The Social Dynamics of Development

165 Pages·1976·1.972 MB·English

by  David C. Pitt (Auth.)

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The Social Dynamics of Development
DAVID C. PITT
Professor of Sociology
University of Auckland, New Zealand
P E R G A M ON P R E SS
OXFORD • NEW YORK • TORONTO
SYDNEY • PARIS • FRANKFURT
U.K. Pergamon Press Ltd., Headington Hill Hall, Oxford
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75240 Paris, Cedex 05, France
WEST GERMANY Pergamon Press GmbH, 6242, Kronberg-Taunus,
Pferdstrasse 1, Frankfurt-am-Main, West Germany
Copyright © David Pitt 1976
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in
any form or by any means; electronic, electrostatic,
magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
First edition 1976
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Pitt, David C.
The social dynamics of development.
(Pergamon international library of science, technology, engineering, and social studies)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Economic development-Social aspects.
2. Underdeveloped areas-Economic policy. I Title.
HD82.P514 1976 338.91 7540027
ISBN 0-08-020533-X
ISBN 0-08-020530-5 pbk.
Printed in Great Britain by A. Wheaton & Co.
PREFACE
There are so many people one should thank in writing a book, that
acknowledgements are nearly always an impossible task. However, I owe a
debt to the members of the Oshkosh group for many stimulating
discussions on the idea of development from below — especially Carl
Widstrand, Richard Salisbury, Henry Rutz, Annika Bornstein, Gerrit
Huizer, Claude Robineau and H. M. Mathur. Tariq Husain read the
manuscript and offered many helpful comments. I of course am alone
responsible for persisting in error and the.bad habit (amongst many) I find
difficult to resist of wanting to generalize from particular experiences and
situations. I owe much also to the many who helped me in the
development agencies and who are doing very valuable and interesting
work. I found the spell I had at the ILO working under George
Spyropoulos particularly absorbing. I have not meant this book to be in
any way a denigration of the many fine aspects of international
development, and in many ways much that I criticize about international
development has been an unfortunate (and unexpected) consequence of
good intentions. I owe much to my good friends in the Third world,
especially in Polynesia. I hope they will forgive yet another intrusion by an
outsider attempting to understand something they alone can comprehend.
Finally, my family as always have suffered the long silences which
surround the roaming and writing man. My wife as always has been a
tower of strength and this book is affectionately dedicated to her.
vii
PART ONE
INTRODUCTION - PROBLEMS AND IDEAS
This book is an attempt to explore social frames for looking at
development in the Third World. Much that has been written in the vast
literature on this subject has assumed that there are, if not perfectly simple
answers to the problem, then at least correct ways of achieving
development. One central theme of this book is that there is no one way
to development, that development situations are exceedingly complex,
constantly changing, fluid and flexible. We need frames that allow us to
understand and influence this complexity and dynamism. What we are
1
looking for are flexible alternatives to the deterministic models, whether
Marxist, structural functionalist, etc., prevalent in the development
literature and the development agencies. We are most interested in models
which involve interdisciplinary approaches and which combine both
empirical evidence and future vision, or "pedantic utopianism" as Berger
2
has called it. Basically, we would like to suggest frames which allow
situational explanations of the dynamics of development complexity in
time and space.
Development from Below and Above
We are particularly interested in exploring situations where Third World
development (defined as increases in production or consumption) has been
achieved at the grass root level, and where it has been internally generated
rather than externally imposed. Most theories about development empha-
size the external influence whether beneficial (as in development agency
propaganda) or exploitary (as in Marxist explanations). We would like to
argue that the external influence is usually neither. The social situations
and structures of external development usually mean that neither altruism
or exploitation has had a great effect. The donors or exploiters and the
recipients are separated by a considerable social gulf which vitiates
1
2 The Social Dynamics of Development
effective contact and communication. However, in the millions of villages
and slums throughout the Third World in a wide variety of different ways
some kind of development is proceeding, often despite rather than because
of development aid, originating from below not above.
Development from below is not a particularly new idea in the social
sciences, pure or applied. The idea is present in the early twentieth
3
century, for example in the work of Franz Oppenheimer, and appears
4
recently in the plea for a more dynamic and generative sociology.
Populism is a continuous current in social and cultural anthropology,
stemming perhaps from the intimate contact of the anthropologist with his
field. Both sociology and anthropology have had their grass root action
programmes. In the colonial period and beyond, there has been a place for
auto-development in the ubiquitous community and co-operative develop-
ment programmes, the essence of which was to pull oneself up by one's
bootlaces, to use one definition.
Although present, the idea of development from below has been
overshadowed by more dominant models, where development is seen to
come from above, from Euro-America, a process in which what is
conceived of as traditional, static Afro-Asia, an intractable peasantry or
proletariat, is modernized through massive social change. Our book is
intended as a critique of this dominant motif in development thinking. But
we also intend it to be a closer scrutiny of the populist position which
itself is often as naive as the image of the man straining on his bootlaces.
Cases and Comparisons
Ultimately, and perhaps essentially, this book is a personal view of
development. The book is not intended especially for either specialists or
the general reader (a distinction which is probably overdone anyway) but
rather for people who have an interest or involvement in development, as I
do. For those who are interested I have tried to document my argument in
the notes at the end of each Part. Nor is it intended to be special pleading
for a greater role for sociology or anthropology, a claim becoming
5
frequent in the literature. In fact we would argue that what is most
needed are more links, more co-operation not only between the academic
disciplines but also across the great chasm between the academic and the
Introduction-Problems and Ideas 3
agency, and also across national and cultural boundaries which are hardly
less divisive.
The book explores problems which emerged in my own involvement,
on the one hand, in fieldwork situations in underdeveloped regions,
7 7a
notably in the Pacific but also in developed villages, and on the other
hand whilst working for U.N. development agencies (UN, ILO, UNESCO).
Consequently, it represents at best only one view of a limited number of
complex situations. I would be the first to admit, in fact it is a central
argument of the book, that it is very difficult in the development field to
generalize. What has happened in the Pacific (or Samoa) (or my
interpretation of it) does not necessarily apply to the complexity of
Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America or the under-developed
segments of the so-called developed world. However, it is still important to
make the effort of comparison especially of critical elements, and to look
at the possibilities of different approaches. There are also some areas, e.g.
Nigeria, India, where tradition has had a huge influence as in Samoa. More
important to a large extent also the vast literature on development has not
reflected the myriad of the Third World so much as the cultures and
environments of the academics and agencies who have produced it. It may
be that Africa and Asia are not as different as the differences between
8
those who observe them. Descriptions or analysis of Third World
situations may consist essentially of models or myths generated in and
reflecting the developed world. Our book is basically intended to be a
discussion of these ideas and an exploration of one very important point,
that too seldom are the ideas and models of the people who receive
development either understood or utilized. Hopefully, however, the book
is to some extent not only about development from below, but also a view
from below. Perhaps a well-fed, affluent Western academic cannot really
put himself in the peasant's shoes, and ideally there should also be a
critical literature by development recipients. Alternative views of develop-
ment stressing non-Western solutions put forward by Westerners tend to be
rejected by those in the developing countries almost as quickly as Western
9
solutions. But the outsider can at least try to appreciate this viewpoint of
the total structure and interpret consequent statements and actions,
especially since images of peasant viewpoints are so much part of Western
development thinking. Being a participant outsider may even have some
advantages in achieving some limited kind of objectivity. Conversely the
4 The Social Dynamics of Development
book is not intended to be a masochistic self-denigration of Western
development agencies or efforts, a stance which has become recently
fashionable for some intellectuals. Much development is in fact altruistic
and I found working in an international development agency a
sympathetic and pleasant environment no better, no worse (in fact very
similar) than working in a Third World village. But probably one should
not ask the question initially of whether development is right or wrong but
rather try first to understand better and to interpret critically development
institutions. My book then is an attempt at an exploration and
understanding of development ideas and problems rather than any kind of
comprehensive comparative coverage.
Problems and Planning
Future historians may well look back on the mid-twentieth century and
pick out development as the great obsession of the times. Increasingly
since World War II the politicians, the administrators and the academics
(particularly the economists) have laboured the problems of standards of
living particularly in the Third World but also at home, and seldom has so
much effort produced so little. Most of the world remains underdeveloped,
10
poverty and deprivation are ubiquitous and not just in the Third World
11
and the problem may be getting worse. One commentator has called
development the greatest failure of the century and there is a growing
lla
pessimism in the development agencies themselves.
What are the reasons for this situation? Many explanations have turned
on relatively anonymous (in some senses almost inevitable) causes,
exploding populations and inadequate resources, inflation and commodity
prices, inappropriate political environments. But much blame has also
attached to the plans for development and to the planners. For a long
period after World War II the economists were a dominant influence in
development planning. As criticisms against, for example, the First
Development Decade mounted there was an attack on conventional
12
economic approaches led initially by rebellious economists and strongly
supported by other social scientists. The thrust of the attack was basically
that conventional planning operated under assumptions that were not
valid, without enough reference to the social and political environment.
Introduction-Problems and Ideas 5
Planning could not be based on long-term certainties, and the compre-
hensive master plan came to be replaced by annual programmes. There
were attacks too on the highly economistic nature and cost benefit bias of
planning, and last but by no means least on the relative unimportance
given to social factors.
Sociology of Development
13
What emerged was a sociology of development, or in economics, the
other social sciences, and the development agencies what has been called a
14
do-it-yourself sociology. Consideration of the social factors in economic
growth was nothing particularly new; the economists had the institutionalist
tradition going back at least as far as Veblen and Commons, whilst since at
least the time of Max Weber sociologists had a major interest in
development. In the development agencies too there was a long-standing
concern for social factors, e.g. in the periodic U.N. Reports on the World
15 16
Social Situation, in the ILO, or the U.N. Research Institute for Social
Development. What was new was the flood of books, periodicals,
etc., concerned with social factors and the belief that the sociologists
could do what the economists had failed to do. We would like to argue
that in many ways the sociologists' cure was as bad as the economists'
disease, that the new approaches suffered from similar faults to the old,
and that the distinction between economic and social was in many senses
quite irrelevant.
Schools and Structures
We might distinguish, at least heuristically, two schools in the sociology
of development, each with its own drawbacks. Structural functionalism
which dominated Western sociology in the immediate postwar period
initially ignored social change, possibly because it tended to disturb the
17
hallowed equilibrium. Even when the structural functionalists came to
18
grapple with change and development the system still dominated, as it
19
did amongst the economists who adapted Parsons to new purposes. The
older Weberian ideas, on the other hand, were not comprehensive enough.
6 The Social Dynamics of Development
Max Weber and many of his latter day followers were essentially
concerned with the limited connections between a religious ethic and
economic activity, and much less concerned with exploring the total
relationship between the movement of goods and services, and the overall
social structure.
The attack on structural-functionalism came initially from those who
saw change resulting from conflict in the system and from those who saw
this change as essentially a matter of class conflict. From the late sixties,
stemming from the work of Paul Baran (1957) and developed notably by
A. G. Frank (1970), neo-Marxism in one form or another came to
dominate much of the thinking of many academic development socio-
logists, especially in Britain and France, and certainly of their students. In
most neo-Marxist views the focus was on the exploitation of the poor
21
countries either internationally by the rich countries or indirectly within
22
nations. In this structure classes were considered to be irreconcilably
23
opposed and change was achieved only through class conflict, rarely
24
without revolution sparked off in the opinion of some by guerilla
25
action. The neo-Marxist ideas were presented in a flood of books,
26
pamphlets and case studies of particular regions.
Determinism
Both neo-Marxists and structural-functionalists in many senses were
deterministic. Apart from the determinism that certain kinds of
institutions, technologies or capital are bound to produce certain kinds of
economic results, there is an assumption of universality — that these
formulae work in most situations in time and space. Underlying both are
assumptions of homogeneity and stasis - in short that development
operates in relatively simple fields and environments. Systems approaches
27
generally are viewed with some awe in the development agencies.
28
Sociologists have recently developed systems approaches to development
which precisely specifies each variable, whilst generally this school is
29
generating grandiose generalizations about development in all ages.
Neo-Marxism has also begun recently to deeply influence the development
agencies, though in some fields (e.g. education, population, and even