Culture, not just the icing on
The Cake of development

Yet another special issue on cultures and economics ! Already no. 5-6 dealt exclusively with that theme. That was back in 1991. Why do we dwell so much on it ?

 We believe that the relationship between economics and peoples' cultures is fundamentally important. The economic life of a country or a people cannot be understood without taking local culture into account. Culture is not just some sort of dimension of economic development. Culture is not to be reserved to a few high-brow specialists dealing with particularly detailed academic questions. Peoples' culture is not to be reduced to some icing on the cake of development ! Culture is what underpins peoples' entire lives, their cosmology, their know-how, their struggles and their aspirations. And also their approach to profit, production, money, saving, sale and credit. In one word, their economy.

This issue offers a report on a challenging session held in Brussels on Popular Economy seen from Africa and Latin America : is it a dead-end, a mere transition to formal economy or a genuine alternative to the dominant economic system ?

The next issue will publish the synthesis on Network Cultures' research programme "Management and African Cultures".
This issue, as well as issue 20/21, will therefore be devoted to economics and peoples' cultures.