Geography
National Development Theory
National Development Theory is a framework that seeks to understand the processes and factors that contribute to the economic, social, and political development of nations. It explores the role of historical, geographical, and institutional factors in shaping the development trajectories of different countries. The theory encompasses various perspectives, including modernization theory, dependency theory, and world-systems theory, to analyze the complexities of national development.
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9 Key excerpts on "National Development Theory"
eBook - PDFHuman Geography
People, Place, and Culture
- Erin H. Fouberg, Alexander B. Nash, Alexander B. Murphy, Harm J. de Blij(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
Makivik Corporation, Nunavik Research Centre-Cartographic Services 324 CHAPTER 11 Development • Development happens in context. The type and level of development in a place reflects what is happening there as a result of forces operating concurrently at multiple scales, from the local to the regional, and from the national to global. • Development scholars have produced a number of theories, referred to as structuralist theories, that take into account the context of neo-colonialism and its influences on the development prospects of peripheral regions. For example, one structuralist theory holds that large-scale, difficult-to- change economic arrangements shape what can happen in fundamental ways. • Structuralists have developed a major body of develop- ment theory, called dependency theory, that sees little hope for economic prosperity in regions and countries that have traditionally been dominated by external powers. Like modernization theory, however, dependency theory has been criticized for not considering the importance of context; indeed, it is based on generalizations about economic change that pay inadequate attention to geo- graphical differences in culture, politics, and society. • A world-systems approach, developed by Wallerstein, ar- gues that states find themselves organized in a hierarchical relationship as core, periphery, or semi-peripheral partici- pants in the global economy. This means that some states gain greater benefits through their position in the global economy than others. • World-systems theory helps us understand the geography of development. It is sensitive to geographical differences and the relationships among development processes that occur in different places. World-systems theory divides the world into a three-tier structure, with a core, periphery, and semi-periphery, that helps explain the interconnec- tions between places in the global economy.
eBook - PDF- Gregory Hooks(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- University of California Press(Publisher)
4 THEORY IN THE CONTEMPORARY PERIOD From the 1980 s onward, sociology took more of a spatial turn. Geographic variations were given increased attention, including those pertaining to subnational development (Lobao, Hooks, and Tickamyer 2007 ). There was movement away from deductive theory and a focus on context, spatial as well as historical. Stratification theories expanded their reach beyond production and class relations to more fully consider reproduction and community (hence geographic space) as found in the work of Anthony Giddens (e.g., 1981 ) and Pierre Bourdieu (e.g., 1989 ). Marxian theory also evolved as the result of efforts of human geographers moving to neo-Marxist approaches (Harvey 1989 ). These approaches demonstrated the centrality of geography to capitalist development not only at the cross-national scale but also at the subnational scale. New methodologies from geography and spatially oriented fields also diffused into sociology. These influenced theory because they allowed regional processes such as spatial diffusion and contextual and network effects to be opened up to greater conceptual scrutiny. Other social sciences also turned their attention to geographic processes, expanding research on subnational development. In economics, Paul Krugman’s ( 1991 ) influential work extended the neo-classical model to account for path-dependent regional development. Political scientists have also given greater attention to subnational development (Sellers 2005 ; Snyder 2001 ). In sociology today, theorizing subnational development processes can be seen to pro-ceed from three general directions. It is important to recognize, however, that no widely used theory (or theories) characterize the contemporary literature. First, there have been some attempts to develop or invoke theory to understand sub-national development holistically in its own right. These revolve mainly around the use of human ecology and critical Marxist political economy.
eBook - ePub- Arthur Morris(Author)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
CHAPTER 1 The nature of developmentThe drive for improvement in human conditions, in personal happiness and in social wellbeing, is innate in every society. It has been more openly expressed in the last 50 years, and that part of happiness which lies under social rather than individual control has been the object of endeavour by theorists and public agencies seeking to understand the processes involved and to control them. At the broadest level, these aspects of human improvement comprise what is involved in development.Fifty years ago the term "development" was used largely in the context of economic change. Economic growth may be defined as the increase in production or consumption of a nation or a region, while economic development is the increase of such production or consumption by each person, putting growth onto a per capita basis. Economic growth may increase the weight of a nation in world affairs, but it may fail to make life any easier for its inhabitants. Economic development provides this increase in goods and services which may be felt by the population.The geographic scale
As understanding of some of the complex links between economy and other human processes has increased, so the definition of development has been amplified from the purely economic to include other elements that lie within the scope of social action. The subject of development is also studied more widely, by economists still but also by sociologists, political scientists and geographers as well as other social scientists. In this work, we focus on the spatial aspects, and particularly at the regional, subnational level, although some of the observations concern whole countries, since these too may form geographical patterns. Regions that form large and economically, socially and culturally identifiable parts of a nation state are the obvious focus, because they have been the object of most analysis regarding spatial differences in development levels or wealth, and the object of policies which individual governments have put in place to modify these spatial differences. Differences within countries should be amenable to change through policy because this can be controlled by a single state; it is also seen as desirable to reduce these differences, for reasons of bringing common levels of equity to all of a country's people, and from the point of view of individual governments, to stem the possible rise of regionalist unrest which may otherwise grow into local nationalism and the move for separation from the mother state.
eBook - PDF- Gedeon M. Mudacumura, M. Shamsul Haque, Gedeon M. Mudacumura, M. Shamsul Haque(Authors)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Such a perspective motivates the government to plan and execute programs not only for national security but also for other types of security. Economic and Political Development Approaches Theories of Economic Development The theory of development has always remained at the center stage of economics and political science. Far from treating development as a spontaneous evolution, econ-omists and political scientists view it as a goal-oriented activity. While among classical economists—Adam Smith and others—the champions of laissez-faire equated economic development with capital formation, Marx iden-tified it with the socialist system ushered in through the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist state. Such neoclassical economists as Alfred Marshall and Pareto identified it with the stability and continuity of the capitalist system and the positive role of the state in the regulation of the market economy. Joseph Schumpeter, who like Marx predicted the decline of capitalism and its succession by socialism, distinguished between economic growth and economic development. Growth is a product of cumulative changes brought about by the material and nonmaterial forces of production. It is steady, continuous, and slow, whereas development, which is the effect of technological and social factors and to some extent economic growth, is discontinuous, disharmonious, uneven, cyclical, and unstable. Technological change is the determining factor and the entrepreneur is the propelling force of economic development. In the 1950s and 1960s the economic development theories that were based on the experience of Western developed countries viewed development as economic growth measured by increasing GNP per capita. This limited definition and ethno-centric conceptualization of economic development became the dominant approach Development as Multidimensional Concern 139 to the development policies pursued by both developing nations and the United Nations in the 1950s and 1960s.
eBook - PDF- Kevin R Cox, Murray Low, Jennifer Robinson, Kevin R Cox, Murray Low, Jennifer Robinson(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
The former began explicitly with a chapter on uneven development as ‘the capitalist whirlpool’ and the latter organized its arguments around a core/periphery model. These two approaches are going to figure prominently in what follows and therefore I will conclude this brief historical excursion into uneven development in political geography here. WHAT IS ‘DEVELOPMENT’ AND WHY IS IT ‘UNEVEN’? The basic subject matter of all social science, including political geography, is social change. Development is a way of describing social change. It is one of a cluster of change concepts that have arisen out of Enlightenment thinking wherein social change was conceived in positive terms: the THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT 519 new is better than the old, modern is superior to tradition (for further exposition, see Rangan, this volume). Other such concepts are ‘improvement’ and ‘progress’. Improvement was used to describe particular techniques of enhancing productivity in agriculture and industry in the eighteenth century. The culmination of this technology in the Indus-trial Revolution imbued nineteenth-century society with an air of optimism based upon the idea of progress. In the twentieth century, the concept of development took on the modern role of describing social change for the better. In this case the pos-itive connotations were derived from a biological analogy. Living organisms develop to become fully mature adults; development is both the process and the outcome. But using this analogy requires spec-ification of the ‘social organism’ that is subject to change. Development as social change has been cen-tred on the state; it is states that ‘mature’ into fully developed political and economic entities. Whereas the specific object of improvement was economic sectors, and progress was a general property of civilization, the practice of develop-ment has had precise territorial bounds defined by the state in question.
eBook - PDFHuman Geography
People, Place, and Culture
- Erin H. Fouberg, Alexander B. Murphy(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
The argument is that development prospects are shaped by the political-economic context within which individual states find themselves, and those contextual circumstances will affect how and whether development takes places. This way of thinking led to structuralist theories of development, including dependency theory and world-systems theory. 10.3 Explain Major Influences on Development. 1. The economic niche a country occupies in the world economy has an important influence on development. Economic arrange- ments influence that niche, including commodity chains (the links connecting places of production and distribution that are involved in the creation of a final product). So do the initiatives of governments and government-supported international insti- tutions, which together have a significant influence on interna- tional investment, foreign aid, and development financing. 2. Governments influence development through the invest- ments they make, the alliances they form, the trade deals they negotiate, and the purchases they make. They also influence development through development assistance and support for international financial institutions and investment banks. Development assistance sometimes can have positive effects in lower-income countries (that is not always the case), but the assistance that is offered usually reflects the interests of donor countries. Countries in North America and western/central Europe long dominated the development assistance landscape, but China has recently become a major player. 3. Many countries struggle to promote development in the face of high levels of public debt. The public debt of many lower-income countries comes from structural adjustment loans made by organizations such as the World Bank. When countries are not in a position to repay their debt, the terms of repayment are renegotiated.
eBook - PDF- Erin H. Fouberg, William G. Moseley(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
We are perhaps most familiar with such differences from country to country, but the gulf between the rich and poor is often just as wide within coun- tries. Why some countries and areas are more prosperous than others can be explained in numerous ways. Some attribute the uneven outcomes of development policies to differences in natural endowments or natural resources. Others focus on po- litical leadership that influences the type of economic policies put in place. Some theories use historical explanations, espe- cially past histories of colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperi- alism, or economic and political interaction between countries that may help some countries and hurt others. Environmental Determinism As students learn more about world geography, many are tempted to use physical geography, including location and climate, to explain development. Geographers went through their own period where they used environmental differences to explain everything from intelligence to wealth. This set of the- ories is called environmental determinism. Although geogra- phers no longer espouse environmental determinism, seeing it as a vast oversimplification of the world, other theorists and Why Is Development Uneven? 75 to infant mortality rates. The infant mortality rate (number of deaths under age 1 per 1,000) in Niger was 71 in 2013 versus 2.4 in Norway (Population Reference Bureau 2013). Images from the 2010 earthquake in Haiti (Figure 3.10) helped North Americans visualize that 50 percent of the population in Haiti were undernourished in 2012 versus 5 percent in Japan (World Bank 2012). One useful concept for understanding varying lev- els of development is dualism. Dualism refers to situations in which two areas are in relationship with one another (through trade, for example), and one area is developing at the expense of the other. This concept may be examined at a variety of dif- ferent scales, including global, national, local, urban, and rural.
eBook - PDFInternational Development
Issues and Challenges
- Damien Kingsbury, John McKay, Janet Hunt(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Red Globe Press(Publisher)
Finally, the question of democracy and freedom raises the question of how far we see development as being a process initiated and implemented by outside forces and actors, or as an essentially an internal transformation fuelled by local initiative and self-help. The emphasis in the field on the role of outside ‘experts’, the inculcation of new and foreign values and methods, and the central role of aid all have conspired to downgrade the role of local mobilization. This is especially true in an era of globalization, when many commenta-tors predict that cultural and economic convergence on some kind of international best practice is bound to take place. In the present era, the whole question of the relationships between globalization and develop-ment theory is opening up as a new battleground in the conflict of ideas 56 International Development and ideologies (see, for example, Jomo and Nagaraj 2001 ; Petras and Veltmeyer 2001 ; Schuurman 2001 ; McKay 2014 ). Theories of modernization None of the complexities, counterarguments or self-doubts introduced in the previous section was allowed to cloud the simple but powerful message espoused by the proponents of modernization theory. During the 1960s and part of the 1970s, within all of the social sciences there appeared studies in aspects of modernization, each couched in the dis-tinctive language and concepts of the particular discipline but all car-rying the same beguiling promise: all nations, however poor, were able, with the implementation of ‘correct’ policies, to achieve a modern standard of living by following exactly the same growth path as that pioneered by the Western nations. Examples of such studies can be found in sociology, geography and political science; however, it was in economics that the seminal work was published, with the appearance of Rostow’s The Stages of Economic Growth (1960). But this is more than just a study in econom-ics, which is part of the reason for its influence over the years.
eBook - PDFImpacts of Participatory Development in Afghanistan: A Call to Reframe Expectations
The National Solidarity Programme in the Community of Shah Raheem
- Mary Beth Wilson(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
This made room for different understandings and conceptual-izations of development to emerge over the past four decades. It, how-ever, still used other countries’ historical modernization as a development model, keeping the concept of development unilinear, with a clearly defined path. Additionally, dependency theorists looked upon the population of the State, and especially the rural population, as units of workforce. Their worth was in being a workforce, and nothing else. The popula-tion was not recognized as a development actor, this role remained at the State level. This would change dramatically as participatory ap-proaches gained favor. As has been shown, though seen as fundamentally opposing theo-ries, modernization theory and dependency theory are based upon many of the same assumptions: there is a path towards development that leads towards imitation of North American and European coun-tries, the State is the main actor, and economic development is the main indicator of success. These two theories, and the forthcoming world system theory, which is based upon the tenets of dependency theory, 51 can be categorized as classical approaches to development. Though the theories of course differ regarding some of the understandings of why a country is undeveloped, they still evaluate this based upon economic indicators and hope to resolve it through the implementation of top-down development approaches that engage the State, but not the peo-ple of the State. These classical approaches continue to inform many development projects and programs worldwide today, but they now share time and money with alternative development approaches that have emerged in response to the failures of these classical approaches. 1.2.5 Expanding the Definition of Development beyond Economics: Shifts towards Participation These alternative development approaches begin with the emergence of different understandings of the indicators used to measure develop-ment.
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