Introduction

The many books recently written on the subject of development bear testimony to its importance. The greater number of these treatises, however, although they pass muster as ‘scholarly works,’ repeat upon minutiae, elaborate upon old and threadbare themes and, to the extent that their ideas have been testable, have not proven capable of setting the mechanisms of development in motion in the underdeveloped society. The failure of traditional concepts to explain a rapidly changing social world calls for a redirection of effort, for the opening of new avenues of inquiry. This book represents such an attempt.