Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 4
Social components of development
As development in the last 50 years has largely been seen as economic
development, it is unremarkable that social aspects have received relatively little
attention. Social change has been analyzed by sociologists in a discourse separate
from that of development. Social elements in development have been treated as a
policy matter, covered generally by welfare. This lays immediate emphasis on
consumption of social goods and services. In other words, society has been
regarded as the consumer, the recipient of development, and not as the producer.
In the following discussion, we examine first the place of social components in
development, and then review developed countries and less developed countries
for relevant materials.
There is no common agreement on the place of social elements in the
development process, so that it is worth outlining briefly some points of view;
whether this social component should be provided for in policy by public
agencies or be left to the private sector is another debate. A first viewpoint on
social provision which we might note is that of the psychologist, Maslow (1954),
that human needs are ordered in a commonsense way, so that survival or economic
interests, food, shelter and clothing, are first, and only when these are satisfied do
social provisions come into focus. Social facilities are secondary and thus come
in at a later stage of development. The logic of this view is that social concerns
are worth including in development policy but not in the early stages, which
means amongst the poorest countries.
A contrasting view is that of the economic historian Polanyi (1977), who
showed that historically, social concerns are in fact primary, even in the most
primitive peoples, and that the economy works within a social framework, what
he called the “social integument”. In tribal society, economic work is allocated to
specific persons, at speciflc times and places, set by the community. In recent
decades there has been an attempt to treat the economic as though it were
autonomous, but this is a mistaken procedure. If we take Polanyi's view, the
structure of society is of fundamental importance at any stage, and should be
addressed by policies seeking to promote the overall development of any human
group.
A third view, implicit in neo-liberal economics, is that the economy is entirely
autonomous and its development may be pursued as a separate enterprise,
