THEORIES OF SOCIAL

DEVELOPMENT:
AN INTRODUCTION

James Dzisah, PhD.

Department of Sociology
University of Ghana, Legon.
 LECTURE OVERVIEW
AND OBJECTIVES
■ This lecture introduces you to the Sociology of Development, a sub-
specialization within sociology. It calls on you to use the Sociological
Imagination to make sense of development theory and practice.
■ Goals and Objectives: By the end of this lecture, you should be able
to:
a. define the term development
b. explain why development is confused with economic growth
c. explain the normative view of development
d. explain why the field of the Sociology of Development
 LECTURE OUTLINE

Why do we confuse
Defining Evolutionary path Normative view of Why the Sociology
Introduction development with
Development of Development Development of Development?
economic growth?
 The term development is one of the
most abused and over used concepts
you will find in sociology.

Though used repeatedly, a definition

Introduction of development that finds global
acceptability has been very elusive.

What does the term development

mean to you
 But what is development for you may be
totally different for your course mates.

The difficulties in finding a universally

Introduction accepted definition for development is not
just because this concept cut across many
disciplines and are approached from
different disciplinary perspectives

The reason is simply because it does not

have a clearly defined enduring purpose and
is therefore, used to mean different things.
 In what sense is South Africa more
Why do we developed than Ghana, or Singapore than
Kenya, or the United States than Sweden?
confuse
development One explanation is that the national income
with is a very convenient indicator.

economic Politicians find a single comprehensive

growth? measure useful, especially one that is at
least a year out of date.
 We can, of course, fall back on the idea that
increases in national income, if they are
sufficiently fast, sooner or later lead to the
Why do we solution of social and political problems
confuse Now that the complexity of development
development problems is becoming increasingly obvious,
this continued addiction to the use of a single
with aggregative indicator
economic It begins to look like a preference for
growth? avoiding the real problems of development
 I have alluded to the difficulty in precisely
defining the term development because of
the variations in placing this concept within
familiar contexts.

Defining One of the critical things we learnt from

employing the sociological imagination is

Development that it allows the sociologists to see the

strange in the familiar.

However, in the context of the sociology of

development, the term development is
difficult to be placed within the confines of
familiarity except the numerous failures of
development.
 So, if we look closely at the term development, the reality is
that it has been deployed so broadly that it has not only
become a cliché, but it has broadly come to represent
something that is ‘good’ (Payne and Phillips, 2010).

Arndt (1987) offered a reasonably instructive laundry list of

Defining what people say signify development:

Development Higher living standards. A rising per capita income. Increase

in productive capacity. Mastery over nature. Freedom
through control of man’s environment. Economic growth.
But not mere growth, growth with equity. Elimination of
poverty. Basic needs satisfaction. Catching up with the
developed countries in technology, wealth, power, status.
Economic independence, self-reliance. Scope for self-
fulfillment for all. Liberation, the means to human ascent
(Arndt, 1987, p. 1).
 ■ “Development can be seen…as a process of
expanding real freedoms that people enjoy. Focusing
on human freedoms contrast with the narrower views
of development, such as identifying development
Defining with the growth of gross national product, or with the
rise in personal incomes, or with industrialization or

Developmen
with technological advance, or with social
modernization.” (Amartya Sen, 1999 p.3).

t ■ “Development in the modern sense implies

intentional social change in accordance with societal
objectives (Hettne 2008, p. 6)
 ■ It is important to bear in mind that
notwithstanding the various ways of
constructing development, two
evolutionary paths are discernable:

Evolutionary 1. Purely academic: the intention of

scholars is to produce theories that allow

Path of us to understand social change,

especially at the level of the state.

Development
2. The practices of development based on
the enactment of new initiatives and
actions by politicians and citizens for the
promotion of what they consider to be
positive social change.
 ■ It is in our interest as students of sociology, from the global
south, to be wary of development accounts that sought to
provide us with a tightly knit accounts

Evolutionary
■ There is the need to approach development with a critical
mind because:

Path of
much harm has been done to people in the name of
development. Development practice in the so-called developing
countries is ultimately rooted in colonialism and has therefore

Development
sometimes contained a good measure of paternalism, not to
speak of arrogance and racism (Hettne, 2009:1).
■ So, the question of what really development is still lingers
on.
 ■ We must dispel the haze around the word
'development' and decide more precisely
what we mean by it
■ The starting-point is that we cannot avoid
The what the positivists disparagingly refer to
as 'value judgements’

Normative ■ According to Dudley Sears (1977:22)

'Development' is inevitably a normative

View of concept, almost a synonym for

improvement

Development ■ But from where are these judgements to

come?
■ The conventional answer, is that we draw
our values from governments.
 ■ But governments have necessarily a

The
rather short-term view
■ More seriously, some governments are

Normative
themselves the main obstacles to
development

View of
■ Another approach is to copy the
development paths of other countries,
which implicitly means aiming at their
Developmen present state as the goal
■ Some aspects, such as their consumption
t levels, seem enviable, but these are
associated, perhaps inseparably, with
evils such as urban sprawl, advertising
pressures, air pollution and chronic
tension
 ■ If values are not to be found in politics or

The history, does this mean that we are each

left to adopt our own personal set of
values ?
Normative ■ This is fortunately not necessary

View of ■ If we ask what is an absolute necessity for

this, one answer is obvious—enough food

Developmen ■ Since foodstuffs have prices, in any

country the criterion can be expressed in
terms of income levels
t
 ■ This concept of poverty as social
deprivation implies that the poverty

The standard would rise as living conditions

improve, and indeed that poverty could
never be eliminated, except perhaps by
Normative making the distribution of income very
equal

View of ■ Another basic necessity, in the sense of

something without which personality

Developmen
cannot develop, is a job
■ This does not necessarily mean paid

t
employment: it can include studying,
working on a family farm or keeping house
■ It is true, of course, that both poverty and
unemployment are associated in various
ways with income
 ■ The direct link between per capita income

The and the numbers living in poverty is

income distribution

Normative
■ Equality should be considered an
objective in its own right, the third
element in development
View of ■ Since race is usually highly correlated
with income, economic inequality lies at
Developmen the heart of racial tensions
■ More seriously, inequality of income is

t associated with other inequalities,

especially in education and political
power
 ■ The questions to ask about a
The country's development are
therefore:
Normative ■ What has been happening to
poverty?
View of ■ What has been happening to

Developmen unemployment?
■ What has been happening to
t inequality?
 ■ If all three of these have become less
severe, then beyond doubt this has been a
period of development for the country
The concerned.
■ If one or two of these central problems
Normative have been growing worse, especially if all
three have, it would be strange to call the

View of result 'development', even if per capita

income had soared.

Developmen ■ This applies, of course, to the future too.

■ A 'plan' which conveys no targets for

t reducing poverty, unemployment and

inequality can hardly be considered a
'development plan'.
 Moving from measurement to conceptualization,
Cowen and Shenton (1995) contend that development,
was present at the very birth of industrial capitalism to
confront the devastation wrought by “progress.”

Why the Esteva (1991), takes a narrower view of the

temporality of development, portraying it as a project
Sociology of directed by the United States to consolidate its
emergent hegemony at the end of the Second World
Development? War.

Where does this leave us? If development is merely an

exercise in faith, as Rist (2002) attests, then perhaps
we are wise to consider Ferguson’s (1994) injunction
that we address two key questions: “What is to be
done” and “By whom”?