Knowledge and Use of Developmental Thinking About

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the extent that ordinary people in Argentina understand and believe the ideas of development, progress and modernity and use these ideas in evaluating the world in general, and family behaviour in particular. We ask whether the concept of development and modernity is known and understood by ordinary people and the extent to which ordinary people use developmental language in describing societies and family organisations. Ordinary people’s knowledge and adherence to the ideas of development, progress, and modernity are essential components of Thornton’s (2005, 2001) theory that developmental idealism is an important source of social change in many parts of the world. Thornton argues that the ideas of development, progress, and modernity were used by scholars for centuries to interpret the world and were combined with the conclusions of social sciences to form a package of ideas – that Thornton labels developmental idealism – to guide and motivate subsequent social change. Moreover, Thornton posits that the ideas of development, progress, and modernity and the propositions of developmental idealism have been have been widely disseminated and have been especially important in changing family life and demographic behaviour in much of the world. This paper presents results from a study conducted in Argentina that was specifically designed to evaluate whether ordinary people are familiar with the ideas of the developmental paradigm and the extent that they adhere to or reject the propositions of developmental idealism. This paper focuses the attention on the conceptual component of the framework and examines people’s familiarity