See the forest, not only the trees

Abstract

"Cultural policy-making needs urgently an operational definition and concept of culture fit for strategic planning purposes. The aim of this paper is to outline the path of answering this need and the theoretical background that it should be equipped with in order to be operationally applicable and compliant. The first part of the paper provides a literature review of the existing theories of culture and cultural impact in economic and sociological sense. The review distinguishes between mono-dimensional (reductive, 'weak-program' (Alexander, Smith 2004)) and multi-dimensional (holistic) concepts of culture. On the bases of some of the leading holistic concepts from cultural sociology and cultural economy (Bourdieu 1986, 1973, North 1990, Matarasso 2002), the paper selects the most convincing and coherent elements. These elements are combined in a model which is further augmented and interpreted from the point of view of strategic planning. The paper poses three main assumptions in constructing its model. Namely: 1) Culture is a resource for sustainable development; 2) Sustainable development is the main target for policy making; 3) Cultural policy aims at using culture as a resource that contributes successfully to sustainable development. Thus, the paper constructs and suggests the so called Culture Based Development (CBD) concept. The CBD concept serves to explain the impact of culture (i.e. living culture and cultural heritage) on sustainable development (i.e. social well-being and economic welfare) in a locality. CBD has three main advantages as a concept. First, it is an econometrically testable concept of the impact of culture on sustainable development. Second, once tested and verified by the data, it can be easily further developed into a measurement apparatus for planning and monitoring of cultural policy. Moreover, CBD provides policy makers with the opportunity to plan at the same time for the whole scope of culture and consider the combined impact of all cultural facets as a joined effect on development." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Tubadji, A. (2009): See the forest, not only the trees. Culture based development (CBD) - conceptualizing culture for sustainable development purposes. In: F. Le Duc (Red.) (2009): Culture as a tool for development : challenges of analysis and action, p. 180-205.