Seminar on Social Aspects of Economic Development

Extract

This seminar was arranged by the Peace Research Institute in Oslo for the purpose of bringing together scattered research workers for the exchange of ideas and methods. They were able to draw on experience from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

P. Heintz, director of the Latin American School of Sociology, Santiago, opened the seminar with a talk on the relationship between anomie and development. He mentioned institutional anomie, the compartmentalisation of sectors of society, which occurs, for example, when education fails to make any contribution to the economy. Although he paid more attention to individual anomie, and how it can be absorbed into and dissolved by anomie structures, the institutional concept would appear to be extremely relevant to development problems. Labour markets and the transformation from ascribed to achieved status were mentioned as mechanisms to reduce institutional anomie.