THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN SOCIOLOGY

INTRODUCTION:

Sociology of development deploys relevant theories to explain the direction of societal change and development. Some of these theories are historical and radical, others are a historical and conservative in their exposition and explanation of societal development. Each of the theories however, provides veritable tools for understanding global inequality in wealth and a leeway to rapid and sustainable growth and development.

(i) Evolutionism, Functionalism and Modernization

The European school of modernization is a product of three (3) historical events in the post world war II. These events include:

a. The rise of America as a global super power;

b. The spread of communism from Russia, Korea and China to the new nations or newly independent nations of the third world; and

c. The disintegration of the European colonial Empires i.e. the British, French, German, Roman and Portuguese Empires in Africa, Asia, and South America.

This collapse ushered in anti-colonial nationalism and independence in the former colonial satellite states. Subsequently, the new nations were in desperate search for development models for their economy in order to secure their political independence and safeguard their economic freedom. Consequently, America showed interest and encouraged their bourgeois elites to support research efforts of their young social scientists. The objective of this was to entrench a neocolonial structure under their full control and halt the spread of communism to new nations. Thus with generous donations and funding from the US government and private individual, elites, young sociologist, demographers, political scientists and economists published thesis and dissertations on the hitherto unresearched third world. The dissertations became the centre piece for national development plans/programmes for nearly all the new nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America (SO, 1990).

(ii) The Theoretical and Intellectual Heritage of Modernization

At inception, modernization was in search of a theory. And to acquire the status of a theory, modernization had to adopt evolutionary and functionalist theories, to provide key to understanding the processes of modernization in the less developed society (LDS).

It is argued that since modernization has helped to provide explanation for the transition of western and American societies from traditional and backward feudal societies to technologically advanced modern societies, modernization will equally shade more light on the transition of the third world from traditional to modern societies.

However, modernization is shaped by both functionalism and evolutionism. For example, all the prominent members of the modernist school were trained in functionalist school. Prominent modernists such as Mario Levy, Daniel, Leaner David McClelland, Neil Smelser, Gabriel Almond, Samuel Eisentadt, Walter W. Rowstow, James Coleman, Talcott Parsons etc. were trained in the functionalist school and so their modernization study could not resist being stamped with the trade mark of functionalism.

(iii) Evolutionary Theory of Change

The evolutionary theory has its epistemological origin in the biological science. Within the biological science, evolutionary theory provides explanation for the development of organism from a single simple cell to many complex cells. The process of this growth and development is adopted by sociologists and applied to human society as its object of study. Thus the evolutionary theory of change was born in the last century, in the aftermath of the bourgeois industrial revolution and the French revolution (So, 1990). Both revolutions for example did not only shatter, batter and destroy the existing social order but also lay a foundation for a new social order. Evolutionary theory thus begins with the premise that the transition from traditional society to modern society is achieved through a gradual process.

The change process is piecemeal; it is also unilinear. Change according to evolutionary theory has a pattern, which every society follows to attain the status of social progress or development. Prominent members of evolutionary theory include Charles Darwin, Lewis Morgan, Herbert Spencer, Ferdinand Tonnies, Sahlin and Service etc.

Each of these evolutionaries has provided an insight into the process of change. They argued that just like organism developed from a single simple cell to a complex posture or object called organism, society has equally changed from a simple form to a complex form. Society has also transited from traditional to modern. For example, Morgan (1968) provided key to understanding the evolution of human society from primitive Savagery to Barbarism and to civilization. Each of these stages has its unique features commensurate with its structure and formation. Tonnies (1978) also discussed the progressive movement of society from Rural-Folk Society to Urban-Modern Society and qualified these with the concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. The transition of society from the hunting and gathering band to chiefdom and finally to state, where the instruments of brute force such as the police, the army, judiciary etc are put in place to protect the interest of capital and ruling elites as articulated by Sahlin and Service (1978).

PROPONENT PROCESS OF TRANSITION
	From	To
Darwin	Single cell or simple form (simple as applied to society)	Complex cell or complex (as applied to society)
H. Spencer	Simple Society	Complex Society
Sahlin & Service	Hunting and gathering band	Chiefdom and state
L.Morgan	Primitive savagery	Barbarism, civilization
F. Tonnies	Gemeinschaft	Gesellschaft