Economic growth and technological progress. A bibliographical research to be useful for the historical sociology of development

Abstract

The «marriage between science and technology» (Landes) was historically preceded by a long period of «engagement», what leads us to believe that the recent development of scientific research and technological innovation and their integration in the processus of economic growth are, above all, the «product» of a previous economic growth. It is the start itself of the economic growth that in the end trails the start of research and innovation, at least as far as their direct use in production is concerned. On the other side the availability of manpower, the workers' qualifications and the salary pressures play a determinant role not only in adopting new techniques but also in the investment rates appointed to the scientific research. As these factors act more strongly in those countries where the economic growth has already touched a higher level, it becomes difficult to invert the dynamics inherent in technological progress. One must add that the analysis of the social movements in the peripheral countries shows that they very often are bearing a double contradictory exigence tending often to block the prosecution of the growth they had aided to set in motion: indeed the pressure to increase consumption impairs the economic growth. Even so there has alway been, after several decades, an indisputable diffusion of modern techniques of production in the peripheral countries, side by side with a growth of their productive forces. But this change seems to have been done up to now mainly according a processus of capital-widening the corresponding processus of which (capital-deepening) is always placed in the most advanced countries.