Family, religion and economic performance: A critique of cultural determinism

Arguing that some attitudes that may constitute an obstacle to the development process are culturally funded, cultural determinism pleads that underdevelopment is essentially generated endogenously, in other words, that people in developing countries, with their beliefs and their attitudes, are the more liable for the poverty in which they live. The simplicity of these arguments has seduced a large number of scholars but what seems to be a cultural brake on economic development could be explained otherwise. This critique of cultural determinism's arguments attempts to supply an alternative version of the interaction of culture and development, from which power, class, domination and the international division of labour will not be excised. In order to simplify this study only two of the cultural features most often referred to will be brought into focus: religion and family and patterns of kinship.