Societal development

Michiel Korthals

pp. 163-181

in: Wouter van Haaften, Michiel Korthals, Thomas Wren (eds), Philosophy of development, Berlin, Springer, 1997

Abstract

The idea of societal development has often been connected with the idea of progress, for better or worse. Both ideas have met with severe criticisms, especially in anthropology and sociology, and it would be an understatement to say that in the present intellectual climate the very notion of a universal, progressive, cumulating development of society is not very popular. It is appropriate to begin this discussion by acknowledging the negative points of traditional stage theories of societal development. But we also note at the outset that doing serious social science with no developmental claims whatever is simply not possible. The idea of development is a lady without whom social scientists cannot live, but with whom they are ashamed to be seen. It is not only social scientists who cannot evade developmental issues: all sorts of modern and contemporary writers regularly refer to some pre-, proto-, or postmodern time in order to orient themselves in the whirlwind of cultures, trends, and new producers of meaning. Those who want to understand their own present sociocultural conditions can do so only by comparing them with other conditions — postmodern, pre-modern, or protomodern — and hence it seems clear that we all need some kind of stage development theory of society.