Socio-Cultural Factors of Underdevelopment. Overcoming Underdevelopment as a Learning Process

Abstract

Underdevelopment is not identical with nondevelopment. It is the result of the evolution of the capitalist mode of production. This thesis may be considered of common concensus among participants in recent discussions of development policy. Research tasks are no longer to be found primarily in the field of a general throry about the genesis of underdevelopment. They are rather concerned with the present chances of politicaleconomical development in underdeveloped societies under conditions of specific, concrete developments of the capitalist mode of production. However, underdevelopment touches upon a further problem area. This problem area is not related to the collective appropriation of nature and the formation of property conditions (mode of production) but to collective communication processes concerning living conditions (communication, interaction, motivation). To the mode of production evolving in underdeveloped countries corresponds the penetration of a capitalist 'culture'; underdevelopment also includes a dimension of wrong development of psychosocial relations in collectives (strata, classes, total populations). However, the unsolved practical and scientific problems in this problem area are not restricted to questions of concrete strategies by which, under the present conditions of international dependencies, underdeveloped countries may overcome their sociocultural underdevelopment. In the first place, there is the unsolved problem as to whether such desirable strategi s may proceed from an adequate explanatory model of socio-cultural underdevelopment ready to claim universal validity in a way similar to that of the thesis of politicaleconomic underdevelopment. In other words, it is not clear, whether, in accordance with the evolution of the capitalist mode of production and its trend towards universality, a corresponding 'capitalist culture' is established with all the consequences for the chances of underdeveloped countries to develop. Is there a trend towards total capitalization of culture that is, of the mass media, the legal system, philosophy and religion, the arts and the language, etc. in underdeveloped countries? Can developments comparable to the penetration of the capitalist method of production be found in pre-capitalist societal formations? Certain phenomena of cultural change seem to indicate a general trend, according to which the penetration of capitalist culture in societies of the Third World also produces a 'structural heterogeneity' of culture. (1) elites in underdeveloped countries, who are working in the 'modern sector' and are socialized in 'modern schools' and universities of European or US-orientation, propagate a national culture oriented toward traditional elements (for example, religion, folklore, language, etc.), intended solely to ensure the social and political loyalty of the masses; (2) On the other hand elites in underdeveloped countries put into practice the capitalist penetration of the socio-cultural field by simultaneously enforcing capitalist education systems and the substantial orientation