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Paper short abstract

This paper offers a critical reflection on how cultural forms inform new forms of political and social agency emerging across Ghana. It argues that reimagining development requires decentering technocracy and foregrounding culture as a site of power, creativity, resistance, and future-making.

Paper long abstract

Culture, understood as the dynamic system of meanings, identities, practices, and values that shape everyday life, plays a central role in how development is imagined, contested, and enacted in Ghana. Through an interpretivist philosophical orientation, this paper offers a critical reflection on how cultural forms such as artistic expressions inform new forms of political and social agency emerging across Ghana. This is situated within broader struggles and systemic global challenges such as climate vulnerability and the crisis of neoliberal development models. Drawing on neo-colonial theory, the paper argues that reimagining development requires decentering technocracy and foregrounding culture as a site of power, creativity, resistance, and future-making. Culture influences how people interpret development interventions, legitimize authority, mobilize collective action, and envision possible futures. It shapes how communities negotiate global norms, resist extractive practices, and articulate context-specific approaches to well-being and self-determination. This study positions culture as both a diagnostic and generative tool for imagining resilient and community-driven development in Ghana.