Priority Position of Communication in the African Development Process

Abstract

In their study of the process of individual modernity in six less developed countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Inkeles and Smith (1974) reported that urbanization was of little or no consequence as a predictor variable. McClelland (1976: 161) has described this finding as “a shock to some sociologists … who have argued that it is the city above all which makes men modern.” Lerner (1965) and Hoselitz (1962) were among such sociologists who assigned a preeminent position to urbanization among factors accounting for modernization in the less developed countries. Lerner (1965), in particular, argued that in a system of causal indicators, the developmental sequence was from urbanization to literacy to communication and thence to political participation. Support for this conception of the national development process has been reported by McCrone and Cnudde (1967), Akler (1966), Smith (1969), and Sigelman (1971), among others. Several other researchers have, however, reported, as did Inkeles and Smith (1974), that urbanization no longer holds such an important position in the national development process, if in fact it ever did hold such a position in the past (Schramm and Ruggels, 1967; Golding, 1974; Edeani, 1977) and Lerner (1976) himself has conceded that these empirical challenges to his once influential findings may well be valid. Schramm and Ruggels (1967) argue that the spread of transistor radios, roads, and rapid transportation have eroded any influences which urbanization might have had on the growth of literacy and the mass media as Lerner contended, since the data which formed the basis of Lerner's conclusions were collected as far back as September 1950 when these media and transportation developments in the Third World had not become so important. Golding (1974) states that Lerner's research and others like it disregarded the influences of colonialism, international news and media organizations, and the relationship between traditional communication channels and the new media on the development of the Third World. Also, Edeani (1977) reports that, contrary to Lerner's stand, urbanization is a function of economic development and mass communication development.