Cultural Studies and it’s

Position in Development
Tari Purwanti
Nama : Tari Purwanti
TTL : Sumedang, 24 November 1993
Alamat: Desa Mekarbakti, Kec. Pendidikan Formal
Pamulihan, Kab. Sumedang, Jawa Barat 11/02/2019 – 31/08/2020 S2 Prodi Magister
Antropologi Universitas Gadjah Mada (Master of Arts)
03/09/2012 – 17/01/2017 S1 prodi Antropologi
Universitas Padjadjaran

Email:
tari.purwanti01@gmail.com

Riwayat organisasi
IKA Antropologi UNPAD (PIC Angkatan 2012)
Pengalaman Mengajar 2020-sekarang
Guru Sosiologi dan Sejarah Indonesia di SMAN Jatinangor Juni Kelurahan LPDP UGM (Koordinator Fakultas
2017 – Desember 2018
Ilmu Budaya dan Fakultas Fislafat) 2019-2020
Cultural studies and development studies
• The importance of cultural studies in development
“…despite its weaknesses, potentially revitalises the significance of
culture in relationship to development” (Clammer, 2005)

• Mark J. Smith has recently argued that changes in the meaning of the
term ‘culture’ signify important shifts in the broader ways that we
analyse society (Smith 2000).

• ‘culture and development’ as an approach to, or even sub-field

within, development studies (for example, Schech & Haggis 2000).
The objective problems of development
Poverty, gross social inequalities, extensive violation of human rights,
hyper-urbanisation and the highly unequal distribution of he benefits of
technological and productive advances.

-> Not only is development seen as (rightly) as much a political process

and a politically contested terrain as it is an economic one, but also
development is viewed as pre-eminently a social and cultural process
(Clammer, 2005).
A map of contemporary approach
• A social process
culture as a complex negotiation of identity now irretrievably embedded in globalisation and linked
also with consumption as the dominating cultural form of late capitalist society (Friedman 1996).

• The rediscovery or recovery of ‘indigenous knowledge’.

participatory application of the ethnographic method, to assist empowerment at the local level by
acting as a midwife to the recovery by indigenous people themselves of the richness of their
knowledge systems and of the potential application of these to the solution of development
problems (Sillitoe 1998).

• Culture and political economy

a system of values, evaluations, processes of production, consumption, and exchange, and of social
arrangements predicated upon particular patterns of organising these processes (Clammer 1985)
How is ‘culture’ to be reinserted into
‘development’?
• culture is ‘an arena of struggle’ (Pietersee, 2001)

• Culture represents the constant creation of meaning, in particular to

render valid disordered experiences (illness, disasters, poverty)
precisely into cultural experiences.
Anthropology works to ‘help’ development
agenda
Bottom up approach, not top down.

Examples
1. Examine government’s policy and how it affects society (rural/urban
society, indigenous people, etc) in economic, politic, education, etc.
2. Examine government’s program in health to reduce the rate of
stunting, polio, covid and any other diseases.
3. Etc.
Reference:
Clammer, J. (1985) Anthropology and Political Economy. Londo: Macmillan.
(2005). Culture, development and social theory: On cultural studies
and the place of culture in development. The Asia Pacific Journal of
Anthropology. Vol. 6, No. 2, August 2005, pp. 100-119.
Friedman, J. (1996) Cultural Identity and Global Process. London: Sage.
Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2001) Development Theory: Deconstructions/
Reconstructions. London: Sage.
Schech, S. & Haggis, J. (2000) Culture and Development: A Critical
Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sillitoe, P. (1998) ‘The development of indigenous knowledge: a new applied
anthropology’, Current Anthropology, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 223/52.
Smith, M. J. (2000) Culture: Reinventing the Social Sciences. Buckingham:
Open University Press.