Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2016
The past three decades have witnessed far-reaching changes and a revolution of sorts both in the Third World countries and in the theoretical frameworks employed in the study of development and underdevelopment. The methodological achievements which have accompanied these theoretical innovations have in many respects approximated the kind of scientific transformations in the natural sciences that Kuhn (1970) describes as the structure of scientific revolutions. Discussing the history of scientific discovery Kuhn (1970: 52-65) draws attention to the distinction between normal science and scientific revolutions. He specifically emphasizes the critical importance of the discovery of anomalous data and how the “awareness of [such an] anomaly, the gradual and simultaneous emergence of both observational and conceptual recognition” of the inadequacies of the currently dominant paradigm in dealing with the existing problems, prepare the ground for its overthrow or suppression.
Until the late 1960s problems of development in the Third World were characteristically examined from the perspective of the dominant paradigm: the modernization theory. Classical modernization theory placed central consideration on the internal conditions of the state: institutional structures, culture, attitudes, and value systems. In the early 1970s, the crises and contradictions which surrounded modernization theory reached an alarming proportion and created the “necessary precondition for the emergence of novel theories” (Kuhn, 1970: 77). Aside from the increasing frustration and general dissatisfaction of underdeveloped countries with “growth without development” (Clower et al., 1966), it was clear that the existing international economic system had failed to spread the benefits of world economic prosperity between the developed and underdeveloped countries.