Theories of Development

Peter Preston

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136855948
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Dr Preston's book, first published in 1982, presents a critical history of development studies since the Second World War, linking the recent, neo-Marxist, debate with the whole tradition in the field, going back to the work of economists like Arthur Lewis.

He identifies a series of 'schools' and evaluates their contribution, supplying in each case a careful analysis, informed by the sociology of knowledge, of the work of its leading theorists. His final assessment draws on the critical theory of Habermas, arguing that social theorising is essentially practical; a matter of the construction, criticism and comparative ranking of ideologies, and that theorists should therefore consider what it makes sense for them to do or say, given their circumstances and the problems they address.

Part I

Prologue

1 The scope and concerns of the study

A POINT OF DEPARTURE

It has been observed that the so called ‘discovery of the Third World’ is as significant for present-day social theory as was that nineteenth-century ‘discovery of industrialization’ for the classical theorists of political economy and the ‘founding fathers’ of sociology. It is towards an elucidation of this claim that our study may be taken to be directed. It is an underlying assumption that if it is true that the discovery of the Third World in some way recapitulates the experience of the nineteenth-century theorists, then it is not unreasonable to suppose that the ‘career’ of ‘development studies’ will provide a series of unequivocal, undisguised, non-routinized, examples of social theorizing in action. The particular ‘object’ of our inquiry is taken as the ‘career’ of ‘development studies’, and this history we treat in the hope of uncovering and displaying something of the nature of social theorizing.

1.0 THE CONSTITUTION OF THE ‘OBJECT’ OF STUDY AND THE METHOD APPROPRIATE THERETO

The matter of the constitution of our ‘object’[1] will serve to offer a preliminary statement, an over-view, of the way in which we shall treat the history of the period. It will also offer a pro-gramme for the study and establish the legitimacy of the enterprise. Having treated the ‘object’ of study, we will consider the method to be used.

As we want to claim that the theorist bestows coherence upon the period selected by virtue of the questions he is moved to raise, then it seems clear that this construction of an ‘object’ is itself a process. The particular interests of the theorist are lodged within the frame of his discipline, itself lodged within history. The ‘object’ of inquiry is a distillate of particular interests, disciplinary constraints and the common sense of the society of which the scholar is a member. Rather than simply announce the ‘object’ of the study, we will review , albeit in a simple fashion, this process.

In this work the period treated is bounded by two wars. This presents the period both formally, i.e. two dates, and common-sensically. Thus the start is indicated by the end of the Second World War, and the end point by the defeat of the USA in Viet-nam. Now if this identifies the period formally, then the substantive issues/problems shaping it – that is, the criteria of selection and coherence – are the changes in approach to problems of the development of the Third World. This aspect we take to represent the experience of the discipline of ‘development studies’, given our particular interest in argument strategies.

1.1

This matter of the changes in approach to development is the key to the constitution of the ‘object’ of study. It permits our inquiries to begin with the ideas of the practitioners themselves. Thus if we ask to what extent is it legitimate to pick out theories of development as a discrete realm of discourse, or how much is it a new separate discipline, and when did it start and why, then we can identify three general sorts of answers. These will provide the material, lodged within the dates noted, which with the addition of our own questions will constitute our ‘object’.

On the question of the independence and theoretical novelty of the discipline of ‘development studies’, the three views are: first, that it is not proper to single out ‘development studies’ as the whole enterprise properly belongs to a positive science of economics; second, that it is proper to single out ‘development studies’ and that, moreover, they have good reason to be regarded as the basis of the first adequate economics; and third, that it is an error to single out ‘development studies’ as these concerns and questions should be subsumed within the study of the historical development of the world capitalist system.

1.11

So, first, it may be argued that it is an error to single out ‘development studies’ as being anything other than a sub-specialism of positive economic science. The purist Bauer [2] adopts such a position. He seems to want to deny that ‘development studies’ and theories are especially novel in the light of the efforts of colonial governments, which he takes to have been pursuing development for many years, and the corresponding intellectual reflection upon these matters. Any novelty development theories might have is that of being wrongheaded and generally mistaken in diagnoses and prescriptions. Bauer is critical of aid and planning, arguing that neither are necessary conditions of development. Economics in the end is a form of technical assistance.

That economics is to be seen as a science, and that the proper exchange of economics and the problems of the Third World is one of the application/extension of the established, proven, tools of the former to the circumstances of the latter, is generally taken for granted by those we can identify as taking this line on the matter of the status of ‘development studies’. However, those who take this line do not, in the main, adopt Bauer’s purism. The ‘conventional wisdom’ of ‘development studies’, established in the immediate post-war period, is, as we shall see, in its initial presentation quite clearly Keynesian. It is this that Bauer rails against.

It is characteristic of the work in this early period of those who would follow the general theoretical line indicated, that it pursues what we can call an ideology of ‘authoritative interventionism’. That ‘development’ was taken to be a technical matter we have noted, but further, it was also assumed that the experts of the presently developed nations had access to the requisite technical expertise. A relationship of super– and subordination was thus legitimated, and responsibility for the future reserved for the technical experts of the developed nations and their agents.

1.12

The second view on the matter of the disciplinary status of ‘development studies’ can be seen to be evidenced in the work of a fairly diverse group of writers. In general we can suggest that they would take it to be proper to single out ‘development studies’, but it should be noted that there would be differences in the strengths of their respective claims. The representatives of our second view might be presented most conveniently as three groups: together they encompass work on the fringe of the economic orthodoxy detailed above, through to work on the fringe of marxian schemes.

The first may be introduced by reference to Seers’s 1963 article. [3] In it he denies that the orthodoxy of economics is of any use when treating the economies of the Third World. Attention must be paid, on the one hand, to the institutional and social context of the economies in question, and, on the other, to their location in the world economy. The emphasis on ‘situating’ analysis is taken up by Streeten, [4] who is not only the most philosophically sophisticated member of this group, but can also be taken as Myrdal’s exegetist.

Streeten advances the claim that ‘development studies’ only got going after the end of the Second World War. The occasion for this involves two sets of reasons: (1) problems of resources and people are taken to be urgent in view of the population explosion and soluble in the light of the success of post-war Western European recovery; (2) political change, in the form of the rise of the new states of the Third World and the start of the Cold War, increases the concern of the ‘West’ for the ‘proper’ development of these areas. The earlier, Keynesian-derived efforts of the orthodox are taken to be a theoretically misconceived departure. The concepts used by ‘development studies’ must necessarily be fashioned in the problem-situation of the Third World societies themselves. The Streeten/Myrdal line isresolutely problem-centred, and the wider implications of their efforts are not systematically developed. Whether they take themselves to have extended/revised/replaced the economic orthodoxy is not made clear ; indeed their problem-centred scheme of ‘institutional social theory’ would probably dismiss the issue as uninteresting.

The second strand to be picked out is largely inspired by Latin American work. The theorist Prebisch makes the first break with the orthodox when in 1949 he rejects the Ricardian notion of international specialization which had justified Latin America’s role in the world economy being restricted to that of primary product exporter. Prebisch advocates industrialization behind protective tariff barriers. The policy change is mirrored in theoretical revision: the equilibrium model of the orthodoxy is set aside in favour of a ‘structuralist’ analysis which takes the putative national economy to be a concatenation of ‘residues’, ‘enclaves’, and ‘parasitic forms’. Later the gradual failure of ECLA reformism occasions a reworking of these views. In the middle and late 1960s the notions used were ‘institutional’ and ‘structural’ economics. According to Girvan , [5] the revision entailed (a) adding an historical aspect to structural and institutional method, and (b) giving the synthesis the empirical content necessary to generate a full theory of underdevelopment.

From Furtado, [6] Girvan draws an interesting point vis à vis the status of economics. Furtado comes to see the Latin American debate as resolving the issue of whether one or two economics were required to treat respectively ‘rich’ and ‘poor’. The answer is that we are treating a world-historical system and that consequently one economics is needed – and it is to be found in the tradition exemplified in Furtado’s own career. That the school of dependency economics began as a reaction against the economic orthodoxy was due to the latter’s being inapplicable to the circumstances of the Third World, but now it transpires that the orthodoxy makes no sense in the circumstances of the rich either! If ‘development studies’ is seen as a product of the postwar period, then it is surely independent of the orthodoxy of economics which is now regarded as chimerical.

The third group of those who would affirm the novelty of ‘development studies’ are represented pre-eminently by A.G. Frank, though their views in this context are oddly insub-stantial. In brief, to the above-noted dependency line there is to be added an influx of marxian notions which serves to produce what Leys[7] terms a ‘left UDT/dependency’. The phrasing is deliberate and serves to indicate that the theoretical realm of underdevelopment theory/dependency is not abandoned, rather a political re-orientation takes place. However, in contrast to the two above-noted threads, each of which would grant ‘development studies’ a measure of autonomy, the marxist infusion is in a sense self-annihilating. It shifts from a political radicalization of common themes to a renunciation of its own perspective as being, ultimately, ‘bourgeois’ in theoretical character andliable, therefore, to ‘re-absorption’. The most recent messages from this group commend the adoption of a thoroughgongly ‘marxist’ standpoint.

1.13

The third view on this matter of the independence and theoretical novelty of ‘development studies’ adopts the strategy of subsuming its concerns and questions within the very much broader framework of the analysis of the historical development of the world capitalist system. This view is exemplified, paradigmatically, in the work of those who regard themselves as either marxists or as working in a tradition of social theory which counts Marx as its most distinguished figure.

The major line of marxian analysis of the Third World is usually associated with Baran and the notion of ‘dependency’, where this connotes the subordinate incorporation of peripheral areas in the world economy. But if this can be regarded as the ‘conventional wisdom’ of the marxists, then it is also a disputed wisdom. The renaissance of marxian scholarship is recent. In the ‘West’ it is strongly associated with the ‘New Left’, and its initial engagement with the Third World was via the co-optation of ‘liberation struggles’ to the efforts of the New Left. The subsequent exchange between this circumstance-specific renewal and established traditions of theorizing within marxism, on the one hand, and, on the other, a dawning appreciation of the com-plexity of debate in respect of ‘development’, has produced, if not a theoretical Babel, then at least a highly complex discussion that has, as one centre, the question of the precise nature of a properly marxian analysis of the Third World. It is in this area of inquiry that we find the most ambitious efforts to theorize the matter of ‘development’.

1.2

We have now taken note of the formal limits of our period of study, and have considered the various distinguishable efforts of the practitioners themselves – ordered around the matter of disciplinary status, itself called forth by our interest in argument forms. To this technical issue we must add a broader interest, both to give shape to the inquiry and to acknowledge recent debate within social science as to the precise nature of the endeavour.

We have noted above that we are interested in the idea that the ‘career’ of development studies might provide a series of examples of social theorizing in action, and that consequently it might be expected to illuminate the matter of the way in which social theorizing is to be done. We take the proper centre of such inquiry to be located within the ambit of the concerns of the marxian renaissance of scholarship to which we have referred.

The ‘object’ of our study, the ‘career’ of ‘development studies’ in the period 1945–75, is taken (in the light of the above report of the practitioners’ views) to have involved, at least in the earlier efforts, the attempt to constitute an autonomous discipline; which project collapses under the combined weight of events, its own implausibility and its success in occasioning refinement in argument. The ‘career’ of ‘development studies’ is not taken to be the whole of the story of the renewal of marxian scholarship, but it might quite reasonably be taken to be a major part of the process of reconstituting that tradition of critical social inquiry exemplified in the work of Marx. Generally, the ‘career’ of ‘development studies’ is seen as an emergent sequence, such that a narrowly technical engagement gives way to a richer and increasingly subtle exercise in social theorizing.

1.3

Having reviewed the process of the construction of our ‘object’ of inquiry, we can here indicate the method of analysis appropriate thereto. Indeed, this method has been anticipated in the foregoing, both explicitly, in the references to the process of ‘object’ construction, where the mention of ‘distillates’ of various interests reveals a sociology-of-knowledge-informed approach, and implicitly – as will become clear a little later – in that the constitution of the ‘object’ by the theorist is taken to be determined by the resources available to the theorist. We claim that presumptions about the nature of a proper analysis are integral to the constitution of the ‘object’ of inquiry.

Having indicated that the ‘objects’ of social theoretical inquiry are here taken to be socially produced, and having reviewed the process of the constitution of our own ‘object’ in a fashion which reveals it to comprise a series of efforts to make sense of the exchange of rich and poor nations, it will come as no surprise that the notion of ideology figures centrally in our work. In line with the anticipations noted above, it appears both as an analytic technique and as a notion encompassing our presuppositions in respect of explanatory propriety.

First, it presents itself in the guise of the analytic stance of the sociology of knowledge. Thus the particular elements of the history of ‘development studies’ are treated by means of the preparation of sociology-of-knowledge-informed critiques. As our ‘object’ of study was taken as a distillate of various elements, so too are the various distinguishable efforts within ‘develop-ment studies’. In particular, we consider ‘exemplars’ taken as representatives of ‘schools’, and of their work ask after: its milieu, the political demands made upon it, and the body of theoretical resources used. Clearly, this treatment presents these exemplars as producing ideologies, as this would be ordinarily and pejoratively understood. However, the reconsideration of the legacy of Marx within the social sciences has also seen areconsideration of the notion of ideology, and here is our second area of use.

That we might properly use a notion of ideology as the meth-odological key to social theorizing can be established in a preliminary fashion by recalling recent interest in language . Thus, after Maclntyre , [8] we can argue that if it is true that thinking goes on by the use of our commonly accepted language (‘language is practical consciousness’ , as Marx puts it) , then the limits of my world equal the limits of the explanations available to me. The explanations available to me will be limited to those that I do accept , or could accept if they were spelt out to me . Now if this is my ideology, then clearly it is not going to be an elaborated scheme taken on board as a result of consumer choice amongst proffered alternatives, but rather it is a taken-for-granted body of knowledge which expresses some sort of structured/constituting relationship of self, social location, and explanations.

At this point the issue broadens in a fashion that introduces presently debated topics in social theory. The scope of these matters, and the idea of the non-arbitrariness of ideology, can be introduced ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Half Title page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Part I Prologue
• 1 The scope and concerns of the study
• 2 The idea of development
• Part II The ‘positivists’
• 3 The crystallization of the positivist orhtodoxy, 1943–55
• 4 The positivist high tide: ‘modernization theory’
• Part III The ‘radicals’
• 5 The contribution of the ‘neo-institutionalists’
• 6 Disciplinary independence and theoretical progressivity
• Part IV The ‘marxists’
• 7 Elements of the renewal of interest in marxian scholarship: the treatments of the Third World
• Part V Concluding remarks
• 8 Social theorizing and the matter of the Third World
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index