ABSTRACT
Comparative and Third World studies have undergone significant paradigmatic changes in recent years, ranging from the ideologically laden poles of the dependency and modernization approaches of the 1970s to the somewhat more neutral neo-statist perspective of the 1980s. Concurrent with this shift in analytical focus has been a zealous rediscovery of culture and its relevance, indeed at times inseparability, to political analysis.1 Chapter 2 examined the rediscovery of culture and posited some general points concerning the overall nature and functions of culture, its role in articulating symbols and sources of identity, and its relationship with domestic and/or international politics. Building up on these arguments, this chapter will contextualize culture – i.e., place it within the right political, economic and social context – and, in so doing, propose a conceptual framework for the study of Third World politics. Culture alone, the last chapter concluded, does not determine politics; it does so in conjunction with a variety of other dynamics. This chapter examines these dynamics and how they interact in order to produce “politics”.
