THE RELATION BETWEEN CULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT
THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE
It is very probable that in the contemporary world, when referring to culture, we should establish that this concept is applied to what we refer to generically as cultural identities, on the one hand, and also to the notion of cultural spaces; however, there are basic political concepts, democracy, participation and exclusion. Nevertheless, in the first place, it should be noted that today culture is a space that, when globalized, becomes universal in the same measure in which it becomes international. This is proved by the way in which major contemporary events are instantaneously brought to the eyes and ears of the world. Akira Iriye has raised this matter in a recent book in which he reasons that culture is a vector that crosses all borders due, not only to the existence of electronic instruments which allow this instantaneousness, but also because there is an international culture arising from the hegemony of political powers which, in this case, I would identify as the hegemony of America, specifically of the United States of America, a hegemony such as has probably not existed for a long time in the history of humanity. Disney and MacDonald are not accidents of an economic machinery, but rather symbols of the hegemony of a cultural vision of the world, which is both international and on a mass-scale, as Iriye suggests. In other words, national frontiers are porous borders, permeated by a virus that homogenizes the attitudes of men and societies, that acts on man and his society, man and his culture. According to this concept, the multiple cedes its place to the single and homogeneous. Iriye makes an analogy between internationalism and the expansion of North American culture - a process of the decentralization of the culture manufactured in this hegemony; although, there is evidence that, at the same time, internationalization opened up different points of cultural dissemination, such as the British Council (1934), the Japanese Society for International Cultural Relations (1934) and the Division of Cultural Relations in the US State Department (1938). In the same way, Iriye mentions the cultural movements that emerged after the Second World War in the so-called "Third World" as a force which countered the internationalization of cultural movements. This led to an interesting emphasis on "cultural diversity" B a proposition that excluded hegemonic cultural uniformity and proposed instead that culture is a multiple element in which it is necessary to be aware of the realities of the different intrinsic cultural identities rather than seek homogeneity (16).
The concept of cultural identify is not accepted by all those who are concerned with cultural affairs. For example, the Venezuela, Elias Pino Iturrieta has categorically stated that (17):
(Cultural) identity is a need invented by anthropologists. Why? What the devil is identity? Is it something inflexible that exists to bring us together and identify us? I don't think so. Whoever sets out to seek identity falls into a trap and wastes his time. Not only Venezuelans, but all collectivities, are constantly seeking to see themselves in a mirror which varies according to the need of the moment. The problem centers on learning how we are, because to seek identity is to pursue a cliché. Nor is Venezuela monolithic, there are regions in the country with a particular sensibility because secularly they were geographically isolated and had very little contact among themselves; and this leads us to refer not to the Venezuelan, but to the Venezuelans
Moreover, referring to the concept of popular culture, the Venezuelan historian expresses a view that is interesting to include in this paper:
I do not feel very comfortable using the term popular culture. I believe that what should be valued are all kinds of things, done by all kinds of men. This is what really should be promoted and analyzed, in order to go beyond what is usually called popular culture, to speak of sensibility, a word that I consider should replace the former. And when I say sensibility, I refer not only to what the man in the street feels in the face of the solicitude of the environment, but also to what the upper classes feel; everyone together, at all levels of society, helps to create a sensibility which is particular to each conglomerate (18).
This notion of sensibility as an element common to all classes, all ethnies and, in general, to all people, is not accepted by authors such as Nestor Garcia Canelini and, especially, Fernando Calderon, with his notion of culture as a process (19). The former, in accordance with a specific ideological tendency speaks of the need "to regain possession of popular culture", but in the margin of an "indiscriminate esthetic recovery, such as populism which considers that everything that comes from the people is good and beautiful simply because they produce it, and forgets how many of their objects, practices and tastes are second-hand versions of the culture which oppresses them". According to Garcia Canclini, recovery of what is popular is a process by means of which those things that are made for use rather than for esthetics are re-appreciated. "This way of considering what is popular helps to define the direction that cultural policies should take when they seek to promote it. If what is popular is not defined for is beauty or its authenticity, there is no need to cultivate its artistic dignity or preserve its authenticity." In other words, esthetics per se is a conservative posture and should be eliminated, as should developmental technocratism, the objective of which is to commercialize the popular in order to increase profits. According to Calderon (20):
Present circumstances may be characterized by a growing inter-active dynamism between the homogenizing production of the mass cultural industry and its relative and rigid heterogenization of the diverse pre-existing cultures. It does not seem possible to observe a linear development of industrial production in these, but rather mobility between the cultural forces specific to programmed society and the endo-culturalization experienced by the different societies that are affected. These, in turn, modify the very logic of the cultural market and especially the generation of a global temporal unity on a planetary scale; they do not necessarily signify a process of cultural homogenization per se, either in central countries or in those on the periphery (21).
In practice, this signifies the old dichotomy between the multiple forms of tradition and the problem of integration. In other words, to what extent can the traditional survive within the schema of modernization, when this is understood to mean that it is precisely the logic of the market that tends to standardize and homogenize. This occurs based on the concept of the city that homogenizes the behavior of the population but, in the same way, modern cities are often only the social unit whose cultural foundation is tradition. Eriksen outlined this issue in a paper where he examined a view of a society and of two cultures, traditional and modern, and in which he speaks of how: "the State is neither an adequate synonym of society, nor a notion of culture". However, without doubt, cultures occur within the contemporary state-nation and this is how we should consider them in order to stimulate them, if this is the goal (22). Hannerz has the same point of view, through the concept of macro-anthropology, if we understand by this the need to see cultural problems within a context according to which:
... in order to reach a better understanding of the large-scale interconnectedness in the contemporary global traffic in meaning; in order to think of the appropriate questions to ask about it; and certainly in order to see through the varieties of rhetoric which at the same time surround it and are part of it, we need more of what one might call a macro-anthropology of culture (23).
In this respect, we should mention the concept of the de-territorialization of cultural processes, an original analysis by Jan Aart Scholte (24). According to this criterion, globalization generates a system of social production in which territory is less important, although the need prevails for identity as an essential human syndrome. In this case, globalization should be understood as a process that is parallel to cultural identity referred to what is local. To this, I would add the notion of social segmentation; this suggests that social classes and cultural modes are identified beyond national borders, as Seymour Martin Lipset states with regard to elites and students, for example. It is the same concept because, according to Lipset, the elites in the region are de-territorialized elites inasmuch as they operate according to international or global parameters, giving scant attention to their local commitments, except for those related to their own earnings (25). In this sense, perhaps, globalization is not necessarily the same as a de-nationalizing process, but rather it means the creation and operation of a new space, in the understanding that the notion of globalization normally implies the evasion of a territory, or of a concrete space, as a level of vital experience (26).
It is worth indicating that a profound debate is going on about whether the effects of contemporary political hegemony have generated a unique cultural notion; that is, if the fact of the massification of North American commercial products implies a homogeneous culture. Samuel P. Huntington does not agree with this criterion. In a recent paper, Huntington states that although countries have modernized, this only occurs at a superficial level, and not in the most important aspects, such as the area of culture, language and values. He posits that instead of accepting the values of North American metropolitan culture in their totality, countries take refuge in their traditional visions, in religion, in local community life and in all those elements that form a foundation to the concept of nation, including the indigenization of educational aspects (27). That is to say, we should probably speak of economic standardization and also of political hegemony, but we should also keep alive the concept of cultural identities throughout the world because it seems that homogenization is a phenomenon that should be carefully examined so as not to confuse interpretations about cultural evolution (28).
THE FORMULATION OF CULTURE IN THE INTER-AMERICAN REGION
There are various valid and viable procedures to support the formulation of cultural policies in the inter-American region. As suggested at the beginning of this report, the traditional tendency may be followed; according to this, it is taken for granted that cultural expressions exist according to the class origin of the underlying ideologies. In this case, we can speak of elite culture and mass culture, for example; this tendency is validated by the facts, which speak of distinct realities. Another way would be to assume a notion such as that of sensibility, as proposed by Pino Iturrieta and mentioned above. This would be a characteristic of human beings and not of social groups in which the former develops his social habitus, in Bourdieu's interpretation of that concept (29). Another position would be the one related to the external stimuli generated by state organizations and those active on the international scene, whose action is reflected and reproduced, according to both the endogenous tendencies of individuals and groups and the exogenous tendencies of those who act from outside in order to generate tangible results from cultural activity. Another position would be the one related to the external stimuli generated by state organizations and those active on the international scene, whose action is reflected and reproduced, according to both the endogenous tendencies of individuals and groups and the exogenous tendencies of those who act from outside in order to generate tangible results from cultural activity.
When formulating cultural policies in the region, it is necessary to return again and again to the historical roots of the cultures whose contacts and successive interactions have never created the hypothetical social and cultural melting pot that has occurred in other parts of the world; as, in the same way the modernization processes have resulted in the homogenization of the bases mentioned above. The population complexities in the region, the historical dominations and vacuums of the basic cultural components (indigenous, European, African and the successive ulterior waves of immigration). It is redundant to mention the complexities of the Latin American cultural world. We should recall the classical typology drawn up by Wagley and Harris who spoke of the new sub-cultures, which in historical order filled this world - a vast and complex region. These subcultures have, however, the same complexities of others such as those of the African continent, where it is impossible not to mention the dozens of types and sub-cultures. A similar situation exists in Asia, of course. In other words, except in the case of Europe, perhaps, it is not possible to speak of homogeneous cultures, but rather of an enormous cultural diversity. This raises the question of cultural identities and, consequently, the need to formulate cultural policies of a macro type, although attention should be given to the micro levels of cultural behavior (30).
CULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA, A QUESTION OF COMPARATIVE METHODOLOGY
In strictly methodological terms, we would suggest that the formulation of cultural policies in the inter-American region should "monitor" similar policies introduced in other regions. Of these, perhaps the African experience would be of importance. In particular, because the black cultures of that continent have been a source of interest to social scientists and promoters and directors of culture and the arts, due their "exotic" nature. This reference is strictly of a methodological order. For example, in a book devoted exclusively to the subject of the relation between development and culture in Africa, Ismail Serageldin puts forward two concepts that should be common when policies are formulated in the region. These are the concepts of cultural identity, which has been mentioned previously in this report, and that of empowerment of the people, a much more difficult concept. The latter is difficult to translate into Spanish, although it is probably synthesized in the notion of redistribution of power to the people or perhaps in the sense of the concept of governability. A second topic to focus on is that examined by Ali A. Mazrui on the question of multi-culturalism that suggests the idea of both social and cultural integration, maintaining the identity but paying attention to the need for the integration, mentioned above. The notion of evaluating cultural programs, in the form of the cultural consequences of the concept of development, has been proposed in Africa, along the lines of the thesis of Dupuis, which we have mentioned above (31). This is set out in the book by Sulayman S. Nyang, cited above. The conditions of poverty of some of the countries of both Black Africa and Arab Africa, which are relatively comparable to those of the region, not only allow us to compare the most adequate mechanism for policy formulation in each region, but make the impact study especially useful. From a methodological viewpoint, we should point out that, unless these studies are carried out, policies are formulated in the midst of the rhetoric which is usual in the fields of cultural activity, an area that is traditionally more full of hopes than concrete realities.
CONCLUSION
Much remains to be said in a report that establishes a relation between culture and development. As a simple reference, we should mention that there remain essential questions such as: what is the relationship between political development and cultural development? Similarly, what is the most appropriate instrument for the formulation of cultural policies? Should they be segmented or integrated, centralized or decentralized, and so on? Alain Touraine has tried to answer some of these questions in a recent document (32). In any case, it is perhaps worth establishing a position which may seem surprising: it would seem that there is not necessarily a positive relation between political development and cultural development, but rather a phenomenon of antagonism between both may be produced, which is evidently totally undesirable. We should, therefore, note the need to observe the parameters of optimism and hope, according to which increased political development brings increased expansion of indigenous cultural development. Nevertheless, we should be alert to the fact that the questions raised remain alive and active in the minds of those of us whose work it is to question what is accepted and to try to establish alternatives to conventional thought.