Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Rural and Urban Community Development

Central to our discussion in this book is the concept "development," which is very difficult to be given a definition that is generally acceptable, owing to the fact that its meaning is affected by human values, intellectual orientation, and differences in schools of thought and ideologies. In addition, it is very difficult to describe a process as absolutely developing because what is regarded as a development in a particular situation might be underdevelopment in another. A situation that has developed a society might be what has underdeveloped another, as is evident in Walter Rodney's (1982) account of how Europe underdeveloped Africa. He believes that the process that underdeveloped Africa was the same one that developed Europe.

Two major schools of development, the modernization and the dependency, are identified in this book. The modernization school conceives development as becoming modern and believes that development can be quantified and compared, resulting to a universal measurement for a comparative analysis of all societies irrespective of culture, geographical location, and history. The school agrees with Talcott Parsons's evolutionary universals, which Parsons believes are the same all over societies. The school submits, on that basis, that the indices of development are the same all over the world. The modernization school also believes that modernization is the same across all societies. Development is therefore conceived as a process that occurs in degrees, and a society can only be more or less developed. The difference between the rural and the urban in terms of development is considered in terms of degrees or sometimes arranged as a continuum.

The modernization school therefore constructed a scale by which rural and urban development is measured. This is called the rural-urban continuum. On the continuum, cities and societies are placed on particular positions on the basis of certain characteristics or variables that are present in them. The modernization school believes in what is called an index gap approach to the solutions of the problems of rural and urban development. According to this approach, a society that considers itself not developed enough should measure itself against a developed society to isolate those variables that it lacked but are present in the developed ones. It is believed that the development of the developed society was possible because of the presence of those variables that the undeveloped lacked. The acquisition of those variables by the underdeveloped society will make it catch up with the developed society. This school believes that this is true for countries and nations of the world as well as for rural and urban societies. Rural and urban development planning, to the planners utilizing this approach, is therefore very simple. A society or any human settlement that believes it is not developed enough should just identify a developed settlement, county, or city and just make a list of what the developed one has and try to acquire them. This would bring development to the undeveloped.

This approach is too simple and also beset with problems. It has failed to recognize the ways of life of different societies and the different needs that are being dictated by these different cultures. If rigidly followed in rural and urban development planning, it might lead to underdevelopment. This theory has been described as evolutionary in nature (Nisbet 1977; Teggart 1977; Lyman 1978; Ogunnika 1985). It tries to prescribe a general solution to all problems of development in all nations and societies. To develop adequately, societies only need to acquire what McClelland identified as N-Ach, or achievement motivation variable. Inkeles called them the overall modernity variables, while Hagen believes that the development of any society depends on innovators. A society is therefore urban or rural according to the degree of human beings who are carriers of the above variables, as they will eventually produce other physical and social variables, making the societies where they are found or where they are not found either developed or undeveloped, rural or urban. Societies that lacked them would surely be rural, as their absence will lead into lack of physical variables of urbanization. Urbanization therefore is equated with modernization and development, while rural society is seen as undeveloped.

The Dependency Approach

The dependency school faults the modernization school's approach to development. In contradistinction from the view of the modernization school, the dependency school believes that development is external to any society. It was argued that the cause of underdevelopment of rural societies should not be blamed on the rural dwellers but on factors and processes in the urban areas that are being allowed to happen by the political power elites who benefit from the exploitation of the rural dwellers (Ogunnika).

Rural and urban development planning, according to this approach, should not be concentrated only on identifying variables present in a supposed developed society or nation that are believed to be absent in others. Rather, development planning in rural/ urban societies should identify the societies (within or without the general society) that the particular society is interacting with. We should then determine who benefits from such relationship and try to halt the process by which one benefits and the other loses. It is the parasitic relationship between the developed and the underdevelopment that rural/urban development planners should be looking for. This school believes that a rural development planner should try to ask questions like What are the main occupations of the people? Who buys the products of the farmers? Are the middlemen from the urban areas paying a fair price for the products? The planner should be willing to find out whether the contractor who has been awarded any rural project was using the correct material he would have used had the project been in an urban area.

Development therefore is seen differently by the two schools. The modernization school believes that development is an increase in the volume of per capita income and productivity of a country. The school also believes that social development means the ability of the individuals to engage in behavior that could be called...