Culture, Politics, and Development

Whether in the domains of scholarship or practice, important advances have been made in recent years in our understanding of how culture, politics, and development interact. Today s leading theorists of culture and development represent a fourth di...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author:	Woolcock, Michael
Format:	Policy Research Working Paper
Language:	English en_US
Published:	World Bank, Washington, DC 2014
Subjects:	AFTERLIFE ANCESTRY ANTHROPOLOGIST ANTHROPOLOGISTS BASIC BELIEFS BLACK BLACKNESS CAPITALISM CIVIC LEADERS CIVIC LIFE CIVIC PARTICIPATION CIVILIZATION CIVILIZATIONS COLLECTIVE ACTION COLONIALISM CONFLICT CRITICS CULTURAL ANALYSIS CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY CULTURAL CHANGE CULTURAL DIFFERENCE CULTURAL EXPRESSIONS CULTURAL HERITAGE CULTURAL PROCESSES CULTURAL VALUES DEBATE DEMOCRACY DEMOGRAPHIC CATEGORIES DEMOGRAPHIC GROUPS DISCRIMINATION DIVERSITY ECONOMIC HISTORY ETHNIC BOUNDARIES ETHNIC COMMUNITY ETHNIC CONFLICT ETHNIC DESIGNATION ETHNIC DIVERSITY ETHNIC DIVISIONS ETHNIC GROUPS ETHNICITIES ETHNICITY ETHNOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE FAMILIES GENDER HISTORIANS HUMAN CONDITION HUMAN UNIVERSALS IDENTITY INFERENCE INNOVATIONS LEGACIES LITERATURE MOBILITY MUSIC NATIONALISM NATIONALITY NORMS PERCEPTIONS POLITICAL ISSUES POLITICAL LEADERSHIP POLITICAL STRUCTURES POWER RACE RACIAL BACKGROUNDS RACIAL HERITAGE RELIGION SACRED SITES SCIENTISTS SELF-CONFIDENCE SOCIAL CAPITAL SOCIAL COHESION SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT SOCIAL EXCLUSION SOCIAL GROUPS SOCIAL IDENTITIES SOCIAL IDENTITY SOCIAL LIFE SOCIAL MOVEMENTS SOCIAL POLICY SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY SOCIAL SCIENCES SOCIAL SCIENTISTS SOCIAL STRUCTURES SOCIETIES SOCIETY SOCIOLOGISTS SOCIOLOGY SYMBOLS TRADITION TRADITIONS URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY VILLAGES WELFARE STATE
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/06/19705697/culture-politics-development http://hdl.handle.net/10986/18824

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Summary:	Whether in the domains of scholarship or practice, important advances have been made in recent years in our understanding of how culture, politics, and development interact. Today s leading theorists of culture and development represent a fourth distinctive perspective vis-à-vis their predecessors, one that seeks to provide an empirically grounded, mechanisms-based account of how symbols, frames, identities, and narratives are deployed as part of a broader repertoire of cultural "tools" connecting structure and agency. A central virtue of this approach is less the broad policy prescriptions to which it gives rise -- indeed, to offer such prescriptions would be something of a contradiction in terms -- than the emphasis it places on making intensive and extensive commitments to engaging with the idiosyncrasies of local contexts. Deep knowledge of contextual realities can contribute constructively to development policy by enabling careful intra-country comparisons to be made of the conditions under which variable responses to otherwise similar problems emerge. Such knowledge is also important for discerning the generalizability (or "external validity") of claims regarding the efficacy of development interventions, especially those overtly engaging with social, legal, and political issues.

Culture, Politics, and Development

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