Does Culture Matter?
Fletcher’s New Cultural Change Institute Aims to Find Out
Students, faculty, and staff gathered at The Fletcher School on April 24 to celebrate the inauguration of the Cultural Change Institute (CCI). An outgrowth of more than 20 years of research and academic scholarship by author and Fletcher adjunct professor Lawrence Harrison, the CCI was established as a permanent institution dedicated to the exploration of the role of culture in development and progress around the world.
Dean Stephen Bosworth launched the opening by recognizing Professor Harrison’s multiple contributions to the Fletcher community. “This is an important day,” he said. “When I first arrived at Fletcher—now more than six years ago—one of the first people I talked to was Larry Harrison.” Their initial chat on cultural change and its impact on the progress of developing countries led to the 1999 Culture Matters Symposium at Fletcher, a popular and widely noted conference exploring the role of culture in democratization and development.
In order to leverage the interest the symposium generated, Harrison spearheaded the creation of the Culture Matters Research Project (CMRP), a three-year initiative that assembled essays and original research from more than 65 scholars around the world. The CMRP culminated in the popular book Culture Matters (Basic Books, 2000), edited by Harrison and Harvard University professor Samuel Huntington (of The Clash of Civilizations fame).
Harrison continued to build on the topic by editing a follow-up book entitled The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save it From Itself (Oxford University Press, 2006). He subsequently secured the funding for the establishment of the CCI at The Fletcher School. In addition to his research and writing, Harrison teaches the Fletcher course “Cultural Values and Development,” offered every semester and always filled to capacity. “It has become an important part of the constellation of academic offerings here at The Fletcher School,” Bosworth said of the course.
At the reception, Professor Harrison delivered remarks about the beginnings of the CCI, which has its roots in his work as an administrator with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Latin America and the Caribbean from 1969 to 1981. Through his work in international development, he began to develop the topics now being explored in CCI’s research projects.
Harrison said the CCI was formed in response to the question, “What can be done to facilitate progressive cultural change?” Although cultural change may be desirable in some cases, Harrison said, “[a] fundamental precept of the CCI is that cultural change cannot and should not be imposed from the outside.”
With funding in place from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the CCI is looking to explore further case studies beyond those highlighted in the Culture Matters Research Project, including the successes of Barbados, Costa Rica, Jordan, Mauritius, Malaysia, Slovenia, Uruguay, and Vietnam. They also plan to examine the role of culture in the cases of India’s disparate economic development, Poland’s “limited tolerance for public debate,” and the acculturation of Mexican immigrants in the United States. In addition, the CCI will undertake studies of instruments and institutions of cultural change—most notably, religion and entertainment media—and launch pilot projects on value-based child-rearing practices, educational reforms, and attitude surveys.
The newly-formed CCI is exploring opportunities for student involvement in its programs and is also looking for opportunities to provide technical assistance to governments, non-governmental organizations, development assistance institutions, and universities. Harrison noted that a U.S. government agency and a private-sector organization have already expressed interest in receiving cultural consulting from the CCI.
In addition, though the center focuses on culture in relation to development and democratization, future CCI projects could move beyond these topics. “I think it’s quite possible,” he said when a student asked about this prospect. “One of the things that’s come up … is the possibility of applying what we’ve learned in the Culture Matters Research Project and its predecessors to conflict resolution.”