4.2.6 - Defining Development, Underdevelopment and Inequality

What development means

In everyday discussion, development is often reduced to money: more industry, higher incomes, and faster economic growth. Sociologically, that is too narrow. Development is always a value-laden concept because it involves a judgement about what counts as improvement and who gets to define a "better" society.

A narrow economic definition focuses on industrialisation, productivity, trade, and rising national income. This is useful because it is easy to count and compare. However, it can make development look like a single path in which poorer societies are expected to become more like wealthy Western industrial societies.

Broader approaches ask different questions. Are people healthier? Are they better educated? Do they have greater security, dignity, and control over their lives? That is why sociologists often distinguish economic development from human development and sustainable development.

Amartya Sen - Argued that development should be understood as the expansion of people's capabilities and freedoms, not just the growth of income. From this view, development is about what people are actually able to do and to be, such as living a healthy life, gaining education, and participating in society.

The Brundtland Report (1987) - Popularised the idea of sustainable development, meaning development that meets present needs without damaging the ability of future generations to meet theirs. This matters sociologically because it shifts attention from short-term growth to long-term social and environmental consequences.

The key exam point is that development is contested. Economic growth is one definition, but it is not a neutral or complete one.

Measuring development

Once development is defined, sociologists ask how it is measured. Different indicators are built from different kinds of data, and each measure reflects assumptions about what matters.

Many development measures rely on official statistics collected by states and international organisations. GDP per capita and GNI per capita are based mainly on economic accounting. GNI itself is a national total; only its per-capita form is an average. HDI and MPI are composite measures that bring together several indicators, often using official data and large-scale survey material. This research design makes cross-national comparison possible, but it also depends on reliable state reporting, standardised categories, and the ability to measure social life numerically.

This is why sociologists criticise purely economic indicators. A country can have a high average income while large sections of the population remain poor. National accounts attempt to estimate informal production, but incomplete data can undercount it; unpaid domestic care is largely outside their production boundary. That means some of the social activity sustaining households and communities becomes statistically invisible.

There is also cultural bias. If development is measured mainly through Western priorities such as formal wage labour, market participation, or particular schooling patterns, then other ways of organising social life can look "backward" even when they reflect different social values.

Underdevelopment and global inequality

Underdevelopment does not simply mean "not yet developed." That phrase implies poorer societies are just behind on the same road. Many sociologists reject that idea because it ignores exploitation and unequal power relations.

Andre Gunder Frank - Argued that underdevelopment is actively produced by global capitalism. In his view, poorer countries were not left outside development; they were incorporated into a world system in ways that transferred wealth outward and blocked autonomous growth.

This is where the historical roots of global inequality matter. Colonialism involved the extraction of land, labour, and resources by imperial powers. The slave trade generated enormous wealth for European and North American economies while devastating African societies through coercion, depopulation, and dislocation. Imperialism then helped preserve unequal political and economic relationships even after formal colonial rule ended.