Development and Change 791

Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton (eds), Culture and Public Action. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004. xv + 441 pp. £14.95 paperback.

The papers included in this book were first presented at a conference in Washington, DC in 2002. The objective of this conference was to bring together distinguished economists, anthropologists and sociologists to examine why and how culture matters in development, and its implications for public action. The participants included Amartya Sen, Arjun Appadurai, Mary Douglas, and Jean-Philippe Platteau, among others. With a few exceptions (notably the contribution of Sen, and the introductory and concluding essays by the editors), there is little evidence of a cross-disciplinary dialogue. This is of course not to suggest that many of the contributions do not add substantially to this debate. They do but largely from each author’s own disciplinary perspective.

The introductory essay by the editors, Rao and Walton, ‘Culture and Public Action: Relationality, Equality of Agency, and Development’, is impressive as a distillation of various contributions in a clearly specified thematic structure. The key questions are: what is valued in terms of well-being, who does the valuing, and why do social and economic factors interact with culture to limit access to a good life. They address these questions with admirable clarity and coherence, drawing upon various contributions to this volume.

Amartya Sen’s essay ‘How Does Culture Matter?’ is scholarly and illuminating. He first draws attention to culture as constitutive of development (enrichment of human lives through literature, music, and fine arts), the links between culture and economic behaviour (work ethics, entrepreneurial initiatives, and attitudes towards risks), the culture of political participation and social solidarity, and cultural influences on values and norms (non-discrimination between boys and girls). He then broadens the discourse by arguing against cultural determinism, since culture is non-homogeneous, non-static, and interactive. He is, for example, emphatic that ‘the cultural damning of the prospects of development in Ghana and other countries in Africa is simply overhasty pessimism with little empirical foundation. For one thing, it does not take into account how rapidly many countries — South Korea included — have changed rather than remaining anchored to some fixed cultural parameters’ (p. 47). In the context of cultural globalization, he addresses two major concerns. The first is whether market-related culture is vulgar and impoverishing, and the second is whether the asymmetry of power between the West and the rest is likely to result in destruction of local cultures. Recognizing that the forces of market-exchange and division of labour are hard to resist, and the threat to local cultures is real, he argues that the resolution lies not in banning cultural influences from abroad but in participatory decision-making ‘on the kind of society people want to live in, based on open discussion, with adequate opportunity for the expression of minority positions’ (p. 53). This is an incomplete response as it steers clear of the difficulties of participatory decision-making in a community with a high degree of socio-economic differentiation.

In ‘The Capacity to Aspire: Culture and the Terms of Recognition’, Appadurai makes a spirited case for strengthening the capacity to aspire, conceived as a cultural capacity among the poor, so that they might find the resources to overcome their poverty. This resonates with Hirschman’s (1970) terminology of ‘voice’, with the assertion that aspiration is essentially a cultural capacity. Appadurai elaborates ‘. . . as the poor seek to strengthen their voices as a cultural capacity, they will need to find those levers of metaphor, rhetoric, organization, and public performance that will work well in their cultural worlds’ (p. 67). He cites some illustrative evidence of how the terms of recognition of the poor and their capacity to aspire changed through women’s savings groups in Mumbai. In discussions about savings, ‘. . . local horizons of hope and desire enter a dialogue with other designs for the future and poor persons (often women) crossing massive cultural boundaries are able to discuss their aspirations in the most concrete of forms, in conversations about why some members are unable to save regularly, about why some misuse their access to community funds . . . and about how money relates to trust, power, and community’ (p. 75). Some evidence from fieldwork in Maharashtra and Haryana, however, points to a different process of empowerment. While culture matters, it is moderate but sustained economic betterment through self-help groups of women that has a more significant role in transforming their lives (Gaiha et al., 2005).

A third interesting contribution is by Abraham and Platteau: ‘Participatory Development: Where Culture Creeps In’. It is a detailed but critical review of participatory approaches to development as a new panacea that donor agencies (such as the World Bank) have endorsed with considerable enthusiasm and resources in recent years. Several striking illustrations are given of why this is likely to be a dangerous and self-defeating strategy — especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Consider a tribal or lineage-based community, characterized by personalization of relationships, other-regarding norms, strong beliefs in the role of ancestors and supernatural powers, and respect of status and rank differences. Any intervention that has the potential of eroding some of these characteristics (for example, weakening the status and power of traditional elites) would be self-defeating — they may claim priority to new resources by authority, force or guile, or by simply boycotting the intervention. Even in a highly socioeconomically differentiated economy in which tribal chieftains are replaced by a new elite of successful entrepreneurs, the outcomes may be similar (akin to an ultimatum game in which the elite divides a pie that would be lost in the event that the rest of the community does not accept the share offered). A case is then made for supporting small artisans or entrepreneurs but without channelling the resources through community-based initiatives, as large-scale funding in a weak or corrupt state is likely to arouse envy and predation. While this is a persuasive argument, I must confess that I do not share the authors’ pessimism. Substantial empirical evidence exists to support the view that even moderate institutional reforms have a large economic payoff (Gaiha et al., 2005).

The volume ends with a superb synthesis by Rao and Walton in the Conclusion: ‘Implications of a Cultural Lens for Public Policy and Development Thought’. Without overlooking the disagreements of various contributors, a broad synthesis points to two major shifts in development policy. One is a shift from equality of opportunity to ‘equality of agency’, such as a change of focus from individuals to group-based phenomena that shape individual aspirations, capabilities and the distribution of power and agency. The second is to ensure that the poor and other subordinate groups have voice and access to a good life. The overall conclusion that ‘. . . blending an understanding of cultural and social dynamics into the mix of economics and politics that have traditionally dominated development thought can shed a little additional light on how to do it better’ (p. 370) is sobering.

References:

Gaiha, R., K. Imai and M. Arul Nandhi (2005) ‘Millennium Development Goal of Halving Poverty’, in Asia and the Pacific: Progress, Prospects and Priorities. Rome: International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Hirschman, A. O. (1970) Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms,Organisations, and States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Raghav Gaiha

Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi, Delhi-110007, India.