Dialectical Anthropology 26: 311–324, 2001.© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Hindsight After the Cold War: Samuel Huntington, the SocialSciences and Development Paradigms

HORATIO WILLIAMSHostos Community College, CUNY, NYC, NY, USA

Since the emergence of newly created nation-states in the second half of thetwentieth century, paradigms purporting to explain development – or howThird World countries can extricate themselves from social, economic andpolitical underdevelopment have mushroomed. The overwhelming majorityof such paradigms/theories were developed in the West during the Cold War,with the U.S. contributing the lion’s share. Third World contributions to thecorpus of paradigms on development have been largely a critical reactionto the flood of Western ideological prescriptions rather than theory building.Many Sub-Saharan Africa states, for example, uncritically embraced Westerndevelopment strategies during the 60s, 70s and 80s, in part because ColdWar realities left little room for serious insistence on substantive democ-racy. A sham of procedural democracy, whenever possible, was sufficientduring a period of Cold War politics and competition. African politicalstructures and leadership, already authoritarian, made good use of the oneparty system of government and shamelessly labeled it democratic from onecountry to another.While authoritarian African governments, (civilian andmilitary alike) sought to perpetuate themselves in power, the governing andeducated elites of those generations had little concern, for the most part,about the underlining cultural arrogance and bias so pervasive of developmentprescriptions.1 After all, the purveyors of development argued that their ideasand models had succeeded in lifting their countries out of poverty. How couldone quarrel with success? Moreover, from slavery to colonization to post-independence economic and political dependence, the assumption of Western“superiority” remained solid. Peter Worsley notes that “The superiority of theWest was never seen by the West merely as a matter of technology. It was atotal superiority.”2

Heavy cultural arrogance and ideological bias, so characteristic of devel-opment literature and models, obviously rekindles the debate from time totime about the severe limits of social science methodology. Indeed, this issuecontinues to plague the social sciences well after the “victory” of capitalism,when it is less tenable to justify subtle or overt academic bias in terms ofideological struggles. Are the social sciences in their claim to relative value

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free research, comparable to those of the physical and natural sciences?Such an introspective methodological question is important. As a result ofits widespread disregard, analytical rigor and humility in theory building,hypothesizing – and even empirical analyses – have given rise to a plethoraof opinions posing as scientific studies of non-Western societies.

The mid 50s and early 60s saw a wholesale attempt at transplantingWestern values to Third World countries in terms of models of economic andpolitical development. Non-Western nations were to glide smoothly towardsdemocracy under the same preconditions experienced in the West. By the late60s most of the “scientific” models had proved to be inappropriate and there-fore unworkable. Africa’s political, economic and ethnic turmoil persistedunabated. A frantic West, led by the U.S., sought to thwart the desires of theEastern Bloc led by Russia. A fresh rethinking about development had to beformulated. This task was spearheaded by the more conservative Americanscholars preoccupied with the problems of order and stability in Africa andother developing countries. Preoccupation with political order and stabilitylegitimized, and was welcome by, Africa’s numerous authoritarian govern-ments mindful of Africa’s relative strategic importance. Despite emphasis onpolitical order and stability, Africa and other developing countries continuedto decay by almost every criteria of development. Gradually, another shiftin thinking began to unfold. Some social scientists began to recognize whatanthropologists had long known: that culture is a fundamental contributingdeterminant of economic, social and political behavior. Africa and otherdeveloping countries did not share the identical internal historical and culturaldynamics of Western development. Western “take-off” therefore, could notbe cloned in these countries. Perhaps most tragic, the post-independencegeneration of Third World leadership failed to understand that developmentis complex. It does not simply entail borrowing from the West and inter-mixing such borrowings with nationalism and aspects of traditional culture –in some cases obsolete culture. Development always first entails self-criticalintrospection, which may often require a new thinking and a new breed ofleadership.

The American political scientist, Samuel P. Huntington was one of theleading conservative advocates of the political order and stability modelfor developing countries. The concern for American economic investmentand the ideological and strategic interests of capitalism as a system largelyexplains the underlying propulsion behind this school of thought. Huntingtonarticulated the simplistic thesis of this school thus: “The most importantpolitical distinction among countries concerns not their form of govern-ment but their degree of government. The differences between democracyand dictatorship are less than the differences between those countries whose

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politics embodies consensus, community legitimacy, organization, effective-ness, stability, and those countries whose politics is deficient in these quali-ties. Communist totalitarian states and Western liberal states both belonggenerally in the category of effective rather than debile political systems.”3

For the political order and stability school whose model of development wasthe centerpiece of American foreign policy, the nature of government, nomatter how oppressive and inhumane, was not uppermost on any develop-ment scale. What was crucial in Africa and other developing areas was thatgovernments governed. Rapid social change, this school argued, along withincorporation of new groups into the political process made order and stabilitydifficult. Moreover, developing societies lacked viable and stable institutionsto absorb direct change.

It may be argued that even if the social sciences cannot be value free,analysis must nevertheless be pursued by looking at problems and reachingconclusions that are subject to critical evaluation. This argument is obvi-ously reasonable; it is through scientific research and observation that socialbehavior and change may be understood. The problem is that hegemonicstates, in defining and implementing the dominant paradigm of developmentin terms of their own national interests – and by reflecting national intereststhrough international institutions and organizations they dominate – do influ-ence the extent and nature of “value free” social science. This state of affairsis in turn filtered down to Africa and other Third World countries througha process of psychological, intellectual and political osmosis or throughoutright economic, financial and political pressure. An important questionis whether, in order to be taken seriously, social science paradigms, researchand observations must be based on assumed premises and values operatingin hegemonic societies or must receive the imprimatur of such societies. Thepremise or assumption for example, that what is good for General Motors orMcDonalds should be universally good and acceptable shows an arrogant andhegemonic disregard and disrespect of other realities. It is important to notethat such a premise does not necessarily preclude criticism of a particularGeneral Motors or McDonalds product; but the danger lies in the a prioriassumption that the hegemonic positions of the two companies naturallyentitle them (as if it were their birthrights) to determine the direction andfuture of the industry and market.Analogies or examples such as GeneralMotors and McDonalds, no doubt, have their limitations when applied toAfrica and other developing areas. After all, a company is not a nationstate; it can not arrogate to itself the legitimate use of force or take certainkinds of actions. But multinational companies such as General Motors andMcDonalds do exercise power and influence over U.S. public policy andforeign policy. In many cases of developing countries dependent on Western

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investment, their direct or indirect role in decision making can spell the differ-ence between survival and stability or political collapse. In a very real sense,therefore, much of Western scholarship on non-Western countries exhibitswhat may be called the General Motors/McDonalds syndrome. It is assumedthat what is good for the West is good for non-Western countries. Culturaldiversity and values are seen as an almost monolithic image to be shapedand changed in North America and Europe. Western hegemonic advantages– by virtue of sheer economic, financial and technological superiority andsuccess – creep into academic scholarship, the sphere of knowledge, the over-throw or undermining of authentic cultures, the direct or indirect removal ofindependent-minded governments and, ultimately, the determining of what isimportant in international reality, based on Western self-interests.

In a patriotic salute to American hegemony, Walter Mead states inunequivocal terms what he sees as U.S. foreign policy achievements: “TheUnited States not only won the Cold War, it diffused its language, culture andproducts worldwide – the American dollar became the international mediumof finance; the American language became the lingua franca of world busi-ness; American popular culture and American consumer products dominatedworld media and world markets. The United States is not only the sole globalpower, its values inform a global consensus, and it dominates to an unprece-dented degree the formation of the first truly global civilization our planet hasknown.”4

This U.S. domination of global consensus and “the first truly globalcivilization our planet has ever known,” often means that compelling develop-ment proposals from non-Western perspectives are largely ignored or politelydismissed. They are seen as too radical, or unrealistic or lacking academicrigor. Interestingly, what we have called the General Motors/McDonaldssyndrome, often plays down the historically diverse development experienceof the West as it determines what is good for the non-West. The corpus ofliterature on development therefore becomes a kind of collection of numeroussubsidiaries of the parent company – Anglo-American culture. Within thiscorpus are variations of interests and emphases. It is indeed possible to finddisagreements, conflicting theories and analyses; but rarely is there any mean-ingful attempt to question the assumed axiomatic validity of the premisesupon which the overall literature is based. In a world of competing ideaswhere he who pays the piper decides which tune is played, how can Africa(the poorest continent) and other developing and dependent countries demandthat their tunes be played?

The scientific method of the physical and natural sciences cannot beduplicated in the social sciences. If this were possible, the problem ofbias, personal preferences, etc. would be largely eliminated from theory and

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research. However, the social sciences cannot afford to become too boggeddown in philosophical issues about their scientific value, and thereforewhether they should be considered as serious sciences. Even the acknowl-edged so-called serious sciences are laden with considerable bias.5 What iscrucial is a conscious effort to dispense with the pervasive pretension andillusion of a near value-free social science that can be transplanted to thedeveloping world through a kind of hegemonic osmosis. There is an honestneed to recognize the susceptibility of theory and research to biases, pontifica-tions posing as objectivity, and thinly veiled ideological prescriptions. It is notenough, as indeed some studies do, to pay lip service to bias in research andthen proceed almost by fiat to theorize, analyze and prescribe remedies fordeveloping countries. There must be a constant vigil to guard against theseproblems. Simultaneously, the tendency to severely reduce the decibel levelof important critical scholarly works from the Third World – because of theasymmetrical character of international power politics – must be guardedagainst.

It is particularly true of the social sciences that there is no universallyreceived paradigm; and as Thomas Kuhn has rightly noted, any descriptionmust, of necessity, remain partial.6 The capitalist paradigm of developmentis for now dominant in developing countries. But “the end of history” isfar from over. Development studies should be wary of uncritically acceptinghegemonic schools of thought or perspectives, purporting to be absolutelyrepresentative and permanent models of what is good for elusive humannature. The hegemonic paradigm that justified the “need” for authoritariangovernments in Africa and other parts of the developing world provedto be ideologically inspired and based on hegemonic economic, politicaland strategic considerations in the context of what was believed to bea bipolar international order. In Africa’s case (as well as other areas),indigenous historical and cultural factors, and exogenous causal influenceswere peripherialized in the hegemonic prescription for political stability.

It is interesting to observe that whereas in 1968 the order and stabilityschool was recommending authoritarian governments for Africa, by 1987its most prominent advocate, Samuel Huntington, was beginning to payacademic lip service to the importance of culture in development. Considerthis new thinking or rethinking: “If, however, the study of development leadsback to a focus on culture and the differences among major cultural traditionsand country cultures, then the time is perhaps appropriate for closer linksbetween the comparative politics scholars (developmentalist subbranch) andarea specialists. If the difference in the present and future development andgoal achievement of East Asia, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa are tobe found in the different values and beliefs of East Asians, Latin Americans,

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and Africans, then surely a primary place has to be accorded the comparativeanalysis of culture, how and why it develops, how it is transmitted, whatpatterns it forms, how its various dimensions can be defined and measured,how and under what circumstances it changes.”7

Culture is neither a residual category of development, nor is it the beall and end all of development. Development studies during the Cold Wartook an increasing shift towards culture as the key explanatory variable,relegating other important factors to the periphery. For example, a study ofLatin America by Lawrence Harrison attempted to argue the predominance ofculture. In his book, Underdevelopment is a State of Mind: The Latin Amer-ican Case, Harrison asserts that “. . . it is culture that principally explains,in most cases, why some countries develop more rapidly and equitably thanothers.”8 Harrison is quick to pay lip service to other variables such as acountry’s resources, its government policies, its history and the structure ofthe international economic order. He even concedes that colonial hegemonicpowers exploited Third World nations. He also acknowledges that “U.S.companies have made a lot of money in Latin America and elsewhere inthe Third World, particularly during the first half of this century. But thealmost exclusive focus on “imperialism” and “dependency” to explain under-development encouraged the evolution of a paralyzing and self-defeatingmythology.”9 Harrison’s work on culture appeared to be a critique of thedependency and imperialism schools as well as the order and stability school.For him, most of the Third World had failed to develop because it had notbeen sufficiently infused with Western culture and values.

While Harrison’s thesis exhibits all the hallmarks of the GeneralMotors/McDonalds syndrome, it at least makes no pretensions to value freesocial science research methods. In fact, he is quite bold in suggestingthat Western cultural values are superior: “According to my values, whichare, I believe, generally shared by most people in both the developed andunderdeveloped worlds, progress-prone cultures are better places for humanbeings than traditional, static cultures. And the most progressive culturesthat humankind has thus far evolved follow the democratic model of theWest.”10 An important shortcoming of the culture thesis as expounded byHarrison is that it smacks of totalizing theories such as those advocatedby some economists. In the final analysis, they explain very little and aresometimes difficult to verify. Like rational models used by economists suchas Gary Becker to explain almost all aspects of human behavior, culture isemployed as the pivotal factor in society that explains human development;it also arrogates to itself the right to determine the nature and direction ofchange and development. Development is viewed not basically in terms ofcontinuous significant improvement in the quality of life of a people; it must

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occur through the prism of Western culture and values, if it is to be recognizedas serious progress. Harrison concedes that he is “. . . advocating the liberal,democratic capitalist model of the West, not necessarily the American versionof it. I believe the Western model, extending from the Swedish variant witha heavier social content to the American variant with a lighter social content,offers the best way of organizing a society that humankind has been able todevise.”11

As a model attempting to explain change and development in Third Worldsocieties during the Cold War era, the culture thesis relegated to secondaryimportance all other contributing variables. The culture thesis and school didnot present itself as monolithic; indeed, there were variations in its emphasis.But a central flaw in the thesis was the tendency to de-emphasize the hege-monic structure of the international system, and the complex interplay ofautochthonous and exogenous variables in shaping and determining devel-opment. Culture, no doubt, permeates society and may even be decisive incertain cases in determining the direction of change or its temporary setback.But it is not a quantifiable variable devoid of great subjectivity. It can not auto-matically enter into the calculus of assessing development as the principle oroverwhelming consideration. The danger here is to try to explain everythingin terms of culture.

Unlike other explanations which, by their very nature are, at best, onlypartial accounts and descriptions of a situation or behavior, the notion ofculture was assumed to be a complete explanation. Latin America, forexample, was thought to experience a “low” level of development becauseof what was described as its static, resistant and backward cultural values. Asimilar framework was applied to Africa. Like Latin America, Africa sufferedfrom excessive traditionalism and paternalism. Starting from such a culturalpremise, it is easy to see how every possible Western cultural argument wasused to support Western governments’ policy. Those countries in the devel-oping world whose economies were relatively vibrant were obviously theresult of their adopting Western ideas and values – so the argument went.

Huntington himself appeared to have had some reservations aboutculture’s utility in social science analysis. To an important extent his reserva-tions reflected (and continue to do so), the serious problem of generalizationand oversimplification in the social sciences. Since social scientists seem tohave a proclivity to generalize, Huntington argued, the explanatory value ofculture could be limiting. “They do not explain consequences in terms of rela-tionships among universal variables such as rates of economic growth, socialmobilization, political participation, and civil violence. They tend, instead, tospeak in particulars peculiar to specific cultural entities.”12

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Few critical retrospective analyses of development studies during the ColdWar would dispute the conceptual experimental confusion and disarray ofthe state of development studies and comparative analysis. The Cold Warera provided a truly golden opportunity for universalized generalizations ofunique, individual, complex situations whose relationships to other variableswere superficial and sometimes even irrelevant. Part of the problem was thenear obsession of some social science disciples to “prove” the scientificity oftheir research methods.

In Understanding Political Development, Huntington made the usualperfunctory and symbolic academic gesture of acknowledging the complexityand variety of cultural diverse realities. But his discussion proceeded toarbitrarily impose a conceptual order by dividing world cultures into nine“cultural families.” He did, however, note a caveat: “The nine cultural group-ings do not, obviously, encompass all the world’s countries.”13 Some of hisnumerous exceptions were also mentioned. But part of the problem was thatthe exceptions to his nine “cultural families” were so many that the useful-ness of compartmentalizing and categorizing was severely limited. Moreover,it was of little explanatory value, for example, to lump sub-Saharan Africaunder one rubric and over simplify its multitude of cultures into two religiousgroupings – Christianity and Paganism. Even within different countries inAfrica, fundamentally different cultural groups may be found with differentresponses to Christianity or Islam. In addition to advising the U.S. govern-ment on Third World development policy, Huntington clearly thought thathis experimental formulations could predict the direction of development. Ashe put it, “If one wanted to predict the probable pattern of development of aCountry X, would not its cultural identity be the information to ask for?”14

But the notion of cultural identity often did not go beyond the Westernizedelites, whose behaviors were erroneously thought to be representative of themany ethnic, regional and cultural groups within a given country. Smallwonder, then, when predictions and prescriptions failed, the knee-jerk ten-dency was for Western “experts” to recommend policies based on order andstability – catch words for support of authoritarian governance. The irony – orperhaps contradiction – could not have been easily missed, since developmentliterature was also advocating democratic governments and institutions forThird World countries.

The complex cultural and historical process through which developingnations move towards economic, social and political development was trulypoorly grasped in competing paradigms of development. Particular, authenticconfigurations of a given culture were dispensed with in preference forgrandiose generalization. To say, for example, that oxygen is essential to thesurvival of Homo Sapiens is no more than to establish an initial characteristic.

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It is quite another development, however, to move from this basic fact toconstruct a universal theory that purports to explain and predict the struc-ture of human behavior based on an extrapolation from oxygen. Universaltraits are, no doubt, useful for their rough or broad contours of ubiquitoussituations. Theories, on the other hand, must demonstrate not just simplerelevance but far-reaching relevance and specific meaning to the reality theyattempt to explain, predict or compare. Cold War hegemonic theories ofdevelopment demonstrated a flagrant disregard for comparative analyticalrigor. It was not always appreciated that relative uniqueness is not necessarilya priori suitable for meaningful comparative analysis. Karl Deutch arguesthat “anything that can interact with events important for us must have somestructural similarities with them, and to a lesser extent with us; and once it hasstructure, there seems to be no a prior reason why it could not be matched bysuitable symbols.”15 The problem with this position in the social sciences isthat it is sometimes taken too literally. It is true, (as Deutch recognizes), thatpolitical processes and institutions share some similarities and differences;that to think in terms of similarities presupposes the existence of differences.But an important consideration emerges: it is in the process of determiningwhat is meaningfully similar or different that warrants comparative analysis– and therefore the conclusion arrived at. This process is described by Deutch“as a second step that new symbols can be assigned to those groups or aspectsthat remain different from those previously familiar, and different from eachother, and that these new data became part of our experience.”16

Common superficial traits in comparative analysis, when confused withstructural similarities, often reflect the problem of analytical rigor and culturaland ideological bias. Trite as it may sound, the purpose of government is, infact to govern. This, it can easily be agreed, is a common trait; but it sayslittle about the nature, structure or type of any government. If an observerdetermines that that universal trait of governments must be elevated to a statusof fundamental importance in comparative analysis – it becomes a misleadingand superficial substitute for analyzing significant structural similarities anddifferences. The observer loses sight of real problems and his conclusionbecomes unconvincing.

Huntington’s use of comparative analysis to discuss governance and hisimplicit suggestion of authoritarian government for developing countriesillustrates the above problem. The universal trait of governing by govern-ments was single-mindedly elevated to the core of his analysis. Thus, forHuntington, what was of utmost importance was that governments mustgovern, and do so most effectively. While he recognized the differencesbetween democracy and dictatorship, those differences were secondary. Inhis comparative framework, “The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet

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Union have different forms of government, but in all three systems thegovernment governs.”17 This narrow logic freed Huntington’s analysis fromthe strictures of comparative analysis even though his thinking became animportant voice in comparative analysis and part of the cornerstone of Amer-ican foreign policy during the Cold War. From Latin America to Africaand Asia, authoritarian governments mushroomed and were buttressed withAmerican economic and military aid. The democratic process of govern-ment and the development process that were to supposed to lift Third Worldcountries out of poverty and misery became secondary to American ColdWar foreign policy strategy. Even in countries where American economicand military aid was limited in the Third World, authoritarian rule wentunchecked. Non-democratic governments understood that the sine qua non oftheir survival was simply to remain within the capitalist orbit. The Hunting-tonian dictum was heeded: all a government needed to do was govern; thekind of government was less important than the fact that it governed.

Modernization paradigms

Modernization paradigms during the Cold War – whether originating fromthe East or west – were not without heavy ideological bias. This ideologicalfactor reflected the struggle between East and West to win the hearts andminds of the Third World following World War II, especially with the emer-gence of new states in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. In a relatively looseinternational bipolar system where Third World allegiance – depending on thepolitical orientation of the dominant political elite at a given time was fickle,– it was of paramount importance for the U.S. to woo the collective elite ofany given country not only through economic and military incentives, butalso through ideology and propaganda. Thus the concept of democracy wascounterposed not so much against authoritarian governments in the traditionalconservative mold, but against the concept of Communism. Communism wasdefined for the local elite as ultra dangerous in terms of taking away humanrights and property rights; it was also ungodly. The concepts of democracyand Communism were then passed on to society at large, where the formerwas presented as desirable and epitomized the West; the latter was introducedas an evil representation of the Eastern Bloc.

In the ideological and propaganda competition of paradigms of modern-ization, Western capitalist hegemony had two remarkable advantages: 1) itseconomic and technological prowess, which had repeatedly proved capableof generating a superabundance of material wealth – the distant sight ofwhich mesmerized poor populations; 2) Christianity as an agent whosefoundation missionaries and colonialism had already established in Africa

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and other parts of the developing world since the 19th Century. The hopeand message that Western technological and economic success brought wassimple: with the right opportunity, education and connections, those whowanted to succeed in society – regardless of their poverty level – could doso through hard work. The concrete evidence was plain to see in the West,not in the East. This explicit and implicit message of hope, in all its ideolog-ical and propagandistic forms, was significantly facilitated by the inherentlyantithetical Christian attitude towards ungodly paradigms of modernizationsuch as communism/socialism.

The attractiveness of the two remarkable advantages may be summedup in the idea of hope. The Eastern camp did not even remotely havean equivalent to dangle during the propaganda and ideological struggle ofmodernization paradigms. In retrospect it is clear to see how they could nothave prevailed. Capitalism generated impressive material wealth for all tosee and aspire to achieve. Even if achieving wealth for the vast majority ofpeople was highly unrealistic – and even if capitalism created extraordinaryand unacceptable class inequality – capitalist paradigms at least offered hopeand consolation when Christian doctrines were inserted into the scheme ofthings. In the final analysis for many Christians, redemption of the soul in theafterworld was the ultimate life assurance. The combination of Christianityand capitalism struck a primal need in man – the desire to be materiallysatisfied and the need to be spiritually consoled. Christianity also allowedfor an endless variety of intellectual, theatrical, emotional, and psycholog-ical interpretations and perspectives of religious thought. Unlike inflexibleMarxism, Christianity was basically apolitical in the developing world andgenerally posed no political threat to autocratic governments. In fact, auto-cratic governments sometimes harnessed its religious message for their ownpolitical needs. It was within this broad framework of East-West bipolararrangements that undemocratic governments flourished and theories andparadigms of development contributed to Third World underdevelopment.

The historical foundations and cultural rhythms of Third World societies –against which Western political, social and economic institutions were super-imposed – often seriously underestimated the rate and nature of change. Therewas an unquestionable arrogance, disregard and disrespect for local institu-tions. This attitude may be summed up in the following: “Nothing reallysolid was here before we arrived.” From the perspective of policy makersand scholars, Westernized elites – with their gift for mimesis – were proofpositive that the social and cultural context within which adopted institutionsfunctioned – was subject to unilinear change. After all, if elites could beWesternized in their habits, tastes and values, surely they could irrevocablychange their social, political and economic environment. All hope was there-

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fore placed in elites as purveyors of change, while objective cultural andhistorical conditions were neglected. This attitude was akin to the view thatthe elite could be taken out of the country, while simultaneously, the countrycould also be “taken” out of them.

Paradigms of modernization are synonymous with some assumptions ofthe idea of change in developing societies. Change is used here in the RobertNisbet sense of the concept. That is, it “is succession of differences in timein a persisting identity.”18 Nisbet notes three essential ingredients in thisdefinition: “differences,” “in time,” and “persisting identity.” Change impliesdifferences of conditions or appearance, which must be successive in time andmust be persistent. Grand theories and paradigms of modernization duringthe Cold War often failed because the concept of change in the process ofhistory was little understood. It was assumed that a developing country’sexposure to Western science and technology, coupled with Western socialvalues and ideas would logically and automatically standardize its rhythm andpace of change with the West. This assumption led to the lumping togetherof different societies – each representing its own rhythm and pace basedon its unique historical, cultural and external circumstances – into grandparadigms of development. Modernization paradigms failed to grasp the ideaof time-order in the process of change. Although it may be significantly influ-enced by external forces, time-order does not evaporate over night as a resultof hegemonic pressures. Indeed, it may naturally persist – inspiring suchabsurd notions as “clash of civilizations.”19 The problem of change is furthercompounded by the fact that in many Third World societies, it is possible tofind several time-orders among different ethnic and cultural groups.

The reality of time-order is essentially one of epistemology, history andculture. It is a reality which students of development studies must becomemore sensitized to for a better understanding of non-Western cultures. Time-order is a universal reality that holds that every society is based on aphilosophy or orientation – implicit or explicit – and transmits it from onegeneration to another. It is, as it were, a broad psychological road mapof a given society’s value system. It is a means of confronting the totalenvironment, both physical and non-physical. The economic system, polit-ical organizations, religion and every institution in society are mediatedthrough the foundation of time-order. A society’s broad philosophical andvalue orientation is neither static nor totally monolithic. As beliefs andvalues are transmitted from one generation to another, and as circumstancesdemand, time-order undergoes adjustments and modifications. It is importantto emphasize that time-order simply can not be reduced to culture. It is acombination of culture and the situation or process through which the totalepistemological orientation of a society or group confronts the reality of

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change in the total international environment. Time-order relates to changein time and space in the context of a social order or group whose rhythm andprogress – depending on the degree of its cultural fixity and persistence – maybe decisive in determining the nature and speed of broad historical changes.20

Any rudimentary definition of culture would acknowledge that it is theway of life of a people, as they struggle to cope with their environment.Culture is a strategy for survival. Cultural change or modification is oftenprofoundly influenced by external input. While the study of Third Worlddevelopment can not be reduced simply to culture, it is one of those importantvariables that is sometimes paid lip service or ignored by the force ofhegemony. The problem is compounded in Western academic social scienceswith their tendency to draw artificial boundaries around various disciplines –rather than support cross-fertilization. One important consequence has beenthe under use of the explanatory powers of anthropology. The historical paceof change and nuances in developing societies are often mismeasured andmisunderstood. It is unnecessary to delve into the voluminous and compellingcriticisms of development studies. What is important to note in conclusion isthis: the emergence of the U.S. as the sole super power, the continuing reinof Western multinational corporations, the stranglehold of the InternationalMonetary Fund and the World Bank, the Third World vulnerability to swiftcapital transfer, the problem of unfair trading, the globalization of Westernculture, etc. – are all hard realities of persistent Western hegemony. But thereis the other side of the coin: visionless leadership in many developing coun-tries, during and after the Cold War, so much so that in the African context,for example, the current Nigerian head of state estimates that Africa hasbeen plundered by its own leadership to the amount of $41 billion dollars.Even if paradigms of development were to become more grounded in ThirdWorld realities, they would, at best, be academic until a post-Cold War sortof new breed of leadership rises in developing countries. The rise of sucha new leadership with great vision is necessary, but not sufficient, to beginto extricate the Third World out of its condition of dependency, wretched-ness, disease, poverty and ignorance. Concrete collective economic, politicaland moral support of the total progressive Third World leadership would beimperative to lead developing countries out of a political, economic and tech-nological quagmire that has existed since the earliest colonization in the 14thcentury.

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Notes

1 President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania was one of the few African leaders who was highlyconscious of the need to seek a path of nation building consonant with the needs of Tanzaniansociety.2 See Peter Worsley, The Third World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 27.3 See Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (Yale University Press,1968), 1.4 See Walter R. Mead, Special Providence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 10.5 In its June 2002 publication, for example, the JAMA acknowledges that some of itsscientific findings may reflect bias and even conflict of interest.6 See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress), Chapters 6, 7, 9, 4.7 See Samuel P. Huntington, Understanding Political Development (Boston: Little Brown &Company, 1987), 27.8 See Lawrence Harrison, Underdevelopment is a State of Mind: The Latin American Case(New York: University Press of America, 1985), xvi. For a more recent discussion of culture,see L. Harrison and S. Huntington, Culture Matters (Basic Books, 2000).9 Ibid., 2.10 Ibid., xvi.11 Ibid., 167.12 Huntington, Understanding Political Development, 23.13 Ibid., 23.14 Ibid., 24.15 See Karl Deutch, The Nerves of Government (London:The Free Press of Glencoe, 1963),24.16 Ibid., 24.17 Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, 1.18 See Robert Nisbet, ed., Social Change (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 1.19 In yet another speculative and intuitive discussion, Huntington argues that civilizationswill supersede ideology as the dominant source of world conflict, in light of the end of theCold War. For an interesting critique of this view see Jacinta O’Hagan’s working paper, “Inter-Civilizational Conflict: A Critique of the Huntington Thesis,” in the Research School of thePacific Studies, the Australian National University, Canberra ACT 2601, 1994.20 See Jacques J. Maquet, “Some Epistemological Remarks on the Cultural Philosophiesand their Comparisons,” in F.S.C. Northrop and Helen Livingston, ed., Cross-Cultural Under-standing: Epistemology in Anthropology (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 13–30; also,Janheing Jahn, “Value Conceptions in Sub-Saharan Africa,” ibid., 56–69.