ISTR Sixth International Conference Toronto, Canada / July 11-14, 2004 Contesting Citizenship and Civil Society in a Divided World

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Culture embedded Social Capital and sustainable Development - A perspective for third sector
by
Anita Rao
# 290 'maithree' 29th main 11th cross J P nagar Ist phase Bangalore - 560 078 Karnataka India.

Culture embedded Social Capital and sustainable Development - A perspective for third sector Culture is a socially generated treasure of ideas that are transferred from generation to generation about how to live and make judgements about the specific domains of life. It is an information system nourished, practiced and transmitted by many generations. It is the culture that determines the nature and quality of social relations in a society. The quality of social relations, in turn, determines the society’s capacity to generate resources of production through social relations. Social capital is a socially embedded resource that assists social production and reproduction. It is a resource embedded in social relations in the form of norms, trust, sanctions, authority and other structural features. These are the assets available collectively to all the members of the group, whether a social group or a community.

A culturally embedded economy is informed by culture and protects millions of marginalised and displaced persons. A disembedded economy is one which is disembedded from its socio- cultural roots due to the breakdown of vernacular society [Karl Polanyi]. The spread of western culture is eroding the core values of many traditional societies such as those of China, India, and Africa. In fact, these societies nourish many of the ecologically sustainable practices through their oral culture and tradition. But these sustainable life practices are waning due to the rising prominence of ‘literate culture’ at the cost of ‘oral culture’ under the impact of western model of economic development.

Greater part of the human history is dominated by oral civilisation. Literate civilisation is only 5000 years old and judged from the time scale of history it is very recent. The western development paradigm assumes that written culture is superior to oral culture as it assists market-oriented capitalist development by fundamentally altering the mental and social organisation. It should be noted that illiteracy is one of the factors of ‘vicious circle of poverty’ and the notion that literate creates a great divide in the intellectual abilities is deeply entrenched in the educational dogma of the industrialised countries (Scribner, 1984:14). The divide between the ‘old’ oral and the new literate world developed due to the ‘alphabetisation of human mind’ on a massive scale. ‘Letters by their own symbolism [got] under the culture’s skin and [changed] social perception in terms of written word’ (Illich and Sanders, 1988: 165). But literacy cannot fully replace Orality of a society, if it is dominated by oral culture. In fact, such a replacement would lead to destruction of oral culture of the society and so it is not desirable from the sustainable development perspective. From the dawn of the human civilisation, it is the ‘illiterate’ oral culture, which has practiced and nourished the sustainable life styles in these societies. The psychological tests have proved that the cognitive skills of an illiterate are not at greater variance in relation to a literate. Therefore, from the sustainable development perspective the divide between literacy and illiteracy is relevant only technically. The most striking continuity in the history of the literacy is the way in which literacy has been used to solidify the social hierarchy, empower elities and ensure that people lower in the hierarchy accepted the values norms and beliefs of the elitists, even when it is not in the class interest (Gee 1988:28). Here again the meaning of development is universalised from the western perspective – literacy (development), illiteracy (underdevelopment). Culture by nature is dynamic and creative. Literate culture alienates people from the ‘immediacy of experience’, which is the origin for oral culture. The distinctiveness that characterises human existence is our ability to make symbolic transformation of reality to enhance the control over our lives. Historically this capacity was rooted in Orality. ‘No one is orally illiterate’ and that ‘there is no fundamental difference between the literate and the illiterate’ (Freire, 1973).

Indigenous modes of communication and forms of social exchange have existed from times immemorial. Therefore, ‘to conclude…the development is incompatible with traditional values is not only inhuman, but foolish, even on the grounds of pure efficiency. One practical consequence of this error is that few planners tailor development potentially attractive benefits to the dimensions of traditional existence, rationalities. Perceptive students have long known of course that certain traditional values are consonant with innovation (Goulet, 1971:211). It is high time that research should focus on culture as a binding force for human survival and a source of development, which regenerates itself.

Methodology: This paper relies heavily on the secondary sources such as, books, journals, government publications and published case studies. Multifarious cultural practices of Indian tradition in contemporary society will be cited as case studies to highlight the culture embeddness of social capital

Date received: October 10, 2003

Copyright © 2003 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # camp-14.