Rethinking Development

Essays on Development and Southeast Asia

Peter Preston

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415602174
• eBook ISBN: 9781136855801
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Economics

First published in 1987, this volume stresses the importance of development studies for sociology, as P. W. Preston argues that this field of study is emerging from the technical social scientific ghetto back into the mainstream of the 'classical tradition' of social theorizing, represented by Marx, Weber and Durkheim.

Preston discusses the position of development studies in relation to the wider group of the social sciences in general and to sociology in particular. Using examples mainly from the study of Southeast Asia, he looks at the diversity of available 'modes of social theoretic engagement' and considers the work of the colonial administrator scholar, the humanist academic scholar, and the scholar who theorises on behalf of the planners, discusses the mode of political writing, and Marxian analyses of development; and considers the particular problems surrounding the elites of post-colonial 'nation states'.

1 Rethinking development

1 Introduction

In this essay I will offer an overview of the present status of work on matters of development.¹ This is no simple task because, in addition to familiar problems of survey and evaluation, there are two areas of growing doubt to be taken into account. Confidence in the analytical machineries of development studies is low and there is widespread unease in respect of the precise intellectual status of social theorizing per se. It seems to me that there are two complexly interwoven processes of reconsideration in train: we are rethinking development as we rethink social theorizing.²

This essay aims to contribute to this reworking by attempting to clarify matters in three related areas: the nature of social theorizing per se; the character of the post-Second World War career of development studies; and the nature of the ‘residual common sense’ of studies of development. Given the scope of this task, my remarks should be understood as tentative.³ I will begin by introducing my theme of ‘rethinking’ and then look at the three issues noted.

2 Appropriating the past of development studies

Over the last forty years,⁴ students of matters of development have produced a very large amount of material: ‘development’ has been one of the major concerns of governments, international agencies and social scientists. This being so, the presentation of a synthetic survey will, inevitably, involve a large measure of simplification. This is acceptable: we appropriate the past in order to make sense of the present and set tentative agendas for the future. I am going to propose that development studies is presently undertaking a significant ‘rethinking’ and as a route into the issues raised by this view I will identify three ways of ‘appropriating’ the past of development studies. I will speak of three – not mutually exclusive – motifs within that history: the attempt to constitute an autonomous discipline; the construction of a series of ideologies; and finally, a progressive movement away from a technical ‘ghetto’ back into the ‘mainstream’ of the concerns of social science. I will focus here on the first three readings as it captures, fairly directly, the ethos of the ‘intelligent orthodox’. The other readings represent what I think did happen and is happening.

I have argued elsewhere⁵ that the post-Second World War period has seen the attempt to constitute an autonomous discipline of development studies. Autonomous in the intra-social sense of being one distinct social science amongst others; and autonomous in the extra-social sense of the study having its own external object and methods of enquiry appropriate thereto. This, clearly, is a strategy of conceptualization which is informed by the ‘received model’ of natural scientific explanation – and there are direct links to practical engagement which can now be noted with the familiar term ‘policy science’.⁶ I further argued that this attempt to constitute an autonomous discipline was identifiable in growth theory and modernization theory, where matters of development were conceived (variously) as an extension of positive economic science. I then went on to claim that it was with neo-institutional work, and some dependency work (in particular, ‘early’ Furtado) that claims to autonomous status were most forcefully and persuasively made. In neo-marxian work – and in the products of some of its ‘left’ critics – there is an analogous concern: the unreflexive celebration of the idea of ‘the one revolutionary mode’ and, further, a residually scientistic analytical approach.⁷ However this, clearly, is a point that cannot be pressed too far and when I speak of the attempt to constitute an autonomous discipline it will be the orthodox theorists I have in mind.

The attempt to constitute an autonomous discipline of development studies failed for two general sets of reasons.

The first was the project's own inherent implausibility: the attempt (made by academic theorists, technical experts in government and international agencies, plus a host of miscellaneous commentators) authoritatively to characterize the major elements of the process of transition to the modern world and to lay claim to particular, technical manipulative, expertise in respect of these identified elements was doomed to failure, it seems to me, from the outset. The overall problem area was both too complex and of interest to too many diversely located groups for it to be amenable to the process of reduction of attention and focusing of enquiry which must be necessary to the constitution of a ‘discipline’. Failure was built into the project design.

A second area of explanation for this failure is to be found in the success that repeated enquiry had in occasioning refinement of argument. From the narrowly economics-based work of the ‘committee of experts⁸ in 1951 there was refinement of argument, in concert with extensive practical experience, along two axes. Firstly we can identify a fairly obvious spread of enquiry. The work of a wide range of social sciences was called upon in the efforts to theorize development. Secondly there was a process of increasing depth of enquiry. By this I do not mean it was the refinement of technical detail but rather the increasing reflexivity of enquiry that was important.

And when we put together this dual process of refinement, it seems to me, the pattern of concerns which are revealed present us with a second synthetic motif. The career of development studies entails a progressive shift from a narrowly technical enquiry detached from the concerns of the mainstream of the social scientific tradition back into that mainstream. Indeed this motif recalls the claim I have associated with Gellner: the issue of development recalls the work of the ‘founding fathers’ in terms of the breadth of scope, complexity of elements, and demanding urgency of the problems addressed.⁹ The matters which students of ‘development’ now typically address are those of widespread and pervasive social change and the extent to which it can be comprehended and its direction made subject to human will. The self-consciousness of students of development now coincides with that of other social scientists: it revolves around the continuing effort to render the nature of social theorizing clear. In slightly over three decades the project first enunciated by the ‘committee of experts’, as a technical matter, has reached a point of being poised to crumble back into social philosophy. The question thus arises: where does all this leave the community of (academic) students of development and the problems they have typically addressed?

At the outset it can be said that it does not leave them with a crisis and it is not my intention in this essay to offer any such declamatory announcement. There are two reasons for eschewing such a course of action of which the first is stylistic. More importantly I do not think that a notion of crisis fits into a plausible metatheory of social theorizing. The business of social theorizing presents itself in diverse guises. The generic notion of ‘making sense’ has to be unpacked in a variety of historical/social/economic/political locations and this view holds for development studies. The range of interests in matters of development is very broad – to speak of a general crisis would be absurd. To speak of a series of crises would be both theatrical and false. Rather I would speak of a diffuse pattern of re-consideration. Thus, out of the range of modes of engagement with matters of development I think we can now pick out some impulses to reconsider, in the ‘depth’ noted above, the familiar assumptions of development studies. These impulses are evidenced in academic commentary – though the extent of reconsideration may, of course, be much broader.

The post-war career of development studies can be read in several ways. I have made reference to the attempt to constitute an autonomous discipline – a project which failed and has issued in a disposition to a thoroughgoing reconsideration. I have also spoken of a shift back towards the social scientific ‘mainstream’. I want now to introduce a major motif. This will serve as a corrective to any reading of the post-war career of development studies which is inclined to draw upon the ‘received model’ and thus be encouraged to look for a spurious coherence. Thus it seems to me that this career can much more plausibly be analysed in terms of the construction of a series of ‘schools’. I would argue that it is both possible and useful to identify five such schools. These five schools – which I shall be discussing in section four – can be identified via a fairly simple sociology of knowledge reading of the post-war career of development studies. Each represents a particular exchange between theoretical traditions and practical demands (that is: economic, social and political ‘problems’). I think this approach to the history of forty years’ work is much preferable to the more usual ‘typologies’. Each ‘school’ is clearly revealed as an exercise in ‘ideology construction’ – which view I will explain in section three.

My purpose in section five will be to discover whether the subsequent ‘decay’ of these particular schools has generated any legacy of widely accepted ideas – a ‘residual common sense’ of development studies. If we can identify such a residuum we can then go on to ask whether it is a help or a hinderance to the ‘rethinking’ process which I have suggested is now taking place.

3 Social theorizing: the construction, critique and comparative ranking of ideologies

Having now presented a simple schema whereby we can ‘appropriate’ the past of development studies so as to open up the issue of ‘rethinking’, I want now to turn to the particular business of rethinking social theorizing per se. Over recent years there has been much work done on this matter and my remarks here are designed to introduce both my thoughts and the ‘line of enquiry’ I find most plausible.¹⁰

The decline and, indeed, eclipse of the dominant post-war orthodoxy has the effect, so far as I am concerned, of freeing us to consider directly the questions of what social theorists have been doing and might, in the future, usefully do.

If we simply look at what has been proposed as ‘social theory’, then it is clear that we confront no single ‘object’; rather we find, to borrow an over-worked metaphor from Wittgenstein, a family of activities. This ‘insight’ is easily gleaned from reviewing either the history of social theorizing generally or the post-war career of development studies. There is, so far as I can presently see, no reason, or intellectual profit to be gained from attempting, to squash this diversity into single mould.¹¹ Social theorizing encompasses a multiplicity of strategies of making sense of the social world: unity and diversity. A general label might be useful -1 am affirming a ‘disintegrated’ view of social theorizing. The substance of such a view can be sketched by offering a characterization of two views of the nature of social theorizing organized around my particular concern with making sense. Thus I will distinguish, for my present introductory purposes, between social scientists who adopt some sort of ‘naturalist-descriptive’ stance, on the one hand, and on the other those who adopt some sort of ‘reflexive stance’.¹²

To cast the matter of my interest in social science at a very general level I would say that my concern is with how actors, collectively, make sense of the social world. Now, clearly, the orthodox ‘naturalist-descriptive’ theorist could also affirm this as their most general interest. It would be understood as the natural science-referring description of structure: Bauman's ‘Durksonian’ social science.¹³ For the orthodox theorists the way in which actors make sense, and the way in which this can be social scientifically appropriated, is conceived in an essentially passive fashion. Thus social science gives a report on how sense has been made, how the world has been patterned: the social world is a reality sui generis. Social scientific enquiry is also, itself, cast in passive form: the provision of value-neutral reports on how things are – how the world has been patterned.

The alternative approach is to see the business of making sense as essentially an active process and enquiry itself as active. The given is the process of structuration¹⁴ – the (re)creation of the patterned social world in and through patterned human action. This alternative, ‘reflexive’ approach also denies the appropriateness of the invocation of natural science made by the orthodox. A passive engagement with the material of enquiry is seen to be unpersuasively and arbitrarily restricted. Thus the alternative seeks to lodge reflexively the community of social scientists (as one group amongst many) within a society which is conceived as an interplay of processes.¹⁵

It is this second noted scheme which I find the more convincing. I use this general conception within a restricted context: thus my interest in making centres on those (more or less) deliberate or self-conscious efforts at what would ordinarily be recognized as social science-type theorizing. So the paradigm case of my interest is the production of ideologies. Here we find the matter of the effective contribution to structuration of actively produced ideas about structures. Thus the key term for the subsequent discussion and for my own views about the nature of social theorizing – how it is to be characterized, how it embeds in the social world, how it differs from natural science – is ideology.¹⁶

For the orthodox social scientist the production of knowledge is, essentially, a matter of reporting how things are, and problems cluster around accuracy of reports. The notions of science and ideology are resolutely divorced and ideology is seen as the repository for all the error to which social science is prey if ever it becomes embroiled in matter of values.

The contrary, ‘reflexive’, approach takes the production of social scientific knowledge to be less a matter of mimicking the supposed procedures of natural science (i.e. affirming the ‘received model’) and much more a matter of the construction of argument. And if social science is taken to revolve around argument construction then it is not possible to regard the history of social science as involving the production of ever-improving techniques for the description of an external given reality. It is, on the contrary, a history of particularly located efforts of argument construction. Any progressivity in theorizing will be revealed in the ways in which arguments, appropriate to their circumstances, are constructed. The social scientific (and thus general) measure of progressivity must centre upon the skill with which arguments are crafted so as to uncover the truth. The multiplicity of pragmatic concerns which variously located social actors might have are measured internally and thereafter to the measure central to social science.¹⁷ The concerns, in respect of propriety of explanation, which are typical of this line of thought centre upon the matters of appropriate premises, theoretical frameworks, the role of valuation and the rational judgment of competing claims: upon, that is, the business of the construction, criticism and comparative ranking of ideological schemes.¹⁸

The view of social theorizing, and social science, which I have been adumbrating runs counter to the post-war orthodoxy of social science. I have noted above that there are reasons for seeing this orthodoxy as in decline. However, there are residual elements of that orthodoxy (and the orthodoxy of development studies) which remain powerful. Thus it seems to me that die common-sense image of natural scientific explanation, affirmed as the model of a useful and true explanation occasions, quite routinely, a great deal of confusion in social theorizing.

The notion of the ‘received model’ has been used by Giddens¹⁹ to designate a particular conception of scientific enquiry around which a series of other views cluster as that model is deployed in the context of social scientific concern. In its narrow sense it is a (philosophically unsatisfactory) view about natural science; in its wider sense it becomes an approach to social science. The image of natural scientific explanation and the presumption of the cognitive superiority of that mode of thought can be found both in ‘lay’ thought, or common sense ordinarily understood, and in the common sense of social science. Consequently, to cast social theorizing in terms of ‘discovering how things are in fact’, as the orthodox do, is to run with the cultural grain in both a general and a particular way. It seems to me that this coincidence of disciplinary and ‘lay’ common sense – in respect of this matter – makes it all too easy for social theoretic enquiry to become intellectually deformed.

Now the gist of my own claims in respect of the nature of what is ordinarily labelled ‘social science’ rests on the view that social theoretic engagement is about making problem-specific an...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Content
• Dedication
• Acknowledgment
• Introduction
• 1 Rethinking development
• 2 The rediscovery of the rationalist tradition
• 3 Boeke and FurnivalPs ‘Southeast Asian sociology’
• 4 Arguing on behalf of scholarship: Barrington Moore
• 5 Arguing on behalf of’the planners’: Chen, Fisk and Higgins
• 6 A. G. Frank: the mode of engagement of the ‘political writer’
• 7 Analysing dependent capitalist development: the Asian NICs
• 8 Constructing nation-states in Southeast Asia
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index