Introduction

It is a striking fact that one of the leading scholarly journals in economics concerned with the economic problems of developing countries bears the title Economic Development and Cultural Change. Few of the articles published in this journal deal directly with culture as such. Yet the acknowledgement is there in the title that in some fundamental sense culture, however it is to be interpreted, underlies the development process and will have some important relationships with economic behaviour in poor countries. The implication is that strategies to alleviate poverty in the Third World and to promote economic advancement will need to have regard for the processes of cultural change which may be critical in determining their success or failure.