ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the concept of national development and evaluates some of the alternative ways in which it has been used. It introduces a simplified model for the empirical study of national development. In exploratory model there are two collectivities or objectively distinct cultural groups: the core, or dominant cultural group which occupies territory extending from the political center of the society outward to those territories largely occupied by the subordinate, or peripheral cultural group. The chapter evaluates the relative merits of some alternative theoretical models concerning the processes of national development. It defines the concept of ethnicity and discusses the social basis of ethnic identification. The chapter seeks to sketch some tentative hypotheses about the conditions governing the prospects for ethnic change. The existence of a cultural division of labor contributes to the development of distinctive ethnic identity in each of the two cultural groups.
