The geography of underdevelopment

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B o o k Reviews

finance, advice and training. There is however a clear and welcome shift of emphasis away from providing employment in market towns and the larger 'key' settlements towards strengthening the economy at a very local level by helping to generate jobs in villages. The policies and instruments to be used are geared towards helping small firms to establish, survive and grow. To help achieve this the Commission intends to continue to provide pumppriming assistance to rural Local Enterprise Trusts - some of which appear to have been highly successful in recent years. Other new developments apparently being explored include the possibility of CoSIRA taking on a brokerage role in the provision of equity finance for small firms. With regard to CoSIRA's traditional role in providing training, it is intended that there will be a continuation of the recent shift in emphasis away from catering for training needs 'in house' towards sponsoring training in appropriate colleges or other institutions. Taken to its logical conclusion this could mean that CoSIRA's direct role will be reduced to that of a 'trainer of last resort'. In relation to service provision, the Commission's role is understandably still interpreted as attempting to influence the provision by other bodies both in public and private sectors and initiating experimental projects. However, more emphasis is likely to be given to community development - - particularly within the Rural Development Areas. It is now widely acknowledged that in the past there has been a degree of 'policy schizophrenia' in relation to marginal rural areas. As a result social and environmental policies have been formulated by one government department or agency to alleviate the problems arising from the economic policies pursued by another. Examples include policies aimed at service rationalisation, of which the closure of rural schools is perhaps the classic example. Indeed, it could be argued that several rural problems are directly caused by or are exacerbated by a failure to consider problems and policies in a comprehensive or coordinated manner. Previous experience indicates however, that the problems of RDAs are such that they will only respond to consistent efforts over the medium to long term. The original Action Plans initiated by the Commission in 1976 were intended to be broadly based and to include details of the action which local authorities and other agencies planned to take to assist the regeneration of particular problem areas. In practice, most local authorities treated them solely as a means of making bids for advance factory building. This experience has clearly influenced the new guidelines set out in this document. The Commission's response has been to invite the local authorities, CoSIRA, the Rural Community Councils and other agencies to work together to draw up a joint Rural Development Programme (RDP) for Rural Development Areas falling within their jurisdiction. The guidelines suggest that the RDP should comprise a broad brush strategy taking a 5-10-year time horizon and a detailed work programme concerned with specific projects and their implementation. Rather like the Partnership Programmes drawn up for inner city areas, the intention is that the detailed work programmes should be reviewed and rolled forward each year. Particular stress is laid on identifying opportunities where the Commission's contribution is likely to 'lever' additional resources from other sources. It is also explicitly stated that the Commission

expects the new Rural Development Programmes to make specific proposals for carefully planned and innovative community development programmes which are designed to elicit and support local leadership and community selfhelp. If successful, this is likely to represent an important shift in the emphasis of work within the RDAs in future years. The guidelines for the preparation of RDPs make it clear that the criteria for assessing requests for action will include the 'integrated' nature of the Programmes, the commitment or proposed actions of other parties in the RDA and the expected impact of such combined inputs compared with the nature and severity of the problems. In practice, of course, a great deal will depend on the capacity of the local authorities and other members of the working parties to respond and on the resolve of the Commission to withhold assistance if they do not. Initial indications of the response from local authorities and other agencies appear to be favourable. This is perhaps not surprising since the guidelines for preparing and rolling forward RDPs closely parallel the broad, systematic approaches to local economic planning and development which have been advocated by such bodies as the Association of District Councils and the Institution of Economic Development Officers. Clearly, however, the obstacles should not be underestimated. There are real psychological impediments to any form of integrated rural development which are unlikely to be overcome until local people, individual local authority departments and central government see the need for and value of a unified approach to the problems of rural areas. At present however, the 'process' is perhaps more important than the 'product'. If nothing else the process of preparing RDPs should bring together representatives of several agencies which previously would not normally have met face to face. Thus, whilst it may not always be possible to achieve a truly integrated approach, whereby all the policies of different agencies are geared towards a set of common goals, in the medium term it should be possible to resolve some of the conflicts which presently exist between the policies of separate agencies. This in itself would be a significant achievement. MIKE TRICKER Public Sector Management Research Unit Aston University Birmingham, U. I~.

The Geography of Underdevelopment, D. Forbes, Croom Helm, Kent, £17.95

This text represents a major contribution to the geography literature on underdevelopment. It draws on material from related social science disciplines to present what is a well researched and original approach to Third World problems. Perhaps its especial value lies in its incorporation into the field of development, broad theoretical issues of current interest and debate within human geography as a whole. The book is divided into three major sections. The first provides an historical review of the expansion of capitalism on an international scale from the sixteenth century, emphasising that the colonial practices with which this expansion became associated did not develop evenly over

Book Reviews space and time. The author then traces the evolution of development geography from the institutionalisation of the subject in the late nineteenth century to the present. In doing so two points are stressed: the important influence of related disciplines in the theoretical development of geography and, in turn, the need to set these theoretical developments within the social, economic and cultural context of the time: For example, the early association between geography, Darwinian theory and evolution and imperialist expansion is outlined. Following the depression and decolonisation, the post-war economic boom of the capitalist nations is related to the emergence of development economics and in turn to 'bourgeois' development geography based on principles of modernisation and economic growth. A major theme of this text is the author's dissatisfaction with much development research hitherto and geography's contribution in particular. The second section provides a critique of the alternative set of theories of underdevelopment derived from marxist and neo-marxist thought which have become prominent since the early 1970s, As a basis for the discussion, while the value of the concept, the Third World, is questioned, an important distinction is made between it and the process of underdevelopment. Dependency theory associated with A.G. Frank, 'world systems' analysis of I. Wallerstein and, more recently, what are referred to as theories of capitalist crisis and the industrialisation of the periphery are all discussed. While important differences between these explanations are emphasised, Forbes points to one underlying similarity, namely, their focus on patterns of international organisation which distinguishes them from the related body of theory which is sensitive to 'the social and economic histories of particular places'. Research into 'the articulation of modes of production' and into class formation is deemed to be more appropriate for micro analysis of underdevelopment. The need to address problems of scale and human agency in explanations of geographical phenomena is as important in studies of non-Western societies as it is in systematic studies of the so-called developed countries. This issue provided the focus for section three. In seeking to construct a critical and radical geography of underdevelopment Forbes summarises his critique of existing theories along two dimensions: the determinist (universal processes in social change)/voluntarist (social change as an accumulation of human practices); the compositional (abstract laws lacking historical geographical specificity)/contextual (human activity as a social event in its immediate spatial and temporal setting). Each theory is located along these dimensions. Few are shown to provide the necessary balance between the two. A critical theory of underdevelopment, Forbes argues, must seek to relate 'theoretically defined relationships between structured abstractions (imperialism and articulation)', to 'the complex array of social processes within which underdevelopment is embedded'. The theory of structuration is regarded as the most effective attempt so far. It not only reasserts the importance of contextuality in explanation ('all social systems are embedded in time and space'), but also deals with the recursive structure/agency relationship (social structures are both the medium and the outcome of social practice). As are other human geographers, it is with the spatial aspects of structuration that Forbes is particularly concerned. By reference to two key themes in development geography, labour migration and urban informal labour markets, he demonstrates how structuration pro-

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vides a means of integrating the regional setting defined in a compositional analysis of, for example, the organisation of production and class structure, with contextual analysis of the 'locales' or settings for human action. A striking feature of this book is its thorough and skilful handling of diverse and complex literature. Not until section three is the author's preferred formulation presented and exemplified. Even then he is rightly cautious in his application of a concept such as structuration, originally formulated in advanced capitalist societies, to areas of the world where the concepts of economy, culture and society can be somewhat difficult. While much of the discussion in the book is theoretical, specific examples are also cited, including detailed material from Indonesia, This effective balance between theory and case study, coupled with the critical perspective adopted and the clarity of style and expression makes it an excellent textbook for students interested in the field of development studies. M O R A G BELL

Department of Geography University of Technology Loughborough, U.K. Introduction to Applied Demography: Data Sources and Estimation Techniques, N.W. Reeves, Jr and W.J. Serow, Sage University paper 39, iii + 95 pp., 1984, Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, Calif., £4:50 The title of this book fails to make clear the fact that its coverage is confined entirely to the United States so that most of what it says is of value only to those with a specific interest in the demography of that country. This comment applies particularly to Chapters 2-4, which deal with Census Statistics, Current Surveys and Vital Statistics and together constitute about one-third of the text. Here we find explained, in considerable detail, the organisation of the U.S. census (particularly the most recent, held in 1980), its areal base and the nature of the published results, together with a similar treatment of the Current Population Survey, the Annual Housing Survey and the National Vital Registration System. As the authors themselves point out, 'the focus of the volume is demographic information: what kinds of data are available, who produces these data, where can one obtain them and how can they be used in estimation procedures to produce new data?' Those who wish to undertake demographic work in the U.S.A. and wish to be clear about such terms as Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSAs), Primary Metropolitan Statistical Areas (PMSAs), Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Areas (CMSAs) and Standard Consolidated Statistical Areas (SCSAs) will be enlightened, as will those who wish to be aware of such matters as the level of accuracy of the U.S. census, the organisation of the published census reports and the available data tapes. This factual material is followed by chapters dealing with the preparation of total population estimates for small areas and the calculation of estimates for various subsets of the total, such as age, sex and 'racial/ethnic' groups, of particular value for 'planning and marketing purposes'. Once again the methods described are applicable primarily