Cultural Alienation Through the Lens of Development
Author(s):
Guy Pierre Kabemba Luembe
Article history:
Received:22 Nov 2022
Accepted:Dec 11, 2023
Abstract:
Studying cultural alienation and development is important for understanding the meaning and the implications of cultural alienation for development. The problem is to set an integrated framework for apprehending the two notions in terms of coexisting divergent cultures within a same society and development of human societies. As method, to elucidate the coexistence of divergent cultures within a society, the African tradition has been retraced from 4236 BCE to date and compared to the transplanted and enforced capitalist system, regarding the typical socio-economic agents and the rule of wealth concentration. Meanwhile, an analysis framework of culture and development has been set in terms of criteria (or conditions) of development, satisfaction of basic needs, social priorities and the integrity of culture. Then, the learnings of the aforementioned comparison of systems has been addressed within this analysis framework. In addition to its known negative effect on satisfaction, as results, first, cultural alienation traduces into erratic social priorities and needs satisfaction. Second, cultural alienation implies the perversion of the criteria of development and thus the perversion of development. These results are significant because erratic priorities may impede efficiency of resources mobilization and allocation. In addition, solving cultural alienation problem is essential to engage contemporary Black Africa in its appropriate course of development. About solutions to cultural alienation, some of them are approached in light of the aforementioned analytical framework.
Keywords:
Cultural conflict; Cultural integrity; Development criteria; Erratic satisfaction; Equations of satisfaction; General
History of Africa; Social complexity
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