SOAS Research Online

Abstract

At least since the publication of Our Creative Diversity , the report of the UN World Commission on Culture and Development, in 1996, discourses concerning ‘the power of culture for development’ have formed part of that circulating concatenation of ideas, terms and images that characterizes what we might regard as the ‘ideoscape’ of international development (cf. Appadurai 1990: 9-10). Alongside such buzzwords as participation , empowerment and poverty reduction (Cornwall and Brock 2005), there has been a programmatic diffusion of ideas that link the realms of culture and development. Thus, culture is said to be ‘a fundamental component of sustainable development’, ‘a powerful global economic engine’, ‘a vehicle for social cohesion and stability’, and ‘a repository of knowledge, meanings and values that permeate all aspects of our lives’ (UNESCO 2010: 2-6).