NATURE AND SCOPE OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

NATURE AND SCOPE OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Social and economic development is a subject within the general discipline called development studies. In development studies, there are other subjects or sub-units like economics, politics, administration and socio-cultural studies.

This subject is primarily concerned with the third world countries or developing countries. Western countries began to prescribe the methodology for the development of the third world countries. Social and economic development therefore became a subject concerned with the improvement of the living condition of the new nations., the developing countries have thus, come to accept the steps or copying the steps taken by the western world as a result to equate development to westernization.

There is general suffering in the human world. These suffering include rate of infant mortality, malnutrition, disease, unemployment, etc. however, different countries have different levels of the problems. These problems are unavoidable and every must go or pass through them at a particular point in time in their course of development.

Scope and nature of social and economic development research takes an interdisciplinary approach. As a subject matter, it tries to give an insight into the development status of countries and the problems associated with it. The subject matter also focuses attention on the activities of social discipline such as economics, geography, sociology, politics etc, to draw source of study and for comparative analysis. The nature of the study deals with the global resources and types of understanding of the social and cultural attribute of a society as enhanced policy decisions

It tries to locate resources of political power and its discipline as well as its improvement because a society that is highly stratified is explosive. As a discipline, it helps us to understand the development strategies of nations or state and why some are succeeding and some are not. This means that the main focus of this discipline is on the understanding of the meaning of concepts like development, underdevelopment, economic growth, imperialism, colonialism, the role of government etc.

That is general living standard. Those less developed countries or continent are Africa, Latin America and Asia. They live in abject poverty, lack of shelter, lack of food, poor health condition, poor educational level, low income and their prospect is uncertain and bleak as a result of so many factors.

Unfortunately, Nigeria belongs to those categories of nations of the world where degradation and general poverty is the order of the day. The questions therefore asked by social and economic development are:

     i.               What causes this disparity n the living standard between the rich and the poor nations?

   ii.               Are the any internal bottlenecks hindering development and progress of this part of the world and what causes them?

 iii.               What strategies and processes should be approved or adopted to adder the problems?

These goals or objectives of any social being, community or society is the improvement in his or their standard of living and to make the best out of his or their environment. The primary concern of social and economic development therefore is to answer certain basic questions like:

Ø Why are some richer than others?

Ø Why some countries are called developed while other called developing?

Ø What is so special about the developed countries?

Ø Is there some basic bottle neck that hinders the development of the third world countries?

We have to know where the society has come from, where it is now and which character we are to take.