The Potential for Economic-Demographic Development: Whither Theory? (The Quaid-i-Azam Lecture)

Changes in stable socio-demographic systems, barring environmental accidents have occurred when major new production technologies are widely adopted and socially institutionalized. In most instances, this process of change is associated with a high degree of specialization and through it with the opening up of local markets and their integration into the wider regional and international system of trade and exchange. It must be emphasized that major technological changes are but one facet, albeit a central one, in the development of our ever-evolving technological civilization. But as major new “production technologies” take hold, a new system of human settlements and social relations evolves which is in harmony with the new wave of emerging “techniques”.