Changing Patterns in Research on the Third World
| Autor: | Elbaki Hermassi |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 1978 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Annual Review of Sociology. 4:239-257 |
| ISSN: | 1545-2115 0360-0572 |
| DOI: | 10.1146/annurev.so.04.080178.001323 |
| Popis: | There is a virtual consensus among scholars in the field that the study of the new nations has reached a state of acute crisis, a crisis that has affected careers, attitudes, syllabuses, and publications. After reaching a peak in the mid 196Os, the volume of publications tapered off, and, with a few excep tions, the quality suffered. The hope such literature once contained for helping the Third World slowly ebbed away. While the early theoretical perspective, sensing a loss of persuasiveness, retreated, new theoretical perspectives moved in from a position of marginality to fill in the gaps. But the field currently does not have a compelling paradigm that will structure study and endow enough coherence for research to proceed in a confident and a cumulative manner. However, the time may be right for an evalu ation. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on the Third World and to discuss the basic theoretical, methodological, and substantive problems. Contrary to widely held assumptions that Third World literature divides into a liberal approach and a radical school, I argue the existence not of two but four approaches to development: the liberal, historicist, managerial, and neo-Marxist. Without discounting significant differences due to ideological preferences and professional inclinations, it is important to look at these approaches as the constantly adjusting responses of the scientific community, or parts of it, to the constantly changing real world. The processes of state formation and national development in the Third World present a distinctive historical moment of human development re quiring as much historical sensitivity and empathy as the processes of reformation, the emergence of the nation-state, and the industrial revolu tion of Europe. In the past as in the future, the crucial divide will be between |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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