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Abstract
This article critically interrogates current policy-sector approaches to culturally sensitive development and the manner in which culture has been conceptualised within the post-2015 development agenda-setting process. By providing a brief interpretive summary of academic debates surrounding culture and development, an analysis of how ‘culturally sensitive’ practices have been pursued within the policy sector, and an examination of the insufficient consideration given to culturally sensitive development within post-2015 agenda setting, I argue that much uncertainty remains around how to translate complex academic understandings of culture and development into policy responses. Following this, I provide one case study drawn from the small, low-income country of Laos to suggest possibilities as to how culturally sensitive development may be better conceptualised and implemented within a post-2015 global development era.
Notes
1. Enns et al., “Indigenous Voices.”
2. Browne and Weiss, “The Future UN Development Agenda”; Engel, “The Not-so-great Aid Debate”; and Kumi et al., “Can Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals survive Neoliberalism?”
3. Radcliffe, “Culture in Development Thinking”; and Nederveen Pieterse, Development Theory.
4. World Bank, Lao PDR Environment Monitor, viii.
5. The UN categorisation of ‘least developed country’ refers to countries that have extremely low indicators of socioeconomic development, including low gross national income per capita and low human development indicators.
6. Drawing on James et al., I define community very broadly as ‘a group or network of persons who are connected (objectively) to each other by relatively durable social relations that extend beyond immediate genealogical ties and who mutually define that relationship (subjectively) as important to their social identity and social practice’. James et al., Sustainable Communities, 14. See also Barney, “Laos and the Making of a Relational Resource Frontier”; Rigg, “A Particular Place?”; Kenney-Lazar, “Land Concessions”; Baird, “Land, Rubber and People”; Baird, “The Don Sahong Dam”; and Sims “Uneven Geographies”.
7. Goldman, Imperial Nature; Barney, “Laos and the Making of a Relational Resource Frontier”; Cronin, “Mekong Dams”; Rigg, “A Particular Place?”; and Baird, “Making Spaces.”
8. Goudineau, “Ethnicité et déterritorialisation dans la péninsule indo-chinoise”; Aubertin, “La forêt laotienne”; Baird, “Turning Land”; and Shoemaker, “Unsettling Experiences”; and Lestrelin, “Land Degradation in the Lao PDR.”
9. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 4.
10. Gasper, “Culture and Development,” 97; and Nederveen Pieterse, Development Theory.
11. James et al., Sustainable Communities, 83.
12. Radcliffe, “Culture in Development Thinking.”
13. Ibid, 18.
14. Ibid, 10; Escobar, “Discourse and Power in Development”; Escobar, “The Making and Unmaking of the Third World”; Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine; Rahnema and Bawtree, The Post-development Reader; Sen, Development as Freedom; and Sen, “How does Culture Matter?”
15. Radcliffe, “Culture in Development Thinking,” 12.
16. Nederveen Pieterse, Development Theory, 60.
17. Gasper, “Culture and Development,” 98; and Nederveen Pieterse, Development Theory, 2.
18. Appadurai, “The Capacity to Aspire.”
19. Nederveen Pieterse, Development Theory, 77.
20. Ibid, 77.
21. Radcliffe, “Culture in Development Thinking,” 17.
22. Nederveen Pieterse, Development Theory.
23. Appadurai, “The Capacity to Aspire”; and Nederveen Pieterse, Development Theory.
24. The Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity acknowledges that culture is not only art and literature or built environments, but the spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of a social group, as well as their value systems, beliefs and ways of living together. The World Decade for Cultural Development included standard-setting tools for pursuing culturally sensitive development, including cultural statistics and inventories, and the regional and national mapping of cultural resources.
25. UNESCO, “Culture and Development.”
26. UNESCO, The Power of Culture for Development.
27. UNSECO, “Culturelink Databases.”
28. Laderchi, “Participatory Research.”
29. Radcliffe, “Culture in Development Thinking,” 21.
30. Goldman, Imperial Nature, 146–147.
31. Radcliffe, “Culture in Development Thinking,” 19.
32. Da Costa, “Introduction,” 52.
33. UNESCO, “Culture for Sustainable Development.”
34. Turshen, “A Global Partnership,” 345.
35. Ibid., 346; and Amin, cited in ibid.
36. Cited in Turshen, “A Global Partnership,” 346, 347.
37. Compiled over a four-year period from 2009 to 2013, the CDIS draws on applied research in 11 countries that involved international experts, national public administrations, national statistics and research institutes, and civil society organisations. UNESCO, “Measuring the Immeasurable.”
38. Carnegie et al., “Generating a Place-based Language of Gender Equality.”
39. Ibid.
40. James et al., Sustainable Communities, 24.
41. Ibid., 78, 84.
42. Ibid., 24.
43. Enns et al., “Indigenous Voices,” 362.
44. Ibid., 363.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., 362.
47. Ibid., 358.
48. Browne and Weiss, “The Future UN Development Agenda,” 1334.
49. Ibid., 1327, 1334.
50. Enns et al., “Indigenous Voices,” 366.
51. Ibid., 370.
52. UNESCO, “Thematic Debate on Culture and Sustainable Development.”
53. Engel, “The Not-so-great Aid Debate.”
54. Berliner, “The Politics of Loss and Nostalgia in Luang Prabang.”
55. Staiff and Bushell, “Mobility and Modernity in Luang Prabang.”
56. UNESCO Bangkok, IMPACT.
57. Winter, Post-conflict Heritage, Postcolonial Tourism; and Bristol, “Rendered Invisible.”
58. Evans, The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance; Long and Sweet, “Globalisation, Nationalism and World Heritage”; Berliner, “The Politics of Loss and Nostalgia”; Bristol, “Rendered Invisible”; Reeves and Long, “Unbearable Pressures on Paradise?”; and Sims and Winter “In the Slipstream”.
59. Lintner, “Laos at the Crossroads”; Phouthonesy, “Vientiane to have US$6m Road Upgrade”; Phouthonsey, “Proposed High Rise Apartments”; Roy and Ong, Worlding Cities; “Roads built for SEA Games not up to Standard”; “Land Compensation Delays That Luang Marsh Development”; and Tan, “Small is Beautiful.”
60. Nyíri, “The Yellow Man’s Burden,” 84, 85, 93.
61. “Experts.”
62. Sims “Laos in the Asian Century”; and Sims “Uneven Geographies of Transnational Capitalism in Laos”.
63. Leebouapao, “Lao PDR’s Perspectives”; Government of Lao PDR and United Nations, The Millennium Development Goals Progress Report.
64. Government of Lao PDR and United Nations, The Millennium Development Goals Progress Report.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid.
67. Sims “Laos in the Asian Century”; and Baird, “The Don Sahong Dam.”
68. Government of Lao PDR and United Nations, The Millennium Development Goals Progress Report.
69. Ibid., 8.
70. Ibid., 48.
71. Ibid.
72. The Ramon Magsaysay Award is an annual award given to those who are seen as leaders of democratic reform and community development. It is a prestigious award that is often described as Asia’s Nobel Prize.
73. PADETC, “Our Founder.”
74. PADETC receives funding from multiple partners, including, but not limited to the Australian embassy, HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation, the University of the Sacred Heart, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and the Asia Foundation.
75. PADETC, “Our Philosophy” (emphasis added).
76. PADETC, “Learning Centers and Networks.”
77. PADETC, “Our Philosophy.”
78. PADETC, “Leadership and Advocacy.”
79. The design for change process is as follows: (1) Feel, what bothers you; (2) Imagine, what solutions exist; (3) Do, take action for change, and (4) Share, reflect and share your change with others. For more on the ‘design for change’ programme see http://www.padetc.org/achievements-impacts/tools-for-education-for-sustainable-development/.
80. Ibid.
81. Somphone, “Experiential Learning in Lao Ricefields,” 5.
82. N’Dione et al., “Reinventing the Present”; and Packer, The Science of Qualitative Research, 356.
83. Somphone, “Interdependencies between Education and Sustainable Development,” 6.
84. James et al., Sustainable Communities, 23–24.
85. Creak, “Laos in 2013.” For more details on Sombath Somphone’s abduction, see www.sombath.org.
86. Indeed, James et al., Sustainable Communities, 374–375, note that UNESCO has been lobbying for a similar approach to education to be implemented across the global South for some time, although its community-oriented learning programmes have been criticised for focusing on community weaknesses, tacitly assuming that communities require external assistance and carrying ‘implicit assumptions’ about what constitutes ‘development’ and ‘education’ that have been ‘formulated within modernist and progressivist theoretical traditions of the Global North’.
87. UNESCO, “Culture and Human Rights.”
88. Enns et al., “Indigenous Voices,” 358.
89. Ibid.
90. Browne and Weiss, “The Future UN Development Agenda,” 1335.
91. Banks et al., “NGOs, States, and Donors Revisited,” 713, 714.