Culture's Role in Social Solutions

Professor Elinor Ostrom's cultural development keynote is a detail-oriented exposition on the role that culture plays in the development that leads to the solution of social issues.

Professor Ostrom explores the role of culture by studying the culturally imposed facets of society that transcend engineering and science research. She delves into a Nepali example of this nature to support her point. From a micro perspective, she explains that self-imposed guidelines in a south Asian society -- such as boundary rules of resource appropriation -- are recognized and enforced by its very own citizens. These regulations change "through self-conscious problem solving, imitation of rules used by others, non-enforcement and memory loss or ignorance of rules."

With the argument that developmental success can be accredited to self-imposed cultural facets, Ostrom reiforces her sound statement of the important role that culture plays in solving social dilemmas. However, she delves deeper in this cultural development keynote to thoroughly reinforce the importance of said societal phenomenons.