ABSTRACT
The fact that the social sciences developed within the nations of the industrialized western world is also responsible for the ethnocentrism that may be discerned in much sociological research. Development theorists, for example, have tended to interpret the western type of development process as a preferential model whose logic was thought to be capable of universalization. Thus, Rostow emphasizes the role of advanced industrial sectors in the triggering of development, in mind no doubt of the role played by the textile industry in England, the steel industry in Germany, or the dairy industry in Denmark.
