The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East, by Daniel Lerner and Lucille W. Pevsner

Abstract

PrefaceA DECADE of effort went into the studies from which this booknwas made. Another half-decade has passed since the book appeared. Thesenfifteen years have witnessed the passing of traditional society from everyncontinent. No area of the world has resisted the attractions, despite thenincreasingly evident risks, of modernization. The emerging nations havenhastened to become new states and emulate the ways of modern societies.Haste has made waste; risks have turned into losses. The qwant: getnratioq has been upset -- since people have learned to want for more thannthey can get. As a result, the qrevolution of rising expectationsq we celebratednso confidently fifteen years ago has, in many places, become a qrevolution of rising frustrations.q Modernization, it now appears, is hardernthan one supposed. Why is this so? Two difficulties are paramount.One is a qtechnicalq difficulty -- or can be made to seem so. This is thenproblem of raising income fast and high enough so that poor people, whilenraising their own consumption to acceptable levels, will still have somethingnleft over to save. These savings -- so runs the technical argument -- will thenngo into investment that raises production levels, which in turn will againnraise both consumption and saving levels. In this way there will be generatedna self-sustaining cycle of growth to replace the vicious circle ofnpoverty in which most traditional societies still live.The trouble with this cogent technical solution is people. They don'tndo what, on any rational course of behavior, they should do. They wantnmore consumption, but they don't worry about saving and think little aboutnproductive investment. Instead of limiting their families, so that eachnmember can have a larger share to consume, they produce a populationnexplosion. As a result every gain in real income is promptly swallowed upnby the extra mouths to feed. This sort of behavior has led economists tonfocus their recent studies on qnon-economic factorsq and developmentnplanners to broaden their attention from technical assistance (as in PointnIV) to qhuman resourcesq (as in AID). We now recognize that modernization can succeed only in the measure that it meets its second paramountndifficulty -- its qpeople problems.qThis book's focus on modernization as people-problems thus is justnas valid now, and even more timely than it was six years ago. Were Inrewriting the book now, I would make changes to take account of events.nI would sound less unqualifiedly optimistic about the republican stabilitynof Turkey, for example, since the two recent military coups impose qualification.nBut the dogged insistence of the new regime on maintainingnconstitutional forms and improving democratic procedures reinforces the underlyingnconfidence that Turkey remains our best hope for republicannstability in the Middle East. I would be less concerned now by Nasser'snuse of external adventures to avoid the harder people-problems of internalnparticipation; instead I would congratulate him on having followed ournadvice. But these changes concern the transitory flow of the daily news -- and this book explicitly disclaimed the function of a current events reader.The central perspective has been validated by events of the past sixnyears. Few today will quarrel with the view of modernity as a qbehavioralnsystemq or with the proposition that modernization requires a systemic qtransformation of lifewaysq if growth is to be made self-sustaining. Nor donthe specific relations posited for the systemic transformation seem contrivedntoday, as they did to some readers six years ago.Even the charge of qethnocentrismq that was heard a few years back --n when the qUgly Americanq was in vogue -- has been seen through as ansuperficial slogan. The people-problems of modernization do include an qethnocentric predicament.q But in this predicament the ethnocentricitynof Americans aiding development programs abroad is only the minor term;nthe major term is the ethnocentricity of the developing peoples themselves.nThe last few years have shown us the cruelty of Indonesians in dealing withntheir own Eurasians, the hostility of most South Asians to their qOverseasnChinese,q the depredations by East Africans against Indians, the mercilessnconflicts between Greeks and Turks, the ethnocentric qEgyptianizationq that terrorized and penalized all minorities including the oldest Egyptiannstock -- the Christian Copts.n n n n n n n