CULTURAL AND DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA

ILAHAKA FRANCIS

Alliance Francaise de Nairobi is the venue of one of the biggest art exhibition ever staged in East Africa on West Africa cultural.

 Titled Francoafric art affair features    French speaking Countries of West Africa among them  Congo,Gabon, Ghana,Ivory Coast,Mali among others with rich Culture diversity dating back to 14 Century AD

TheNairobi exhibition is being staged at the time when there is outcry for Culture concept in Africa and around the World  due to the changing Culture value among the younger generation not only that it is being staged when Kenya had held the just ended confused election

Going through the exhibition one  is likely going to understand. The relationship between Africa  Culture and  modern Science of Culture

One of the organizer Abderahaman Njiguo of Afric Arts told media that the major objective of the exhibition jointly staged by French Culture Center  is to prove to the outside World the relationship between Culture and Development

In the modern World It is very difficult to give a definition of culture which is acceptable to the whole community of cultural scientists. There are colleagues who broadly call culture every result of human action. Mankind is acting on nature; what comes forth from this action is the transformation of nature into culture. This most general view on culture can be opera-tionalized by asking what the degree of intensity of certain actions is. The concept of intensity is taken again in a very broad sense, being related not Only to quantity but also to quality of actions. Thus you can compare earlier and later situations and also parallel situations in different societies. The analysis of actions, for instance the exchange of commodities of the mobility of groups of persons, leads to conclude that it takes place in one period of history or in one area of the world with a higher intensity than in others. The measuring of these differences tells something about the specific culture of a certain society or group of people.

By this means every action and every aspect of action can be regarded as cultural. The cultural dimension of action thus is all-embracing. It just articulates what the inner formation of a certain action is. The degree of intensity of an action does not simply measure parts of an action which can be called its properties. Specific analysis of this type would be possible. It happens in special cultural sciences as for instance in the economic or geographical sciences. What we intend here is the measuring of action as action or the analysis of its inner formation. This is the subject-matter of cultural science in a more general sense of the word. The problem is to find an axiomatic system in order to execute this measuring. There is a group of scholars in Rotterdam working on the foundation of a general science of culture. One of lliem has chosen for an axiomatic approach.¹ It is also possible to give a more specific meaning to the concept of culture. Again the starting point is human action as such. You can ask: what does "form" mean in the analysis of the inner formation of human action? When this question is worked out one does not measure the intensity in terms of quantity and quality. "Form" we find in artistic action and the result of it, is to be found in a work of art. It is not so easy to describe what the criteria are by which an object can be recognized as a work of art. We have to talk about the formal elements of an object which are in a relation to balance. But also certain disturbances of this balance can be recognized as aesthetic. There is a dialectical connection between art and society. On the one hand the situation of a certain society determines which arrangements of formal elements are characteristic criteria for a work of art. On the other hand there are autonomous aesthetic criteria for what is an artistic relation of these elements within an object. These criteria, however, cannot externally be described. They are due to an aesthetic sense, which is accompanied by a feeling that guarantees that something is artistic or not.

Such an aesthetic quality we do not find only with a work of art. To a certain extent it is characteristic of every object, and not only of objects in the meaning of external things, but also of institutions, patterns of action or customary conduct. All these objects are determined by qualities and quantities which can be known exactly and described clearly. But there is also another determination which can only be recognized by an aesthetic sense. I just recall to mind in this connection the well-known description of our recognition of beauty which is given by Immanuel Kant. He speaks of "interesseloses Wohlgefallen", pleasure without any interest.² According to Kant this is not a property of the object which can be known, but a feeling within the knowing subject. And it is still very difficulty to specify what it is in the object that brings forth such a feeling. We can say that it has to do with our imagination and with the constellation of formal elements within the object other members of the Rotterdam group try to explain culture by analyzing aesthetic elements within the human world.

Besides these two concepts of culture I want to introduce a third one which stands in between them. On the one hand I will take over the idea that actions have a certain degree of intensity. I intend to propose that we can isolate the intensity as a specific aspect of action. If we speak of ideal types of action there could be assumed one type which is primarily determined by its higher or lower degree of intensity. In order to distinguish this type of action from others, I will use the theory of action as it is developed by the contemporary German philosopher, Juergen Habcrmas. In his typology of action we find: instrumental action or labour, communicative action or searching for a consensus, and expressive action which I intend to interpret primarily as determined by intensity.

Of course, the concept of expressive action can easily* be misunderstood. You can think of an inner sensation which is externally shaped. And many people will attach to with this word the meaning which it has inherited from the period in the history of arts is called expressionism. We must put aside these ideas and try to think expressive action as more or less intensive action. My proposition is that the aesthetic constellation of formal elements within any object and in the most pure way within the works of art is originated by expressive action

. This aspect of action is not one aspect among many.lt is not one property of action, but it makes human action that what it is

  ENDS. francisilahakai@gmail