1. CREATING SPACE FOR CHANGE: A PERSPECTIVE ON THE SOCIOLOGY OF DEVELOPMENT.
- Author
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Long, Norman
- Subjects
- *
SOCIOLOGY , *SOCIOLOGY of economic development , *SOCIAL change , *SOCIAL structure - Abstract
The paper argues that we have reached an impasse in theorizing about agrarian social change due to the deterministic and centralistic assumptions of existing sociological theories of development, whether they adopt a modernization, dependency or political economy framework. What is needed, it is suggested, is a more serious attempt to analyse the dynamic processes by which individuals and social groups - peasants, workers, entrepreneurs, bureaucrats, politicians and others - interact and develop strategies for dealing with changing circumstances. Space must be found for an actor-oriented analysis of social process which identifies how 'ordinary people' rather than simply abstract 'social forces' actively shape the outcomes of development The argument, which draws upon the author's field research in Zambia and Peru is developed by considering three analytical issues a) the significance of differential responses to similar social conditions, b) the problem of relating interactional processes to larger scale social structure, and c) the question of how development policy is transformed at the 'interface' between implementer and target population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 1984
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