Socioeconomic Aspects of Development Research Paper

Even among social scientists who retain a commitment to development, the term has taken on a variety of meanings, and has motivated inquiries employing vastly different theoretical frameworks. While ‘development’ may be the concern of macroeconomists modeling the impact of trade liberalization on national growth rates, it may be equally central to ethnographers seeking to reveal linkages between the protection of cultural diversity and the survival of agricultural practices deemed crucial to maintaining biodiversity or to ensuring local production of critical foodstuffs. Despite the semantic overlap, and the likelihood that macroeconomic policies impinge upon the decisions of farmers to plant one crop or another—or to migrate to overcrowded cities that lack the infrastructure to accommodate them—dialogue is at best weak among researchers operating across such broadly different levels of analysis.

Most currents of social scientific research now agree that development refers, ultimately, to improvements in the conditions of life for groups of people experiencing relative deprivation, whether they be located in a particular village, urban metropolis, country, or subnational or transnational region. Efforts to promote development may focus on the entirety of a population, or may be targeted to address needs of specific groups that are deemed especially vulnerable, or whose welfare is perceived as potentially generative of multiplier effects, i.e., whose improved welfare is deemed likely to enhance the life chances of the community as a whole. Thus, peasants, shantytown dwellers, women, or ethnic minorities may merit positions of privilege in considerations of development on grounds that their needs are especially pressing. Similarly, given their potential role in promoting growth or employment, micro-entrepreneurs, managers of competitive firms, or foreign investors may also be central to analyses of development.

Amid continuing disagreement concerning the appropriate scope of analyses of development, there is widespread accord that development concerns trajectories of change, encompassing movement from circumstances of relative hardship and deprivation toward qualitatively improved conditions of life. Those who effect measures to promote development may or may not be the intended beneficiaries of those efforts, but whether development is pursued through interventions by external agents, such as development assistance agencies, or through initiatives of the targeted communities themselves, it is a process that involves social actors. Indeed, to the extent that particular trajectories of economic change are known to correlate strongly with societal characteristics, development increasingly is understood as a set of processes that reflect underlying social dynamics of the territories in which it takes place.

Development implies increasing the volume of available resources, and thus is associated powerfully with economic growth. For many years, widespread scholarly acceptance of the so-called Kuznets curve (Kuznets 1955), according to which inequality expands sharply during initial phases of economic growth and declines steadily upon achievement of substantial industrialization, motivated many development economists to disregard or tacitly advocate economic inequality. More recent research has established a far more complex relationship between growth and distribution, however, suggesting in some instances that a relatively equal distribution of assets is conducive not only to rapid economic growth but also to patterns of growth that reinforce equality (Stallings et al. 2000). Partly in keeping with these findings, and as a result of ethical and pragmatic concern about the plight of impoverished people, at the beginning of the twenty-first century development typically refers not only to economic growth but also to the distribution of income among different segments of the population and, more broadly, to enhancements in quality of life. Thus, alongside the achievement of higher incomes, development is intended to reduce poverty, improve health and nutrition, prolong life expectancy and afford opportunities for education. By some accounts, and for a growing scholarly literature, development encompasses political objectives, such as expanded individual freedoms and greater civic participation, and environmental ones, such as community access to natural resources and protections against ecological degradation.

Of course, these economic, political, and societal goals are not obviously compatible, and as Gereffi and Fonda have noted, ‘[T]he multi-dimensional nature of development, and the fact that these desired objectives do not necessarily occur together, help to account for some of the … tradeoffs in … development outcomes’ (1992). Arguably, this multidimensionality lies at the root of divisions that often limit productive debate about development, but that in some instances, by contrast, have made studies of development especially fertile ground for cross-disciplinary innovation.

The remainder of this research paper sketches further the evolution of social scientific thinking about development. After tracing movement away from the conviction that ‘all good things would go together’ in tandem with economic progress, the paper highlights currents of research that illuminate connections between characteristics of social processes and the nature of development outcomes. It concludes by noting promising trends and future challenges for research on development.

1. From Economy-Centered Analyses To Plural Conceptions Of Development

Early twenty-first century preoccupation with the social aspects of development stands in stark contrast to perspectives held widely during the initial decades following World War II. Espousing an underlying idea of development that can be traced as far back in Western thought as Hegel and Marx, who shared a conviction in the inexorable progress of human history toward ever greater levels of perfection, modernization theorists believed that the advanced industrial countries of Western Europe and North America represented the logical end-point toward which the former colonies of Africa, Asia, and Latin America would advance inevitably (Leys 1996, pp. 4–5). Early thinking about development thus posited that properly balanced macroeconomic policies and functioning state institutions would facilitate a relatively seamless evolution of ‘backward’ nations toward the prosperous and peaceful conditions achieved by economically developed countries.

While the almost universally disappointing experience of postcolonial economies served to undermine the model long ago, confidence in such unilinear progress has disappeared even in the prosperous countries of the North, where deindustrialization and increasing social polarization have eroded the sociopolitical consensus that characterized the period of postwar growth. And despite the often dramatic expansion of industry and rapid urbanization in parts of the former Third World, the economic and political inequalities of the past have not only been slow to disappear but often have actually grown worse in conjunction with these very processes of modernization. These trends have been exacerbated further by growing discrepancies between supply and demand of natural resources needed to assure communities of the ability to satisfy their basic needs.

Dependency theory, the principal alternative to the modernization school as a paradigm for analyzing development, has hardly been proven more prescient. To be sure, the dependency critics were not unjustified in contending that deeply embedded structures of discrimination reinforced the subordinate position of peripheral economies vis-a-vis the so-called core countries. However, they erred in their identification of the particular mechanisms—such as the supposedly deteriorating terms of trade for primary product exporters, emphasized by Raul Prebisch and his followers—through which this process was sustained. Moreover, as evidenced by the significant degrees of industrialization that were achieved in parts of Latin America and Asia, they failed to grasp the degree to which developing economies could advance despite the disadvantageous conditions they confronted (Evans 1979). In particular, dependency analysis was called into question by the considerable success of export-oriented growth in several East Asian countries, which contrasted markedly with the failure of development strategies predicated on isolation from the very global market that dependentistas held to be the primary impediment to development in the periphery (Haggard 1990).

Indeed, variations in the development experiences of different parts of the North and South testify to the degree to which the impacts of the international context on particular communities, nations, and regions are contingent on factors that transcend inherited conditions or positions in the world system. Understanding of the strikingly diverse development experiences of apparently similar countries and regions since the 1980s requires analysis of the microfoundations of distinctive trajectories. Structural inequities have by no means disappeared from the scene, but they have taken on new forms, and reflect complexities that are not clarified sufficiently by the sweeping categories of traditional theories of dependency or of the world system.

Moreover, for dependency theorists, as for modernization analyses, development was understood at the level of states and was analyzed through macro-level policies and institutions. The particular societal configurations of developing countries were of little interest to these analyses of developmental impasse, nor were the strategies of social forces or their fate as a result of distinct development trajectories a major concern. As Leys (1996) has pointed out progress, or more frequently stagnation, was deemed a function of underlying structures of interaction operating above and beyond the micro-and meso-level processes that would be of concern to subsequent generations of social scientists concerned with development.

Confidence in the grand theoretical frameworks of modernization and dependency had already weakened by the mid-1970s, when the impact of oil shocks, declining faith in the capacity of economic growth to reach the majority of the world’s poor, and debates about ecological limits to growth combined to shift the emphasis in development circles away from large-scale, state-oriented modernization efforts toward localized strategies for meeting the needs of the world’s poor (Sutton 1989). The World Bank’s 1973 call for targeting development efforts to the ‘poorest of the poor’ catalyzed a shift in focus away from growth and toward issues of redistribution and equity. Perhaps resigned to the likelihood that significant portions of the globe would remain trapped in low-growth situations, the concern of policy makers turned to enhancing the well-being of communities that were destined to miss out indefinitely on the postwar vision of modernity and prosperity. This in turn led to increasing emphasis on community participation in development. Whether labeled ‘farmer-first,’ ‘bottomup,’ or ‘grassroots’ development strategies, the emphasis here was on decentralization, localization, and the satisfaction of basic human needs for food, shelter, health, and security.

Absent expectations of significant increases in wealth, provision of adequate nutrition, sanitation, housing, and health care, and in some instances assurances of minimal incomes and educational opportunities came to be perceived as central objectives of development policies. While such measures as the rate of increase in per capita income retained their traditional appeal for researchers and practitioners, alternative indicators of development gained everbroader acceptance. The physical quality of life index (PQLI), for example, used by a variety of international agencies to inform their development efforts, sought to measure the overall well-being of particular communities and countries. Incorporating indicators of health, nutrition, and literacy as well as income levels, such measures were acknowledged increasingly as more accurate yardsticks of development than were the more traditional macro-level indicators that focused on economic growth, industrialization, or urbanization.

While the state was sometimes viewed as a potential provider of goods and services required for poverty alleviation, international development agencies increasingly bypassed developing country governments, choosing to rely instead on the mediation of international and local nongovernmental agencies. This trend gained steam during the 1980s, a decade marked by the international debt crisis in Latin America and the implosion of postcolonial states in parts of Africa and elsewhere. Influenced by studies that emphasized the economic distortions effected by rent-seeking elites in command of predatory states (Bates 1981), conventional wisdom increasingly abandoned the notion that central states had the capacity or inclination to ameliorate the hardships faced by most of their populations. Rather, faith was placed in the operation of more-or-less unfettered markets, and in the benefits that market-driven growth could bestow upon societies whose potential for growth had been stymied by inefficient state institutions (Williamson 1993). Accordingly, multilateral institutions and Western governments advocated structural adjustment programs and sharp reductions in the economic role of the state in development countries.

The so-called neo-liberal trend coincided, albeit somewhat awkwardly, with an equally anti-statist notion that development entailed the empowerment of communities and individuals themselves to undertake the development ‘project.’ The emphasis on local autonomy and grassroots participation provided a useful corrective to top-down development strategies of the past, and engendered significant improvements in efficiency and equity in many settings (Tendler 1997). Yet in most of the periphery, declines in state spending on health, education, and social welfare took a severe toll on living standards, particularly among the poor, as local institutions were given responsibility for tasks without enjoying corresponding increase in their access to resources, or as supply of these public goods was simply transferred from the public to the private sector.

Nor were criticisms of the laissez-faire approach limited to its impact on equity, since a worsening of extreme poverty has been demonstrated to have adverse ecological consequences as well (Martinez Alier 1991). Left solely to the vagaries of the market, limits on pollution, deforestation, soil erosion, and other environmental hazards cannot be ensured. Such considerations emerge as integral to analyses of development that emphasize linkages between the welfare of communities and their access to natural resources. By the end of the 1980s, understanding of these linkages as well as growing scientific and public concern over processes of global environmental change (such as ozone depletion) combined to foster greater emphasis on development strategies that could accommodate the needs of the present generation without jeopardizing the availability of resources for future generations. Much of this work concludes that a high degree of equity and local control over resources are necessary, if not sufficient, preconditions for environmentally sustainable development. In some instances, the argument coincides with an emphasis on empowerment of subordinate groups, ranging from indigenous peoples to women to subsistence farmers, who are portrayed as threatened by a singular focus on economic growth, which is in turn characteristic of the visions of modernity and progress that have provided the justification for much of what we have come to think of as development. It should come as no surprise, then, that proponents of this view often question the desirability of retaining development as a societal objective, and in any event call for ‘an alternative modernity,’ a modernity fundamentally skeptical of economic growth (e.g., Martinez Alier 1991).

2. Emerging Trends And Future Challenges

The need to comprehend the development implications of processes of globalization occasioned a revitalization of development thinking toward the end of the twentieth century. By virtually all accounts, the unprecedented mobility of goods, knowledge, and peoples across national borders, and increasingly transnational flows of capital and information have made the traditional boundaries established by states far more permeable. While some regions, and some social sectors, appear well situated to benefit from the new circumstances, others face growing hardship, and the boundaries between prosperity and decline often do not coincide with the borders of countries. Research on the changing structure of industries illuminates both the increasingly global scale of economic activity (e.g., Gereffi and Korzeniewicz 1994) and the significance of community dynamics for encouraging cooperative ties conducive to successful adaptation to rapidly changing markets (Piore and Sabel 1984). This literature calls into question the traditional focus on national policies to promote economic growth or to alter prevailing patterns of distribution. Understanding the ways in which different states respond to similar pressures differently (and with varying degrees of success), remains important (Evans 1995), yet statelevel analyses of the political economy of development must be supplemented by attention to the ways in which relationships among local and nonstate actors can evolve in such a way as to encourage successful economic adaptation (Doner and Hershberg 1999).

Given strikingly different trajectories of change among apparently similar communities, social scientists have devoted increasing attention to the role of social capital and social institutions in determining prospects of different groups to prosper. Here, the focus has been on the relational dynamics that characterize specific socio-territorial spaces, and that nurture levels of trust without which economic actors cannot work together to insulate themselves from market risks (e.g., Perez Sainz 1996). While a concern with social capital and institutions is shaping a good deal of innovative work in sociology, anthropology, and political science, economists are also advancing influential perspectives on the societal underpinnings of growth. Endogenous growth theorists highlight the mutual connections between rapid economic growth and relatively equal distribution of resources, including such assets as health and education. In this manner, by the end of the twentieth century, equity was increasingly accepted by economists as a foundation of economic growth, and as such has become part of even the most mainstream of development agendas. Similarly, informed by the work of economic historians, researchers in both political science and economics are developing fresh approaches to the study of economic institutions and their relationship to market processes (Williamson 1985).

To the extent that development consists of more than economic growth, and also encompasses movement toward the creation of greater opportunities for political participation, fuller representation of societal interests, and the protection of individual and collective rights, it is crucial to understand how political and economic transformations alter the linkages between state and society in different parts of the world. Whether social actors organize themselves on the basis of class, community, ethnicity, or other principles is of fundamental importance for any comprehensive treatment of development, just as it affects the likelihood for sustaining particular political coalitions, some of which, in turn, appear more likely than others to be able to sustain different strategies of development (e.g., Nelson 1994, Haggard and Kaufman 1995).

The importance of community in considerations of development is underscored by the growing consensus among scholars and practitioners that successful development—in the North as well as in the South— hinges on the strengthening of local institutions, be they community development banks, schools, or health clinics (Ake 1991, Tendler 1997). The importance of neighborhood characteristics—whether for the sociologist studying the experience of growing up in impoverished urban slums, or for the anthropologist concerned with how kinship networks help attenuate the effects of agricultural shortfalls—underscores the degree to which development-related research is concerned with micro-level phenomena. Whether in connection to these sorts of issues or to questions of industrial development and employment (Stallings and Peres 2000), the need to link micro-level processes to the ‘macro’ level transformations taking place in the global political economy remains an ongoing challenge for students of development in the next decades.

As these comments suggest, many of the topics attracting creative scholarship will continue to reflect challenges that, in hindsight, have been relevant throughout the half century during which development has been the subject of social science inquiry. Yet alongside promising evidence of potential complementarities between economic growth and other indices of well-being, researchers are uncovering disturbing evidence of new forms of immiserizing growth (Kaplinsky 2001). No less daunting are the new forms of exclusion that are emerging, as uneven access to information technologies threatens to reinforce the disadvantaged status of vast segments of the world’s population. Perhaps most troubling of all are the development implications for a number of the world’s poorest countries, most notably in Sub-Saharan Africa, of the devastation wrought by the AIDS epidemic, the human costs of which are magnified by its likely impact on economic growth for generations to come. It is difficult to conceive of a more striking illustration of the degree to which the economic and social aspects of development are inextricably linked to one another.

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