CONFLICT, SECURITY AND DEVELOPMENT: A DURKHEIMIAN APPROACH

This article addresses the problem of legitimacy in developing states, with significant peasant populations, where western aid agencies seek to introduce western values and standards as integral to the aid. We particularly address the concern for ‘security and stability’ in developing states, which is often sadly lacking. This we argue, is because there is a major failure to understand the concepts of legitimacy utilised by westerners, fundamental for security and stability, which differs from that understood in developing (peasant) societies. In particular we identify the western imposition of Weberian ideas of legitimacy in societies wholly unprepared for them. We do this via the social theory of Durkheim, which stresses how legitimacy in peasant society is rooted in the social and religious, whereas western Weberian is rooted in the individual and scientific, causing its rejection and conflict in non-Western societies. This in turn reflects a failure of western states and developers to grasp the role and importance of culture as the major defining (soft) variable in determining legitimacy.