Interrogating the Development Discourses: A Sociological Introspection (original) (raw)
So far the conception of the word "development" has been highly economized in true sense of its approach and application worldwide. But the problems of development do not inclusively fall in the realm of economics alone. Further, the economic rationality is incomplete without referring to social ethics. Acknowledging this somehow the sociologists and development economists have delimited the economic conceptualization of the term "development" for a sensible comprehension of its retrospective results and future prospects. In this article we have reassessed and recaptured the quintessence of development discourse engaging classical economists, institutional theorists and diffusion theorists on the one hand and the sociologists and dependency theorists, on the other. Our critical overview reveals that while the economists explore the cause and consequences for the development and underdevelopment of a country in term of economic variables the sociologists conceive it in term of a state or state of conditions structured or induced by the economic and non-economic factors for the same. Nevertheless, their views and counterviews on development and underdevelopment largely complement to one another. However, the former gives a coherent theory of development to which the latter explains with a framework of critical thinking. Our study also reflect that the structural-functional assumption of society held by the sociologist and modernists and criticized by dependency theorists could not be the effective substitute against classical and neo-classical theory of economic development in the world. However, our study substantiate that underdevelopment refers to a state of backwardness or conditions of arrested development whereas development refers to a state of advancement or conditions of continuous development. Further, the conception of development has been realized much more than just a socioeconomic endeavour.Interrogating the development discourses certainly proposes a new turn in the article.
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