries these instances are only found among the groups that are most remote and isolated from daily contact with other groups. In most cases, the clash between local populations and modem technologies ends with the latter becoming established, largely because of the increasing pace of decolonization and the effects of foreign training, political and economic experience, colonial traditions, etc. This situation will gradually lead to the emergence of elites that aspire to copying foreign cultural models, thus causing cultural values to be marginalized.  

The effects of this mimetic behaviour, which is generally imposed from outside, sometimes have serious consequences for local populations. Here is an example, concerned this time not with technology transfer, but with the transfer of dietary habits:

The introduction of baby food in areas where hygiene is a problem raises many difficulties, and often has the opposite effect to the one initially envisaged, sometimes with tragic consequences. By constant aggressive advertising, the manufacturers of baby food and artificial milk have succeeded in making mothers believe that they must feed their children with milk of this type to ensure that they grow properly.  

In fact, by ending breastfeeding or weaning infants prematurely, mothers in certain particularly deprived areas are actually exacerbating the malnutrition of their children (in proteins and calories), for a number of reasons.  

Firstly, because mother’s milk given for three or four months provides the best nourishment there is and the best protection against infectious diseases such as those that cause toxicosis.

Secondly, because the mothers cannot read, and wish to make this costly foodstuff go further, they water it down too much or do not prepare it properly, this being one of the main causes of child malnutrition. 

Secondly, because the mothers cannot read, and wish to make this costly foodstuff go further, they water it down too much or do not prepare it properly, this being one of the main causes of child malnutrition. 

A lack of good-quality facilities for sterilizing feeding bottles properly, and other factors such as a lack of refrigeration equipment for storing preparations or the water to be used in them, mean that gastro-enteritis becomes a problem.  

Psychologically, these practices break the bond between the mother and the child, yet the child needs such a bond from the earliest age. 

Given these conditions, artificial foodstuffs make no sense in developing countries. Unfortunately, it is sometimes unavoidable for families to have to use these foodstuffs when the mothers are obliged to work in cities. Here again, the situation of the poor is the same as in rural areas, and the same consequences ensue. This has led certain countries, such as Papua New Guinea, to ban the use of baby foods except on prescription. It is also interesting to note that the popular belief in the contraceptive properties of breastfeeding has been confirmed scientifically. In Bangladesh, the average interval between births is three years, largely thanks to the production of prolactin, a hormone secreted as a result of natural feeding. This effect is lost when the time spent breastfeeding is reduced.  

Action from abroad should concentrate instead on improving standards of living for women, as this would help ensure that children developed normally.  

Adverse consequences of this kind resulting from the introduction of the products of Western civilization are numerous, and can be found across a whole range of fields.  

The development of agriculture, for example, has led to cultural aberrations and the breakdown of traditional values relating to agriculture and agricultural technology. Thus, in Africa, a large proportion of the flat, fertile land has been given over to big farms that generally grow export crops. Peasants who are obliged or have chosen to stay in the fields are forced to cultivate the most infertile and inaccessible land using outdated traditional methods, which do not provide a good yield.  

It often happens that experts called in to restore agricultural production on such land find that their work is hindered by the mistrust of peasants and their cautious attitude towards innovation, as risks can carry a high price, and scientific methods are difficult to assimilate and sometimes regarded as inapplicable, whereas the old methods appear to be infallible. Efforts by farmers to assimilate new methods without understanding their use and importance have led to disastrous results, as is illustrated by the example of farmers who buy fertilizer not in accordance with their needs, but on the basis of price. 

To escape from this impasse and achieve positive results, the most logical way of approaching this cultural dilemma would be to improve the traditional methods used by subsistence farmers. By drawing on local people’s help and knowledge of the environment and enlisting real cooperation from them, it should be possible to adapt modem methods and tools to their needs. To show how this can work in practice, we may take another example,39 which concerns the pressing need for drinking water that is found in many of the countries of the Third World:  

In a sub-Saharan area, a large number of deep boreholes were sunk using costly and sophisticated equipment, without the local people having any real part to play in this work. In one of the villages concerned, women used to have to fetch water from 10 kilometres away. Despite the seriousness of the need that the well was there to meet, the villagers lost little time in stopping it up with stones: the tremendous time saving made in the women’s working day, which was not filled by other activities, had led to endless arguments which were seen as more detrimental than the difficulty of obtaining water. 

The solution found for a less deprived village was to pump water from the river and store it in a water tower, whence it could be distributed through hydrants. The local population had been heavily involved, providing labour and paying contributions. It was agreed that the local people would meet the cost of fuel for pumping, after the start-up period when it would be covered by the project. Despite a number of meetings to raise awareness, the water pumping system soon stopped working because not enough contributions were paid. It was not until several months later that anyone thought of taking the matter up with the women, who had not hitherto taken part in the meetings where decisions were taken. They very quickly organized themselves and took charge of collecting contributions and organizing water distribution. 

This example shows that the success or failure of the process of transferring technical know-how largely depends on the sociocultural context in which it takes place, as only this can ensure that a development project will work and survive.  

The consequences of tourism, which is seen in poor countries as an easy panacea for correcting exchange rate fluctuations, can also have severe consequences in terms of its social and cultural costs which, in some cases, far exceed the short-term benefits. 

The tourist industry makes use of a range of techniques,“’ among which mention may be made of: 

indoctrination and propaganda techniques (such as films on location);

mass media techniques and other systems for distributing entertainment produced in metropolitan areas;

public relations methods and other advertising techniques;  

techniques for building hotels, restaurants, leisure centres, holiday resort facilities and sports equipment;  

management and financing techniques; and far and away the most important, importation of top-quality foods, along with techniques for transporting and storing them. 

In regions where nature provides ideal sites for tourist facilities (the Caribbean, for example), many governments are encouraged to diversify the economy of rural areas by promoting tourism, the argument being that this will provide leisure equipment and infrastructure. 

This mechanism, which broadly speaking is a legitimate one for developed countries, unleashes severe imbalances within local populations: the only purpose of the new industries is to please tourists, facilities constructed in the countryside being beyond the reach of peasants; in most cases, these are debarred from any profitable involvement, their role being limited to that of serving staff or “models” for photographs. Prostitution, homosexuality, a distaste for the hard work of the fields and nostalgia for an unhurried and carefree existence are just some of the consequences of this process. Furthermore, the net benefit accruing to the host country is not great when compared to the dysfunctions that are brought into being.“

This being the case, there is an inherent contradiction between tourism, as practised in poor countries, and development. Tourism, in fact, propagates the cultural values of the rich countries, whereas the development of a country involves efforts to encourage creative work and discipline. As James F. Michele said: “As Prime Minister of my State (St Vincent), please forgive me if I do not rush to pick up this manna of dollars. The tourist dollar is not in itself enough to justify the ruin of my people. A people that has lost its soul is no longer a people, and its country is no longer worth visiting”.

It must be recognized, however, that tourism is not necessarily an obstacle to development, as it brings significant benefits. Nonetheless, it does transpire that, for better results, tourism should not be imposed on a community for strictly economic reasons, and it is the community that should decide what type of technology it wishes to introduce to that end. This type of tourism would enable more businesses from the country concerned to take part in the activities of this sector, but it will require tourists to be better informed, so that they can learn to respect the culture of the society they are visiting and recognize its human significance and the reason it is as it is. 

In this section, we have just touched upon a few issues relating to the domains and problems that arise during the knowledge transfer process. These aspects are extremely complex and diverse; as has been seen, they concern all human activities and often make a decisive contribution to transformations in civilizations. To respond to the new needs and demands of the modem world, confronted as it is with serious problems such as environmental degradation, population growth and famine, there is no choice but to improve on the old methods and, in doing so, to create new ones; this process is, therefore, now necessary and inevitable. Yet experience shows that solutions from outside must be adopted only with the greatest care and without betraying the wishes of the majority. 

These mechanisms, considered to be the principal means of economic development, have led over time to major changes in the countries of the Third World. 

The results, however, have fallen far short of those expected at the beginning of the enthusiastic post-colonial period, and “underdevelopment” remains the condition of most of the planet. This state of affairs is largely the fault of those running and holding power in nonindustrialized countries, whose decisions have determined the main lines of development strategies. A close relationship between developed countries as providers of funds and development models, on the one hand, and “underdeveloped” countries seeking financial assistance and support to improve their economic situation, on the other, has thus come into being. This relationship has become one of dependence, sustained by the transfer of knowhow, by the interplay of worldwide economic and geostrategic interests, by bilateral and multilateral assistance policies, etc. The role of political decision-makers, then, has been crucial in these exchanges and is largely responsible for the current situation.  

Aid and power: strategies and ambiguities in the relations between donor States and recipient States  

The relationships that arise between “donor” States and “recipient” States, between North and South, are extremely complex and diverse, bearing on such vast fields as political sociology, economics, international relations, international law, etc. These aspects have been the subject of numerous specialist studies analysing the changes and dysfunctions that have arisen in the political, economic and social spheres in newly independent States. We shall confine ourselves in the analysis that follows to touching upon some of the aspects that are most closely connected with the link between the policy followed by the elites in power, the provision of development aid and the culture of the countries concerned. The interaction of these three factors reveals the existence of several reciprocal types of determinism. 

A. Determinism: development assistance - behaviour of elites in power 

The relationship that arises between those providing funds (international development financing institutions, various bilateral, regional and international aid agencies, etc.) and the elites in power in developing countries, at the different levels of political or decision-making authority, is the result of mutual dependence and influence. Leaving aside the fact that certain politicians are propelled to power with outside support to serve the material or geostrategic interests of the great powers (France in the case of sub-Saharan Africa, for example), where the dependence of the former on the latter is plain to see, the provision of development assistance is made conditional on strict political and economic criteria: 44 the introduction of democracy and multi-party politics, economic growth, respect for the environment, etc. It is up to the elites in power to accept and implement these principles; furthermore, it is these elites that propose development projects and programmes in order to obtain financial support.