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Cultural factors in the contemporary theory of development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

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Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1973

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References

* Kunkel, J. H., Society and Economic Growth: a behavioural perspective of social change (New York, Oxford University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Moore, Bahrington, The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (London, Allen Lane, 1966)Google Scholar; Adler, F., The Value Concept in Sociology, Amer. Journ. Sociol., LVII (1956), 272279CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blake, J. and Davis, K., Norms, , Values and Sanctions, in Faris, R.E.L. (ed.), A Handbook of Modern Sociology (Chicago, Rand McNally, 1969)Google Scholar.

(1) See Singer, M., “Culture’, in the International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. IIIGoogle Scholar; and Stocking, G. W., Race, Culture and Evolution (Glencoe, Free Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

(2) Thus Goodenough, W. in Hymes, D. (ed.), Language in Culture and Society (New York, Harper, 1964), p. 36Google Scholar.

(3) Herskovits, M. J., Economic Change and Culture Dynamics, in Braibanti, R. and Spengler, J. J. (eds.), Tradition, Values and Economic Development (Durham, N.C., Duke University Press, 1961), pp. 114–34Google Scholar; cf. Vogt, E. Z., On the Concepts of Structure and Process in Social Anthropology, Am. Anthr., LXII (1960), esp. pp. 2526Google Scholar.

(4) Ayal, E. B., Value Systems and Economic Development in Japan and Thailand, Journ. Soc. Issues, XIX (1963), 3551CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bellah, R. N., Tokugawa Religion (Glencoe, Free Press, 1957)Google Scholar and, with others, in Religion and Progress in Modern Asia (New York, Free Press, 1965)Google Scholar, Eisenstadt, S. N., Introduction to The Protestant Ethic and Modernization (New York, Basic Books, 1968)Google Scholar; Kapp, K. W., Hindu Culture, Economic Development and Economic Planning in India (London, Asia Publishing House, 1963)Google Scholar; Goheen, J., in India's Cultural Values and Economic Development: a Discussion, Econ. Dev. and Cult. Change, VII (1958), pp. 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(5) Lewis, O., The Concept of the Culture of Poverty, in his Anthropological Essays (New York, Random House, 1970)Google Scholar; Banfield, E. C., The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Glencoe, Free Press, 1958)Google Scholar; Kahl, J. A., The Measurement of Modernism: a study of values in Brazil and Mexico (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Fillol, T. R., Social Factors in Economic Development: the Argentine case (Cambridge, Mass., Mass. Inst. Tech. Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Cochran, T. C., Cultural Factors in Economic Growth, Journ. Econ. Hist., XX (1960), 515530CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(6) Lipset, S. M., The First New Nation (London, Heinemann, 1963)Google Scholar; Pye, L. W., Politics, Personality and Nation Buiding (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1962)Google Scholar; Almond, G. A. and Verba, S., The Civic Culture (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pye, L. W. and Verba, S. (eds.), Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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(8) Leach, E., Political Systems of Highland Burma (London, Bell, 1954), pp. 16–17:Google Scholar “Culture provides the form, the ‘dress’ of the social situation […] the cultural situation is a given factor, it is a product and an accident of history”; particular structures can assume a variety of cultural dresses.

(9) In this respect see Worsley's, P. M. critique of Fortes' studies of Tallensi kinship: The Kinship System of the Tallensi: a Revaluation, J.R.A.I., LXXXVI (1956), 3776Google Scholar.

(10) Gellner, E., Pouvoir politique et fonction religieuse dans l'lslam marocain, Annales, E.S.C., XXV (1970), 699713Google Scholar.

(11) Cohen, A., Custom and Politics in Urban Africa (Manchester, U.P., 1969)Google Scholar.

(12) Political Systems of Highland Burma, op. cit. pp. 4, 13.

(13) Kroeber, A.L. and Parsons, T., The Concepts of Culture and of Social System, Amer. Soc. Rev., XXIII (1958), pp. 582–3Google Scholar.

(14) Kunkel, Society and Economic Growth, op. cit.; Barrington Moore, The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, op. cit.

(15) Adler, The Value Concept in Sociology, op. cit.

(16) Blake and Davis, op. cit. Norms and Sanctions.

(17) Kunkel, , op. cit. p. 64Google Scholar.

(18) Valentine, C.A., Culture and Poverty (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1968), Chap. 1Google Scholar.

(19) Belshaw, C.S., The Identification of Values in Anthropology, Amer. Journ. Soc., LXIV (1959), pp. 555562CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(20) Social Origins, op. cit. p. 485.

(21) Ibid. p. 291.

(22) Frank, A.G., Capitalism and Under development in Latin America (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

(23) On the nineteenth century debate which prefigures the contemporary one see Peel, J.D.Y., Herbert Spencer: the evolution of a sociologist (London, Heinemann, 1971), pp. 8990, 185–91Google Scholar.

(24) Social Origins, pp. 470–4.

(25) Ibid. p. 338.

(26) Leach, , op. cit. p. 10Google Scholar.

(27) Social Origins, p. 484. But for a highly plausible defence of social inertia, see Nisbet, R.A., The Social Bond (New York, Knopf, 1970), pp. 304–9Google Scholar; see also Stinchcombe, A.L., Constructing Social Theories (New York, Harcourt Brace, 1968), pp. 101 sqqGoogle Scholar.

(28) For example, from many cases, the following: p. 480, the upper classes need “a fair degree of blindness” to provoke peasant revolutions; p. 407, Nehru's policies, dependent on his assessment, are held responsible for India's plight; p. 429, the lack of “military traditions” in the Italian aristocracy are cited as part explanation; pp. 121–122, the ideological incompatibility of the northern and southern states held largely responsible for U.S. Civil War; p. 343, reasons for British remaining in India are in the end psychological not commercial.

(29) Homans, G.C., The Explanation of English Regional Differences, Past and Present, XLII (1969), esp. pp. 2930Google Scholar: “What do we mean by a cultural explanation ? When a people has lived together generation after generation, sharing a common history, […] it tends to develop distinctive institutions, adaptated of course to its physical envirment and technology. When faced with new circumstances, the people may well adjust its institutions to meet them, but the adjustment will start from the old traditions, and a recognizable continuity will be maintained”.

(30) Thus Parsons, T., An Approach to the Sociology of Knowledge, in Sociological Theory and Modern Society (New York, Free Press of Glencoe, 1967), pp. 139165Google Scholar. Cf. also Parsons, T. and Shils, E. (eds.), Towards a General Theory of Action (New York, Harper and Row, 1962), esp. pp. 158–89Google Scholar.

(31) On values in general see Adler, op. cit. Albert, E.M., On the Classification of Values, Amer. Anthr., LVIII (1956), p.221CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Albert, E.M. and Kluckhohn, C., A Selected Bibliography on Values (Glencoe, Free Press, 1959)Google Scholar; and Kluckhohn, C., Values and Value-orientations in the Theory of Action, in Parsons, and Shils, , op. cit. pp. 388433Google Scholar.

(32) Parsons, , The Role of Ideas in Social Action, in Essays in Sociological Theory Pure and Applied (Glencoe, Free Press, 1949), pp. 151–65Google Scholar.

(33) A recent reiteration of this intellectual tradition is Friedrich's, R.W., A Sociology of Sociology (New York, Free Press of Glencoe, 1970)Google Scholar.

(34) Parsons, , The Structure of Social Action (Glencoe, Free Press, 1937), p. 768Google Scholar.

(35) First New Nation, op. cit. p. 4: A trenchant, but in the end somewhat helpful critique of Lipset is Barry, B.M., Economists, Sociologists and Democracy (London, Macmillan, 1969)Google Scholar.

(36) Ayal, , loc. cit. p. 35Google Scholar.

(37) Cf. Inkeles, A., Making Men Modem: on the causes and consequences of individual change in six developing countries, Amer. Joum. Soc., LXXV (1969) 208225CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(38) Davis, J., Morals and Backwardness, Comp. Stud, in Soc. and Hist., XII (1790), 340353Google Scholar.

(39) Lerner, D., The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe, Free Press, 1958), pp. 47 sqqGoogle Scholar.

(40) Cf. Spencer, H., The Study of Sociology (London, Williams and Norgate, 1873), pp. 5052Google Scholar: “Given the structures and consequent instincts of the individuals as we find them, and the community they form will inevitably present certain traits; and no community having such traits can be formed out of individuals having other structures and instincts […]”.

(41) Almond, and Verba, , op. cit. p. 323–74Google Scholar; also Pye, op. cit. chap. XIII.

(42) See the suggestive essay of Khare, R.S., Home and Office: Some Trends of Modernization among the Kanya-Kubja Brahmans, Comp. Stud, in Soc. and Hist., XIII (1971), pp. 196216CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(43) As Robertson, R., The Sociological Interpretation of Religion (Oxford, Blackwell, 1970)Google Scholar, passim, argues convincingly.

(44) See the useful explication of Weber on this by Warner, R.S., The Role of Religious Ideas and the Use of Models in Max Weber's Comparative Studies of Non-Capitalist Societies, Jour. Econ. Hist., XXX (1970), 7499CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(45) Singer, M., Cultural Values in India's Economic Development, Ann. Amer. Acad. Pol. Sc., XXXV (1956), 497505Google Scholar; ID. Religion and Social Change in India: the Max Weber Thesis, Phase Three, Econ. Dev. and Cult. Change, XIV (19651966)Google Scholar; M.N. Srinivas and M. Singer, India's Cultural Values and Economic Development: a Discussion, Ibid. VII (1958), pp. 3–6, 10–12.

(46) Morris, M.D., Values as an Obstacle to Economic Growth in Asia, S., Journ. Econ. Hist., XXVII (1967), p. 607Google Scholar.

(47) See C. Geertz, Religious Belief and Economic Behaviour in a Central Javanese Town, and E. Willems, Culture Change and the Rise of Protestantism in Brazil and Chile, both in Eisenstadt, , Protestant Ethic and Modernization, op. cit.; Peel, , Aladura: a Religious Movement among the Yoruba (London, Oxford University Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Long, N., Social Change and the Individual (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1969)Google Scholar, on Jehovah's Witnesses in Zambia.

(48) Bellah, , in Eisenstadt, , op. cit. p. 244Google Scholar.

(49) Loc. cit. pp. 243–51 passim.

(50) Eisenstadt, ibid.

(51) Spiro, M. E., Buddhism and Economic Action in Burma, Amer. Anthr., LXVIII (1966), pp. 11631173CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(52) For a further case of a new pattern of social behaviour emerging from cognitive change see Peel, , Aladura, op. cit. p. 127Google Scholar; here changed behaviour concerning medical treatment resulted from ongoing beliefs about the relation of religion and sickness, both Christian and Yoruba traditional and the interpretation of recent experiences.

(53) The general argument is most forcefully stated by Goody, J. and Watt, I., The Effects of Literacy, Comp. Stud, in Soc. and Hist., V (19631964), 304345CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an instance of what is likely to prevail in a preliterate society see Bohannan, L., A Genealogical Charter, Africa, XXII (1952), 301315CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(54) Cf. Parsons, , The Theoretical Development of the Sociology of Religion, in Essays in Sociological Theory (Glencoe, Free Press, 1949)Google Scholar, and in Theories of Society (New York, Free Press, 1961), esp. pp. 983–84Google Scholar.

(55) Cf. Berger, P., The Social Reality of Religion (London, Faber, 1969), p. 127Google Scholar.

(56) Thomas, K., Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970)Google Scholar.

(57) Lamont, W. M., Godly Rule: politics and religion 1603–1660 (London, Macmillan, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(58) A contrary view is Macintyre, A., A Mistake about Causality in Social Science, in Laslett, P. and Runciman, W. G. (eds.), Philosophy, Politics and Society (Oxford, Blackwell [2nd series], 1965), pp. 4870Google Scholar: “[Weber et al.] necessarily erred in presenting the role of ideas in society and their relations to action. For no matter how assiduous they were in presenting facts, they misconceived the logical character of what they collected”. Maclntyre transmutes a sociological possibility which holds in some circumstances (i.e. a state where belief and action are so tightly integrated that it makes no sense to ask how belief ‘influences’ action) into a universal philosophical truth. But it is less a question of the concepts which we bring to sociological analysis that of the character of the social data.

(59) Cf. the very suggestive work of Walzer, M., The Revolution of the Saints (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966)Google Scholar. The kinship was recognized by Trotsky, , History of the Russian Revolution, trans. Eastman, M. (London, Sphere Books, 1967), p. 29Google Scholar.

(60) For the most significant recent analysis of tradition, cf. Shils, E., Tradition, Comp. Stud, in Soc. and Hist., XIII (1971), 122159CrossRefGoogle Scholar. With it might be read, highly schematic though it is, Bell, W. and Mau, J. A., Images of the Future, in Bell, W. (ed.), The Sociology of the Future (New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1971)Google Scholar.

(61) McClelland, , Motivational Patterns: Chinese Cases, journ. Soc. Iss., XIX (1963), pp. 1718Google Scholar.

(62) Cf. Peel, , Herbert Spencer, op. cit. pp. 244 sqqGoogle Scholar.

(63) Geertz, in Apter, D. E. (ed.), Ideology and Discontent (New York, Free Press of Glencoe, 1963)Google Scholar; Schram, Stuart, The Political Thought of Mao Tse-Tung (New York, Praeger, 1963)Google Scholar; Mazrui, A. A., Violence and Thought (London, Longmans, 1969)Google Scholar; Coleman, J. S. and Rosberg, C. G. (eds.), African Socialism (Stanford, University Press, 1964)Google Scholar; Macrae, D. G., Nkrumahism, Government and Opposition, II (1966), 535545CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Macrae's, earlier article, The Bolshevik Ideology, in Ideology and Society (London, Heinemann, 1962)Google Scholar anticipates many of these themes. Also generally useful is Matossian, M., Ideologies of Delayed Industrialization, Econ. Dev. and Cult. Change, VI (1958), 217228CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(64) Clapham, C., The Context of African Political Thought, journ. Mod. Afr. Stud., VIII (1970), 114CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Much of the spirit of this article, it must be said, is a very salutary reaction to a period in the political sociology of Africa, in which scholars were far too ready to confuse ideology and actuality, and to infer the realities of political structure from the self-justifying ideologies of political elites. A worthwhile attempt to incorporate ideology into an analysis of a situation without succumbing to its picture is Bienen's, H.Tanzania: party transformation and economic development (Princeton, U.P., 1970)Google Scholar.

(65) This charge cannot be levelled at a more recent study of revolutions, Dunn's, J.Modern Revolutions: an introduction to the analysis of a political phenomenon (Cambridge, U.P., 1972)Google Scholar.

(66) Cf. Dunn, , op. cit. p. 161Google Scholar and citations there.

(67) Cf. Mazrui, , Islam, Socialism and Nationalism, in On Heroes and Uhurumore worship (London, Longman, 1964)Google Scholar.

(68) Of a wide literature, see especially Lloyd, P.C., Introduction to The New Elites of Tropical Africa (London, OUP/IAI, 1966)Google Scholar and Balandier, G., Problématique des classes sociales en Afrique Noire, Cah. intern, sociol., XXXVIII (1965), 131142Google Scholar.