Durkheim and Development Theory

Abstract

The task of transforming Durkheim's sociological perspective into an explanation of poverty in rural areas carries a triple handicap: Durkheim was not concerned with material well-being, he did not conceptualize structures of inequality, and his explanation of the division of labor wasflawed. His late book on religion, however, contains an explanation of institutional innovation which offers a new starting point for understanding formal dimensions such as differentiation and pluralism, and these in turn as they are related to poverty. When these dimensions are combined with technical organization, differences in welfare can be explained. When the summary formula for this combination of structure and technology is compared with those for Marxist and conventional economic explanations, the result is a dramatic contrast between the two materialist theories and a true sociological position. Despite a century of commentary, exegesis, and creative elaborations of Durkheim's thought, we do not yet have a Durkheimian explanation of development-that is, a theory of social change which tells why the welfare of some populations is greater than that of others. Such a specification is a reasonable challenge for a perspective that claims to be general. Some scholars would argue that Durkheim's analysis of the transition to a modem form of societal organization could be converted to a theory of development, but that is doubtful, as I will show below. What is possible, I argue, is a recombination of concepts and principles associated with the process of social creativity that Durkheim conceptualized in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life ([1912] 1954). From this starting point a truly adequate explanation of development can be formulated.