SOSC 3800 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Class Conflict, Development Theory, Auguste Comte

• School: York University
• Department: Social Science
• Course: SOSC 3800
• Professor: Miguel Gonzalez

Document Summary

Society, state, and market: a guide to competing theories of development. Mainstream theories have not been able properly to explain the patterns of transformation and stagnation in developing countries. Tendency to assume a kind of universal applicability and validity, ethnocentric, precedence to methods and theories developed with empirical foundations in western societies and culture. Also asserted that the developing countries" own traditions and inherited economic, social, and political structures and institutions are of little importance as determining factors for their societal development. Hypothesis that the special features of the developing countries are of critical importance. Development studies and research - the societal reproduction and transformation processes of the developing countries, in conjunction with the international factors that in uence these processes. De nition puts emphasis on societal factors and consequently on social science theories and methods. Research in the third world becomes development research only when expressly related to societal conditions and processes.