Culture

Culture is a complex concept that needs to be defined in itself, even as we take into account its dominant uses that tend to do otherwise. Setting out a workable definition requires an understanding of the process of culture while relating the concept to its conceptual framing. In the context of globalisation and development this becomes difficult because culture tends to be treated as secondary. Rather than discussed directly as part of a triangle of processes and outcomes – culture, globalisation and development – culture tends to be treated, first, as an add-on to other primary processes, such as economic development or modernisation, secondly, as the outcome of those processes with the emphasis on content, and/or thirdly, as a relatively unchanging background feature. This chapter brings culture ‘back in’ as critical to debates about globalisation and development, defining it as a social domain that emphasises the practices, discourses, and material expressions, which, over time, express the continuities and discontinuities of social meaning of a life held in common.