Key issues : Cultural issues : Development, Cultural Values and Disability: The Example of Afghanistan

Conclusions

from Development, Cultural Values and Disability: The Example of Afghanistan by Peter Coleridge

People feel threatened when their values are attacked or start to disappear. When there is fighting everywhere, when the economy is in ruins, when the future holds no hope for one's children, to see one's whole value system also threatened means that the sky has fallen in. The core values described for Afghanistan, in particular Islamic duty, the strength of the extended family, honour, well-defined roles for men and women, and respect for senior males, bring order and predictability to a society living in a harsh and unpredictable environment. It is perhaps inevitable that poverty, destruction, and chaos stimulate the emergence of leaders who preach the loss of traditional values as the cause and a return to traditional values as the cure. The same phenomenon has occurred in Europe and elsewhere. For foreigners to challenge these values as 'counter developmental' is not likely to be met with a positive response, especially when 'western values' (which are often as inaccurately stereotyped in the minds of Afghans as Afghan values are in the minds of westerners) are not necessarily seen as producing a more cohesive society. Development programmes have to take these values as the given starting point and work within them.

If development is about moving forward on an upward path towards greater understanding and control over our lives, a process which is more than the provision of material benefits is necessary. Material benefits, even though they are absolutely necessary in a country as poor as Afghanistan, do not amount to development. Culverts, bridges and wells, though vital, do not in themselves make people more inclusive, democratic, or peace loving. A shift in perceptions is necessary. A process must be engaged in which centres on aiming to change perceptions, not to change culture. Changing perceptions is the key to altering behaviour. An enormous difference to the way we live our lives can be created by a shift in perceptions about things we have always taken for granted or never questioned.⁹ The difficulty is that our perceptions are conditioned by our cultural background, and changing them is not something that most humans do spontaneously. Some outside trigger is required. Seeing development as the creation of self-sufficient communities who do not need outside influence is not only unrealistic; it is a flawed model. We all need external stimuli to enable us to grow and develop.⁹

The role of a development worker is to give people the confidence that they do have the ability to develop themselves. At the same time he or she needs to challenge perceptions, from within the culture. Well-trained field workers working within their own cultural context are in a much better position to challenge perceptions than foreigners. The role of foreigners is to ask the questions of the field workers but not to provide the answers; these must be provided by local people from reflecting on their own context and values. Foreigners can ask the questions in different ways, which include providing the materials and the experiences which challenge field workers to change their own perceptions. Discussions on cultural values need to be a regular and normal part of the process of running a development programme and not ignored or left aside as 'too sensitive'. In this way a thinking, questioning, experimenting cadre of field workers can be created who are true catalysts for change within their own culture.

A CBR programme is at base about changing perceptions. Evidence from the CDAP programme shows that changing perceptions about disability can be an important step on the road to deeper understanding about more general development processes. As one field worker in Herat recently said during a discussion about development, 'If we had started a CBR programme twenty years ago in Afghanistan we would not need the UN today.'

Peter Coleridge
CDAP POB 740
Peshawar
Pakistan
Fax (00 92 91) 844946
email: cdapdis@petcol.psw.erum.com.pk

Key issues : Cultural issues : Development, Cultural Values and Disability: The Example of Afghanistan

14/07/1999