Abstract

Development and modernisation processes are amid the fundamental themes, if not the constitutive ones, of classical sociological thought. In an attempt to spell out conditions, characteristics and consequences of the economic and social development of countries and contexts, scholars have conceptualised them in various ways. Recently, development theories themselves have undergone significant changes. Most striking is that the the most meaningful contributions of the sociology of development are being made in the field of economic sociology. A considerable change has thus come about: whereas, until the 1970s, economic sociology was to development sociology what species was to kind, more recent contributions have shown that this analogy has been inverted and that development sociology is now considered to be a particular expression of economic sociology. The article spells put the main analytical consequences this new centrality of economic sociology in the field of development analysis.