Culture

What is the relationship between culture, globalisation, and development? This apparently simple question leads us down an extraordinary pathway. If culture signifies the domain of social meaning that grounds human existence, if globalisation refers to the process of extending social relations across world space, and further, if development names the nature of social change across time as it affects different human cohorts and communities, then this triangle of concepts – culture, globalisation, and development – should be fundamental to the human condition. By the same argument, analysis of this triangle of concepts should be crucial to political debate and social theory. My provisional definitions of culture, globalisation, and development are not the mainstream definitions. Nevertheless, it remains the case that however those concepts are defined our understanding of their relationship is rarely systematically explored. It should be an important conceptual constellation for explicit enquiry, but something must be getting in the way – because this three-way relation is not much discussed at all.