International Workshop
Cultures and Civilisations for Human Development
Rome, Home of Geography
Villa Celimontana
December 12-14, 2005
Cultures and Civilizations for Human Development
by
Paul Claval, France <>
Re Session 8 — Cultures and civilizations for human development
The three stages in the modern concern for development
The concern for human development is an outcome of the philosophies of history and of the idea of Progress which became prominent on the Western intellectual scene during the eighteenth century. It took, however, a long time before this concern was really transformed into a political objective shared by an increasing number of people – and States.
In the perspectives opened by the philosophies of history, human beings were able to change the World and reform the societies in which they lived in such a way that they could enjoy happiness here below. All the human beings were endowed with reason: as a result, all of them deserve respect; they had to be considered as equal, since they had the same basic capabilities.
For a long time, the fact that economic development was responsible for unequalities did not disturb Western public opinions. In industrialized countries, they were obviously poor and rich people, but all of them experienced a betterment of their economic situation. In many cases, the gap between higher and lower classes was reduced.
Firste stage: economic development as an imperative for humankind
With the rise of macro-economics and the improvement of economic statistics, it became possible, at the time of World War Two, to measure the Gross National Product of every nation, and its Gross National Product per capita. It appeared that between the poorest countries and the wealthiest ones, the gap was from 1 to 100. Between the different regions of the same country, the differences were also important. Because of the new technologies of communication, these figures were soon diffused all over the World: for the first time such a situation appeared untolerable as well in the developed countries, because they were based on democratic ideals, as in developing ones, since they suddenly became conscious of the unfairness of the economic World in which they lived.
Economic development led to a fundamental improvement of human life in many sectors: if people earned enough money, their children could attend schools, their families could be treated by doctors and, if necessary, have access to hospitals; they could spare some money for the time when they would retire. The social dimensions of the economic development imperatives were such that in less than twenty five years, all the developed countries were transformed into Welfare States: the redistribution of income allowed for the poorer part of their population to benefit for the first time from efficient health and education systems.
At the international level, solutions were more difficult to find out. The different programmes of International Assistance were always too short of finance to allow the easy take off into sustained growth of most developing countries. The prices of commodities were set in such a way that Third World producers were unable to earn enough to modernize their equipments.
Economic development remained uneven during the 50s and the 60s, but the World production rose rapidly: industrial products came mainly from Europe, North America and Japan, which benefited much by the growth; oil became to make wealthier the Middle East and some countries elsewhere. In the 60s, industrialization grew rapidly in a few Eastern Asian countries, like South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong or Singapore.
Because of the persisting unequalities in the World, the objective of economic development remained essential, but the growing demand for energy and raw materials began to generate a new concern for environment.
Second stage: sustained growth as the new form of collective imperative
From the end of World War Two, the demand for oil, mineral ores and some food staples kept growing at an exponential rate. With the new facilities offered by computers, it was easy to model such an evolution in order to predict what will happen in the future: Jay Forrester had devised efficiently models of urban dynamics in this way (Forrester, 1969). Within a few years, his methods were applied to the evolution of resources (Ehrlich and Ehrlich, 1970). Their ideas were central in the report published by Club of Rome in 1972 (Meadows et al., 1972). The slogan of all the ecologists was a simple one : growth had to be stopped. It was the attitude chosen by the scientific community at the Conference organized by the United Nations in Stockholm in 1972.
Until World War Two, people were conscious of the scarcities which slowed down the economic development of the World: energy was costly to produce; coal was difficult to transport, which meant that its use was restricted to limited areas; electricity allowed the distribution of power around the power plants, but costs remained so high that the radius of electric networks remained rather short. The industrial economies lived with a permanent fear to be short either of metallic ores or of wool, cotton and other raw materials.
After World War Two, the situation changed rapidly. Because of the growing share of oil in the supply of energy, transportation costs went down, which allowed for the use of concentrated forms of energy everywhere, in the agricultural sector of the economy for instance, thanks to the tractor. Because of the progress of chemistry, it became possible to replace natural products by synthetic ones, as for rubber for instance: the new basic raw material of these production was oil. Hence the feeling that all the obstacles to growth had been removed.
The real successes observed in the 50s and 60s resulted in fact from the growing reliance of economic activities on energy: development was increasingly tied to the perspectives of power production, essentially oil and natural gas – or nuclear energy. The reserves of oil and gas will be exhausted some day – and more rapidly than generally thought, because of the exponential rate of their demand. To develop nuclear energy was more difficult as initially thought, with real risks for the environment. With the increased use of energy, pollutions ceased to be limited to the urban and industrial areas : they became increasingly regional; in the lee of big human concentrations, acid rains became a serious problem. Some experts spoke of the potential threat over the thermic balance of the Earth that glasshouse gases could create.
To renounce to growth was however impossible: the Earth was experiencing a period of demographic explosion: to renounce to the use of fossile fuels meant a more dramatic situation for the majority of people and a growing risk of demographic catastrophes.
The whole problem of development had to be thought again in a new perspective. Production had to be regulated in such a way that it will not impair the resources the future generations will require: humankind had to apply to its own development the principle of responsability invented at that time by Hans Jonas. In order to avoid a catastrophic future, people had to refrain from launching projects which could reduce the future potentialities of nature.
In 1987, the United Nations Commission on Econonmic Development presented a report prepared by a group of experts chaired by the Norwegian Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland: Our Common Future. It translated the ongoing reflection on the contitions of development into a simple formula: instead of maximizing its economic production, humankind had to practice a sustainable growth. The United Nations Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, adopted this formula as its main guideline for the future.
The economic dimension of development was not forgotten, but it was completed by an ecological one. The success of the expression was curious. It was in no way a concept: the two words development and sustainable were contradictory, since it was impossible to provide human groups with growth without at the same time transforming, and in most cases, impairing their environment; in order to make growth sustainable, it had to be so much slowed down that the perspective for improving human condition were much reduced.
The tension between the two words was, however, the main advantage of the expression : it reminded that growth had to be controlled in order to limit the risks for the future.
Third stage: human development as the new imperative for humankind
Since a long time, experts were dissatisfied with the prevalence of economc aims in the growth policies developed by the different nations and sponsored by the United Nations. Hence the efforts for developping new conceptions of what is good for humanity. As early as 1970, a group of experts chaired by D. V. McGranahan proposed a synthetic development index, the "aim being a balance between social and economic indicators, and between structural (causal) and development (outcome) indicators" (quoted by Smith, 1996, p. 778). These efforts met only a limited success: the GNP had "a correlation coefficient as high as 0.89 with the new composite development index" (ibidem, p. 779). Other indexes gave better results, the Human Development Index (HDI) introduced by the United Nations in 1990, for instance. It basically combined life expectancy, adult literacy and the Gross National Product per head,
What is most significant for us was the name given to this index: the "Human Development Index". What was at stake had ceased to be only the economic production and the state of the environment. It was from now on the life as experienced by ordinary people. In most cases, these new orientations were interpreted in termes of human welfare and social justice (Smith, 1996). It meant that the conception of society remained basically utilitarian.
The real significance of the new interest for human development lied elsewhere: human beings live in a World which is at the same time material and symbolic. Culture is the link between what is material and what is symbolic in social reality : it is made of attitudes, practices, know-hows, knowledges and beliefs. It is inherited from the past, experienced in the present and permanently adapted to its conditions. It provides individuals and groups with perspectives for the future: in this way, it gives a sense to their existence.
The word civilization captures the same set of elements as culture, but the term is used to designate those cultures which are transformed by a dynamic of deepening and self-surpassing.
There were many signs that the cultural dimension was increasingly incorporated into the conception of development – that we were moving from economic or sustainable development to human development: the former economic and ecological objectives were preserved, but new ones were taken into consideration. Until the 50s, the only "cultural" right which was recognized was religious: in democratic nations, everyone could practice the faith of its choice. All the other aspects of culture were ignored. When looking at the American urban landscapes in the first half of the twentieth century, all the ethnic groups live in the same houses, with the same type of street. The only sign of ethnicity was religious: the presence of different churches, temples or synagogues.
Today, the situation is different: many groups are struggling for the possibility of practicing their own way of life and to assert their presence by imposing landmarks on the landscapes. Many democratic countries are now conceived as multicultural ones. The international institutions put pressure on States for giving a fair treatment to their minorities.
At the same time, there is a growing concern for inheritance: in the past, the property rights of individuals could be reduced because of the prevalence of public interest when collective economic and urban development was involved; compulsory purchase was then possible. Because of the new concern for environment preservation, compulsory purchases are now authorized also for protecting areas of special ecological significance, wetlands when migratory birds stay for a while during their long travels for instance. Today property rights are increasingly limited also for protecting inheritance: private owners are denied the right to transform or destroy the monuments they have bought because they have a cultural significance for whole communities; they are often asked to allow visits if they wish to get public money for restoring them. UNESCO has been very active in that field during the last generation
It is in this context that the initiative of our Study Group has to be situated. We have to reflect on what the inclusion of cultures means for those who, today, conceive policies for the World of tomorrow.
The context: a speeding-up globalization
In order to fully understand the growing concern for human development, it is necessary to keep in mind the context in which the conceptions of development evolved from the mid-twentieth century: that of a speeding-up globalization.
The new effects of globalization
Globalization is a long term process. It started at the time of the discoveries, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, underwent a phase of acceleration during the nineteenth century thanks to the railway, the steamship and the telegraph, and entered a new stage at the time of World War Two, with the development of cheaper mass transport for goods (either supertankers or pipe-lines), rapid transport for persons (planes, and especially jet planes) and more efficient telecommunications (T. V., cellular phones or internet). Until well into the twentieth century, its effects were mostly important in the material field (thanks to easier conditions for international trade).
During the last fifty or sixty years, the relations of human groups with their environment deeply changed: (i) the first ecological revolution, that of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, had released the constraints which limited for long the possibilities of development in many places – hence the exponential rate of growth when this limitations disappeared, and specially in the late 40s and 50s; (ii) the second ecological revolution resulted from this acceleration. With ever increasing flows of polluted air and water, with an ever increasing quantity of solid waste, ecosystems became unable to recycle all the elements which were injected into them. Their capacity of resilience was not big enough : hence the diffusion of pollution over ever increasing areas, and the rise of global unbalances.
The economic growth of the major countries of the developping World, either China and India, was slow until the 80s. Tremendous changes occured in that field since twenty years, and more particularly, since of the beginning of the twenty–first century: it means that the pressures on the global environment will grow rapidly in the next future. Action for sustainable growth never was as necessary as today.
Because of the growing mobility of persons and news, the World is in many ways smaller than in the past: it is more difficult to avoid the diffusion of informations on what happens even in remote places. The socialist regimes as well as military dictatures often tried to control their boundaries in order to prevent the diffusion of news, modes and attitudes. They met only very limited success.
It is because of these two facets of contemporary globalization that the problem of development has today become so central in public opinions and State and international policies. The transformation started when it became possible to know the income levels all over the World; in the late 40s: it was the time when economic development became a collective imperative. It took another orientation when the scale of environmental problems became a planetary one, at the beginning of the 70s. With a growing flow of tourists, of international migrations of refugees or people looking for employment or social welfare, with the diffusion by T. V. networks of the same programmes in many countries, and with the possibilities offered by internet, globalization is responsible for a closer confrontation of cultures. Hence the third stage in the policies of development: it is not enough to provide everyone with enough money to have a roof, send children to school and pay for health care; it is not enough to look for the conditions our children or grand children will find on Earth in the future. What is at stake is the possibility for anyone to find a sense for his life: globalization is threatening many of the aspects of traditional and modern cultures.
Globalization and the transformation of cultures
Cultures last for long periods, which does not mean that their features do not evolve. In fact they are permanently reassessed and transformed: people adapt them to the situations which confront them. Globalization appears as a major factor of transformation.
In traditional societies as well as in industrial ones until the interwar period, the passing down of low cultures was mainly achieved through the direct imitation of adults by young people who observed them and listened to what they said. These vernacular cultures allow the transmission from generation to generation of the attitudes, practices and know-hows used in daily life, as well as of most of the productive techniques. The passing down of high cultures relied more on the use of the written word; they were more centred on values, beliefs and the techniques of social control.