ABSTRACT
A short retrospective view The study of the role of culture has long been the almost exclusive province of sociology and cultural anthropology. Not surprisingly, development economists have lent relatively little attention to it. Yet, it is interesting to notice that, during the 1950s and 1960s, the most prominent among them have usually discussed cultural and social aspects of development, albeit briefly, and expressed (sometimes crude) opinions about whether traditional institutions, attitudes and values are likely to block or to promote economic growth. Some of them, eager to identify determinants or prerequisites of modern economic growth, have made statements very close to the modernization view originated in the field of sociology (see Chapter 2). This applies to Walter Rostow (1960, 1963), Stephen Enke (1963), Simon Kuznets (1966, 1968), Henry Bruton (1965) and Benjamin Higgins (1968) who tended to look at development as the result of a ‘Big Push’ driving traditional societies out of secular stagnation into the era of selfsustaining growth. What characterizes their writings is a good amount of optimism concerning the pace at which traditional culture and institutions, which are ill-suited to the new system of growth, can adjust to its requirements. Other contemporary development economists, however, envisioned institutional and sociocultural change in pre-modern societies as a much less radical step (Meier and Baldwin 1957; Bauer and Yamey 1957; Hirschman 1958). For example, Gerald Meier and Robert Baldwin adopted a resolutely gradual approach to sociocultural change:
Not only must economic organization be transformed, but social organization . . . must also be modified so that the basic complex of values and motivations may be more favourable for development. . . . To avoid human discontent, [however], changes should be introduced in ways that will disrupt the existing culture as little as possible: the cultural change should be selective . . . more rapid progress will come by utilizing as much as possible existing attitudes and institutions rather than by attempting a frontal breakdown of the culture.
