The Development of Underdevelopment
TL;DR: For example, this article pointed out that most of our theoretical categories and guides to development policy have been distilled exclusively from the historical experience of the European and North American advanced capitalist nations, and that most historians study only the developed metropolitan countries and pay scant attention to the colonial and underdeveloped lands.
Abstract: We cannot hope to formulate adequate development theory and policy for the majority of the world's population who suffer from underdevelopment without first learning how their past economic and social history gave rise to their present underdevelopment. Yet most historians study only the developed metropolitan countries and pay scant attention to the colonial and underdeveloped lands. For this reason most of our theoretical categories and guides to development policy have been distilled exclusively from the historical experience of the European and North American advanced capitalist nations.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.
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TL;DR: This article found evidence of both massive cultural change and the persistence of distinctive cultural traditions in 65 societies and 75 percent of the world's population using data from the three waves of the World Values Surveys.
Abstract: Modernization theorists from Karl Marx to Daniel Bell have argued that economic development brings pervasive cultural changes. But others, from Max Weber to Samuel Huntington, have claimed that cultural values are an enduring and autonomous influence on society. We test the thesis that economic development is linked with systematic changes in basic values. Using data from the three waves of the World Values Surveys, which include 65 societies and 75 percent of the world's population, we find evidence of both massive cultural change and the persistence of distinctive cultural traditions. Economic development is associated with shifts away from absolute norms and values toward values that are increasingly rational, tolerant, trusting, and participatory. Cultural change, however, is path dependent. The broad cultural heritage of a society - Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Confucian, or Communist - leaves an imprint on values that endures despite modernization. Moreover, the differences between the values held by members of different religions within given societies are much smaller than are cross-national differences. Once established, such cross-cultural differences become part of a national culture transmitted by educational institutions and mass media. We conclude with some proposed revisions of modernization theory
4,551 citations
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01 Jan 2005TL;DR: The authors presented a model of social change that predicts how the value systems play a crucial role in the emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions, and that modernisation brings coherent cultural changes that are conducive to democratisation.
Abstract: This book demonstrates that people's basic values and beliefs are changing, in ways that affect their political, sexual, economic, and religious behaviour. These changes are roughly predictable: to a large extent, they can be interpreted on the basis of a revised version of modernisation theory presented here. Drawing on a massive body of evidence from societies containing 85 percent of the world's population, the authors demonstrate that modernisation is a process of human development, in which economic development gives rise to cultural changes that make individual autonomy, gender equality, and democracy increasingly likely. The authors present a model of social change that predicts how the value systems play a crucial role in the emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions - and that modernisation brings coherent cultural changes that are conducive to democratisation.
3,016 citations
TL;DR: This paper reviewed a wide range of recent attempts in both economics and political science to explain the "resource curse" and found that much has been learned about the economic problems of resource exporters but less is known about their political problems.
Abstract: How does a state's natural resource wealth influence its economic development? For the past fifty years, versions of this question have been explored by both economists and political scientists. New research suggests that resource wealth tends to harm economic growth, yet there is little agreement on why this occurs. This article reviews a wide range of recent attempts in both economics and political science to explain the “resource curse.” It suggests that much has been learned about the economic problems of resource exporters but less is known about their political problems. The disparity between strong findings on economic matters and weak findings on political ones partly reflects the failure of political scientists to carefully test their own theories.
1,690 citations
TL;DR: This book argues that a new conceptualization is needed in order to come to terms with the experience and consciousness of this new migrant population, called “transnationalism,” and describes the new type of migrants as transmigrants.
Abstract: Our earlier conceptions of immigrant and migrant n o longer suffice. The word immigrant evokes images of permanent rupture, of the uprooted, the abandonment of old patterns and the painful learning of a new language and culture. Now, a new kind of migrating population is emerging, composed of those whose networks, activities and patterns of life encompass both their host and home societies. Their lives cut across national boundaries and bring two societies into a single social field. In this book we argue that a new conceptualization is needed in order to come to terms with the experience and consciousness of this new migrant population. We call this new conceptualization, “transnationalism,” and describe the new type of migrants as transmigrants. We have defined transnationalism as the processes by which immigrants build social fields that link together their country of origin and their country of settlement. Immigrants who build such social fields are designated “transmigrants.” Transmigrants develop and maintain multiple relationsfamilial, economic, social, organizational, religious, and political that span borders. Transmigrants take actions, make decisions, and feel concerns, and develop identities within social net-
1,448 citations
Cites background from "The Development of Underdevelopment..."
...6 Important early work in a global analysis was carried out by Andr6 Gunder Frank (1966)....
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Abstract: The debate on migration and development has swung back and forth like a pendulum, from developmentalist optimism in the 1950s and 1960s, to neo-Marxist pessimism over the 1970s and 1980s, towards more optimistic views in the 1990s and 2000s. This paper argues how such discursive shifts in the migration and development debate should be primarily seen as part of more general paradigm shifts in social and development theory. However, the classical opposition between pessimistic and optimistic views is challenged by empirical evidence pointing to the heterogeneity of migration impacts. By integrating and amending insights from the new economics of labor migration, livelihood perspectives in development studies and transnational perspectives in migration studies – which share several though as yet unobserved conceptual parallels – this paper elaborates the contours of a conceptual framework that simultaneously integrates agency and structure perspectives and is therefore able to account for the heterogeneous nature of migration-development interactions. The resulting perspective reveals the naivety of recent views celebrating migration as self-help development “from below”. These views are largely ideologically driven and shift the attention away from structural constraints and the vital role of states in shaping favorable conditions for positive development impacts of migration to occur.
1,428 citations
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