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Voluntary Associations in West Africa: “Hidden” Agents of Social Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Graham B. Kerr
Graham B. Kerr*
Affiliation:
State University of New Yorkat Buffalo
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Extract

The purpose of this paper is to indicate how one area of social science research may contribute to social and economic development in the Third World. International aid and technical assistance programs for less developed nations began in the late 40s shortly after World War II. The interest of scholars in the study of such programs also dates from this time (Opler, 1954). Ever since the early days, we, the social scientists, have been called upon to explain the failure of many assistance efforts or to discern why new ideas and practices caused chaos in the societies into which they were introduced. An example of an early program failure was documented in Peru when village women failed to use the “good” public health practice of boiling contaminated water before drinking it after the method had been advocated in an extensive education campaign by public health personnel (Wellin, 1955: 71-103). The disorganization of a society in the face of what appeared to be a relatively minor technological improvement of an existing tool, was reported in 1952 after missionaries gave steel axes to Australian aborigines (Sharp, 1952: 66-92). The determination of the adverse social consequences of innovation was an important aspect of the early studies done by social scientists, especially anthropologists (Rogers, 1962: 27). Though there were reports of cross-cultural diffusion which did not affect societies adversely, for example, the adoption of potato growing by a Pacific Northwest Indian tribe (Suttles, 1951: 272-88), many reports appear to concentrate upon the damage done by technical assistance programs (Dobyns, 1951;Bliss, 1952;Mead, 1955; Erasmus, 1961).

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , December 1978 , pp. 87 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1978

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