Art

The role of culture in development traces back its conception to the ‘cultural turn’ in development when the “modernization equals westernization” paradigm no longer held fast for developmentalism. This questioning of Western development models became a ‘soul-searching’ quest for the Westerners themselves, together with non-Western and newly decolonized societies. The shift from Eurocentricism to polycentrism, coupled with accelerating globalization and the waning of Cold War ideologies became the basis for including culture as a new dimension of development (Nederveen Pieterse 2010a). However, situating art and culture in the form of cultural and artistic expressions within the development discourse remains a tall order in the face of neoliberal advancements that narrowly equate development with economic growth (Clammer 2015; O’Connor 2015; Belfiore 2015; 2012; Banks 2014).

One notable way of looking at the role of culture in development, and how such a role influences the conceptualization of development itself, is through the linear formulations of UNESCO’s conventions and policy documents (Isar, 2015). Within the UNESCO framework, development refers to the widening of access to cultural resources and the provision of favorable conditions for creative work. Favorable conditions, in this sense, include infrastructures and alternative spaces that allow for individuals to exercise their freedom of expression. In situating the political artists, migrants and refugees of Globa Aroma within the development discourse, our research focuses on this conceptualization of development in the context of having favorable conditions for artistic expressions. We consider development as the enhancement of the “effective freedom of the people to pursue what they have reason to value” (WCCD 1996, p. 14) within spaces that serve as “catalyst[s] for dialogue, cooperation, networking, creation and experience” (Globe Aroma).

Another important aspect we consider in this research is on how cultural and artistic expressions provide a more affective dimension to an otherwise technical and often academic development (Clammer, 2015). By looking beyond the primacy of economic growth, holistic development becomes the betterment of the human condition outside the premises of economic valuations. In this sense, we consider the concept of development as the deliberate enhancing of cultural resources in order to give meaning, depth and dignity to human beings, eventually creating a spill over to other areas of social, political, economic and cultural life (Clammer, 2015). Culture, as the “source of our collective memories and our social imagination […] and also the main resource for conceiving and mapping humane and viable futures for our planet” (Clammer, 2015, p. 5) is made explicit through cultural and artistic expressions (Cabral 1974). As such, this research focuses on artists and their artistic expressions, as concrete manifestations of culture, in order to illustrate how culture is not just an abstract concept but actually consists of sets of practices that reconfigure how we see development.