What do we do with culture? Engaging culture in development

Key list: Culture and development

More about culture and HIV and AIDS

By engaging cultural processes at all levels, development practitioners can encourage local initiative and better understand social change.

Exchange Findings 3: What do we do with culture? Engaging culture in development (PDF 6 pages 90KB)

Contact healthcomms@healthlink.org.uk to receive a text-only version by e-mail.

Key points

• It is vital to address cultural processes in development policy, planning and practice.
• Power relationships are central to cultural practices and beliefs.
• HIV and AIDS communication has highlighted the links between communication on the personal level and social change.
• Local cultures and communication methods are not just vehicles for delivering messages.
• Culture shapes the institutions and practices of international development.
• Social and cultural change depends on complex factors beyond the control of development agencies.

Increasingly practitioners argue that culture needs to be taken into account in development work. In particular, recent HIV and AIDS communication approaches take social context and culture more seriously and show that engaging with culture can strengthen development communication programming.

See the full paper (PDF), by Exchange's Dr Robin Vincent, which presents the arguments for the key points above and signposts to some practical examples of work that engages cultural processes.

See Source Key list: Culture and development for key resources drawn from this research.