SDC36306: Perspectives and Themes in International Development
Studies
Week 1-2: Modernization
Lecture 1.1: Introduction and sociological engagements with development
- Development as an interdisciplinary, contested notion.
o In last 250 years, greater divergence between developed and underdeveloped
o Developed = rich? Measure in GDP? – Kennedy: measures everything except that
which makes life worthwhile. What is ‘the good life’?
o Measuring is dangerous (dollar, prices of food) --> PPP (koopkracht)?
o Sen: freedom to vote.
o HDI (correlated to GDP, health and education cost money)
o Where do these conceptions come from? How do they feed public policy and with
what effects? --> main questions of course.
- Examples: How to remove poverty?
o Sachs (MDGs): wealth/poverty is determined by geography. Poverty can be lifted
by large-scale aid programs that target disease, agriculture, biotech, infrastructure
(Big Push)
o Easterly: governments and outside experts cannot remove poverty through
planning, money and technology. Poverty comes from institution (property rights
and rule of law) --> improve institutions
o Acemoglu et al.: Ok, but institutions are in a certain context. There are good and
bad ones (e.g. protecting white minorities)
o Davis: history is a very bloody business, patterns of colonial violence that led to
underdevelopment
o Other: culture, gender relations, discourses – all have other solutions
o WEBER: “The true function of social science in to render problematic what is
conventionally self-evident.”
- Sociological engagements with development I (1940-1970)
o The sociological view is that we must understand and solve inequality. Can be done
in three ways (after WWII):
1) facilitate economic growth (more market and state) - HOSELITZ
2) critiquing 1), securing resources and markets for Western powers, promote
global capitalist expansion as geopolitical goal
3) confronting and delinking from the colonial matrix of power
o Lively debates within and across these perspectives
- I. Modernization
o Assumption 1: existence of ‘traditional’ (poor) and ‘modern’ (rich) societies, each
with distinct qualities such as economic structure
o Assumption 2: ‘modern’ societies possess characteristics that allow them to
advance economically. Modern is better, so the traditional has to become modern.
o Example: Rostow’s Stages of Growth – traditional, pre-conditions, take-off, drive to
maturity, age of high mass consumption. Stages are unilinear and deterministic.
o Culture is seen as impediment to modernization/barriers to progress (e.g. culture
of poverty Lewis, limited good Foster, amoral familism Banfield etc.)
o So: destroy/weaken material economic environment in which backward cultures
can flourish
, o Trojan horses of modernization: media, aid agencies, technology,
artefacts/gadgets, science & education.
- II. Critique of global capitalist expansion
o Alternative explanations of development: modernization does not necessarily
guarantee a smooth path to liberal democracy, and is often accompanied by
discontinuities, breakdowns, dictatorship, rebellions and protests. So: need to look
at the history and context of development.
o Dependencia theory: underdevelopment as a result of a long history of unequal
exchange between US and the rest. Therefore, not destroy traditions, but cutting
capitalist relations between the Global North and Global South. By:
1) import-substitution industrialization (own country cars)
2) more radical view: political revolution needed
3) development is not a transition but a process of transformation (break with linear
traditional --> modern)
4) focus on the foreign trade, labour and investment linkages that produced
underdevelopment.
o World Systems Theory: emphasizes the world system, not about nation states but
about regions (core, semi-periphery and periphery). Core countries focus on higher-
skill capital-intensive production, and extraction of raw materials. The system is
dynamic (states can gain or lose their core status over time).
- III. De-coloniality:
o The subjugation of one culture by another, that leads to genocide, marginalization
of indigenous peoples, colonial division of labour, social reorganization, ideologies
justifying colonial rule and submission.
o Plea for a non-racist world, not economies as a target but to respect and
acknowledge differences.
o Decolonization: Newly independent states had to negotiate an unequal
international framework that was not of their making.
o Main issue: ‘decolonization of the mind’ (try to open up spaces for subaltern’s
thoughts and ways of living.
o There must be alternatives – FANON
Hoselitz, B.F. (1952), Non-Economic Barriers to Economic Development. Economic
Development and Cultural Change 1 (1), 8-21.
CORE: Cultural norms and values are a big obstacle to development, because they block
economic progress. Change can be facilitated by weakening/destroying systems of values.
- Development is a change In production techniques but also a reorientation of social norms
and values.
- Most attempts nowadays: economic development through economic determinism (supply
countries with capital). But what is often not recognized is the obstacle of traditional values.
- But, attempts to alter values fail (e.g. religion is difficult to change).
- The people in economically less advanced countries say: we favor economic progress,
poverty is a result of colonial status. But: the rejection of colonialism makes a sense of
nationalism, valuing the traditional ways of thinking most. These often oppose efficient,
progressive activity.
- Technical and economic innovations (sponsored) are often received with great caution and
seen as symbolic performances.
- Another obstacle: the economic development plans are often unrealistic and divorced from
the immediate needs and productive capacities of these countries.
,- The implementation of short-run objectives (economic gain or the rejuvenation of a
traditional way of life) are often opposed to economic progress.
- European’s transition towards capitalism also included a change in values of the people
(adaptation of a new ideology).
- Also a change in skills needed.
- The result is often tied aid.
- So: not only economic, but also non-economic barriers to development.
Fanon, F. (1961), The Wretched o the Earth. Chapter 1: Concerning Violence. New York:
Grove Press, 35-106
- Decolonization is always a violent phenomenon: it always includes the replacing of a
certain ‘species’ of men by another ‘species’ of men. Without any period of transition, there
is a total, complete, and absolute substitution.
- In colonies: the policeman and the soldier are the instituted go-betweens, the spokesmen
of the settler and oppression.
- In capitalist societies: the educational system, the moral values that a father gives his son,
the medal after 50 years of good work, these moral teachers create the atmosphere of
submission and inhibition.
- Reciprocal exclusivity: settler’s town versus the town belonging to colonized people.
Inhabited by two different species.
- The destruction of this colonial world is no more and no less that the abolition of one zone.
- The settler only ends his work of breaking the native when the native admits loudly and
intelligibly the supremacy of the white man’s values.
- The bourgeoisie of the capitalist country: realize that it is impossible to maintain
domination, so they will always try to defend the crumbs that were left for them. You can
therefore not expect most from them, they have a recalcitrant role.
- The native intellectuals: they are the ones who want to break traditions. They can be part
of 1) bourgeoisie or 2) spokespeople of the masses helping to get a revolution and a
change. Frans Fanon is a native intellectual himself.
- A role of dance and possession
- The idea of compromise is very important in decolonization. Compromise involves young
nationalist bourgeoisie and the colonial system.
- Violence is needed, but it opens up to non-violence to change situations without the use of
violence.
- It is possible to change: the first world should give the power back. More a revolution in the
west is needed to give back part of the riches rather than violent revolution in the third
world.
EXTRA: differences between Fanon and Hoselitz. Fanon says that the West has created the
Third World. Hoselitz says that the Third World needs to be remade, to be made into the First
World.
Lecture 1.2: Capital accumulation and the Big Push
- “Modernization era”
o focus on economic growth, simple one-sector model
o Sources of economic growth:
1) Factor accumulation: more capital and labor ( )
2) Productivity growth: more efficient production (better management e.g.) or
technological change ( )
- Elements of a growth model:
o Production function links inputs to output: Y = F(K,L)
o Savings are a fraction of income: S = sY
, o Investment = Savings (I = S)
o Investments are thrown in the capital stock for next year, so ΔK = I – dK. Evolution
of capital stock over time: ΔK = sF(K,L) – dK (depreciation)
o The population growth (amount of people = amount of workers) grow at an
exponential rate: ΔL = nL, constant growth rate.
- Solow growth model
o Substitution between labour and capital
o Output expansion by increasing all inputs, or by changing the capital intensity
o Capital-output ratio is endogenous (= can be responded by people), affected by
prices, policies and other factors
o Long-run analysis based on one sector: no need for coordination (no role for the
state)
o Question is: are saving large enough to compensate for depreciation + population
growth?
o Increase savings rate: income per worker goes up
o Increase population growth rate: income per worker goes down
- Beyond Solow:
o Biggest disappointment: in the long run there is continuous growth, not the steady
state. Because there is no technological change included, only looked at factor-
accumulation. So this only holds for very poor countries
o The advice for poor countries: save more money, or less people. Steady state
goes up.
- I. Market failure (e.g. urbanization)
o Two sectors: agriculture and industry.
