Social Evolution, Economic Development and Culture: What It Means to Take Japan Seriously

Ronald Dore's enquiring mind, rigorous reasoning and comparative methodology have greatly enhanced our understanding of Japan. His insights from Japan have been deployed to generate fresh perspectives on Britain and other industrialized and developing countries. This careful selection of writings reflects his underlying concern with what light the study of Japan sheds on theoretical generalizations about how societies evolve and how economies work.

Social Evolution, Economic Development and Culture brings together Ronald Dore's key writings for the first time, making his work accessible across a wide range of social science disciplines. It produces a distinctive perspective with four interlinking themes - technology-driven social evolution, late development, culture and polemics. These are highly topical in the current context of rapid technological innovation and socio-economic change, globalization and accompanying policy choices.

The book provides a rich empirical and conceptual source for those interested in technology, socio-economic evolution and culture, and the ways in which they interact. Researchers, teachers and students in the fields of evolutionary economics, economic development, comparative education, institutional economics, political economy and economic and classical sociology (as well as Japanese studies) will find this volume invaluable reading.

The late Ronald Dore, formerly Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and Political Science and D. Hugh Whittaker, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford, UK