Critical Issues in Community Development: : an Introduction to Rural and Urban Sociology

By Zacchaeus Ogunnika

The book is a critical analysis of fundamental issues in Urban and rural community development. It aims at filling the gap in the paucity of books in Rural and urban Sociology hence its subtitle An introduction to urban and Rural Sociology. It approaches the issue from the area of stratification and social inequality and dwelt in large part on the human variables in the rural and urban communities. The major aim is to lay bare the impediments to the development of the rural dwellers and the urban poor. It carefully find a correlation between the activities of Elites in the fields of politics,intellectuals and the power class and the plight of the urban poor, women,and rural dwellers. Though it did not produce a chapter on what is to be done but this is implied in the text in every chapter that the solution to the problem is not an appeal to the benevolence of the elites to allow the poor to have access to the crumbles falling from their tables, but that the affected should take the bull by the horns and develop themselves through many methods - political independence, economic emancipation through cooperatives and the like.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Apr 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781490765679

Zacchaeus Ogunnika

Dr Ogunnika obtained his doctorate degree from the prestigious New School for Social Research where he was introduced to critical thinking and social analysis by the renowned professors Stanford Lyman and Arthur Vidich. He also attended the New York University where he obtained the Masters degree in Sociology. He benefited a lot from his long time professor and friend, Professor Akinsola Akiwowo, who imbibed in him the sprit of unification of the ideographic and nomothetic methodologies in social science through the"indigenism" (Akiwowo's project) method of sociological perspective. Dr Ogunnika believes in methodological hybridization in opposition to methodological monism in the positivistic sense. He is presently a full professor at Virginia State University, Petersburg. He has published widely in the ares of Methods, Theories,Organization Ethnic and Race, Urban and Rural, Stratification and Inequality. He is presently the Editor of "International Journal for Social Science Research and Practice" and has served in the editorial board of "International Journal for Culture, Politics and Society".

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© Copyright 2017 Zacchaeus Ogunnika.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-6566-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-6568-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-6567-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017902078

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Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 Theoretical And Methodological Issues In Rural And Urban Community Development

The Dependency Approach

Rural And Urban

Approaches To Community Development

Chapter 2 Intellectuals And Community Development Policy The Nigerian Case

Theoretical Orientations On The Roles Of The Intellectuals

The Nigerian Intellectual

Intellectuals’ Perception Of Themselves

The Rationalization Role

Chapter 3 Urban Ecological Paradigm And Urban Planning: A Critique Of The Conventional Approach

Why Human Ecology?

An Exposition

The City Plan: The Human Ecologists’ View

Effects Of Human Ecology On Urban Planning

The Future

Chapter 4 Exogenous Issues In Rural Development

Victim Blaming

External Factors

Rural Modernizing Institutions

Policies

The Colonial

Development Plans

The Future

Chapter 5 Nigerian Governments’ Fiscal Crisis And Community Development

Fiscal Crisis

Mixed Economy

Causes Of Fiscal Crisis And Attempted Solutions

Inadequacy Of The Response

Alternative System

Chapter 6 Cash Crop And Food Shortage In Nigeria: Examining Food Development Strategy

Cash Crop And Imperialism

Comparative Advantage Theory And International Exploitation

The Government Policies

Foreign Exchange

Import Compared To Exports: Case Of Cocoa

What Is To Be Done

Chapter 7 The Nigerian River Basins And Community Development

The Small Farmers

Rbda And The Farmers

Rural And Agricultural Development Before Rbda

Rbdas, Past And Present

The Future

Chapter 8 High Technology And Rural Resources Development

Objective Of The Study

The Research Setting

Method Of Procedure

Findings And Discussion

i.   Human Resources Development

ii.   Association

iii.   Political And Social Awareness

iv.   Rural Natural Resources

Summary And Conclusion

Chapter 9 Government Institutional Linkages With Farmers In Irrigation Development And Production

Government Institutional Linkages

The River Basin Development Authorities (Rbda)

Performance Of The Rbdas As Institutional Linkages With Farmers So Far An Appraisal

Conclusion And Recommendation

Chapter 10 Ethnicity And Market Behavior

Introduction

The Problem

The Setting

Method Of Procedure

Findings

The Market Group

Organization

Discussions And Conclusions

Chapter 11 Cooperatives And Community Development

Cooperative Movement

Rural Development Policies

The Promise Of Cooperative Movement To Rural Dweller

Economic Benefits

Social Benefits

Problems And Prospects

Conclusion

Chapter 12 Issues In Women Community Development Organizations

Coordination And Women Development Program

Ingredients Of Coordinating Activities

The Coordinating Agency

The Process Of Coordination

Conclusion And Recommendations

FOREWORD

Experts have agreed that most communities of the world, especially in the developing societies, are largely rural, as more people reside in the rural areas. It has also been established that the urban dwellers mostly have their roots there. This fact highlights the phenomenon of rural-urban interpenetration, which is more prominent in African societies than in any other parts of the world. The significance of this phenomenon helps us understand the importance of this book, Critical Issues in Community Development: An Introduction to Rural and Urban Sociology.

The book treats the seen but not always noticed issues in our rural and urban communities. It looks inside our farms and rural development organizations, especially the river basins, and offers a critique of the bases of the theory of urban development. An interesting point is the assault of the author on the evolutionary base of urban planning which turned our cities into unpleasant abodes of men.

I was fascinated by the chapter on ethnicity and market behaviors of the Nigerians. This account gives us an understanding of the situation from the actor’s side.

The book attempts to cover most of the topical areas in the field. Of note is the concentration of the later chapter on the issue of women and the disabled in our communities. The treatment of the issues, in my opinion, is timely and topical if one views the level and the direction of development in the sub-Saharan region today.

I commend the author, Dr. Zacchaeus Ogunnika, for a job well done. His method is down-to-earth and a departure from those of previous writers, as it represents what he calls the actor’s side approach. It enables us to understand the issues from the standpoint of the affected rather than that of the observer alone.

I therefore recommend this book to the academic community, the policy makers, and the general reader who is eager to learn something about rural and community development.

Dr. Adeyemi Adekoya

Professor of Information and Computer Sciences

Virginia State University

Petersburg, Virginia, USA

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My debt in writing this book is big, but because of human limitation, the most may not be acknowledged.

First, I thank the Almighty God, who made it possible for me to have good health and the ability to write the book.

I thank my students in community development, rural sociology, urban sociology, and introduction to sociology classes for their numerous questions, which formed the basis of this book.

I am indebted to my children, who encouraged me a lot to continue writing so as to make them have something to emulate. My son Dr. Olumuyiwa Ogunnika, an electrical engineer, always surprises me when he offers advice on my writings and even the title of the books. This shows the beauty of American education where students are not one-dimensional. My English-trained specialist daughter Olutoyin Ogunnika did a lot of editing as to my use of words to create a reader-friendly book. My son Olufemi, an engineer, and his wife, Monica Ogunnika, helped in editing and formatting the tables of the book. My daughter Oluseun, a Nigerian business trained, always called to ask for the progress of the book. I received a lot of encouragement from her husband, Mayowa Omosa.

I am grateful to all the authors of the books I referred to in this work; I love their approaches even when I do not agree with them. Their pioneering activities helped this work to see the light of day.

I am grateful to Barrister Oni and Brother Olu Ajayi, who always gave me encouragements and acted as spiritual mentors to me. They provided most of the financial support in the time I could have crashed under the load of shortage of funds to continue.

I am indeed grateful to my wife, Olabisi Ogunnika, who always stood by me as the earthly pillar of my life. My leaning on her in times of slight headache or even a major disturbance, when her gentle voice and care always relieved me of my pain, contributed in no small way to the success of this book. She also read the chapters and effected corrections. I am sincerely grateful to her.

I am highly indebted to Asia Frazier, my very intelligent student, for her love, friendship, and loyalty and assistance in editing the book.

I am grateful to Dr. Levi Nwachuku of Lincoln University, who was responsible for my thinking of writing on this subject. He is a friend in millions and had contributed a lot to my academic success in this country.

I owe a lot of debt to my professors, dead or alive: Professors Oloko and Okediji gave me the initial academic start in Nigeria at the University of Lagos; Drs. Stanford Lyman, Arthur Vidich, and Wolf Hydebrand completed the work at the New York University and the New School for Social Research in the USA. My success in life depends on the training they gave me to a very large extent.

I also thank my parents, Chief Gabriel and Jolaade Ogunnika, for giving me the spirit of hard work and trust in God Almighty. I am indebted to Oyetunde Ogunnika, my late brother, who took over the responsibilities of my education after the death of my father. Last but not the least, my thanks go to Mokerrom Hossain, Joyce Edwards, Zoe Spencer, and Ghyassudin Ahmed, who are my colleagues at the Virginia State University, for the academic-friendly environment they have created.

Grisel Campbell the department administrative specialist deserves my thanks for the technological and administrative assistance she provided.

Zacchaeus O. Ogunnika

South Chesterfield, Virginia, USA

March 8 2017

CHAPTER 1

THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES IN RURAL AND URBAN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

Central to our discussion in this book is the concept development, which is very difficult to be given a definition that is generally acceptable, owing to the fact that its meaning is affected by human values, intellectual orientation, and differences in schools of thought and ideologies. In addition, it is very difficult to describe a process as absolutely developing because what is regarded as a development in a particular situation might be underdevelopment in another. A situation that has developed a society might be what has underdeveloped another, as is evident in Walter Rodney’s (1982) account of how Europe underdeveloped Africa. He believes that the process that underdeveloped Africa was the same one that developed Europe.

Two major schools of development, the modernization and the dependency, are identified in this book. The modernization school conceives development as becoming modern and believes that development can be quantified and compared, resulting to a universal measurement for a comparative analysis of all societies irrespective of culture, geographical location, and history. The school agrees with Talcott Parsons’s evolutionary universals, which Parsons believes are the same all over societies. The school submits, on that basis, that the indices of development are the same all over the world. The modernization school also believes that modernization is the same across all societies. Development is therefore conceived as a process that occurs in degrees, and a society can only be more or less developed. The difference between the rural and the urban in terms of development is considered in terms of degrees or sometimes arranged as a continuum.

The modernization school therefore constructed a scale by which rural and urban development is measured. This is called the rural-urban continuum. On the continuum, cities and societies are placed on particular positions on the basis of certain characteristics or variables that are present in them. The modernization school believes in what is called an index gap approach to the solutions of the problems of rural and urban development. According to this approach, a society that considers itself not developed enough should measure itself against a developed society to isolate those variables that it lacked but are present in the developed ones. It is believed that the development of the developed society was possible because of the presence of those variables that the undeveloped lacked. The acquisition of those variables by the underdeveloped society will make it catch up with the developed society. This school believes that this is true for countries and nations of the world as well as for rural and urban societies. Rural and urban development planning, to the planners utilizing this approach, is therefore very simple. A society or any human settlement that believes it is not developed enough should just identify a developed settlement, county, or city and just make a list of what the developed one has and try to acquire them. This would bring development to the undeveloped.

This approach is too simple and also beset with problems. It has failed to recognize the ways of life of different societies and the different needs that are being dictated by these different cultures. If rigidly followed in rural and urban development planning, it might lead to underdevelopment. This theory has been described as evolutionary in nature (Nisbet 1977; Teggart 1977; Lyman 1978; Ogunnika 1985). It tries to prescribe a general solution to all problems of development in all nations and societies. To develop adequately, societies only need to acquire what McClelland identified as N-Ach, or achievement motivation variable. Inkeles called them the overall modernity variables, while Hagen believes that the development of any society depends on innovators. A society is therefore urban or rural according to the degree of human beings who are carriers of the above variables, as they will eventually produce other physical and social variables, making the societies where they are found or where they are not found either developed or undeveloped, rural or urban. Societies that lacked them would surely be rural, as their absence will lead into lack of physical variables of urbanization. Urbanization therefore is equated with modernization and development, while rural society is seen as undeveloped.

The Dependency Approach

The dependency school faults the modernization school’s approach to development. In contradistinction from the view of the modernization school, the dependency school believes that development is external to any society. It was argued that the cause of underdevelopment of rural societies should not be blamed on the rural dwellers but on factors and processes in the urban areas that are being allowed to happen by the political power elites who benefit from the exploitation of the rural dwellers (Ogunnika).

Rural and urban development planning, according to this approach, should not be concentrated only on identifying variables present in a supposed developed society or nation that are believed to be absent in others. Rather, development planning in rural/urban societies should identify the societies (within or without the general society) that the particular society is interacting with. We should then determine who benefits from such relationship and try to halt the process by which one benefits and the other loses. It is the parasitic relationship between the developed and the underdevelopment that rural/urban development planners should be looking for. This school believes that a rural development planner should try to ask questions like What are the main occupations of the people? Who buys the products of the farmers? Are the middlemen from the urban areas paying a fair price for the products? The planner should be willing to find out whether the contractor who has been awarded any rural project was using the correct material he would have used had the project been in an urban area.

Development therefore is seen differently by the two schools. The modernization