Social Change and Development: Modernization, Dependency and World-System Theories

It's an easy reference book for the understanding of development theory. It contains the three main currents of development theory including modernization theory, dependency theory and world-system theory. The book is well structured in ideas and eash to read. For those who are interested in the development theory, this book is a good choice.

Alvin So's book is the only time I ever read a book about theory and on the first time through the sentence I said "Oh! That's what that's all about!" It's sad but true that most theory books are so full of garbage-- unneeded words, grammatically convoluted sentences that go nowhere-- that you end up more confused than enlightened. Twenty or so years of teaching at the University of Hawaii if I am not mistaken allowed So to practice again and again explaining theory to students until he'd figured out how to do it right, I only wish he'd written a book on all the other theories as well!

This is clearly a textbook, as the publisher's writeup notes, so don't go looking for a ripping insider tell-all. That said, it's a good, solid textbook in true academic fashion: clearly laid out, systematic in structure and specific in definitions. Absolutely a dream to take notes from. It's also a needed change that, instead of hopping around references to different theories based on politics or country, the author breaks the text into three blocks - one per major theoretical school - and lines them up chronologically by era of popularity. This of course gets a bit muddy by the end as the field in general starts to look like a free-for-all to find what works, but overall the text is blessedly clear after so much rhetoric.

Dr. So's comparison of the three major schools of thought in Development Studies, namely Modernization, Dependency, and World Systems, is the best book of its kind currently available. While it lacks the breadth of _Society, State, and Market_ by John Martinussen, it makes up for it in the depth of its analysis. Using A limited numer of theorists, Dr. So presents a comprehensive picture of each of the schools of thought in a historical perspective. He outlines the historical and intellectual origins of each, then discusses the theory itself, follows with an examination of the classical studies in each school, and concludes with the modern studies from that intellectual tradition. If supplemented with another, broader work, this book is a perfect introduction into a daunting field that often defies understanding.