ECONOMIC ORGANISATION AND LOCAL CULTURES :

EXPLORATIONS INTO THE CULTURAL EMBEDDEDNESS
OF LOCAL ECONOMIC LIFE

Summary and Conclusions
of Network Cultures' Research Project

A world in search of meaning

Never in history has there been as much wealth created on this planet than over the last 15 years. Yet the gap between rich and poor, far from decreasing, has been widening. The 1996 UNDP World Report on Human Development states that this is not only true at world level - the well known gap between North and South - but also in countries which enjoyed comfortable growth rates and in western countries with an old industrial background. In the USA, 15% of the citizens live below the poverty line. In Europe, there are no less than 25.000.000 unemployed, many of them young. In France, 2.000.000 people resort to food aid. James Speth, director general of UNDP warns that this system of increasing polarization is leading our planet to a situation which is not only unethical but "unhuman". Violence is threatening everywhere, as chairman of the IMF board of governors, Ph. Maystadt, said recently. We are watching the dawnfall of the wellfare state.

Since the Reagan and Thatcher years. Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) and monetarist policies lead to frustration and anger. "Globalization is creating in our democracies an underclass of demoralized and empoverished citizens" observes former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Malnutrition and material poverty is spreading in some countries of the South or remains desparately stable in many others. Even where SAP do achieve positive results in terms of public debt and inflation rates, their social impact remain harmful.

The average US citizen consumes 60 times more than the average Haitian citizens. If all the inhabitants of the planet were to consume like the average European, 5 planets would be required in terms of resources and fresh air and water. Today, 20% of the world inhabitants consume 83% of world resources. 800.000.000 people suffer from malnutrition or hunger. 250 million children are forced to work in factories and on plantations or for prostitution whereas 35.000 children a day are starving from malnutrition or disease.

Finance ends up wielding more power in society that politics. Financial experts (not the enterprising industrialists of the olden days) head big companies. Decisions are taken which do not take into account the quality of the products and of the production process but submit first to goals of short term financial return. What matters is benefit to a few people, with no industrial vision, no real social or environmental concern. Speculation on currencies has become a major occupation and source of income for enterprises. 1.400 billion US$ float daily around the planet, only 10% of which is used for trade or investment for productive purposes. The remainder is available for speculation. Half of that money seems to be of "grey" or outright illegal origin (mafia, drug-trade, corruption money raised through bribes, etc.).

It looks as if our statesmen are unable to conceive and implement alternatives to the present social and ecological drama unfolding in front of us. Jacques Delors, former president of the European Commission, laments that there is a vacuum in places where power is exercised and he compares our planet to an airplane rushing through the night without a pilot on board. Even Hans Tietmeyer, chairman of the Deutsche Bundesbank, admits that today "markets govern politicians". Our own friend and former IBRD and US Aid expert David Korten published a seminal book called "When Multinationals Rule the World". He stigmatizes the downfall of democracy caused by the exorbitant power exercised by multinational corporations.

It is urgent to look for ways out of the present impasse, away from the blind triumphalism of neo-conservative economics. A new ideological wall has replaced the Berlin wall : that of money and laissez-faire capitalism. Since politicians seem unable to offer credible solutions, is it not our task, as responsible citizens, to think and to explore other approaches, to become more vocal on the basis of reasonable suggestions for a world more just, more equal, more free, more sustainable ? In short, more human ?

Network Cultures has decided to live up to its own responsibility as an international NGO, no matter how modest in size. Our specific input is the analysis of local cultures. Network Cultures' point of entry in this debate consequently is the exploration of local cultural dynamics in economic life. For the last ten years, we have been pleading against development when it is practised, as a culture-blind catching-up manoeuvre. It confuses progress and westernization. Today, we wish to apply our expertise in socio-cultural affairs by exploring how people, with their cultural differences, react to globalization, resist to dominant economic forces, and possibly even implement elements of alternatives to global capitalism. In the last ten years, we have been struggling, at our level, against the globalization of westernizing development of the third world countries. Today, we wish to struggle against the globalization all over the world, including in the North, of wild capitalism prompted by narrow-minded values of materialism and competition and by rigid monetarist policies which former Chancellor Schmidt does not hesitate to call "monomaniac".

The Research Project 1995-1996 called "Economic Organization and Local Cultures : explorations into the cultural embeddedness of local economic life" is a modest effort in that direction. It was based on the presupposition that, contrary to dominant economic and political thinking, people do not respond everwhere in the same way and unreservedly to the same individual profit maximization logic. In the background paper calling for participation, Network Cultures formulated in this way its basic hypothesis.

The underlying assumption

Dominant economic thinking is based on the assumption that people everywhere in the world respond to the same profit maximization logic. In this age of ever increasing globalisation, it is no doubt correct to state that profit maximization or the logic of capitalism is spreading all over the world. The universalistic assumptions of dominant economic theory seem to be corroborated.

Yet, more careful scrutiny of the actual behaviour of people at micro level seems to indicate that economy is not to be reduced to the capitalist logic. The narrow materialistic and individualistic market logic does not reign supreme. It is certainly present in most societies if not, by now, in all of them. But that logic is mixed with other rationalities, expectations, interests, values, codes and patterns of behaviour. Religions, ethical norms, power relations and politics, traditional as well as neo-traditional modes of organization, local and specific approaches to time, space, nature, land use, tools, to solidarity and to security, also play a role in peoples' daily behaviour towards money, profit, competition, market, saving, accumulation and redistribution.

Today's world is hybrid. The logic of capitalism is blended with local socio-economic logic, local constraints and ultimately with the sense which the local population gives or tries to give to life. This blend produces original and culture-specific behaviours and modes of organisation.

Local cultures in a global world

Network Cultures' call for participation was widely distributed and a considerable number of people showed interest. After a careful process of screening, twenty-five participants were identified. Some withdrew along the way because they were not prepared to go through the various "waves" of inputs which our kind of research method involves. Other felt the spirit of the research was questioning too radically the legitimacy of dominant neo-conservative thinking. One prospective author feared that our interest in cultural alternatives present in the local cultures would lead us to idealize the African customs and tradition which he had studied in Zimbabwe. There is a variety of inputs coming from places like England and Chile, China and Cameroun, Belgium and South Africa, Canada, India and Switzerland.

On the whole, it can be stated that the underlying assumption of the Research Project has been corroborated : local cultures - including their modes of social organization and of coping with material needs, their ethical and spiritual values as well as their cosmological and philosophical world views - have not been totally eradicated. They continue to give meaning to economic activity as well as to inspire local forms of organization. There is often "continuity in change".

Introducing the synthesis

Turning to the synthesis of the various papers produced for this Research Project as well as to the synthesis of the discussions held during the November 13-17, 1996 Workshop in Rixensart (Brussels), we will first report on comments of a more general nature regarding the capitalist logic, its strength but also its harmful effects when left un-checked by other concerns than competition, maximization of profit and freedom for giant corporations (chap. 2).

Its effect on development policies in the countries of the South are dealt with in the next chapter (chap. 3).

People's reaction to it is looked into, as is manifested by "deviant" practices both South and North (chap. 4).

A number of cultural traits in which people's reaction is embedded are then identified (chap. 5).

Whether fullfledged alternatives to the dominant economic system exist is the object of detailed descriptions of a number of practices and institutions studied in places as varied as China and England, Chile and Cameroun (chap. 6).

New approaches in the Western hemisphere to money and banking, and to consumerism, receive attention in the next chapter (chap. 7).

Under the title "Culture and Economic Transformation", the economy is looked at "as if people mattered" and concluding remarks follow regarding the embeddedness of the economy in local cultures beyond materialistic and culturalistic determinism (chap. 8).