Culture

Main Entry:

1 cul·ture

Pronunciation:

ˈkəl-chər

Function:

noun

Etymology:

Middle English, cultivated land, cultivation, from Anglo-French, from Latin cultura, from cultus, past participle

Date:

15th century

1: cultivation, tillage

2: the act of developing the intellectual and moral faculties especially by education

3: expert care and training <beauty culture>

4 a: enlightenment and excellence of taste acquired by intellectual and aesthetic training

4 b: acquaintance with and taste in fine arts, humanities, and broad aspects of science as distinguished from vocational and technical skills

5 a: the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations

5 b: the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also : the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life} shared by people in a place or time <popular culture> <southern culture>

5 c: the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization <a corporate culture focused on the bottom line>

5 d: the set of values, conventions, or social practices associated with a particular field, activity, or societal characteristic <studying the effect of computers on print culture> <changing the culture of materialism will take time — Peggy O'Mara>

6: the act or process of cultivating living material (as bacteria or viruses) in prepared nutrient media; also : a product of such cultivation

There is a lot of food for thought!

Although there is a lot of talk of culture in terms of agriculture (meaning one) in development, I suspect that most societies today are beyond this aspect though there is always more to learn here.

There is also a lot of focus on definition 2 in development work. One of the MDGs directly address this (Achieve universal primary education) and another (Promote gender equality and empower women) impinges on it.

The 5th definitions are the ones I really want to look at in part because it looks a lot like development is a full frontal assault on this kind of culture.

Often dealing with development of education in developing countries has entailed the imposition of outside educational structures that have really in fact undermined culture as in definition 5.

Another factor that entails cultural change is globalization. Cultural homogenization. Is this a part of development?