1. PREVENTING CONFUSION
Conferences about culture often suffer from a lack of precision when it
comes to the terminology used. Culture is understood by some to be
about values and customs, others think essentially of art, others yet,
think of education. In such conditions, it is quite easy to go around
in circles. We talk about everything and anything. If the outcome of a
contribution about culture is to find specific recommendations with
regard to action, clear and precise concepts are needed as future
action lies in them.
2. AN OVERVIEW OF DEFINITIONS
Let us try to clarify what we understand by this word culture when it
comes to the matter of "culture and development".
Narrow acceptations of the word.
There are narrow meanings of the term culture which reduce it to art or
education. Art refers to artistic or literary creativity or to
something from an art gallery, (ie. a painting or an artefact).
Education refers to teaching or to the totality of "general culture"
that is doled out within that teaching, or in "cultural centres" or in
the media, etc. In this sense we then find "Ministries for Education
and Culture". Education, for some, must be democratic, while for others
it is the prerogative of an elite. In this case, we say that a person
is "cultivated". Culture is then largely linked to education with
regard to the past and some people tend to associate it with a
knowledge of History or of a dead language (Latin, Sanskrit) as well as
a knowledge of ancient monuments. Others emphasise the knowledge of
contemporary artistic or literary creations.
A broad acceptation of the word
There is nevertheless a much broader acceptation of culture. This is
the one to bear in mind when we speak of culture in relation to
development. We shall try to deal with this broad notion of culture
without it becoming indistinct or obscure. Let us try to come to an
agreement on an adequate definition.
3. AN ATTEMPT TO DEFINE CULTURE.
One can argue for hours about definitions of culture in its broad
sense. Sociology and ethnology have proposed quite a few.
Let us retain the following definition which seems to be a good tool
for clarification :
____ "Culture is
the complex whole of solutions that a given community inherits, adopts
or invents to face the challenges of its natural and social
environment".
(...)
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South-North Network Cultures and Development