Development and culture: in search of a lost agenda

Abstract

The debate about culture is a key issue for economic theory and for proposing new developmental policies. Despite this, some recent approaches have hardly incorporated or explored culture. Thus, identifying this gap in the literature, we explore the relationship between culture and development. Firstly, we analyse this relationship in new mainstream approaches, identifying their limitations. Then, we discuss the developmentalist approach, underlining the structural and unbalanced conception. Sequentially, and somewhat inspired by the latter, we examine new approaches that share the structural perspective, such as the post-Keynesian and institutionalist approaches. We conclude that the developmentalist approach has contributed to amplifying the integration of culture and development and that these new “non-neoclassical” conceptions reveal an interesting potential for incorporating the cultural dimension of development.