Development Theory

Four Critical Studies

David Lehmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781136856150
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Economics

The studies in this book, first published in 1979, offer an all-encompassing contemporary critique of the sociology, politics and economics of development as they are 'conventionally' taught and disseminated.

They also seek to outline the beginnings of a new approach, while not sparing from criticism the simplistic of contemporary radical theories. The reissue will prove of significant interest to the teaching of development studies at both undergraduate and post-graduate levels.

Sociology of Underdevelopment vs. Sociology of Development?

Henry Bernstein

Once there was the sociology of development. Without necessarily having any more intrinsic coherence or unity than other specialisms within sociology (or the subject in general), a body of literature developed, bibliographies were compiled, conferences held, university courses on the sociology of development were established. This new field had hardly started its career of academic institutionalisation when it was subjected to aggressive attack: the sociology of development typified the ‘underdevelopment of sociology’ (Frank, 1967), the need to go ‘beyond the sociology of development’ was asserted (Oxaal, Barnett and Booth, 1975).

Several salient features of this challenge will concern us here. The first is that underdevelopment was now posed as the object of study more appropriate to the realities of the Third World, and as against prevailing notions of development and modernisation, which were held to be ideological. Second, underdevelopment was conceived as an active process rather than a passive or residual condition. The framework for analysing underdevelopment was that of ‘the world system perspective’, which sought explanations in international relations of inequality and domination/dependence. As sociology lacks the concepts with which such a perspective can be constructed, recourse was had to an emerging political economy and economic history of the Third World in which the writings of Gunder Frank occupied a key place (1966, 1967, 1969a, 1969b, 1972a, 1972b). Finally, the association of underdevelopment of some areas of the world with the capitalist development of others suggested, though it was not defined clearly, some relation to Marxist theory. Despite (or perhaps because of) the uncertainty of this theoretical relationship the ideological thrust of a radical sociology of underdevelopment could lay a claim to the epithet ‘neo-Marxist’ (Foster-Carter, 1974; Hoogvelt, 1976).

Sociology, Development and Modernization

How was sociology to find a place for itself in the new field of development studies which had burgeoned after the Second World War? One writer expressed scepticism as to whether the intellectual tradition of the discipline equipped sociologists to contribute effectively. In this view the interest of sociologists in problems of development was ‘simply a case of sharing growing outside concern with the contemporary position of so-called underdeveloped peoples … there is no historical linkage of this new problem of “social development” to any of the three older sociological interests with which it might seem to have affinity … the interests in social evolution, social progress, and social change’ (Blumer, 1966, p. 3).

Certainly it is true that the sociology of development which emerged has little intellectual unity or coherence, its object being a field of study given by the practical experience of underdeveloped countries and not by any shared theoretical categories. On the other hand, the failure to achieve a theoretically specified object of knowledge is hardly a distinguishing feature of the sociology of development relative to other specialisms in the discipline, insofar as one perspective does bestow a semblance of unity on the literature of the sociology of development, it is that of ‘modernization’ and the formulation of‘models’ of modernization. Contrary to Blumer, it can be argued that modernization theories both incorporate and adapt issues and concepts elaborated by the founding fathers of sociology concerning the themes of social change, evolution and progress (Bernstein, 1972).¹ In fact, the 1960s witnessed a significant revival of interest in social change and evolution by sociologists of the structural-functionalist school (see the articles by Bellah, Parsons and Eisenstadt in the American Sociological Review Vol. 29, No. 3, 1964; also Moore, 1963a, Parsons, 1966, Smelser, 1968, among others).

The Passing of Traditional Society by Daniel Lerner, published in 1958, was one of the earliest attempts to establish the agenda of a sociology of development. In commenting on Lerner’s work, Bendix expressed succinctly the relationship between model and modernisation in this context. ‘The great merit of Lerner’s study consists in its candid use of Western modernization as a model of global applicability’ (1967, p. 309). In the following review of the salient features of modernisation theories, our primary concern is with the mode of conceptualization they employ rather than with the substantive content of particular models of modernization, although some comments on the latter are made for purposes of illustration.

The destination: models of modernity

Modernization is by definition the process of change towards the condition of modernity. The social entity undergoing modernization may be a society, economy, polity or culture (or, as in personality theories of ‘modern man’, the individual is the unit of analysis). The categories of these forms of theorization can also be applied in the study of particular social or institutional spheres—the family, the city, the village, education, bureaucracy, the military, and so on.

Our first question concerns the source of what is modern. As modernization theorists have explicitly stated, the content of modernity is given by the experience of those societies which have achieved it, namely the societies of Western Europe and North America which combine industrial economies with representative democracy. To accept this statement of the historically given, however, would be far too innocent. The social content of modernity is not ‘given’ by a certain history, but is formulated according to the categories through which that history is appropriated and reflected upon in sociological theory.

Broadly speaking, modernization theories can be distinguished according to whether the concepts constituting modernity are formulated at the level of social structure, culture or personality. The first traces its theoretical ancestry to the evolutionism of Spencer and Durkheim, conceiving the process of change in terms of increasing societal differentiation and complexity. On the analogy of the division of labour, extended to all spheres of society, a modern society is one in which a wide range of specialized institutions and roles are functionally related through corresponding agencies of integration (Smelser, 1963; Friedland in Morse et al., 1969; Chodak, 1973). The function of specialization is to increase the capacity of the modern society to respond to changes generated internally, or by the external environment, in ways that do not endanger social stability. An equivalent notion in economics might be that of the capacity to sustain ‘balanced growth’.

Cultural modernization theories have as their object the sphere of values, goals, norms and attitudes. Their preoccupation with religious ideas reflects their inspiration by Weber’s thesis concerning The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The central concept here, as for Weber, is that of rationality identified at the level of both individual social action and the organizational rules of institutions.

Personality theories have as their object the concept of ‘modern man’, a type of social actor equipped with the value and cognitive orientations deemed necessary for effective participation in modern society (Lerner, 1958). ‘Modern man’ is one who has the ability to fulfil the obligations of a number of roles in different areas of social action (job-performance, consumption, citizenship, membership of voluntary organizations, family, etc.). Various inventories of the desirable traits of modern man have been compiled, which differ according to the type of psychological theory employed. McClelland’s notion of ‘need for achievement’ or n. ach. is the best known expression of personality theory (McClelland, 1961). McClelland makes it clear that entrepreneurship (sometimes more abstractly expressed as ‘innovative ability’) is the central motif of this approach.²

The departure point: non-modernity

What these various formulations have in common is that they posit models of modernity held to represent the product of a historical process in the West, which is at the same time a historical promise for other parts of the world.

Historically, modernization is the process of change toward those types of social, economic and political systems that have developed in Western Europe and North America from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth and have then spread to other European countries and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the South American, Asian and African continents (Eisenstadt, 1966, p. 1).

(Social scientists) persist in using the term (modernization) not only because it is a part of popular speech, but also because they recognize that these many changes (in individual attitudes, in social behavior, in economics, and in politics) are related to one another—that many countries in the developing world today are experiencing a comprehensive process of change which Europe and America once experienced and which is more than the sum of many small changes (Preface to Weiner, 1966).

Conforming to the teleological character of ‘before and after’ models of social change, the process (modernization) is defined by its destination. In relation to the destination of modernity the departure point is the non-modern or traditional, a necessarily residual category. While this fundamental dualism—underdeveloped/developed, traditional/modern—is a conceptual currency standard throughout development studies, in the sociology of development it also subsumes a range of polar ideal-types contained in the sociological tradition and which perform a similar theoretical function: status/contract, sacred/secular, mechanical solidarity/organic solidarity, community/association, and the pattern variables of Talcott Parsons (Hoselitz, 1963).

When the purpose, by common consent, is to promote a programme of modernization, there is a tendency to aggregate all that is non-modern, irrespective of the various types of pre-modern societies. This effect of definition in Rostow’s concept of the traditional, for example, has been noted by Raymond Aron.

All past societies are put into this single category, whether they be the archaic communities of New Guinea, the Negro tribes of Africa, or the old civilizations of India and China. But the only feature they have in common is that they are neither modern nor industrialised (Aron, 1964, p. 30).

Reaching the destination: the process of modernization

The process of modernization is charted in the cumulative development of elements of modernity which displace non-modern elements. Various indices have been devised for measuring the degree of modernization, exemplifying an underlying method of comparative statics. ‘On the basis of indicators a, b, c … developing country x in the 1970s corresponds to the stage of modernization of developed country y in the 1890s’. Whether put as baldly as this or employed implicitly, this form of reductionism is a pervasive one and explains the appeal of Rostow’s stage model to sociologists of development.³

How modernization is to be achieved is a question that has vexed sociologists seeking to contribute to development studies, especially in view of the primacy given to issues of economic development. Moore observed some years ago that sociologists had failed to say much about economic development (1963b, p. 520), while Smelser and Lipset attempted to deflect the problem by suggesting that ‘other sectors of the social structure (may) provide the developmental vanguard movement’ in opposition to the view of economic change as primary which they attributed to ‘the combined influence of the classic British model of industrialization, as well as lingering materialist assumptions’ (1968, pp. 157-8).

The problem remains, however, and it reflects the lack of any concepts of social production in sociology. The classical social theorists were preoccupied with the disruptive effects of the industrialization of nineteenth-century Europe and how to maintain social control and stability in face of the destruction of those social institutions and ideologies that had previously guaranteed them. For them the intensity and scale of economic change were given and not problematic, as they are for contemporary development studies where the issue is how to achieve development.

Practically sociologists have tried to stake their claim not by questioning the content of the growth models of the economists but by suggesting that they presuppose certain social and cultural conditions which sociologists are equipped to analyse (Weinberg, 1969, p. 3). On similar lines Hoselitz, an economic historian, has questioned the ceteris paribus clause of the economic growth theories, stating that ‘one cannot always proceed as if all other things remained equal; for often they do not, and it is the change in those ‘other things’ which is crucial (Hoselitz, 1965, p. 183; or in Smelser and Lipset’s words, modernization in other sectors of the social structure—education or the polity are their suggestions—may provide the ‘developmental vanguard movement’).

This represents an attempt to switch from an exclusive focus on the effects of economic development to the consideration of its (non-economic) conditions.⁴ One characteristic expression of this has been the preoccupation with entrepreneurship. Within the framework of an idealist conception of the modern economy derived from Weber—that is, the economy constituted by the actions of economic subjects related to each other through the market—some sociologists and anthropologists have sought to identify the social and cultural determinants of economic innovation. This type of analysis has often concerned itself with seeking in ‘non-Western societies’ cultural ‘equivalents’ to ascetic Protestantism as the ideational source of rational economic behaviour (Eisenstadt ed., 1968). Another expression of this approach is the construction of typologies of ‘modernizing élites’ or regimes...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• The Meaning of Development, With a Postscript
• A Critique of Development Economics in the U.S.
• Modernisation, Order and the Erosion of a Democratic Ideal
• Sociology of Underdevelopment versus Sociology of Development?