The Cultural Question in the Third World Development and Underdevelopment

An average third world country strives after development. Yet, culture, being the total way of life of the people, has exerted great impact both in the development and underdevelopment of the third world countries. Culture forms the ideas, customs, and social behavior of a particular people or society. However, where the culture adopted from antiquity opposes the present changing world realities, it becomes a problem of contemporary concerns. Using a descriptive and analytical method, and cultural determinism theory, this chapter examines the role of culture in the development of underdevelopment of the third world countries (a sketch study of Africa). It argues that the cultures that lead to the development of the third world countries will gradually lead to conflict prevention and peacebuilding. Culture and development are essential notations to be reconsidered and re-enforced in the third world. Hence, to attain relevance, both must be complemented. The chapter therefore helps to harness and foster the complementation between culture and development in the third world countries.

Developmental Idealism, the International Population Movement, and the Transformation of Population Ideology in Kenya*

The spread of developmental idealism's beliefs about how “modern” family practices help achieve a modern prosperous society did not happen spontaneously, especially in societies whose family systems bore little initial resemblance to the “modern” ideal. We examine how Kenya in the 1960s became the first sub-Saharan country to adopt a fertility reduction policy, even though Kenya's leaders and their Western advisers initially had very different population ideologies. The advisers were neo-Malthusians who viewed continued high fertility in the face of rapid mortality decline as a grave threat to Third World development, whereas most Kenyans were traditional mercantilists who viewed a larger family and a larger population as signs of wealth and prosperity. Kenyans' conversion to neo-Malthusianism is often presented as the simple result of education and reason: Kenyans came to be convinced that progress requires slower population growth and lower fertility, achieved through modern methods of fertility control. Our account differs. It recognizes that neo-Malthusianism was a Western export that faced substantial opposition and that its adoption was the result of a coordinated movement by neo-Malthusians that applied pressure on Kenyan elites to change the intimate behavior of their people. We conclude that developmental idealism has spread from its Western origins to ordinary people around the world, but that the process was not simple, inevitable, or uniform.

The Annunciation of the Gospel

ABSTRACT Fifty years ago, Ivan Illich – then a trainer of missionaries – declared that the Church should withdraw from its current role in third world development and focus instead on “the annunciation of the gospel.” This would be the church's “contribution to development which could not be made by any other institution.” Since then church institutions have instead greatly expanded their role in relief and development. This article examines why we need to listen to Illich.

ETIKA DALAM PEMBANGUNAN INTERNASIONAL

Inequality and poverty are the impact of the unevenness of the distribution of physical and economic development outcomes. This is the result of development which ignored the moral and ethical dimension. Liberal and neo liberal system makes the factors of production mastered by a few people that contribute to inequality. People who have little ability to access resources become increasingly poor and backward. Ethics of Third World Development emerged as a critical alternative approach theory which concern with community development or empowerment community to make their life become better. Gaoulet and others of critical alternative approach suggested at least there are three basic component which are should be conceptual foundation and practical guide in understanding the development, those are sustenance, self-esteem, and freedom.Key Words : Ethics of Third World Development, Sustenance, Self Esteem, Freedom