Social Development Theory
by Garry Jacobs and
Harlan Cleveland
1. Importance
of Theory
The formulation of valid theory possesses
enormous power to elevate and accelerate the expansion and development of human
capabilities in any field, leading to fresh discoveries, improvement of
existing activities and capacity for greater results. Science is replete with
examples of theoretical formulations that have led to important breakthroughs,
such as the discoveries of Neptune and Pluto, electromagnetic waves, subatomic
particles, and new elements on the periodic table. Today scientists are
discovering new substances on computer by applying the laws of quantum
mechanics to predict the properties of materials before they synthesize them.
In fact, a broad range of technological achievements in this century has been
made possible by the emergence of sound theoretical knowledge in fields such as
physics, chemistry and biology.
As management expert Peter Drucker put it,
“There is nothing more practical than a good theory.” Valid theory can tell us
not only what should be done, but also what can be done and the process by
which it can be achieved.
Social development can be summarily described
as the process of organizing human energies and activities at higher levels to
achieve greater results. Development increases the utilization of human
potential.
In the absence of valid theory, social
development remains largely a process of trial and error experimentation, with
a high failure rate and very uneven progress. The dismal consequences of
transition strategies in most Eastern Europe countries, the very halting
progress of many African and Asian countries,
the increasing income gap between the most and least developed
societies, and the distressing linkage between rising incomes, environmental
depletion, crime and violence reflect the fact that humanity is vigorously
pursuing a process without the full knowledge needed to guide and govern it
effectively.
Advances in development theory can enhance our
social success rate by the same order of magnitude that advances in theoretical
physics have multiplied technological achievements in this century. The
emergence of a sound theoretical framework for social development would provide
the knowledge needed to address these inadequacies. It would also eventually
lead us to the most profound and practical discovery of all – the infinite
creative potentials of the human being.
2. Hierarchy
of learning
Social development consists of two
interrelated aspects – learning and application. Society discovers better ways
to fulfill its aspirations and it develops organizational mechanisms to express
that knowledge to achieve its social and economic goals. The process of
discovery expands human consciousness. The process of application enhances
social organization.
Society develops in response to the contact
and interaction between human beings and their material, social and
intellectual environment. The incursion of external threats, the pressure of
physical and social conditions, the mysteries of physical nature and
complexities of human behavior prompt humanity to experiment, create and
innovate.
The experience resulting from these contacts
leads to learning on three different levels of our existence. At the physical
level, it enhances our control over material processes. At the social level, it
enhances our capacity for effective interaction between people at greater and
greater speeds and distances. At the mental level, it enhances our knowledge.
While the learning process takes place
simultaneously on all these planes, there is a natural progression from
physical experience to mental understanding. Historically, society has
developed by a trial and error process of physical experimentation, not unlike
the way children learn through a constant process of physical exploration,
testing and even tasting. Physically, this process leads to the acquisition of
new physical skills that enable individuals to utilize their energies more
efficiently and effectively. Socially, it leads to the learning and mastery of
organizational skills, vital attitudes, systems and institutions that enable
people to manage their interactions with other people and other societies more
effectively. Mentally, it leads to organization of facts as information and
interpretation of information as thought.
The outcome of this learning process is the
organization of physical skills, social systems, and information, which are
then utilized to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of human activities.
It is a cyclical process in which people are continuously learning from past
experiences and then applying that learning in new activities.
This learning process culminates in a higher
level of mental effort to extract the essence and common principles or ideas
from society’s organized physical experiences, social interactions and
accumulated information and to synthesize them as conceptual knowledge. This
abstract conceptual knowledge has the greatest capacity for generalization and
application in other fields, times and places. The conceptual mind is the
highest, most conscious human faculty. Conceptual knowledge is the organization
of ideas by the power of mind. That conceptual knowledge becomes most powerful
when it is organized into a system. Theory is a systematic organization of
knowledge.
A comprehensive theory of social development
would provide a conceptual framework for discovering the underlying principles
common to the development process in different fields of activity, countries
and periods. It would also provide a framework for understanding the
relationships between the accumulated knowledge generated by many different
disciplines. If pursued to its logical
conclusions, it would lead to not just a theory of social development, but a
unifying theory of knowledge—which does not yet exist in any field of science
or art.
3. Search
for a social operating system
Rapid advancement in computer technology and
application has primarily been the result of dramatic progress in two parallel
but interrelated fields – development of the processing capacity of the silicon
chip and development of more advanced operating systems that enable users to
utilize the chip’s greater computing power. Chip development increases the
potential power of the computer. Development of more powerful, intuitive and
easier to use operating systems increases the practical power of the
technology.
As a parallel, advances in scientific and
technical knowledge have vastly increased the potential productivity and
developmental achievements of society. But full utilization of this potential
requires the capacity to consciously direct and accelerate social development
processes. The discovery of methods to genetically engineer improved varieties
of food crops or to control population growth through improved medical devices
would have little practical value unless we also possessed the know-how to
promote dissemination and adoption of these advanced technologies.
Historically, advances in our understanding of
material and biological process have far outstripped advances in our understanding
of social processes. As a result, vast social potential has been created, but
society has not yet acquired the capacity to fully utilize it for its own
development. A theory of development should aim at a knowledge that will enable
society more consciously and effectively to utilize its development potentials.
4. Why
a framework has not yet emerged
A question naturally arises. If such a
framework is possible, why with all the attention focused on development for so
many decades has it not yet emerged?
Social development theory has been elusive for
several reasons. First, because of the very practical importance of this issue,
attention in this field has very largely focused on the material results of
development and on those strategies that have proven most effective for
achieving those results, rather than on abstract principles or theoretical
concepts. Rapid economic progress in North America and Europe after the Second
World War, which was followed by even more stunning achievements in Japan and
other East Asian nations, imbued governments and the international community
with the confidence that development was primarily a question of money,
technology, industrialization and political will. Confident that the lessons of
early achievers provided all the knowledge necessary for those that were to
follow, there was an urge for concerted action and an expectation of results,
rather than a quest for theoretical knowledge.
In most discussions, development was conceived
in terms of a set of desirable results—higher incomes, longer life expectancy,
lower infant mortality, more education. Recently emphasis has shifted from the
results to the enabling conditions, strategies and public policies for
achieving those results—peace, democracy, social freedoms, equal access, laws,
institutions, markets, infrastructure, education and technology. But still
little attention has been placed on the underlying social process of
development that determines how society formulates, adopts, initiates, and
organizes, and few attempts have been made to formulate such a framework.
Second, a very large number of factors and
conditions influence the process. In addition to all the variables that
influence material and biological processes, social processes involve the
interaction of political, social, economic cultural, technological and
environmental factors as well. Development theorists have not only to cope with
atoms, molecules, material energy and various life forms. They must also cope
with the near infinite variety and complexity of human beliefs, opinions,
attitudes, values, behaviors, customs, prejudices, laws, social institutions,
etc.
Third, the timeframe for social development
theory cannot be confined to the modern day or even the past few centuries.
Human development has been occurring for millennia. The basic principles of
development theory must be as applicable to the development of early tribal
societies as they are to the emergence of the post-modern global village.
Development theory must be a theory of how human society advances through space
and time.
5. Looking
beyond the instruments
Fourth, the instruments of development—science
and technology, capital and infrastructure, social policies and institutions—
are so compellingly powerful in their action, that they are often mistaken for
its cause and source. Most efforts to understand the development process have
focused on the central importance of one or a few of these instruments—primaril
y on money, markets, the organization of production and technological
innovation. Some efforts have also been made to describe what has been learned
about the contribution of education, skills, laws, public policies, strategies,
social systems and institutions. While it is evident that all of these
instruments can and do play an important role in social development, it has not
been adequately explained what determines the development of these instruments
themselves or the extent to which they are utilized by society or the process
by which they can be made to generate maximum results.
Obviously, the ultimate determinants of
development cannot be the instruments themselves, for none of them exists
independently from society. To understand the central principles of
development, we must look beyond these instruments to the creator of the instruments.
Human beings fashion technology, invent money, erect infrastructures, establish
policies, build institutions and adopt values to serve their needs and
aspirations. Although humanity exhibits a strong tendency to mistake these
instruments for primary determinants rather than created products of its own
initiative, the ultimate power of determination must lie with the human beings
who create and use these instruments, rather than with the instruments
themselves.
Money and technology do have useful power,
including a power of organization and efficiency, a power to increase the
velocity of production and transactions. But they do not possess an intrinsic
living power for growth or development, a source of aspiration or energy that
compels their own advancement. Moore’s Law describing advances in the speed of
microprocessors is not driven by material forces—the microprocessor does not
increase its own speed—it is driven by humanity’s quest for greater productive
power. The surge in value of financial markets is not driven by impersonal
physical or mathematical laws governing the growth of money, but by the quest
of human beings for greater material prosperity. This self-existent power for
growth is an endowment of human beings, living organisms compelled to develop
by a pressure within themselves, which in turn gives life and energy to the
growth of the instruments and systems they create.
What has been lacking is an organized
theoretical framework that describes the role of each of these instruments as aspects
of a greater whole and shows each in its proper relation to the others or the
greater whole of which they are all parts. To arrive at such a framework,
we have to shift our focus from the
instruments of development to their creator; from the role of money and
technology to the role of human beings that invent new forms of money and
technology and harness them for productive purposes. The theory has to place
human beings at the center and view all other aspects of development from the
perspective of and in relation to human motivation and action. This conceptual
knowledge of the development process should enable every society to better
utilize the available instruments better, in order more fully to tap its
developmental potential.
6. Development
as a spherical whole
A theory of social development should generate
a framework around which all knowledge of the factors, instruments, conditions,
agencies and processes of development can be integrated. Rather than singling
out a specific set of determinants or giving primacy to a limited set of
instruments, it would reveal the nature of the relationships and processes that
govern the interaction of all these elements to generate developmental results.
Rather than generate a linear formula or ‘right’ perspective, it would make it
possible to view the whole field and phenomenon of development from multiple
perspectives that are integrated and unified ways of knowing the whole, rather
than divided and separate ways of viewing the parts.
The modern tendency to divide scientific
inquiry into an increasing number of specialized fields of study has made the
emergence of an integrated perspective very difficult. Philosopher Stephen
Toulmin mourns the absence of broader conceptual thinking in physics over the
past few centuries and argues the need for grand cosmological visions of the
universe to unify and integrate the discoveries of many different disciplines.
Comparatively, the need for synthesis is even
greater for the study of human social development than for understanding the
physical and chemical evolution of the universe. For in human development, we
must not only grapple with four material dimensions in space and time that
preoccupy the physicist and chemist, but also integrate the dimensions of life
and mind—including physical, genetic and biological determinants; social
behaviors, skills, attitudes, customs, traditions, systems, formal
organizations, non-formal institutions, and cultural values; and linguistic
determinants, data, facts, information, beliefs, opinions, systems of thought,
ideas, theories, and spiritual values—all of which interact and influence each
other to impact the course of human development.
The quest for theory in social development
cannot lead to any linear or logarithmic equation that adequately explains and
predicts human progress. The reality we seek to understand is not of that type.
It is not linear or uni-dimensional or even a combination of several
dimensions. It is a complex, many-dimensional whole that evolves in many
interrelated directions simultaneously. The development of society is best
represented to our minds as an expansion from a point to a sphere, rather than
as movement along a single line or along multiple lines of progress. Social
development is the gradual discovery and unfolding of the potential of a
complex, integrated whole, a living organization, a living social organism.
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