The Cultural Dimension

Brown (1991) and others (Nurse, 2006; Throsby, 2008) point to culture as a missing dimension from three pillars of sustainable development. Nurse (2006) argues that we must consider how the cultures of production and consumption can be altered and adapted to the changing ecological, socio-political and technological context. He proposes an alternative framework in which cultural identity is added to the economic, ecological, and social pillars. In his construction we need to look at development in the context of a culturally defined community and the development of this community as rooted in the culture's specific values and institutions. Throsby (2008) cites the work of the World Commission on Culture and Development whose report proposed bringing culture in from the periphery of development thinking and placing it center state. He notes the formal similarities between natural capital and cultural capital, and argues for a series of principles of development that can be regarded as culturally sustainable.