Development Theory: An Analytical Framework and Selected Application

Author(s): Ester Boserup

Source: Population and Development Review, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Sep., 1996), pp. 505-515
Published by: Population Council
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NOTES AND COMMENTARY

Development Theory:
An Analytical Framework

and Selected Applications

ESTER BOSERUP

THE HUMAN and social sciences have now divided into a large number of

academic disciplines, many of which have made important contributions

to development theory. But the rapid accumulation of knowledge such

specialization makes possible is not without its problems. Differences in
terminology and methodology and insufficient interdisciplinary cooperation create misunderstandings and apparent or real conflicts between dis-

ciplines.
In this note, I suggest a framework for a concise interpretation of con-

tending theories of development and for description of a variety of development processes. In doing so, my aim is to stimulate interdisciplinary discussion of development problems.
I begin by suggesting a distinction between a number of broadly de-

fined "structures," which are relevant for development theory. I am aware

that some researchers define structures as static, but since development of
human groups and societies is a dynamic process, I propose to deal with

structures that have a certain stability, but may nevertheless yield to change
if they are exposed to strong or persistent pressure from other changing
structures. In other words, I suggest a basic framework consisting of a num-

ber of structures and flows between them. I will operate with six structures (characterizing human societies within appropriately delineated
boundaries), defined as follows:
1) Environment (E): Climate, soil, topography, type of vegetation,
mineral and water resources, and size of area.

2) Population (P): Population size and composition (such as age and

sex distribution), and rates of fertility, mortality, and migration to and from
the area.

POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW 22(3):505-515 (SEPTEMBER 1996) 505

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DEVELOPMENT

THEORY

3) Technology level (T): Technological level of capital equipment and

infrastructure (military as well as civilian), and methods used by economic
enterprises, government, and other economic, social, cultural, and political organizations and units. (Thus a particular government system is considered as a political and administrative technology.)

4) Occupational structure (0): Distribution of the population among

occupations and preparation for later occupations (or inactivity). This is closely
linked to the degree of self-sufficiency or monetization, and to the capitallabor ratio of the economy. (An example may help to clarify the distinction
between T and 0. A particular agricultural system is a technology, while a
feudal tenure system is part of the occupational structure, reflecting power
relationships. There may be harmony or antagonism between the two.)
5) Family structure (F): Size-, age-, and sex-distribution of the families and households in the area, kinship relationships, and distribution of
labor and authority between their members.

6) Culture (C): The prevailing theories, ideologies, and beliefs of the

population and its various subcomponents. (While the patriarchic distribution of family labor is family structure, the idea that women and children are inferior is culture. Catholicism is culture, but its organizational
hierarchy is part of the occupational structure.)

In Figures 1 and 2, which are examples of use of the technique, the

arrows indicate the origin and direction of pressure that a changing structure may exert on another structure. I have placed the symbols designating
the six structures on the perimeter of a circle so as to permit drawing arrows

between any two structures, in either direction. Except for global models,
transfer of culture, people, products, and technology from or to other areas
may increase or relieve the pressure on a particular structure. In open models, this must be taken into account in analyzing development processes.

Modeling development theories

The basic framework outlined above can be used for many purposes. One
is to describe the dynamic found in micro studies of villages, urban areas,
or larger geographic units. It can also be used to study structural relations
in dynamic macro studies relating to a particular period, historical or re-

cent, and it can be used to distinguish among the major conceptional approaches in development theory, as they evolved in the history of economic thought. This last use is illustrated in Figure 1.

I have chosen well-known authors, not in order to present my own

view of their theories, some of which I have discussed elsewhere, ' but solely
to demonstrate the usefulness for interdisciplinary discussion of a schematic representation of the main structural components of development
theories and the causal relationships between them. Therefore, my exposi-

tion is noncritical, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions. (Need-

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507

FIGURE 1 Analytic frameworks illustrating modeling approaches in the

history of development theory

1

Adam

Smith

Malthus

Ricardo
C

Marx

5 Max Weber 6 Neo-Malthusians

Ous

~~~E

_P

0\

_/

E = Environment P = Population T = Technology level

0 = Occupational structure F = Family structure C = Culture
0 = start of the dynamic process; in the case of Maithus, two versions are posited.

less to say, understanding of the development theories themselves requires

careful study of the original texts.)
Four of the six models shown have population growth as the dynamic
starting point for the process on which they focus, and all of them assume
that structures yield to pressure from other structures; but in all other re-

spects they are very different from one another, as shown by the arrows
and the different structures left out of the various accounts. So, it is unsurprising that their authors' expectations for the future were also very different, as shown below:

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DEVELOPMENT

THEORY

1) Adam Smith

P-4T More people and higher population density stimulate specialization of labor and better technology;

P->O More people and higher population density result in a larger market, with occupational specialization and further improvement
of productivity;

O-T Occupational specialization leads to improvement of technology.

2) Malthus
First Essay:

P->E---P More people and higher population density cause greater use of
inferior land, resulting in insufficient food supply per person,
higher mortality, and declining population size;
Second Essay (after criticism):

C-*F--P Foresight prompts desire to avoid large families by means of late

marriage or recourse to 'vice," resulting in low fertility and constant population size.
3) Ricardo

P-+T More people and greater needs for food result in agricultural intensification;

T-*E Agricultural intensification leads to higher food prices and increasing rents to landlords (unless agricultural protection is relaxed
and food can be imported at a low price);
E-*O Since wages are already at subsistence levels, the rate of profit

declines, thus discouraging development of industry. "Economics, the dismal science."

4) Marx

T->O Technical change and capitalist competition ruin small enterprises

and result in increasing exploitation and growing numbers of
propertyless wage earners;

O-F To be able to subsist on declining wages, women and children in

wage-earning families must work long hours at low wages in capi-

talist industry, thus halting the decline of the rate of profit and
helping unemployed workers to subsist;

F-*C Misery and decay of family life in workers' families help to spread
socialist ideas among the workers;

C->O Socialist ideas penetrate the working class, which takes power
and expropriates the capitalists.

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5) Max Weber

C->F Protestant ethics promote responsible parenthood, late marriage,

and abstention in marriage;

F-+O Fewer children per family allow higher savings and more rapid
economic growth;

F-+P Fewer children per family reduce the rate of population growth.
6) Neo-Malthusians

P-+T More people lead to more intensive land use with modern inputs
and result in a greater number of technological artifacts such as
motor vehicles;

T-+E Modern technology damages the environment;

T->O Modernization of agriculture promotes rural-to-urban migration;

O-E Accelerated urban growth results in urban slums and increases
pollution;

E->P Food shortage and pollution reduce rates of population growth

by increasing mortality.

A glance at Figure 1 reveals how different the approaches are. Adam

Smith ignores environmental effects and focuses upon the positive effects
of population growth on specialization of labor and expanding markets, while
Malthus in his First Essay focuses on negative effects on the environment
and ignores technological change. The latter omission is repaired by the NeoMalthusians, but they focus exclusively on the negative effects of technological change (assuming sustainable technology to be nonexistent).
Ricardo takes account of both the environment and technological

change in agriculture and arrives at his crisis scenario by means of the effect
changes in relative prices on income distribution. The economist Marx was a

pupil of Ricardo and also focused on income distribution, but he ignored the
effects of general population growth and environment on which the earlier
models focused. Marx the philosopher has a clockward movement in his
model from technology to culture, but Marx the politician of the First International reversed the sequence with the superstructure reacting on the so-

cial and economic structure (as shown by the C-*O arrow in Figure 1).
Finally, Weber, following the Malthus of the Second Essay and writing much
later, focuses not on the effects of population growth but on the causes of retardation and decline of population, with cultural features as the dynamic element.

The history of development

Models 1-3 and model 6 in Figure 1 have population growth as the dynamic element, which initiates the process of change. Their authors lived

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DEVELOPMENT

THEORY

in periods of accelerating population growth, first in Europe and later in

the world as a whole, and they focused on that growth. In Figure 2, I have
focused on long-term population change in order to show the usefulness
of the schematic representation of structures and their interactions in development theory. My experience from my book on Population and Techno-

logical Change2 dictated the placement of some of the arrows, and the graphic
representation helped me to discover structures and causal influences that
I had hitherto overlooked.
FIGURE 2 Analytic frameworks in selected models of the
development process
1 From hunting and gathering to crop production 2 The autonomous village
C

3 Pastoralists and nobility in the Eastern Hemisphere 4 The process of urbanization

CE

P0

6 Fertility decline and cultural

5 Industrialization in Westem Europe change in Western Europe

C

En

0 = Occupational structure F = Family structure C = Culture

0 = Start of the dynamic process.

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Figure 2 focuses on cases in which population change was accompanied by development. In real life, of course, intervention from outside or
resistant structures often prevented the process of adaptation or even caused
complete systemic breakdown.

The six models should be seen as sequential, one beginning when the
previous one ends, permitting population increase to continue, because the
structures are adaptable. The six models represent what are usually considered the major stages in the development process: the change from hunting and gathering to agriculture or pastoralism; the next step to settled and
increasingly intensive agriculture; the appearance of urbanization and in-

dustrialization; and finally the emergence of the electronic society (ofte.n

called "postindustrial") where the military establishment was the originator of the dynamic process. Viewed together, these models portray a process of gradual change, from full self-sufficiency of individuals and families
to more and more elaborate occupational networks.

The models in Figure 2 can also be applied to human groups and soci-

eties that even today are at preindustrial levels or in the process of industrialization; but of course in that case external technological and cultural
influences are of a different order of magnitude than in the historical models. Development of latecomers was and is different from development in

areas that were pioneers at a particular stage of history, especially if the

former were colonies of the latter.

In Population and Technological Change, I focused on structures E, T, P,

and 0, while in Woman's Role in Economic Development and later papers on
women, I discussed the relationship of these factors with F and C.3 In Figure 2 I have combined the results of those earlier studies, and tried to take
account of all six structures. The formulation below reflects my professional

bias; it may have led me to omit important 'arrows" or include some that
are debatable, but, as already mentioned, this exercise is a means to develop a technique that can point up disagreement among disciplines and
promote fruitful discussion.

1) Change from hunting and gathering to crop production4

P-+E When the population of hunter-gatherers in a sparsely settled area

increases (by natural growth or immigration from other areas)

they must increase the supply of vegetable food and consume
less meat per person;

E-*T Therefore, they change their technology of food supply by sow-

ing or planting some of the species they had hitherto obtained by

gathering, using longer-fallow methods;

T-+F The women, who were gathering vegetable food while the men
hunted, become cultivators of crops;

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DEVELOPMENT

THEORY

T-*C With change to cultivation of crops by women, fertility cults with

female goddesses may replace earlier beliefs;

C-+O While sorcerers seem to be the only professionally specialized

group among hunter-gatherers, cultivators have male and female
priests.

2) The autonomous village5

P-*E Population increases beyond the level that can be supplied by longfallow methods;

P-*T Therefore, in step with population increase, the method of cultivation gradually changes to bush-fallow and short-fallow agriculture;

T-*E Landscape becomes divided between fields, pasture, and some forest for supply of wood and additional food. Permanent villages
are established at shorter distances from one another than was
the case in earlier settlements;

E-+O Occupational specialization increases, partly because the market

becomes large enough to allow some specialized village crafts, and
partly because rights in village land become inheritable in the "old"
families, so members of landless families must obtain food as workers or servants for the cultivator families;

O->F Families provide training for youth in the parents' occupation,

but youth from landless families are trained in the employers'
fields or households;

O->C Occupational differences in the village may develop into a caste

system, imposing a ban on intermarriage and resulting in segregated living quarters in the village for different occupational
groups.

3) Pastoralists and nobility in the Eastern Hemisphere6

P-*E Pastoral people living in open grassland (created by climatic conditions or deforested by repeated burning) risk overgrazing when
human and animal populations increase;

E-*T To avoid this they increase their mobility and roam with their
semi-domesticated animals over long distances, using the animals
not only as food, but also as means of transport;

T-*O By using their horses or camels as mounts and by virtue of their

higher stature (a consequence of consuming protein-rich food),
the pastoralists' military strength becomes superior to that of cultivating groups, whose territory they invade. Often the mounted
foreigners become a hereditary nobility of slaveowners, or a feudal upper class in agricultural communities;

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O-F When subjugated cultivator families supply part or all of the food

and other necessities, the men from the pastoral tribes become
warriors and administrators, and the women become confined to
the house, sometimes secluded;

O-C Culture becomes hierarchic, with devaluation of the status of

women and commoners. Patriarchic religions develop for free
men, often excluding women and slaves.
4) The process of urbanization7

Both today and in the past, urbanization in an area owes much to influences from other areas, exerted through immigration, trade and conquest,
culture transfer, and transfer of capital and technology. The following pro-

cesses describe the concentration of population in urban centers when development in an area is autonomous.

P-*E Population increase leads to settlement of uncultivated land between existing villages;

E-*T-*O With higher densities there is more communication and easier

transport between settlements. Nonagricultural producers settle
mainly in market centers as they offer better services and allow
more specialization among artisans;

O-F Growing urban markets for agricultural products induce production

and sale of agricultural surplus: the proceeds are used to purchase
nonagricultural products and services by agricultural families;
F-*O Unpaid family work declines in relative importance, and exchanges
become increasingly monetized in rural as well as urban areas;
O-C Literacy spreads in urban areas;

C-*O Urban centers attract producers and consumers of private services,

civil and military administrations, and educational and cultural
establishments. Expectation of higher incomes and access to education stimulate rural-to-urban migration. The educated urban
population becomes a middle class with higher social status than
the peasants.

5) Industrialization in Western Europe8

P-*E Population growth and increasing urbanization result in a shortage of forests suitable for charcoal production;

E-*T Experimentation succeeds in substitution of coal for charcoal in iron

production, followed by mechanization of industry and transport;

T-*O Rapid increase of industrial production for the home market and
for exports generates industrial employment of male, female, and
child labor. A growing middle class of technical and other professionals emerges;

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DEVELOPMENT

THEORY

T-*C Literacy and higher education and science spread;

O-F Family life of industrial workers decays. By contrast, in urban
middle-class families wives are increasingly 'nonworking," and
children are enrolled in formal educational institutions;

F-*C Contrast increases between the ideology of industrial workers and

that of the urban middle class.

6) Contemporary fertility decline and cultural change in Western Europe9

O-T-*O In this model Western Europe has lost its pioneer status in technology, and technology transfer from the United States and Japan, combined with the large research capacity in Western Europe, promotes technological change in industry, transport,
communication, and other services. Traditional working-class employment declines, while technical and other professional occupations for both men and women increase in importance.

O-F Family structures are radically changed. Both husband and wife
are engaged in extra-household work, household activities are
mechanized or replaced by purchases, and child care becomes increasingly institutionalized; couples have few if any children. Formal marriages decline and divorce increases;

F-*C With educated middle-class women in modern occupations, the

status of working women improves while that of the housewife
and mother declines;

T-*O Rapid spread of electronic technology and reinvestment by European enterprises in countries with lower costs of production
create high levels of unemployment;

C-*P Resistance to immigration grows, while population size stagnates

or declines;

T-*E-EC Increasing doubts about the sustainability of energy technology

and fear of radiation create insecurity;

T-+C Secularization spreads with scientific advance, but so does insecurity, with many embracing superstition or religious fundamentalism.

Use of the technique for micro studies

Researchers from many disciplines specialize in micro studies relating to

developing countries or to a particular historical period. As already mentioned, the representational technique presented above can be used for comparison of dynamic micro studies; it can also be used to compare micro
studies with the results of macro studies made by scholars from other disciplines, thus promoting interdisciplinary research.

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Note
I am grateful to the historian Jon Mathieu

me to select the structures shown in the fig-

(University of Bern, Switzerland), who read

ures and discussed in the text.

two earlier versions of this paper and helped

References
The references are to works by Ester Boserup, which contain full references to works by

other authors. For a selected bibliography of works by Boserup in English see her Economic
and Demographic Relationships in Development [EDRD] (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1990).
1 The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change under Population
Pressure [CAG] (Chicago: Aldine, 1965; reprinted London: Earthscan, 1992). 'The impact of

scarcity and plenty on development," The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 14 (1983): 383-

407; reprinted in EDRD. "Agricultural growth and population change,f in The New Palgrave:
A Dictionary of Economics (London: Macmillan, 1987; reprinted in EDRD). "Development strat-

egy and demographic transition," Tilldgsnummer til Nationalikonomisk Tidsskrift 1982: 4

reprinted in EDRD.
2 Population and Technological Change: A Study of Long-Term Trends [PTC] (Chicago: Uni-

versity of Chicago Press, 1981).

3 Woman's Role in Economic Development [WRED] (London: St. Martin's Press, 1970; reprinted London: Earthscan, 1989).

4 "From food gathering to agriculture," PTC, Chapter 4, pp 31-42. "Environment, popu-

lation, and technology in primitive societies," Population and Development Review 2, no. 1
(1976): 21-36; reprinted in EDRD. "Male and female farming systems," WRED, Chapter 1, pp.
15-36.

5 "Population change in ancient agriculture," PTC, Chapter 5, pp. 43-62. CAG, Chapters 1-7, pp. 15-69. "The economics of polygamy," WRED, Chapter 2, pp. 37-47. "Population, the status of women, and rural development," Population and Development Review 15
(Supp.): 45-60; reprinted in EDRD.

6 PTC, pp. 63-64 (with notes). "Systems of land use as a determinant of land tenure,"
CAG, Chapter 9, pp. 77-87. "Population growth and prospects of development in savannah

nations," in Human Ecology in Savannah Environments, ed. D. Harris (New York: Academic
Press, 1980; reprinted in EDRD). "Work input and women's status," WRED, pp. 47-5 1.
7 PTC, Chapters 6-8, pp. 63-101. "Population and technology in preindustrial Europe,
Population and Development Review 13, no. 4 (1987): 691-701; reprinted in EDRD. "Women

in a men's world," WRED, Chapter 5, pp. 85-105.

8 PTC, Chapters 9-10, pp. 102-125. "Inequality between the sexes," in The New Palgrave:
A Dictionary of Economics (London: Macmillan, 1987; reprinted in EDRD). "Shifts in the de-

terminants of fertility in the developing world: Environmental, technical, economic, and

cultural factors," in The State of Population Theory: Forward from Malthus, ed. D. Coleman and
R. Schofield (London: Basil Blackwell, 1986; reprinted in EDRD).

9 "International adaptation to demographic and technological change," PTC, Chapter

15, pp. 188-199. "Economic change and the roles of women," in Persistent Inequalities: Women
and World Development, ed. I. Tinker (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990; reprinted in
EDRD).

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