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A Theory of Sustainable Sociocultural and Economic Development
A Theory of Sustainable Sociocultural and Economic Development Mohamed Rabie
A THEORY OF SUSTAINABLE SOCIOCULTURAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Copyright © Mohamed Rabie 2016 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2016 978-1-137-57951-5 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission. In accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 2016 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of Nature America, Inc., One New York Plaza, Suite 4500, New York, NY 10004-1562. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. ISBN: 978-1-349-88759-0 E-PDF ISBN: 978-1-137-57952-2 DOI: 10.1007/978-1-137-57952-2 Distribution in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world is by Palgrave Macmillan®, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rabi’, Muhammad, 1940– author. A theory of sustainable sociocultural and economic development / Mohamed Rabie. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Economic development—Social aspects. 2. Sustainable development—Social aspects. 3. Economics—Sociological aspects. I. Title. HD75.R325 2015 306.3—dc23 2015027278 A catalogue record for the book is available from the British Library.
To children of the world who sleep hungry And The women and men who cry for them
Contents
Introduction
ix
1
A Personal Note
1
2
Meaning of Development
7
3
Meaning of Sustainable Development
17
4
Culture and Society
33
5
Development of Human Societies
45
6
Economy and Society
67
7
Economy and Globalization
81
8
Perspectives on Development
95
9
Cultural Theory of Development
115
10
Obstacles to Development
127
11
Education and Development
145
12
Stages of Sociocultural Transformation
161
13
Toward Sustainable Societal Development
185
14
A World in Transition
207
15
Concluding Remarks
215
Notes
225
Bibliography
233
Index
239
Introduction
Developing nations in general are facing serious economic, social, cultural, and political challenges that complicate their efforts to develop their economies and join the industrial world. The hundreds of billions of dollars loaned or granted to them over the last five decades by the World Bank, foreign governments, and other international aid agencies have failed to change their economic, social, or political structures and improve the quality of people’s lives in a meaningful way. The far-reaching structural economic adjustments imposed on many of them by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) seem to have provided no relief, particularly to the poor. Consequently, most nations continue to be trapped in a cycle of poverty, economic stagnation, high unemployment, political corruption, and often violence as well. World Bank reports indicate that about 800 million people still live on less than one dollar a day, and more than 2.8 billion live on less than two dollars a day. Recent international reports indicate that the number of the world’s poor has increased since the Great Recession of 2008. There is no doubt that the financial aid and technical assistance provided by the industrial nations and international institutions have helped stabilize the situation in many African, Asian, and Latin American states and have prevented further deterioration. Yet such assistance seems to have benefited the rich much more than it helped the poor, and empowered corrupt rulers and officials rather than women and the weak, causing the income, wealth, and power gaps in society to widen and deepen. By so doing, foreign aid may have made genuine social, cultural, economic, and political transformation more difficult than before. The World Bank, for example, has failed, after some seventy years, to help a single underdeveloped nation develop its economy and industrialize; it, therefore, still has no success story to tell. Meanwhile, theories of development written since WWII to explain underdevelopment, identify its causes, and draw road maps capable of helping poor nations achieve sustainable development were exposed as inadequate, if not harmful.
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Introduction
This simply means that the assumptions that development theories and World Bank policies have used were either inadequate or unrealistic. Even the concept of “economic development” is misconceived, because economy is only one facet of life in society, and it does not function in a vacuum. Problems facing Third World nations today are economic, political, and, above all, sociocultural; no theory of development has built its assumptions on such facts, and no international aid agency has tried to deal with these issues in a comprehensive manner. This clearly suggests that new development theories are needed to take all facets of societal life into consideration. Thinking that a plan can cause economic development in a country without a similar plan to transform the values, traditions, attitudes, institutions, and political and education systems of society is like trying to treat certain symptoms of a disease without knowing the real cause of the patient’s ailment. Due to the failure of old theories of development and the importance given today to the concept of “sustainable development,” serious attempts to envision new development theories seem to have stopped. Most books written recently are directed more toward addressing issues of sustainable development rather than the development process itself. There is no doubt that there are many useful lessons to be learned from dealing with particular issues of sustainable development. However, it is important to investigate issues of income inequality and its impact on the overall health of national economies, poverty and its impact on social peace, freedom and its impact on releasing the potentials of people to be creative and innovative, and education and its impact on the development of human resources and labor productivity. Investigating such issues helps us gain a better understanding of the causes of underdevelopment, political and economic corruption, and the spread of violence in many parts of the world. Nevertheless, single-issue studies contribute little to meeting the need for national and global sustainable developmental theories. This book is an attempt to develop a new theory of sustainable societal development capable of identifying the major obstacles hindering poor nations’ development in general, and the sociocultural and political obstacles in particular, place them in their proper historical contexts, and address them comprehensively. And while recognizing that obstacles facing poor nations are many and complex in nature, I believe that the roots of most obstacles are sociocultural and thus require a sociocultural approach rather than a purely economic one. I further believe that sociocultural transformation needs economic change to succeed; and economic restructuring requires sociocultural transformation to achieve its objectives. In other words, economic restructuring cannot succeed unless it is preceded or accompanied by sociocultural transformation that includes the political system.
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To theorize is to generalize. But in the case of development, generalization is often inappropriate because each country has its own unique set of problems and challenges and its own particular culture and social, economic, and political structures that require a somewhat different approach. Nonetheless, all developing nations live in the agricultural age or are in transition from the agricultural to the industrial age; therefore, they have similar cultures that nurture similar attitudes toward work, time, life, and social change. Cultures of nations living in the same civilization, as will be explained later, tend to be similar in content and character and to play largely the same roles in societal life. Therefore, generalization in this case becomes possible and rather appropriate. I hope that this book makes the complex issues of underdevelopment and sustainable development easier to understand and the path to deal with them comprehensively less difficult to chart. Mohamed Rabie
CHAPTER 1
A Personal Note
B
ecause this book is about development that draws its lessons from the past as it tries to change the present and chart a promising path to the future, I feel the need to explain my connection to history and the transformations of societies, cultures, economies, and civilizations it witnessed. I have been fortunate to experience in my own life the development of human societies over time and to witness firsthand the evolution of civilizations and participate in some of their important events. Because civilizations go through difficult transitional periods before transformations are completed, living the life I have lived has given me a unique, probably unprecedented opportunity to witness the three major transitional periods in human history and to feel the agonies and hopes of people in such circumstances. My writings, therefore, are based on real life and are not a matter of imagination, intellectual curiosity, or scientific research only. I was born in a serene, beautiful agricultural community where neither electricity nor running water nor modern sanitation systems were available in peoples’ homes. The house in which I was raised had a swimming pool and a few rooms and was surrounded by orange trees and flowers. People in the village used donkeys and mules to plow the land, plant the seeds, harvest the products, and transport them to local markets. The community in which I spent most of my childhood was probably quite similar to a typical European agricultural community during the early decades of the nineteenth century, with a few exceptions, such as the absence of feudalism and the existence of cars, radios, and water wells operated by mechanical pumps. As I was growing up and becoming aware of my social, cultural, and economic environments, war erupted and caused my family and my generation to become refugees. The refugee camp in which I spent about five years of my youth was outside an agricultural town at the edge of a desolate, hot desert. The first two years were lived in shacks rather than tents because no
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international organization paid attention to our plight. During these two years, my older sister and I were assigned by our father the task of spending the weekends roaming the neighboring desert to collect dry and dying bushes and shrubs to make fire for cooking. During late winter and early spring, the task was expanded to include roaming the hills of the mountains to collect wild vegetables to feed the family. Two of the vegetables we so many times collected are now domesticated, and every time I taste them I remember the days and events of a childhood lived as a hunter-gatherer who hunted no animals but gathered a lot of vegetables and wood for making fire. Our normal day used to start with the sunrise and end with the sunset. Other circumstances surrounding my life led me to share with nomads their food, listen to their folk songs and old stories, spend time in their tents, observe their daily life, and even go with shepherds about their daily tasks. It was a life that represented the first stage of the development of human society on its way to civilization. The way of life of the tribal people led them to move from one place to another in an attempt to go around time and to ignore its imperatives; as a consequence, tribal society was unable to develop a conception of time, which caused tribal people to live tens of thousands of years without making any noticeable progress in their way of life and state of life. Having been uprooted from a rather affluent and secure existence and made to live a life of abject poverty in an insecure environment caused me to become aware of the new life and its deep transformation, and this led me to take nothing for granted and to evaluate every change and every development with a critical mind that has never stopped thinking and wandering beyond the present and into the unknown. As a consequence, I was able to observe the change in the speed of time from near zero in the refugee camp and the tribal tent to the speed of light in the new, fast-emerging knowledge society. By the time I entered high school, my family had moved to Jericho, which is believed to be the oldest city in the world. Nevertheless, all nine of us lived in a one-bedroom apartment that had none of the basic modern amenities. The family, moreover, had neither the money nor the space to buy a desk, a chair, or any piece of furniture that is today taken for granted in most agricultural communities. For seven consecutive years, I had to lie on my stomach for approximately an hour a day to do my homework. My father rented and cultivated a small piece of land on which we lived and whose produce provided most of the food the family needed to survive and save a little money to support a mostly subsistence living; all children who were old enough to help were required to do so. Domesticated turkey, chicken, pigeon, and rabbits provided the meat the family needed to supplement its mostly vegetarian diet. Picking the produce early in the season and taking it to the market early in the morning is the way to guarantee selling your product and getting a good
A Personal Note
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price for it. Because of this fact, I had to help pick several types of vegetables most days of the year before going to school. The okra and eggplant in particular were painful to pick; they have little thorns you cannot see but you can feel. Yes, I cried countless time, but my father never saw my tears; the pain he would have felt would have been many times the pain I felt. Upon graduation from high school, I received a grant from the United Nations to study in Egypt and live in Cairo, one of the largest and most vibrant cities of the Third World at the time. The trip to Cairo gave me my first opportunity to fly in a plane and spend a night in a hotel in Beirut, Lebanon. Living and studying in Cairo gave me a chance to observe affluence and abject poverty coexisting side by side and to watch modern and primitive cultures living their separate, estranged lives in one place. Crossing the bridge from one side of the Nile River to the other, you cover thousands of years of societal development: on one side, men and women mingle freely; on the other, an innocent smile to a stranger could cost a young woman her life. Third World nationalism and socialism were thriving in Cairo along with anti-imperialism in an atmosphere that inspired the young and gave hope to the deprived. No one could live a full life in Cairo at the time without being involved in politics. It was only there that I was able to live in a house with electricity, running cold and hot water, modern sanitation, and even a working phone. Life in that city represented what I call the transitional period separating two civilizations—the agricultural and the industrial. Five years later, I received a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, DAAD), which took me to Germany to witness the so-called “German economic miracle” that pulled the country from the devastation of WWII. And this gave me the opportunity to closely watch the development of the German economy, see the work ethics of the German people, and thus live for almost two years in a mature industrial society. In Germany, I pursued a graduate degree and worked for a few months in a publishing house. Most workers there were Greek women who spoke almost no German, which made communications with them rather difficult but interesting. Working with those beautiful, young, simple women enabled me to realize that work ethics can improve tremendously when channeled through a system of management and challenged by fair rewards. Most of my free time was spent visiting as many German cities, towns, and villages as possible and immersing myself in the culture of the land. My life in Germany, in fact, and the relationships I made, gave me a priceless opportunity to move in my thoughts and awareness from the tribal, hardly civilized society, to an industrial, highly civilized and organized society. In 1965, I moved to the United States, where I completed my higher education, received a PhD degree in Economics, and taught at two American universities
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before going back to the Middle East. While living and teaching in the United States, I witnessed two of the most important social and political movements in US history: the civil rights movement and the anti–Vietnam War movement. In 1970, I left the United States to teach at Kuwait’s newly established university. While teaching there, I managed to change the university’s education system and the curriculum and introduce coeducation for the first time in Kuwait’s history. Through my participation in the cultural life of society, I learned how immigrant workers lived and viewed life conditions in that part of the world. For six consecutive years, I witnessed a tribal society losing the major characteristics of its traditional culture and way of life as oil money was transforming it into what I call a “petroleum society.” This is a society whose roots were anchored in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, while its aspirations were touching the twenty-first century. The Kuwaiti people thought and behaved at the time as if they could buy anything they wished to have and employ anyone to serve them without giving them any rights except the right to get paid. This petroleum society was a phenomenon that set the stage for the development of a unique society that history has never known in the past—a society that could buy anything to consume without having to produce anything in return. A study by Stanford University students conducted in the 1970s reported that Kuwaiti employees of the government spent on average about 12 minutes a day on the job. In fact, the separation of the culture of consumption from the culture of production was born in Kuwait, and from there it traveled to other oil-exporting countries and to countries that rely heavily on remittances from their citizens working abroad. As a consequence, many countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America have failed to improve the work ethics of their populations due to the separation of the culture of consumption from the culture of production. In 1976, I returned to the United States to teach first at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and then at other universities. While living in Washington, I witnessed the transformational impact of the Reagan and Clinton years on the US economy as well as on American society and culture; it was an opportunity to witness civilization changes for the second time and live through the transitional period that led a mature industrial society into the age of knowledge. In addition to teaching at a few American universities, I got involved in business, research, and writing and publishing books covering several topics; I have so far published 37 books in English and Arabic, and by the time this book reaches the market, the number of published books will exceed 40. Between 1998 and 2000, I spent my time shuttling between Washington and Germany, giving lectures at German universities and research institutes
A Personal Note
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there and advising Erfurt University, which was being reopened after more than two centuries of closure due to the religious wars of the seventeenth century. In 2002, I went to Morocco, where I spent two years teaching at Al Akhawayn University. Then I lived two more years in Jordan. So for the second time in forty years, I had the opportunity to observe how life changes during a transitional period separating the agricultural from the industrial age, where globalization has caused traditional cultures to lose most of their age-old traits and characteristics and be deformed beyond recognition. Since boyhood, my life has been an ever-evolving, most fascinating story that has taken me to many interesting places in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and North and South America, enabling me to look back at the primitive roots from which I started and explore the unknown future in my thoughts and ways of living. Since I graduated from college, I have continued to travel, give lectures, write articles, and publish books. Thus my perspective goes beyond the ups and downs of ordinary life in one society, one region, or one civilization, and my connections to all the places and historical phases I have experienced firsthand have continued to fascinate me and challenge my intellectual capacities. As a result, I can say with confidence that I have experienced, within my lifetime, starting with the tribal age and into the knowledge age, the life of more than five hundred generations, going back to preagricultural times. It is a kind of life that probably no other person has lived, and no one will ever live such a life again, because some of the times I lived have come and gone and will never come back again.
CHAPTER 2
Meaning of Development
D
evelopment is basically an economic concept that has positive connotations; it involves the application of certain economic and technical measures to utilize available resources to instigate economic growth and improve people’s quality of life. In the 1950s and 1960s, development was largely referred to as economic growth, which meant a quantitative rather than qualitative change in economic performance. Consequently, development theories were designed to activate and accelerate the process of economic growth and move developing nations along the path charted by the industrial ones of the West, from relying primarily on agricultural activity to relying primarily on industrial production and trade. It is worth mentioning, however, that since my days as a graduate student, I have argued that the “economic development” concept was misconceived from the beginning. No plan or amount of money can develop an economy if it leaves out culture, which governs the attitudes and the ways of thinking of the people who would be managing the proposed development strategies and programs. In the 1970s, a new concept associated with development emerged, claiming that the rates of economic growth of the world economy could not be sustained at the then prevailing levels because arable land, water, and most other natural resources were being depleted at fast rates that could not be sustained for long. In 1987, the Brundtland Report was published and made “sustainable development” a key concept in development studies as well as in the work of the World Bank and other organizations engaged in development. The report warned against the depletion of natural resources and called for economic growth strategies that could be sustained without harming the environment or compromising the welfare of future generations. Subsequently, it was acknowledged that development is both a quantitative increase in economic production and a qualitative improvement in life conditions, while protecting the environment.
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As a result, development emerged as a complex concept that remains hard to define in universally acceptable terms. However, one cannot write a book on development without providing a workable definition that explains the essence of the development process and its basic objectives: Development is a comprehensive societal process to move the underdeveloped nations from their state of economic backwardness and slow sociocultural change to a dynamic state characterized by sustained economic growth and sociocultural and political transformation that improves the quality of life of all members of society.
As such, people become the major agents of development and the main beneficiaries of change produced by it. Joseph Stiglitz argues that development is about transforming the lives of people, not just their economies, and, therefore, development involves every aspect of society; it engages the efforts of everyone: markets, governments, NGOs, cooperatives, and not-for-profit institutions.1 This simply means that no development strategy can achieve its objectives unless it views development as a comprehensive societal process that covers all aspects of life and involves all major social, cultural, economic, and political actors in society. It is through such a process that traditional agricultural societies should seek to build modern economies that depend less on farming the land and more on manufacturing and services. In other words, economic development is a societal process to move people and their economic and social structures—and cultural, political, and educational institutions—from the agricultural age into the industrial age, while ensuring that the sacrifices and benefits of development are shared fairly by all members of society. Thus, development can only be achieved when society acquires the capacity to utilize its human and natural resources efficiently to improve the quality of life for all citizens. Due to its comprehensive nature, development seeks to improve life conditions in ways that help free people and their creative energies from all constraints. It also seeks to enable people to pursue personal goals within legitimate political and legal frameworks that guarantee fairness, equality of opportunity, freedom, and social justice. Development, therefore, is both a vision to create new, much-improved conditions of life and a program to transform economic, political, and sociocultural conditions to correspond to the envisioned vision. A well-conceived strategy that defines the goals society seeks to accomplish, identifies the obstacles it faces, and acknowledges the sacrifices society has to make must be articulated before any work is done. A development strategy is a set of plans and programs to reach certain economic, political, cultural, educational, and social goals deemed desirable by
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society in a peaceful manner. No strategy can work if it lacks the capability to motivate the social forces of economic change and sociocultural transformation and fails to convince people that their participation in the development process is the safest and shortest way to realizing their individual dreams and collective goals. The objectives articulated and the priorities set by the strategy should seek to give hope to the hopeless and direction to people without a sense of direction; the strategy, therefore, should be pursued as a program of change in which everyone plays a role and feels that he or she has something substantial to gain. Since development is a process of economic and sociocultural transformation, the new reality that would eventually emerge from this process would be tentative and transitory. The fast pace of change that all societies are witnessing today has made our world a world in transition, causing societal goals to become moving targets that need to be defined and redefined continuously. Therefore, for societal development to succeed and achieve its objectives, change must be perceived as a never-ending process of sociocultural and economic transformation. “Development is about processes of enrichment, empowerment and participation.”2 Several theories have been written to explain underdevelopment and development and construct processes to transform poor economies. Development theories in general tend to focus on agricultural, largely traditional societies with the aim of transforming them into industrial ones through the launching of infrastructure projects, improved education, modern economic organization, and manufacturing. Since each civilization, like the agricultural civilization, produces its own particular culture, society, and economy, as will be explained later, the movement from the agricultural age to the industrial age causes a profound transformation of agricultural culture. Without an understanding of this fact and what it entails, the role of culture in societal life will remain subject to speculation and conflicting views, causing development efforts to often lead to frustration rather than to meeting people’s expectations. Culture and Change In claiming that culture is the most important variable influencing economic development, Francis Fukuyama emphasizes the role played by culture in the development of the industrializing Asian nations, particularly China. Fukuyama wrote, “Confucianism has defined the character of social relations within the Chinese society over the last two and a half millennia.”3 Confucian ethics, he argued, underpin social trust, which, when predominant in society, creates the social capital that drives economic development and guarantees
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success. Thomas Sowell, in contrast, uses China as an example to explain the negative role that culture plays in society. He wrote, “No nation has had a longer history of cultural preeminence in the world than China. Yet this past glory has itself been one of the major obstacles to China’s modernization.”4 This apparent contradiction between the views of Fukuyama and Sowell suggests that there is a general agreement on the important role culture plays in societal life, but there is no agreement regarding the nature of that role. While Fukuyama sees Chinese culture as an agent of change and progress, Sowell sees it as an obstacle to change and modernization. Nevertheless, both writers are correct in their assessment of the Chinese culture; however, the culture that Fukuyama highly praises is not the same culture that Sowell harshly criticizes. There is no doubt that traditional Chinese values were an obstacle to change for centuries, but with their transformation decades ago, Chinese traditions and values have become agents of change. The mistake committed by Fukuyama is to claim that the current ethics of Chinese culture and the social trust such ethics nurture go back more than 2500 years. If this claim were correct, China should have developed hundreds of years ago and should not have had to wait two hundred years after the industrial revolution had transformed European and American societies and economies to start its own revolution. Each economy embodies institutions, organizations, relationships, and goals that cannot exist or function without people. People, on the other hand, cannot survive and find meaning in life without being involved in the many activities of their economies. People’s attitudes, values, traditions, and relationships— or simply people’s cultures—affect the way their economies are organized and how they function. Meanwhile, people’s involvement in the activities of their economies makes them subject to the influence of economic and technological changes and production relations, which in turn cause their cultures to change accordingly. In other words, the relationship between culture and economy is a dynamic one, whereby each affects and is affected by the other. This makes the relationships that tie culture to economy and economy to culture the major forces that cause progress and stagnation, development and underdevelopment, and determine the degree of dynamism in all aspects of societal life. Culture is very important in the life of society because it provides the social glue that holds its members together and largely defines their identity; it represents the heart of society that keeps the entire body functioning properly. Societal hearts, however, can be healthy, weak, or sick, but not dead; when hearts get sick, the body in which they function suffers. Therefore, cultures play a major role in society, which could be positive or negative but not neutral. However, the role any culture plays depends on the way its values and traditions are viewed and used and how the nation’s history is interpreted
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and taught to younger generations. It also depends on the civilizational context within which culture lives; a culture living in the agricultural age plays a different role than a culture living in the industrial age. For example, Japan worked vigorously in the late nineteenth century to reinterpret its cultural values and traditions and place its entire cultural heritage in a new historical context more hospitable to change and modernization; in other words, Japan moved to create a new sociocultural environment more conducive to change and development. And by so doing, Japan was able to transform its culture from being an obstacle to change to being an agent of economic, social, scientific, and technological transformation. China, in contrast, had focused for centuries on the preservation of its age-old cultural values and traditions and therefore was unable to develop; only when China began to transform its culture and accept the principle of borrowing from other nations was it able to start its drive toward societal development. Third World national leaders and traditional intellectuals seem to think that economic development is possible without transforming traditional cultures and sociopolitical structures. While such leaders and intellectuals seek economic development for material gain, they try to preserve outdated values and traditions to protect their privileges. They claim that there is no conflict between traditional ways of living and modern economic organization and industrial production relations. In contrast, some Western social and political scientists seem to think that certain cultures naturally possess the values, work ethics, and attitudes conducive to modern economic organization, while most other cultures do not possess such qualities. They tend to say, as Francis Fukuyama proclaimed, “The most important variable [in development] is not industrial policy per se but culture.”5 Third World development economists tend to promote economic development, political freedom, and social justice but hesitate to promote change that transforms traditional values, while opposing change that weakens economic independence. Such economists seem unaware that traditional cultures represent the most formidable obstacle to development and that economic independence is neither possible nor desirable in this age. Change instigated by economic and cultural globalization has transformed national and international realities in ways that have rendered assumptions regarding cultural particularism, political sovereignty, and economic independence largely meaningless, and at times harmful. Cultural preservation in the traditional sense is no longer possible because it requires isolation, control of the media and the Internet, and shielding people from the influence of new ideas; it simply requires the closing of minds, books, borders, and skies. Regardless of what traditionalists think or claim, global changes such as urbanization, instant communications, satellite TV, consumerism, and social
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media have transformed most traditions, values, and views of peoples everywhere. And while undermining the role that cultures play in community life, they have caused traditional social and political structures to become largely dysfunctional. Moreover, lack of freedom, government control, business and individual greed, and the spread of political and economic corruption have caused prevailing attitudes and relationships in developing countries to become largely superficial. Old cultures and old nations, as we knew them decades ago, no longer exist and could never be reconstructed no matter how hard some people may try. Development is a societal enterprise in which all members of society and all institutions participate, and, through their participation, society is transformed. As a comprehensive societal process for change, development needs to transform the political, economic, and social structures of society, as well as the prevailing value system, in order to succeed. People need to realize that changing their attitudes and ways of thinking is a necessary first step toward having more of what they want and deserve from life. However, people’s involvement in the development process must be pursued through education, attitudinal change, project design, freedom, political participation, and identification with needs and goals. People must be taught to value knowledge and strive to acquire it, not only as a means for development, but also as a tool for personal growth and enrichment, satisfaction, and enjoyment. Sociocultural and sociopolitical transformations encourage popular participation in the development process and make the borrowing and application of knowledge proceed rather smoothly; they tend also to guarantee that benefits generated by development are shared by all participants. However, no real economic progress or societal change can be accomplished without technology. “Economic history plainly shows that increased social wealth results from technical progress over time.”6 Today, inside forces, led by the political process, are needed to initiate the desired sociocultural transformations; and outside forces, led by the global economic process, are needed to bring investment capital, modern technologies, and advanced management systems. Through the development process, society gains the capacity to utilize its natural and human resources more efficiently to build its economy and improve the quality of life. As for the major objectives of societal development, they are as follows: 1. Building a national capacity to transform economic, social, and political institutions, as well as cultural values, attitudes, and social relations; 2. Developing new economic, social, political, and management systems to meet national needs as circumstances change and human needs evolve;
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3. Increasing the productive capacity and competitiveness of the national economy to compete internationally and meet the needs of growing populations; 4. Increasing the stock of knowledge and capital in society, including social capital; and 5. Improving the general quality of life for all members of society. Efficient and safe transportation systems, instant communications, and economic and cultural globalization have enabled most people of the world on both sides of the sociocultural, economic, and political divide to become more aware of life conditions on the other side. Because of this awareness, the poorer and less developed nations of the world have begun to see an image of their future in what the richer, more developed nations have. Karl Marx was probably the first philosopher to discover this fact and acknowledge its importance when he wrote, “The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.”7 Nevertheless, we must realize that this image is no longer stable as before, and the means to transform it into reality are not easily defined or obtained. The image of the future keeps changing, and the methods to attain it continue to shift correspondingly. Third World The term “Third World” was coined decades ago to distinguish the largely poor agricultural societies from the rich industrial ones (First World), as well as from the not-so-rich socialist states (Second World). Thus, the Third World concept refers to peoples located in certain regions of the world that have attained neither the level of industrial development of the capitalist states nor the quality of life that had been prevalent in the socialist ones. In the wake of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the demise of Marxism, the Third World concept was replaced by the North-South concept, with the North referring to the industrialized capitalist nations and a few of the former socialist ones and the South referring to the less developed and poverty-stricken agricultural states. However, I believe that the NorthSouth concept is neither descriptive nor analytical, and, therefore, it is neither factual nor helpful; it gives the wrong impression that all peoples of the North are developed and all peoples of the South are underdeveloped and that the world is divided into two opposing and largely conflicting camps of rich and poor. The concept of the First, Second, and Third World is still appropriate and useful. The First World should refer to societies, not states, that are highly industrialized and to others that have moved beyond the industrial age and
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into the knowledge age; the Second World should refer to societies that are in an advanced stage of industrialization; and the Third World should refer to societies that still live in the preindustrial age. I say societies, not countries or states, because each state of the First World has a substantial minority that belongs to the knowledge age, a majority that belongs to the industrial age, and a tiny minority that belongs to the agricultural age; each state of the Second World has a small minority that belongs to the knowledge age, a majority that belongs to the industrial age, and a substantial minority that belongs to the agricultural age; and each state of the Third World has a tiny minority that belongs to the knowledge age, a small but growing minority that belongs to the industrial age, and a majority that belongs to the agricultural age. The record of human development from the age of hunting and gathering to the age of industry and beyond indicates that the economic factor played the leading role in facilitating sociocultural transformation and societal progress. In contrast, the experiences of Japan and the other industrialized Asian nations of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and China indicate that sociocultural transformation is capable of causing equally significant economic changes when combined with a will to industrialize and a vision to achieve economic development. The Asian experience has also proved that sociocultural change does not have to wait for economic change to lead the way to societal transformation and that genuine economic change may not be possible without creating a sociocultural environment conducive to economic development. In fact, no traditional society has managed to industrialize without passing through a process of social and cultural transformation, and no socially and culturally developed society has failed to enter the industrial age. Therefore, societal development may be initiated by either sociocultural or economic forces of change or by both; however, the age we live in today has made the involvement of the state in this process a must. In traditional societies that still live in preindustrial times, the state is the most important actor; it dominates the cultural, political, and economic life of society and controls the media, thus limiting the ability of people to function freely. As a consequence, the state makes it difficult for any other actor to take the initiative and lead change. Therefore, the active involvement of the state in the development process has become essential to economic mobilization and sociocultural transformation in traditional societies. In Japan, Singapore, and China, the decision to industrialize and modernize was taken by the state, not by any other actor. Recent global developments that include an expanding free market system; cheaper and more efficient transportation systems; and easier, much faster, and more reliable communications systems have caused national economies to link to one another, forming a global economy. Meanwhile, the
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internationalization of the world’s major trade, investment, and capital markets has made economic globalization a dynamic, self-sustaining, and continuous process that knows no political borders and recognizes no national sovereignties. As national economies strengthen their outside links and move slowly toward integration, cultures expand their interactions, causing ideas, information, and technologies to travel easily from one country to another and from one group to another. Consequently, no development plan has a chance to succeed if attempted in isolation, and no economic, social, or political actor is able to cause societal development by itself. When economic change affects only one region or sector in society, it creates economic duality and causes differences between sociocultural groups and socioeconomic classes to widen and inequality to deepen. When sociocultural change affects only one region or group, social fragmentation follows, causing socioeconomic gaps to widen. Therefore, neither culture nor economy can stay the same while the other changes; and neither one can change without affecting the other, oftentimes profoundly and irreversibly. Thus, no societal development is possible without transforming both culture and economy.
CHAPTER 3
Meaning of Sustainable Development
T
he Club of Rome was the first organization to use the term “sustainable” in its 1972 report titled The Limits to Growth, written by a group of scientists led by Dennis and Donnella Meadows. Describing the desirable “state of global equilibrium,” the authors wrote, “We are searching for a model output that represents a world system that is: (1) sustainable without sudden and uncontrolled collapse; and (2) capable of satisfying the basic material requirements of all of its people.”1 But developing a world system where a state of equilibrium prevails requires balancing economic production, peoples’ actions and desires, and nature’s ability to renew depleted resources, when no one is able to determine the feasible rate of resource extraction or the actual rate of resource renewal or to control people’s actions. In 1987, the Brundtland Commission issued its report on the state of the world’s environment and development, in which it used the term “sustainable development” for the first time. The commission defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”2 Michael Needham goes beyond this definition to say that sustainable development is “the ability to meet the needs of the present while contributing to [meeting] the future generations’ needs.”3 Therefore, sustainable development could be defined as “a pattern of economic growth in which resource use aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for generations to come.”4 The UN declaration of the 2005 World Summit refers to the interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars of sustainable development as economic development, social development, and environmental protection.5 However, the concept of social development is often referred to as “human development.” Yet these pillars have largely been treated as separate spheres of life, an issue that needs to be addressed to improve our chances of achieving
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sustainable development. “In the field of sustainable development, there are many major challenges to be addressed. They require us to re-think our economy and our growth in favor of a society that is more economical in its use of raw materials and energy. Some of these challenges include: climate change, energy consumption, waste production, threats to public health, poverty, social exclusion, management of natural resources, loss of biodiversity, and land use. In this context, sustainable development approaches are now essential obligations,”6 says the Legrand Group. The Limits to Growth sought to highlight the dangers inherent in high economic growth and consumption rates that cause natural resources to be depleted at a rate that exceeds nature’s ability to replenish them. If a lack of sustainable development has such consequences, why is more systematic action not taken to alleviate this problem? Cohen and Winn try to answer this question; they point to four types of market failure as possible explanations: First, while the benefits of natural capital depletion can be privatized, the costs are often externalized. Second, natural capital is often undervalued because we are not fully aware of the real cost of its depletion. Third, the link between cause and effect is often obscured, making it difficult to articulate informed choices. Fourth, most firms, contrary to economic theory, are not perfect optimizers.7 Because every issue of public concern is inherently controversial, the issue of “sustainable development” continues to be debated. Forces promoting environmental protection, defending the rights of the poor, and promoting free markets have caused three conflicting worldviews to emerge: one emphasizes environmental protection and calls for regulations to protect nature from degradation; another emphasizes free markets and claims that the sustainability notion is too vague to be helpful and that markets are by their nature optimizers; a third worldview says that constructing a world system in equilibrium with nature requires that the developed nations start contracting their economies to allow the developing ones to expand theirs in order to enable the world system to meet the basic needs of all peoples and avoid sudden collapse. John Baden, for example, views the notion of sustainable development as vague and dangerous. He says that “in economy like in ecology, the interdependence rule applies. Isolated actions are impossible. A policy which is not carefully enough thought will carry along various perverse and adverse effects for the ecology as much as for the economy. Many suggestions to save our environment and to promote a model of ‘sustainable development’ risk indeed leading to reverse effects.”8 He argues further that the vagueness of the expression can cover anything and open the door for regulations that “undermine the principle of freedom without proven efficacy.”9 Instead of regulations, Baden proposes relegating the responsibility of preserving the
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environment to the people, arguing that private property is capable of leading both producers and consumers to save natural resources. According to Baden, “The improvement of environment quality depends on the market economy and the existence of legitimate and protected property rights.”10 While Baden provides no examples to support his arguments, the countless rivers, lakes, and forests that the free market forces have polluted suggest that regulations are needed to protect the environment. Philosopher Luc Ferry says, “I know that this term [“sustainable development”] is obligatory, but I find it also absurd, or rather so vague that it says nothing . . . The term is more charming than meaningful. Everything must be done so that it does not turn into Russian-type administrative planning with ill effects.”11 Sylvie Brunel, a French geographer and specialist on the Third World, develops in “Who Benefits from Sustainable Development?” (2008) a critique of the basis of sustainable development, saying that sustainable development can be compared to the Christian vision of good and evil, where nature is idealized and the human being is an animal or a parasite harmful to nature. She thinks that the core ideas of sustainable development are a hidden form of protectionism by the developed countries to impede the development of the other countries. For Brunel, sustainable development serves as a pretext for exploitation; she says, “I have the feeling that sustainable development is perfectly helping out capitalism.”12 Robert Kates and his colleagues argue in What Is Sustainable Development? that “opponents of sustainable development attack from two very different perspectives. While some view sustainable development as a top-down attempt by the United Nations to dictate how the people of the world should live their lives—and thus as a threat to individual freedoms and property rights—others view it as capitulation that implies development as usual, driven by the interests of big business that pays only lip service to social justice and the protection of nature.”13 In a study entitled Our Common Journey: A Transition toward Sustainability, the Board on Sustainable Development of the US National Academy of Sciences identified three major categories it claims need to be developed to realize sustainability: nature, life-support systems, and community; in other words, environment, economy, and people. Attempts to reach common understandings regarding issues of sustainability began as negotiations between the rich and poor nations, with each suspecting the intentions of the other. While the poor nations viewed the rich nations’ repeated calls for the protection of the environment as attempts to deny them the opportunity to grow their economies and develop, the rich nations viewed the poor nations’ determination to grow their economies as a threat to the environment and its scarce natural resources. Nevertheless, nations were able to agree on a joint view at the Rio conference of 1992. But
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since what is feasible today is unlikely to be feasible tomorrow, sustainability should be viewed and treated as a state of transition to a desirable state of living. Societal and global developments are evolving processes that transform all aspects of life and involve all actors whose actions affect life, such as people, technology, culture, and weather; they also involve actors affected by nature and human actions, such as water resources, the environment, and the air we breathe. Emphasizing the interdependence between humans and nature, the Brundtland Commission Report stated, “The environment does not exist as a sphere separate from human actions, ambitions, and needs, and attempts to defend it in isolation from human concerns have given the very word ‘environment’ a connotation of naivety in some political circles. The word ‘development’ has also been narrowed by some into a very limited focus, along the lines of ‘what poor nations should do to become richer.’ But the ‘environment’ is where we live; and ‘development’ is what we all do in attempting to improve our lot within that abode. The two are inseparable.”14 The Legrand Group says, “The concept of sustainable development is based on a set of requirements. It must allow the basic needs of present and future generations to be fulfilled with regard to demographic constraints, such as: access to water, education, health, employment, and the fight against hunger.” The report argues further that development should aim to improve the quality of life, which involves easier access to medical care, social services, and culture. In addition, the report states, “Respect for rights and freedoms and the promotion of new forms of renewable energy such as wind, solar, and geothermal power, are important aspects of sustainable development.”15 The report argues further that sustainable development also involves narrowing the gaps between rich and poor countries, because these gaps, if maintained or accentuated, could cause violent conflicts, which by their very nature lead to regression rather than development. Though the Brundtland Commission Report provided a clear definition of sustainable development, it could not answer questions related to how to achieve this goal, nor could the experts who tried later to elaborate on it. No one, in fact, seems able to say with confidence how to reach a state of sustainability or what needs of future generations we must consider. Also, no one knows how many people there will be at any time in the future, how much of our resources will be available at that time, or what the state of technology will be years from today. We also do not know how much progress we are making at this time and when a state of sustainability is expected to be reached. But despite the complicated nature of these questions, we cannot ignore them. Therefore, I shall try to answer some of these questions and explain why sustainable development must be considered a global issue.
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In 2007, a report written by Joy Hecht for the US Environmental Protection Agency said that sustainability has become the common term for describing the objectives of public policy, while sustainability indicators have become a preferred tool for tracking the actions of public agencies, But Hecht says, “When these indicators move in the ‘right’ direction—if we even know what that is—does that really mean that our economy, our environment or our society is actually sustainable? Do we know how to define sustainability precisely enough to use it as a basis for assessing public policy decisions?”16 Instead of relying on common definitions and goals, states and UN agencies have developed indicators that practitioners use to gauge the progress they are supposedly making. But how can anyone measure, for example, the progress that sustainable human development is making when the quality of education varies from one university to another and from one country to another, and when cultural values, attitudes, and ways of thinking are not taken into consideration. Since one of the major goals of sustainable development is to put people first, the way to achieve this goal presents an obstacle to reaching an international consensus on sustainability. Different nations tend to view human rights differently; and needs and expectations of people vary greatly from state to state, according to their cultures and levels of development. In fact, one nation’s needs could be another nation’s luxuries. Helen Clark, administrator of the United Nations Development Program, said in 2012, “If the way in which both rich and poor nations develop is destructive of the very ecosystems on which life on this planet depends, then the burden will fall disproportionately on the poorest and most vulnerable people who depend the most on healthy ecosystems for their survival and have the least means to adapt to the challenges brought by environmental degradation.”17 As national development agencies strive to achieve sustainable development, they tend to treat sustainability as a largely domestic rather than an international endeavor. But sustainable development is unattainable except at the global level, because many nations have access to nonrenewable resources like water and natural gas to waste, and rivers and seas to pollute, without giving much consideration to the needs and interests of other nations that depend on the same resources. Therefore, fairness and reality dictate that sustainability must be treated as a global endeavor, and the sacrifices needed to accomplish sustainability, and the benefits generated by it, should be shared by all nations. “In order to be sustainable, development must also be harmonious. At least a certain amount of social cohesion must exist on a planetary scale in order to create the conditions for the peace we need.”18 As mentioned earlier, debate over issues of sustainable development led to defining the sustainability problem as how to manage three types of
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capital: economic, social, and natural. However, the indigenous peoples of the world have argued that sustainable development has four pillars, the fourth being cultural. The Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, issued by UNESCO in 2001, states, “Cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature. In this sense, it is the common heritage of humanity and should be recognized and affirmed for the benefit of present and future generations . . . [it is] one of the roots of development understood not simply in terms of economic growth, but also as a means to achieve a more satisfactory intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual existence.”19 But as production and consumption activities deplete our shared natural capital, cultural globalization undermines cultural capital as it deforms indigenous cultures. As a consequence, globalization has reduced the capacity of indigenous peoples and traditional cultures of the world to significantly contribute to our intellectual, emotional, moral, and spiritual existence. Actually, indigenous peoples and truly traditional cultures are vanishing fast; they hardly exist today to make a real difference. Intellectuals defending the rights of the poor and underdeveloped nations to develop say that the developed nations need to reduce their rates of economic growth. According to one of these voices, on a planet where 20 percent of the population consumes 80 percent of the natural resources, the right term for this 20 percent ought to be “sustainable degrowth,” defined as “a smooth, voluntary and equitable downscaling of production and consumption that insure human well-being and ecological sustainability locally as well as globally on the short and long term.”20 While such a suggestion sounds rather fair, it eliminates the possibility of constructive dialog between the rich and poor; it also ignores the rich’s responsibility to help improve the quality of life for the poor and lead the way toward sustainability. In fact, I believe that we do not need to even think about this controversial issue, because sustainability is possible without reducing the rates of economic growth or the incomes of the world’s rich. This issue will be discussed further in the next section. Since the publication of The Limits to Growth in 1972, people calling for the protection of the environment and others advocating free markets have proposed reducing population growth rates to sustainable levels; they claim that such a reduction is necessary to prevent the human race from destroying the planetary support systems. But what population growth rate is sustainable? No one seems to have a satisfactory answer. Improving the productivity of all forms of capital, and substituting knowledge for other factors of production, has enabled our planet to support more people than ever before, making projections of sustainable population growth rates hard to come by.
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In fact, as technology advances and new tools and systems are invented, the productivity of labor, capital, and land increases continuously, making it possible for us to produce a larger amount of goods and services using the same amount of inputs, as well as produce the same amount of goods and services using smaller amounts of inputs. Technology is also making it possible to produce better, safer, and more durable goods and services, while reducing the cost of production in terms of time and money. Nevertheless, the world’s poor need more food to eat, the world’s rich need to eat less and stop wasting food and other things, and corporations need to stop wasting valuable human and natural resources by producing harmful products like cigarettes. This means that the cultures of conspicuous consumption and corporations need to be transformed; they need to become less wasteful. The Brundtland Report says, “Sustainable development involves more than growth. It requires a change in the content of growth, to make it less material- and energy-intensive and more equitable in its impact. These changes are required in all countries as part of a package of measures to maintain the stock of ecological capital, to improve the distribution of income, and to reduce the degree of vulnerability to economic crises.”21 In September 2000, 189 member states of the United Nations came together at the Millennium Summit and adopted the Millennium Declaration, which emphasized the role of values in human life. The declaration stated, “We consider certain fundamental values to be essential to international relations in the twenty-first century.”22 These fundamental values include: 1. Freedom. Men and women have the right to live their lives and raise their children in dignity, free from hunger and the fear of violence, oppression, or injustice. Democratic and participatory governance based on the will of the people best assures these rights; 2. Equality. No individual and no nation must be denied the opportunity to benefit from development. The equal rights and opportunities of women and men must be assured; 3. Solidarity. Global challenges must be managed in a way that distributes the costs and burdens fairly in accordance with basic principles of equity and social justice. Those who suffer or who benefit least deserve help from those who benefit most; 4. Tolerance. Human beings must respect one other. Differences within and between societies should be neither feared nor repressed, but cherished as a precious asset of humanity. A culture of peace and dialog among all civilizations should be promoted; and
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5. Respect for nature. Prudence must be shown in the management of all living species and natural resources, in accordance with the precepts of sustainable development. Only in this way can the immeasurable riches provided to us by nature be preserved and passed on to our descendants. The current unsustainable patterns of production and consumption must be changed in the interest of our future welfare and that of our descendants.23 Sustainable development, therefore, involves the simultaneous pursuit of environmental quality, economic prosperity, human development, social equity, freedom, human values, and cultural diversity. If pursued as such, sustainable development would be able to protect the environment, enable all people to meet their basic needs, achieve social justice and peace, and liberate women and men from political and cultural chains that undermine their potential. It should also undermine the capacity of corporations to use the sustainability issue to protect their interests while preventing poor nations from developing their economies. Therefore, the way to achieve sustainability is to integrate economic, cultural, environmental, and social policies, including the development of human resources and the issue of population growth. There is no doubt that sustainability efforts have improved the conditions of many lakes, rivers, and forests around the world, which means that “environmental sustainability” seems to be on the right track. However, other forms of sustainability appear to have failed to make meaningful progress. More than 42 years after the publication of The Limits to Growth, and 27 years after the the Brundtland Commission Report was issued, indicators suggest that the world is not on the right track to overall sustainable development. According to reports issued by the United Nations agencies and conferences, as well as by the World Bank and several nongovernmental organizations, world poverty is still very high and increasing in many parts of the world, population growth rates are slowing but not enough to claim that sustainability will be reached in years or decades, human rights and women’s rights in particular are being violated systematically in many parts of the world, and illiteracy rates are still high. Because all these issues are global, the only development that could be sustainable is global development that makes national changes an integral part of a global grand design. And because every major change touches the lives of everyone in society, the process of sustainable development cannot succeed unless we understand it and manage it as a participatory process. Every member of the world community thus must feel that he or she has a stake in change, and a vital role to play in making change, and that the benefits sustainability generates are shared by all.
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The Chinese experience proves that public projects that fail to involve the public in the design process are more likely to anger people and fail. The demonstrations that Shanghai witnessed in the summer of 2012 seem to suggest that economic growth that damages the environment degrades, not upgrades, the quality of life and makes money worthless. Attaining Sustainability Concerned people of the world argue correctly that meeting the needs of future generations depends on the decisions we make today to balance our social, economic, cultural, and environmental objectives. But the question of how to balance such variables is hard to answer. For example, what is the rate of economic growth that is compatible with land use and that can meet present needs while protecting the ecosystem? Since no state or organization is able to determine the sought-after rate, we have to assume certain economic growth ratios based on our historical experience and devise plans to achieve and maintain such ratios. Again, this has to be done at the global level because interdependence and shared resources make national policies inadequate, if not counterproductive. Robert Kates and his colleagues say in What Is Sustainable Development? that “much of what is described as sustainable development in practice are negotiations in which workable compromises are found that address the environmental, economic, and human development objectives of competing interest groups.”24 Thus, negotiations that enabled the wealthy and poor states to reach common goals through the efforts of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) should not be considered as having achieved what is needed to attain sustainable development; they are only an attempt to reconcile the different aspirations of the poor with those of the rich to preserve the basic life-support systems of the planet.25 Nevertheless, we need to agree on a formula that divides nations into groups according to certain indicators, as explained hereunder, and assign a range of economic growth rates for each group. These ranges, while prescribing an upper limit for members of each group, limit the overall growth rate of the world economy to 3 and 3.5 percent annually. Economic rates would be based on each group’s level of development and needs. Rich nations that enjoy high levels of per capita income and low population growth rates are able to live comfortably with low economic growth rates. For example, Germany seems to do just fine with less than 1 percent annual growth rate. In contrast, poor nations that have low per capita incomes and high population growth rates need substantially higher rates of growth. Nevertheless, these nations need to reduce their population growth rates as they develop;
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otherwise, their standards of living will not rise fast enough to improve the quality of their lives. Nations that are neither rich nor poor need moderate economic growth rates and probably lower population growth rates. All nations, however, need to transform their cultures to move away from conspicuous consumption, because it wastes resources and is governed by the law of diminishing returns. Advocates of less consumption argue correctly “that beyond certain thresholds, ever-increasing consumption does not increase subjective levels of happiness, satisfaction, or health. Rather, it often has precisely the opposite effect.”26 People living in societies that view conspicuous consumption as a sign of affluence tend to have health problems such as diabetes and obesity. As a consequence, they spend more money fighting self-inflicted diseases than maintaining healthy lifestyles. As a global issue, sustainable development must be viewed and pursued as a human goal. Nations need to agree on the basic services that all people should have and join together to ensure that such services are provided wherever needed. Since equity requires that income gaps between the rich and poor be narrowed, states need to specify levels of income disparity as targets to be reached within a specified period of time. And to achieve such goals, people need to become aware that some nations need to reduce their population growth rates and that all nations need to transform their culture. States need also to agree on an upper limit of economic growth for each group of nations based on their levels of development and quality of life. Accordingly, it is suggested that nations be divided into four groups: the most developed states that are entering the knowledge age, the industrialized states, the developing nations that are about to enter the industrial age, and the less developed nations. Five basic indicators are suggested as possible markers to use to determine the group to which each state belongs and thus the range of economic growth rates it should try to attain and sustain: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
The overall state of the economy; Per capita income; Rate of poverty; Illiteracy rate; and Population growth rate.
It is further suggested that the upper limits of economic growth rates for these groups be set at 2, 3, 4, and 6 percent, respectively. However, targets should be viewed as averages over specified periods of time, say five years, and should be reevaluated periodically. Based on these assumptions, the average growth rate of the global economy would be around 3.5 percent annually— not a difficult rate to sustain. In fact, continued improvement in the overall
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state of technology, the unstoppable stream of scientific discoveries, and replacing knowledge for the basic factors of production are capable by themselves of achieving this rate of economic growth without utilizing more natural or human resources. However, there is a need to enable poor nations to have access, at affordable cost, to the new technologies and scientific discoveries related to raising the productivity of land, labor, and machines, as well as to substituting knowledge for these factors of production. There is also a need to ensure that technology is employed to promote peace and improve quality of life, not to encourage war, destroy human and animal life, and harm the environment. In the larger scheme of efforts to achieve sustainable global development, the United States represents an obstacle; the American culture of conspicuous consumption and tax loopholes contributes to spreading poverty and fostering ever-widening income and wealth gaps in society, and spending some one trillion dollars annually on security matters is incompatible with sustainable development. The United States, therefore, needs to eliminate tax loopholes over a few years, raise taxes on the rich and super-rich gradually, rebuild the middle class as suggested in the next section, and reduce spending on the military and other security matters incrementally until total spending on security matters is equal to be less than 2 percent of GDP; it also needs to incorporate the teaching of the merits of saving and investing and reduced consumption in the curricula of all school. The current American economic growth model based on conspicuous consumption and military spending is very harmful; it wastes natural and human resources, promotes war, and encourages greed and envy as it pollutes poor people’s cultures and minds. In addition, the United States needs to allocate a budget for peacemaking and peacekeeping, because weapons kill people and end life; they do not save people or prolong life. Looking back at our shared human history, I found that humanity was able to achieve sustainability by maintaining balance between three major factors: population, natural resources, and technology; though culture is important to achieving and maintaining such a balance, it remained remarkably stable throughout the agricultural age, which lasted about ten thousand years. Due to lack of industry, neither the environment nor the ecosystems were exposed to substantial damage. But as society entered the transitional period to the industrial age around the middle of the fifteenth century, the old balance, and the means to sustain it, was disrupted. Populations grew faster, technology improved, industrialization spread, cultures changed greatly, consumption increased substantially, and the utilization rate of natural resources accelerated. Consequently, industrial society was able to produce more, consume more, and colonize many countries. But in the process of achieving these
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objectives, industrialization created many problems, such as environmental degradation, air pollution, a population explosion, widespread poverty, and war and violence, particularly in poor countries. By exploiting the natural resources of the colonized peoples, colonialism undermined the capacity of the colonized nations to develop their economies, transform their societies, and improve the quality of their lives, while consumerism caused their cultures to be deformed. Meanwhile, a new capitalist culture that sanctioned exploitation, racial segregation, greed, and conspicuous consumerism emerged, widening the income, wealth, and educational gaps within and between societies. As a result, the balance between resources, population, culture, and technology ended, causing sustainable development to end as well. Thus, to reach sustainability at national and global levels, the old balance needs to be reconstructed, taking into consideration the need to incorporate environmental protection and adapt all components to suit our changing times. While no one is able to determine what rate of economic growth is sustainable, we know that some natural resources are increasing and many more are being depleted. We also know that the state of technology is improving all the time; and knowledge is fast becoming a good substitute for the basic factors of production. Based on this, we can say that by harnessing the potentialities of science and technology, and developing our human and cultural capital, we should be able to reach our economic growth targets and attain sustainable development. However, to reach these targets before a population explosion makes sustainable development unachievable, the world needs to set five targets and try to reach them within the coming two to three decades: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Distribute income fairly among social classes and nations; Reduce the world’s annual population growth rate to near 1 percent; Transform world cultures; Reduce annual military spending by all nations, especially the great and regional powers, to 2 percent of their GDPs or less; and 5. Liberate all nations from the burden of public debt. The first objective has to be sought by working at the national and international levels. All states need to close tax loopholes gradually while raising tax rates on the rich incrementally and increasing minimum wages, using the new tax revenues to improve the quality of life of poor citizens. States should also provide health care for all citizens and guarantee equal work and educational opportunities. In addition, states need to arrest the deteriorating position of the middle class and adopt regulations to enable it to grow in size through education, equality of opportunity, and financially rewarding jobs.
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New laws should be enacted to change production relations to give workers a voice in managing the companies they work for and to help the middle class survive the free market’s tendency to worship money and greed, ignore fairness, and avoid social responsibility. To strengthen the middle class and ensure its survival and permanence, it is suggested that public corporations pay 25 percent of their employees’ salaries in company stock, using the stock market to determine the price of shares at the end of each pay period. Since old employees are accustomed to getting paid in cash, the stock payment should be introduced gradually over two years. It is further suggested that employees be required to hold the shares they receive as partial payment for at least two years before they can sell them; this condition should also be introduced gradually. After three to four years, almost every employee of a public corporation will have at least 25 percent of his or her annual salary invested in his or her company, causing an active and rather permanent block of shareholders to gradually evolve. Creating such a block of shareholders whose members care about the financial health of their companies and the way they are managed is badly needed to control the spiraling compensation packages of managers, and limit the bonuses they usually grant themselves, while holding them accountable for their deeds. The adoption of this proposal would create fairly large groups of people tied to productive economic processes everywhere, causing the middle class to be strengthened while restoring corporate social responsibility and stockholders’ oversight.27 The international community of states, meanwhile, needs to develop a new economic world order to contain the current trend of enriching the rich and impoverishing the poor and to ensure that national policies and international treaties of common markets do not give some states substantial advantages over others. As for the transformation of cultures in poor states, it has to come through the launching of national campaigns to educate all children and empower women in conjunction with sociocultural and economic transformation processes whose aim is to revive national economies and achieve sustainable development. While citizens of the Third World need to change their attitudes toward time, work, material gain, the environment, and life, all people in the world need to transform their cultures to consume less, stop smoking, stay healthy, protect the environment, and end discrimination against others. A sustained international campaign, similar to the antismoking campaign, needs to be launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) to explain the damage conspicuous consumption causes to people’s health and the environment, and how it depletes natural resources, leaving little to meet the needs of future generations. To ensure success, WHO should make every effort to guarantee
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the cooperation of the national and international media, the major Internet companies, and social media. All nations, moreover, need to reduce spending on arms and the armed forces and promote a culture of peace instead of a culture of war, fear, and intimidation. The great powers in particular need to concentrate on solving national and regional conflicts rather than perpetuating conflicts and using them as tools to manage relations with each other at the expense of the world’s poor. As for liberating all rich and poor nations from the burden of public debt, a visionary plan was articulated in 2013 and published in my book Saving Capitalism and Democracy. The plan is designed to help everyone and hurt no one; it does not ask the rich to sacrifice any portion of their wealth, and it guarantees lenders the money owed to them. And by saving the interest that states are required to pay on their debts, it gives all states additional income to spend on helping college students and the poor, improving schools, providing health care for the needy and the elderly, and enhancing the quality of life for citizens of the world. As mentioned earlier, a balance between population, natural resources, technology, and culture was able in the past to attain and maintain sustainability for countless generations. Though the same old balance is needed today to achieve sustainability, all components have to be addressed as global issues due to the globalization of economies, cultures, and security matters. And while we do not need to worry about the state of technology anymore, because it continues to improve, the other components, particularly population and culture, need special attention. Populations, corporations, and cultures affect the state of natural resources, the levels of consumption, and the degree of damage caused to the environment. Therefore, as population growth rates decline, economic growth rates should decline as well in order to preserve resources. And as the state of living of the poor in rich nations improves, the rich nations should increase aid to poorer nations to help them speed up the process of sociocultural and economic transformation. If the plan outlined in Chapter 8 of my book Saving Capitalism and Democracy (2013) were to be fully implemented before the end of 2016, global sustainable development would most likely be reached by 2050, and a new, healthier, more peaceful world would become a reality for all to love and enjoy living in. Technology needs to be directed toward serving peace and justice, developing new sources of renewable energy, facilitating better education, and creating small industries to enable rural communities to develop and join the world of industry. Cultures need to be transformed to enable people to view time, work, and material gain as sources of pleasure and social recognition and to see a cleaner environment as a prerequisite for a good life and
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longevity. Consumption should be deemphasized, and saving and investing need to be emphasized and rewarded. All of this can be accomplished by transforming education systems and eliminating both traditional and cultural illiteracy. This simply means that sustainable human development is a key to all other facets of sustainability, as well as to improving the chances for a more harmonious and peaceful world.
CHAPTER 4
Culture and Society
W
orld history is the record of past events that are universally recognized as important and interesting to most peoples. Such events include war and peace, the creation of states and religions, the rise and fall of empires, and the consequences of such changes. While it has always been difficult to determine the nature of forces that control the course of history, it is thought and often claimed that the environment, circumstances, political leaders, ideologies, technological innovations, states, cultures, and ambitions of past leaders and empires have been responsible for making history and what we think of it. However, such forces are not and could not be isolated from one another; they are linked to each other, and it is through their actions, reactions, and interactions that human history has evolved, forming a process of continuous change. This process is an unconscious and unregulated movement of individuals, groups, nations, states, ideas, inventions, cultures, and economies toward higher goals and more complex organizations and societies. And because this process is self-propelled, it has no particular point of departure, no predetermined objective, and no defined destination. As it moves, it causes conflict, effects change, and transforms people’s attitudes, ways of thinking, values, perceptions, economic conditions, and social and political structures. Regardless of time and place, all individuals, groups, institutions, organizations, societies, and states are continuously faced with issues to consider, complex decisions to make, and multiple actions to take. People have contradictory goals to pursue, varied problems to solve and situations to manage, unforeseen circumstances to prepare for, and emerging internal and external challenges to face. But for such tasks to be accomplished, people and the institutions through which they function must change, anticipate change, and accept change as inevitable. People are social actors and products of different life experiences, religious beliefs, and cultural backgrounds, as well
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as economic conditions and environmental settings; as a consequence, they tend to function according to different sets of values, traditions, and laws. Diversified human outlooks, largely incompatible religious beliefs, different cultural values, and competing social and economic interests are causes of conflict and forces of change that never stop influencing the nature of social transformation and the course of history. History, most people seem to think, holds the key to understanding change over time and identifying the major forces that shape human life in general and influence its future course in particular. Because of this belief, theories of history were written and continue to be written to explain the nature of the historical process, its course, and its final destination. But no matter how much we write about history and how hard we may try to be neutral, and regardless of our purpose for writing and what we write, we will never know what exactly happened in the past or how it happened; all that we can possibly know and should strive to know are the trends of change and the major transformations of the past and their consequences on our lives. What people read is important; it usually affects their life and outlook. But where people live and what kind of cultural, educational, and socioeconomic background they come from are as important as what they read; they affect the way people interpret what they read as well as how they use the knowledge gained from reading. Culture, class, and education, therefore, are very important to understanding the meaning and importance of knowledge and determining its societal role. A computer, for example, can be used by a student to do research and gain more knowledge, by a police officer to spy on people and search for criminals, by a military commander to plan for war, by a businessperson to increase productivity, or by others to play games, navigate the Internet, and manage investment and banking accounts. Because of the vast differences in cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds of people, nations have repeatedly failed to find ways to cooperate and face their destinies together. Such a failure has caused most nations to struggle, largely alone, to solve problems, set national priorities, and make progress, with some nations having much more success than others. The Historical Process Since the dawn of history, humans have formed societies with the primary objective of reaching higher levels of security and satisfaction. At the beginning, the pace of change was very slow, making societies seem frozen in time. But as people developed better tools and more efficient organizations, they attained higher levels of physical and food security, causing the pace of change to accelerate and life to become more complex and demanding.
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Complexity presents people with more challenges to face, more desires to satisfy, more opportunities to exploit, more decisions to make, and more change to endure. As a consequence, more players are involved in shaping societal life, causing it to be organized in ways that make people and their social, cultural, economic, and political systems more interdependent and dynamic. The increasing complexity and dynamism of life has made the breakup of older political and economic organizations and relationships increasingly easier to effect, while making the reorganization of older value systems and social and political structures increasingly difficult. The first is easier to undo because they are largely driven by interests that keep changing and shifting, while the latter is difficult to redo because they are governed by values and belief systems that seldom change. Traditions, social structures, and value systems are all products and components of cultures that develop over time but never change in time. As societies change, they move from one stage of societal development to another, or from one civilization to another, with each stage representing a fluid station on the road to a new, more complex civilization. The major stages of societal development or civilizations that the world has witnessed so far are the preagricultural or the tribal stage, the agricultural stage, the industrial stage, and the emerging knowledge stage. No society goes from one stage to another directly; all societies go through transitional periods that connect the past to the present and the present to the future. Since each successive stage represents a more developed and complex society, as well as economy and culture, transitional periods represent historical discontinuities rather than smooth links connecting the past to the future; because of that, transitional periods tend to be characterized by chaos and social conflict. Each stage of societal development experiences a crisis as it enters a transitional period on the road to the next stage. But after the transition is completed, a new civilization emerges with its social and economic structures, traditions, and values, or its unique society, culture, and economy. During transitional periods, certain agents of social and technological change become more active than usual, and new agents arise and intervene, causing complexity to increase, the pace of change to accelerate, and its direction to shift. As a result, the pillars of stability in society, particularly established values and traditions as well as social and economic structures, are undermined. Stability is replaced by instability, certainty by uncertainty, and confusion and fear of the unknown become prevalent, causing a large segment of society to suffer the pain of change and become disoriented and disillusioned in the process. As a consequence, most people feel impelled to resist change and struggle to abort the process of sociocultural transformation and reverse its course. Nevertheless, humankind has demonstrated a remarkable
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ability to adapt and persevere and a strong desire to learn and accumulate knowledge and use it to face challenges and improve life conditions. Edward Gibbon was quoted as saying, “We may acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion that every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue of the human race.”1 Societies have never failed to use the accomplishments of each passing civilization as a foundation on which to build new social and economic systems, produce more and better products, reorganize economic life and social relationships on sounder bases, and attain higher standards of living. But with every new age, life conditions get more complex and knowledge more sophisticated and specialized, causing our ability to produce and use knowledge to become more decisive in making further social, cultural, political, and economic progress. However, no progress has ever been accomplished without inviting conflict and causing unforeseen change. Conflict and change have kept shaping and reshaping human life, causing the creation of an everevolving, self-propelled world of increasing complexity through time.2 Knowledge and the skills associated with it have always been unevenly distributed in society as well as among societies. There exists a knowledge gap between those who know and others who know less; and those who know less are less able to compete in an increasingly dynamic world. Continued change, moreover, has caused this knowledge gap to widen, causing societies to be divided along socioeconomic lines as well as sociocultural divides. Moreover, sociocultural transformation and economic development have never been comprehensive, even, or equal; some areas, economic sectors, social classes, and ethnic and cultural minorities usually develop faster and get more, while others develop slowly and get much less. As the influence of knowledge increases in society, institutions in which knowledge is produced and through which knowledge is processed and disseminated to the public increase as well. And as such institutions multiply, they reduce the influence of the individual and the group and weaken their roles in society, creating need for more complex societal systems. As a consequence, change becomes multifaceted, hardly controllable, and largely unpredictable; it affects all aspects of life, all people, all the time, in all places. The people most involved with the production and application of knowledge tend to change faster, benefit more, gain added power, and achieve higher standards of living, causing socioeconomic gaps and sociocultural divides within and between societies to widen and deepen further. Historical records suggest that human societies have passed through numerous stages of development on their way to the current stage. Although it is believed that the first human society with a family organization and a language appeared about ninety-five thousand years ago, the first society
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with a food economy appeared only about thirty thousand years ago. For roughly twenty thousand years thereafter, human societies were small, and people within those societies lived a nomadic life as animal hunters and food gatherers rather than food producers. But by organizing into small groups of hunters, people were able to improve their ability to hunt and use the meat of some animals for food, the skin and fur of others for clothing, and certain bones as tools and armaments.3 An archaeological discovery made in Germany in 2009 indicates that humans developed an appreciation for music at least thirty-five thousand years ago and used animal bones to make musical instruments that could play more than one note.4 About eleven thousand years ago, humans were able to domesticate several animals and use them and their products for a variety of purposes. Animals were employed to ease the burden of migration, carry food across inhospitable terrain, and help people launch and fight wars. Around the same time, people also developed agriculture, or plant cultivation. This development in particular enabled humans to produce food in relatively large quantities to satisfy their needs and generate a surplus to trade; this was probably the single most important development in human history. Plant cultivation enabled agricultural people to attain a substantial degree of security and independence from nature, and this paved the way for people to settle and develop. In fact, with the cultivation of the land and the building of settlements, the ideas of progress and civilization were born, causing populations to grow faster, cities to be built, states to be established, trade to slowly expand, and what is called civilization to appear. Conflict and Change Group and institutional relationships in society are based on cooperation and competition—forces that exist side by side in every system and play their roles concurrently. Forces of cooperation create and sustain societies by integrating systems, fostering harmony, and giving members of society a sense of belonging to a larger community. Forces of competition, on the other hand, provoke individuals, institutions, and organizations to use their particular assets to exploit available resources and emerging opportunities, giving all players a chance to play by the rules of their choice to increase their stock of knowledge and utilize whatever knowledge and talents they have to enhance their social position, sometimes at the expense of others. Nevertheless, people tend to play by the rules of both cooperation and competition at the same time, sometimes consciously but often unconsciously. Culture is the primary force determining the degree of cooperation and competition in each society and system at any time.
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In societies where the level of cooperation is very deep due to strict social traditions or environmental constraints, conformity and contentment usually prevail, causing the economic pie to be small and to remain relatively small. Any growth in the pie is usually incremental and unevenly divided, causing the gap between the haves and the have-nots to widen. In contrast, wherever competition is moderately strong but does not threaten the continuity of society, the size of the economic pie tends to be relatively large and to grow faster, allowing more people to get a share of the increase. Nevertheless, some people usually get more than others and gain more power, leaving the majority of the population to lag far behind, causing the door to open for social conflict that leads to change. Conflict and change have maintained a mutually reinforcing relationship throughout history, causing people as well as the institutions through which they function to experience the vagaries of conflict and the pain of change without interruption. At times, change precipitates conflict; at other times, conflict paves the way for change. Because of this mutuality, the extent of each force has largely become a function of the other and a consequence of how the other is managed. People, no matter how hard they may try, can avoid neither conflict nor change, nor can they escape the impact of either one on their personal lives and collective consciousness. The interaction of conflict with change and the accumulation of their consequences over time have given birth to the societal processes of transformation that together form the larger contexts within which all change is introduced and conflict is managed. These processes are the sociocultural, political, economic, and infomedia processes, and they will be explained later. Change is usually caused by the introduction of new ideas that have sociopolitical or sociocultural implications or come in response to technological innovations that have economic or organizational applications. Change may occur first at the intellectual level, creating a new state of mind, which in turn labors, often hard, to change the actual states of sociopolitical and socioeconomic affairs on the ground. Change may start by the introduction of a new technology in the economic arena, changing the economic order, which works in turn to slowly change the prevailing state of mind. This change in particular starts usually as an integral part of the existing social order, not as a challenge to it, and emerges as a natural by-product of human efforts to become more productive and enhance their life conditions. Technological developments that precipitate change, such as the invention of the printing press, the car, and the Internet, tend to follow an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary path, and, therefore, they seldom clash with the basic interests of the predominant social forces in society. Gradual adjustments, rather than open conflicts, are usually the path through which
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technological changes travel into the larger society to effect behavioral, attitudinal, and institutional change. New states of sociopolitical and socioeconomic affairs are ultimately created, causing new social gaps to develop and persist in society and thus instigate conflict and cause further change. In contrast, change that starts with the state of mind, such as religious fundamentalism, communism, and nationalism, presents a challenge to the existing sociopolitical, socioeconomic, and sociocultural orders, forcing most people to react, sometimes strongly, to arrest change before it undermines their values, traditions, and power base. Because of such actions and reactions, actual change precipitated by a changed state of mind is more likely to be revolutionary rather than evolutionary, causing open conflict before effecting the desired change. Change may still occur at both levels without lag, transforming the prevailing state of mind and reforming economic, political, and sociocultural affairs simultaneously. Change, nevertheless, produces winners and losers; the first tend to accept change, the latter to detest it. Eventually, new states of political, economic, and social affairs appear, causing existing socioeconomic and sociopolitical gaps to widen and sociocultural divides to deepen. “Culture” and “Civilization” The words “culture” and “civilization” are often used alternately to refer to the same thing; it is oftentimes assumed that they have the same meaning. Although the terms bear similar definitions, their connotations differ from each other, which makes their interchangeable usage inaccurate. Explaining the meaning of each word and its connotation requires an explanation of how they relate to one another in a historical context. Such a clarification is important to understanding the course of societal development over time and to identifying the issues causing different peoples to misunderstand each other and at times clash with one another. Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary defines “civilization” as “an advanced state of human society, in which a high level of culture, science, industry, and government has been reached.” An alternate definition of “civilization” by the same source refers to “modern comforts and conveniences, as made possible by science and technology.”5 As for “culture,” it is defined as “the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.”6 In general, “culture” stands for the way of life that a group follows, and it provides the social cement that binds its members together, while “civilization” stands for the state of life that a group enjoys and defines the economic and cultural means that enable people to satisfy their needs and improve the material conditions of their lives.
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The first definition of “civilization,” as the achievement of “a high level of culture, science, industry, and government,” considers culture, just like industry and science, a component of civilization rather than its equal or its other face. The definition also suggests that culture does not include science, industry, or government; it only includes intangible things that can be transmitted from one generation to another, such as traditions, values, and attitudes. Culture, wrote Constantine Zurayk, is “the sum of the creative achievements of the human spirit in society.”7 Or, in Thomas Sowell’s formulation, culture “involves attitudes as well as skills, languages, and customs.”8 Michael Naumann says, “Culture is a symbol for spiritual innovation, for satirical laughter, for imagination, for intellectual challenge—but also for comfort, for relaxation and for all those forms of entertainment that do not automatically dull people’s minds.”9 Since civilization includes culture, and culture is one component of civilization, neither concept should be used to refer to what the other means or is intended to mean. The definition of culture concerns itself with the quality of what a society develops in the fields of visual arts, literature, values, traditions, and similar things. It refers also to “the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings”10 interacting with each other for a long time in what is called society. This suggests that culture includes values, traditions, customs, attitudes, languages, the arts, belief systems, worldviews, ways of thinking, and social organization developed by a people and transmitted from one generation to another. “Civilization,” on the other hand, refers to both the quality and quantity of human achievements in the fields of culture, science, government, industry, and technology; it is therefore a product of peoples interacting with each other as well as with nature over long periods of time in countless places. Civilization thus tends to underline the comforts of life that are attainable through industry, science, technology, and culture. These are comforts that reflect the accumulation and utilization of knowledge developed by all peoples in all places throughout history. “Civilization,” therefore, concerns itself largely with the material aspects of life; culture concerns itself mainly with the nonmaterial aspects. Because the interaction of humanity with nature is meant to discover nature’s secrets and laws and exploit its resources, economic factors and technological tools have become decisive in making and shaping civilizations and life conditions. While culture is a product of the efforts of one people in dealing with life challenges that emanate primarily from their social environment, civilization is a product of all peoples’ dealings with life challenges that emanate primarily from nature’s conditions and fluctuations. Civilization, therefore, is produced by humanity and thus belongs to all peoples; culture is produced by one society and thus belongs to one nation. Consequently, culture is more
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particular and portable; civilization is more global and hardly transferable— the first is communal, the second universal. Because culture is a component of civilization and one of its aspects, a civilization can and does produce more than one culture or, to be more accurate, several shades of the same culture. Being an attribute of civilization, culture owes its very existence and basic traits to the civilization that produces it, and not to any other one; and, therefore, the fate of each culture is tied to the fate of its mother civilization. This means that the development of cultures follows that of civilizations; therefore, as civilizations change, the cultures they produce change as well. This is not to say that cultures do not influence the development of their mother civilizations. On the contrary, after a civilization is developed and has become well established, the cultural component of civilization assumes an active role in shaping societal change and influencing its pace and course. Culture, being the sum total of ways of living, helps shape the way younger generations think and the attitudes they adopt toward other peoples and cultures, the environment, the economy, science, and technology, as well as work, time, and life. However, the most important elements of culture, I believe, are the values it espouses and the attitudes it impels people to adopt, particularly toward the environment, science, work, and time. Because culture is a product of people’s interactions with one another, it had to await the formation of societies to develop and be transformed. Though culture appeared during the tribal age, only after agriculture was developed and human settlements were established did culture begin to influence societal and civilizational change. Since the agricultural age lasted about ten thousand years before the industrial revolution arrived, all cultures produced during that time were products of one single civilization, and therefore they were similar to one another. “Until comparatively recently in human history, all humans had the same subsistence pattern. In a certain sense, they all shared a similar, though not identical culture.”11 Culture in Historical Perspective Ancient “civilizations,” such as the Greek, Egyptian, and Roman civilizations, were merely empires that covered large areas of land and ruled several peoples. All such empires lived in the age of agriculture and therefore had similar cultures, not only to each other but also to other cultures that appeared in other places at the time. Describing life conditions and the way of life in Pacoma, a village in Bolivia, Jack Weatherford wrote: “In many ways Pacoma seems typical of village life across South America as well as throughout India, China and Sub-Saharan Africa.”12 A visit to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam will reveal that the artist’s paintings depicting rural life in Holland, France,
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and Belgium in the 1880s, particularly domestic life, could have been done a century later in Mexico, Thailand, or Morocco. The Egyptian pharoanic era of five thousand years ago is considered one of the greatest civilizations of the past, if not the greatest of all. But Egypt of today is much more sophisticated and advanced than Egypt of the past, yet it is not considered a civilization. And what is true of the Egyptian civilization is also true of the Greek, Chinese, Indian, Mexican, Roman, Persian, and Islamic civilizations. These were empires having similar cultures and life conditions; however, their architectural and artistic achievements and social organizations were somewhat different. Furthermore, while people may talk of an American or a Japanese culture, no one talks about an American or a Japanese civilization. These are large states having slightly different cultures and economies, both of which, however, were produced by the industrial civilization; therefore, they are similar to each other in both their ways of living and states of living. The industrial revolution of the eighteenth century has enabled peoples of Western Europe and North America to achieve higher levels of culture, science, industry, technology, and government, causing the Western state of human living to be recognized as having reached the highest status of all civilizations. This civilization is commonly known as the “Western civilization,” but, to be more accurate, it should be called the “industrial civilization.” In fact, this civilization no longer describes life conditions in the West only but in all industrialized societies of the West and East. Advanced civilizations produce refined cultures, and refined cultures reflect the achievements of advanced civilizations. The material and nonmaterial achievements of each civilization go hand in hand, and their internal and external dynamics and mutual influence are what makes progress, stagnation, or regression possible. Some Third World intellectuals, particularly those belonging to older nations and great empire-civilizations of the past, tend to claim that the Western civilization is one of material and technological achievements but little meaningful culture. They argue that human relations in Western societies in general, and the United States in particular, are superficial, lacking passion and sincerity and, therefore, reflect the lack of refined culture. But in so claiming, such intellectuals conveniently ignore the superior Western achievements in the fields of visual arts, music, literature, education, laws, sports, and architecture; they also ignore Western nations’ contributions to the development of individual freedoms and their espousal of human rights and environmental protection. Although human relations in Third World societies in general are more personal and passionate, it is doubtful that they are always stronger or necessarily better than those prevalent in the West. In fact, human relations in a
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large Third World city like Lagos, Cairo, Manila, Calcutta, or Mexico City seem to be not only less conducive to change and development but also less personal and passionate than human relations in a small Greek, Spanish, or British town. A United Nations study declared two decades ago that Manila and Bangkok have more in common with Tokyo and Washington than with their rural hinterlands. Globalization is exposing people to aspects of other cultures and causing all cultures to change and be transformed, and sometimes deformed, often unconsciously. Third World intellectuals making the argument about the lack of culture in the West tend to acknowledge, though unconsciously, that cultures are products of civilizations and that an industrial civilization produces cultures that give priority to the material aspects of life. What causes human relations to become less personal and passionate and more formal and materialistic are powerful forces that include urbanization, industrialization, population growth, migration, money, and the diversification of interests and careers. Human relations and the social organizations of today are, as they were in the past, functions of environmental settings, human needs, belief systems, political structures, economic interests, education, science and technology, and modes of production. As a consequence, cultures cannot stay the same while needs and interests, situations and economic activities, change and multiply. Every civilization has produced its own cultures, and every successive culture has been less personal and more materialistic than the one it replaced. Most Third World peoples view Western cultures as strange ways of living that grew out of a colonialist mentality and are inherently imperialistic rather than humanistic. Since Western societies and cultures are centuries ahead of Third World societies and cultures, they are difficult for Third World peoples to understand and appreciate. On the other hand, Third World cultures stem largely from primitive needs and traditional belief systems and hierarchical relations developed in small villages dominated by family life and the clan system; most of them, in fact, predate the Enlightenment and even the Renaissance ages. Because of that, Third World cultures are difficult for Westerners in general to understand and appreciate. While some Third World intellectuals and humanists accuse Western societies of becoming largely materialistic, some Western intellectuals accuse the descendants of the great nations/civilizations of the past of becoming the new barbarians of the present.13 Although both sides are wrong, deeply rooted prejudices and failure to understand the dynamics of cultural change within civilizations allow such claims and accusations to be made, believed, spread, and to persist.
CHAPTER 5
Development of Human Societies
H
istorians and other social scientists, using various models and criteria, have defined several stages of societal development. Some have made the list lengthy; others have abbreviated it. However, each social scientist seems to acknowledge that the greatest revolutions in human history were the agricultural and industrial revolutions, which gave birth to the agricultural and industrial civilizations, respectively. Historians also acknowledge that these two revolutions have had the greatest impact on human ways of living and states of living, or on their cultures and economic conditions. There is also agreement on at least three major stages of societal development or civilization: the preagricultural, the agricultural, and the industrial stage. Nevertheless, a growing number of historians think that the information and communications revolutions represent another great revolution in human history that is destined to transform both the cultures and economic conditions of people everywhere. Changes that certain nations, particularly the United States, are experiencing today have led some thinkers to herald the arrival of a new age. This new, yet to be defined and agreed upon age is often referred to as the postindustrial age, the information age, or the globalization age. I call it the “knowledge age” because it is knowledge that includes unprecedented innovations, scientific discoveries, and information and telecommunications systems that are fundamentally changing people’s ways of living and states of living in the developed and developing countries, affecting the cultures of the rich as well as the poor. A careful analysis of these stages should make it possible to place all major sociocultural and economic transformations in their proper historical contexts and thus enable us to track the course of societal development over time. The intended analysis, however, is not meant to recount the history of societies or underline their accomplishments but to find that particular thread that
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runs throughout all stages of societal development, forming the continuous human movement that is called the “historical process.” Emphasis, therefore, shall be placed on the major forces of change and transformation and the role each force has played in linking those civilizations to one another and differentiating them from each other. Historical records suggest that long before the development of agriculture, human beings were able to get enough food and attain a level of physical security to survive and grow. Familial and tribal ties, as well as customs, norms, traditions, and languages, served as social glue that held early human societies together and gave meaning to their communal life. This simply means that the roots of civilization came into existence probably twenty thousand years before the dawn of the agricultural age and the establishment of permanent human settlements. However, it was a primitive civilization based on a food economy that depended primarily on the hunting of animals and the collecting of wild fruits and vegetables. Societies in that civilization were nomadic, and cultures consisted of little more than tribal norms and traditions. The economic arrangements and social organizations were simple and informal, and, because of that, societies remained largely changeless for countless generations until the domestication of animals and plants some eleven thousand years ago. With the development of agriculture, the economic base of life began to change relatively rapidly, causing the culture and social structure of society to change in ways that made it very different from tribal society. “The resulting food surpluses, and the animal-based means of transporting those surpluses, were a prerequisite for the development of settled, politically centralized, socially stratified, economically complex, technologically innovative societies,”1 says Jared Diamond. But after agriculture was established and its culture fully developed, the pace of change slowed, causing life conditions to become steady and seem perpetual. Most forces of change were either dormant or yet to be born. The most important changes that the later centuries of the agricultural era had witnessed were the birth of organized religion, the development of the state, the expansion of trade, and the incorporation of merchant life into the larger life of society, causing the pace of societal change to accelerate slightly but steadily. While the state was able to regulate economic and political relations between neighboring communities, establish law and order, and make roads safer for merchants, trade helped societies connect with each other and facilitated cultural interaction, technological borrowing, and the diversification of economic activities. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the manufacturing of goods emerged in England as the most important, though not the largest, economic activity. This development heralded the coming of a new age, the industrial
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age, and the dawn of rapid socioeconomic, sociopolitical, and sociocultural change. The coming together of major economic, social, cultural, scientific, and technological developments is what historians call the industrial revolution. It was a revolution that changed the mode of production and production relations, forcing other social, political, and cultural aspects of life to change drastically, profoundly, and irreversibly. The industrial revolution emerged as a forceful process of societal change that seems to have no end in sight. “Our fathers,” wrote Charles Van Doren, “started the revolution and we are still living it. We could not stop it even if we wanted to.”2 Around the middle of the 1990s, industrial society in general and American society in particular began to experience a new wave of fundamental change or revolution. This new revolution was driven by knowledge that caused the economy to shift quickly from the production of tradable goods to the production of tradable services and information. “In the United States, service employment accounted for 80 percent of employment in 2000. More people were at the time working in doctors’ offices than in auto plants and more in laundries and dry cleaners than in steel mills.”3 Consequently, the knowledge age began to force itself and impose its logic on the prevailing way of living and state of living, causing all aspects of life to undergo gradual but fundamental change. The Hunter-Gatherer Age The hunter-gatherer age lasted longer and experienced less change than any other age; it started probably one hundred thousand years ago and continued without interruption until the development of agriculture. People during this age lived in small groups of families and tribes that survived on the hunting of animals and the gathering of fruits and vegetables. The domestication of animals about eleven thousand years ago gave the tribal society and its social organization a new meaning; it enabled the nomads to strengthen their economic base, grow in size, and further develop their culture and way of life. Domesticated animals made tribal life easier and sustainable; the meat of some was used for food, the skin and fur of others were used for clothing, and the bones of some animals served other purposes, providing tools, weapons, musical instruments, and ornaments. In addition, people employed some animals, like the camel, the horse, and the elephant, as means of transportation, making it easier for tribes to move across difficult terrains and interact peacefully and otherwise with other tribes. The intellectual horizon of the tribal people, however, remained “limited to their allegiance and their loyalties, which extended no further than the tribe, and was directed towards the smaller family group in the first instance.”4
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Culture in this age was in essence a way of life based on age-old norms and traditions and a history of feuding with other tribes. The social and cultural aspects of life or what I call “the sociocultural process” governed the pace and determined the course of change for thousands of years to come without challenge. In fact, the sociocultural process could hardly be called a process; it consisted of a simple set of traditions and customs that were passed from one generation to another without discernible change. The abundance of freedom and lack of technological innovations made change difficult to conceive in this age. However, the basic and most important goals of survival and security improved over time but remained constrained by nature, which set the limits and defined the space of social and economic maneuverability. Since economic conditions and needs were at the time basically the same everywhere, the environment or nature became the primary force influencing life conditions and social change. And since environmental conditions were similar everywhere, they produced similar patterns of living. Consequently, tribal cultures displayed almost identical characteristics in content, character, attitudes, and outlook; all had the same internal and external dynamics. The way of life of an African tribe, for example, has been found to be similar to that of a Middle Eastern tribe, which resembled greatly the way of life of Asian, Australian, European, and Mexican tribes. “Many events in human history seem to correlate very remarkably with environmental controls . . . The historical theory that ascribes many events in the human record to environmental causes thus receives powerful support from geology.”5 All tribes lived in the same stage of societal development, had the same economy, and developed similar cultures. Members of each tribe were tied to each other by blood and kinship relationships and believed and largely behaved as if they were members of one large family sharing the same history and destiny. Strict tribal norms, traditions, and relationships served to strengthen tribal unity and loyalty but weakened individuality and initiative. Meanwhile, internal tribal solidarity reflected an almost equal enmity toward the outside, causing tribal relationships to be largely shaped by suspicion, hostility, and a strong desire to avenge real and perceived past injuries to tribal honor. Tribes raided each other for a reason and often for no reason at all. Hostility toward the other had been, as the Rwanda, Burundi, and Somalia tragedies of the 1990s demonstrated, an important aspect of the tribal way of life. Contact between different tribes often meant war, the consequences of which were recognized and largely accepted as normal. In other words, tribal humans lived to fight and fought to live, causing life in general to start and end with fighting. Nevertheless, places in which tribes lived were different in geography and topography, as well as in their endowment of plants and animals that lent
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themselves to domestication. Because of this diversity, argues Jared Diamond, some regions were able to develop first, enter the agricultural age, and make more progress than others. “Hence the availability of domestic plants and animals ultimately explains why empires, literacy, and steel weapons developed earlier in Eurasia and later, or not at all, on other continents.”6 In addition, nature and the dictates of a nomadic life denied people the opportunity to establish roots in one place, leading them to have no attachment to a country or sense of belonging to a nation, even after agriculture was developed and the state was established. The family house, usually a tent, was the place to which tribal people exhibited the most attachment, and the tribe was the nation to which they belonged and to whose customs and traditions they gave allegiance. About ten thousand years ago, humans began to domesticate plants and develop agriculture. Although no one knows how this discovery came about, historical records strongly suggest that agriculture was first practiced in presentday Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Palestine. From there, it traveled slowly to other Asian, African, and European regions. It is also believed that agriculture may have developed independently in other regions of the world, particularly in China and New Guinea. It is significant that “the long transition from foraging to agricultural life . . . happened in several places seemingly independently, yet within a few thousand years of one another.”7 Year-round warm weather, the abundance of water, fertile land, and domesticated animals made a seminomadic life possible. And this, in turn, enabled people to observe nature closely, follow its seasonal course, and ultimately discover the life cycle of plants. Since tribal men were forced by nature and culture to spend most of their time foraging, I believe that women were responsible for discovering the life cycle of plants and developing agriculture. In fact, women in many agricultural societies have continued to spend most of their time cultivating the land, tending plants, preparing produce for food, and preserving it for cold and hard times. By the end of the twentieth century, women represented about 80 percent of farm workers in the developing countries. And while women continue to work in the fields, men in some rural areas are busy developing bad habits, such as smoking and abusing their wives. Therefore, women should be credited for causing the greatest revolution in human history. The Age of Agriculture The development of agriculture changed the economic conditions of life and the way of life of societies that adopted it; agriculture transformed human relations and the way societies and economies were organized, as well as the
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relationships of people to one another and to their environments. It brought about a new civilization with its own society, culture, economy, social and economic structures, and political organization. “The change from hunting and gathering to agriculture involved more than a mere change in subsistence pattern; it represented a complete change in the social and cultural fabric of life.”8 With agriculture, the ability to produce enough food to support a subsistence living was no longer in doubt. Because of that assurance, the importance of survival as an existential issue was vastly reduced, causing the life of the wanderer in constant search of food to become largely obsolete. As a consequence, the old way of life had to recede, and the building of a new, more advanced one had to begin. As agriculture was increasingly becoming a way of life, permanent settlements began to appear and grow in size, leading people to build houses and communities and make roots in scattered hamlets and small villages. Farming the land and building permanent settlements transformed all aspects of human life. It changed the economic base, creating new activities over which people had some control, and caused land to acquire a new meaning that forced societies to reorganize themselves socially, politically, and economically around it. Domesticated animals, meanwhile, began to play an added role in the new economy as a means to cultivate the land and transport agricultural products to markets. “Compared with the thousands of years humans spent foraging, the construction of villages represented another revolutionary change in culture, subsistence, technology, social organization and history. In many respects, humans still have not successfully completed this major transition.”9 The importance of land in the life of society led eventually to private ownership of land, which, in turn, caused agricultural society to be divided into two social classes separated primarily by land ownership. In addition, the farming of the land on a permanent basis led people to develop a strong attachment to their environment, which led individuals and families to acquire a sense of belonging to a place, to a community, and later on to a society and a state. As a result, people were forced to develop new traditions, initiate new internal and external relationships, and compete to improve the quality of their lives, which led them subsequently to acquire wealth, both portable and nonportable. Meanwhile, as communities grew in size and number, trade appeared and began to play a major role in life, causing economies to diversify their activities. As a consequence, a need for a superstructure or a state was created to regulate access to water resources and fertile land and to protect agricultural communities and trading roads and traders from tribal people. Subsequently, politics and political leaders and institutions, or what I call “the political process,” emerged slowly
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to play an increasingly important role in societal life. Therefore, the development of agricultural society and economy and the building of the state superstructure moved together; they reinforced one another, giving the new civilization its cultural and noncultural characteristics. The social relations people developed in this age were, unlike those of the tribal age, based largely on cooperation and trust, not on suspicion and enmity. Learning from their experience and environments, people began to develop and accumulate knowledge and make tools that served many purposes, causing productivity to rise and people’s needs and desires to grow slowly in ways that affected their ways of living and social relations. Meanwhile, the accumulation of knowledge, the ability to produce a food surplus, and the institutionalization of private property worked together to introduce the idea of progress in human life and accelerate the pace of development in four major areas: 1. State building, which led to strengthening the political process as a force of change and transformation and was a tool to maintain security and stability; 2. Expansion of trade, which created a need to produce new tradable products and paved the way for economics to play an increasingly important role in societal life; 3. Development of tools of production and means of transportation, which led to improving labor productivity, facilitating trade and governance, and introducing a technological element to societal life; and 4. Cross-cultural interaction, which led societies to learn from each other, exchange ideas and goods, and borrow available technologies, causing some people to become more aware of the world around them and more interested in knowing its formation and workings. And this led eventually to the development of religion and the idea of God. The need to share water resources among neighboring communities, resolve conflict among clans by peaceful means, and protect trade routes and communities strengthened the state’s role as an institution to manage intercommunity relations and provide a mechanism for collective security. Subsequently, the state began to build cities as trade and political centers, form bureaucracies to collect taxes, develop courts and security forces to keep law and order, build armies to protect communities from invading tribes, and expand state influence over larger areas and differentiated communities. Since most agricultural settlements were small villages and isolated hamlets, they could not survive the attacks of roaming tribesmen without state protection. And because the core purpose of an agricultural community was and still is
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to farm the land, not fight wars, the new society’s capacity to protect itself against invaders was limited. In fact, mobility of fighting forces, which tribesmen had enjoyed, has been an advantage in all wars throughout history. Consequently, the state system evolved as a superstructure, having the authority and power to govern and influence the course of change. One of the new forces that played a pivotal role in the development of both state and culture was organized religion. Religion as we know it today was a product of the agricultural age. It came in response to certain human needs, particularly the inability of humans to explain nature, its workings, and many of its manifestations. Religion was also needed to provide ethical and moral codes of conduct and regulate social relations, especially during the formative stages of agricultural communities when the state was still ineffective. Since some of the questions raised by people thousands of years ago have continued to elude science even today, religious convictions have continued to play a major role in life, influencing social relationships, attitudes, and worldviews. Therefore, no one should doubt the importance of religion in individual and group lives or assume that it will disappear any time soon. Nonetheless, religion had its ups and downs and is expected to continue to do so. While the same economic base caused nations during the agricultural age to belong to the same civilization and exhibit its major characteristics, dissimilar environmental settings and varied internal and external challenges led societies to develop slightly different cultures. “The ways in which different societies responded to challenges distinguished Chinese civilization from that of the Aztecs, or Egyptian civilization from that of India. Problems produced unique responses and further differentiated one culture from another.”10 Nevertheless, the production and consumption of food has continued to be the focal point of the life of agricultural society in general. As a result, agricultural humans ate to live and lived to eat, making food production and consumption and the enjoyment that comes with both activities the essence of all cultures of the agricultural age. With the expansion of trade and conquest, cultures began to play a more active role in life, viewing external forces not only as threats to be avoided but also as challenges to be faced and potential opportunities to be harnessed. Cultures that viewed external forces as challenges and opportunities were able to change faster and make more progress. In contrast, cultures that viewed external challenges as threats to be avoided became suspicious, inward looking, and less able to develop and make further progress. Culture, consequently, emerged as a force shaping peoples’ attitudes, ways of thinking, and worldviews, defining individual and community goals, setting priorities, and influencing the way societies respond to varied life challenges. Such
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challenges were not limited to the physical environment and the other only; they included new ideas, philosophies, technologies, and scientific facts, as well as unconventional social, economic, and political arrangements. Nevertheless, cultures, regardless of place and time, have shown little enthusiasm for change, especially change introduced from the outside or instigated by nontraditional forces and ideas. Sociologists and political scientists often speak of a “national culture” and the role it plays in uniting people and giving them an identity of their own. While it is true that each people living in one state feel that they belong to one country and form one nation, no society has ever had one culture, except the tribal one. The moment the institution of private property was invented, no society could stay homogeneous. And since wealth is a source of power, and power is an effective tool to gain more wealth, the crystallization and legitimization of private property caused the haves to feel and often behave differently from the have-nots. And this, in turn, served to differentiate the rich from the poor, and the powerful from the powerless, causing the culture of the rich and powerful to acquire new traits different from those of the largely poor and powerless. As societies moved from the agricultural to the industrial age, the socioeconomic gaps that separated the rich from the poor widened further, and a new sociocultural divide was eventually created. Socioeconomic gaps reflect differences in income and wealth between rich and poor; sociocultural divides reflect educational levels and cultural sophistication that differentiate one group from another. During the hunting and gathering stage, the tribe represented the society to which every member belonged. Each tribe had its own chief whose role was regulated by customs and whose functions were largely limited to leading his people in times of war and mediating between them in times of peace. Life activities, including the economic ones, were performed almost entirely outside the family home. But when the agricultural age and its civilization arrived, the tribal way of life lost its meaning and reasons for being. The extended family, or the clan, replaced the tribe and became the basic unit of a typical agricultural community, which consisted of a few clans. Each clan had its own head who was often chosen because of his age and wisdom and whose role was to maintain clannishness, manage conflict with other clans, and mediate between his clan and state authorities. In addition, most social and economic activities were performed inside the family home, not outside it. With the full development of the agricultural society, the history and historical logic of tribal society lost their relevance, causing tribal culture and social organization to become less civilized. So, as the tribal way of life was becoming outdated, the agricultural civilization with its own history and
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historical logic was being born. Although tribal history would retain much of its relevance within its own circles for thousands of years to come, it lost under the state authority much of its pastureland and freedom and momentum. It was forced to adopt a circular movement within an increasingly smaller and more confined physical, economic, and political space. Consequently, tribal society, being less free and less able to provide for itself as before, became dependent on agricultural society. Nevertheless, tribal society retained a capacity to disrupt the life of agricultural society and temporarily impede its development. But even when tribes did invade, loot, and destroy states and empires and cause their demise, the invaders could not reverse the course of history. The conquerors were often absorbed by the more economically productive and culturally sophisticated conquered peoples. History, being irreversible, has continued to move forward, making some of the most civilized peoples of the past the least civilized and developed ones of the present. Because neighboring agricultural communities shared interests and had similar cultures, they had little difficulty developing workable means of communication with each other. And because relationships were essentially based on cooperation and trust, language differences and a scattered existence did not present insurmountable obstacles. But since their cultures were different from those produced by a less sophisticated and civilized tribal society, they had difficulty communicating with tribal people and resolving conflict with them peacefully. Communications between similar cultures produced by the same civilization has always been easier than communications between cultures produced by different civilizations. Latin Americans, for example, have less difficulty communicating with each other than with North Americans, while the latter have less difficulty communicating with Europeans than with Asians. Third World nations in general, whose cultures are products of a largely agricultural civilization, find it easier to communicate with and understand each other than to communicate with and understand the industrialized Western nations. Communications across cultural lines, therefore, must be defined and viewed as communications across civilizational lines or across profoundly different cultures produced in different times. Until the fifteenth century no center of civilization anywhere in the world had experienced profound change to distinguish itself from other centers. Both Jack Weatherford and Paul Kennedy argued that throughout the Middle Ages the great centers of civilization in the world were at roughly similar stages of development and, because of that, “the world formed a single, albeit large, social system that operated at a much slower pace than that to which we have become accustomed.”11 But around the middle of the fifteenth century,
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the pace of social, cultural, political, economic, intellectual, and technological change began to accelerate and change direction in Europe. These were developments that forced all systems to enter a new period of transformation. Trade, which by then had become an important economic activity, led change and paved the way for the economic transformations, scientific discoveries, and technological innovations that were to follow, giving birth to what I call “the economic process.” Other developments occurred subsequently and played decisive roles in promoting change and accelerating its pace; they included improvements in navigation tools and maps, better ships, more potent arms, competition between the major European cities and states, the development of the printing press, and the discovery of the New World. Due to these developments and others, manufacturing expanded, financial services were acknowledged as a legitimate business activity, and scientific and philosophical inquiry multiplied. Three centuries later, the industrial revolution took place in England, and from there it traveled to other European and North American states, transforming agricultural life in ways and to extents previously unknown. “Agricultural societies were transformed into urban industrial societies within the space of perhaps a hundred years, and all the accumulated norms, social habits and customs that had characterized rural village life were replaced by the rhythms of the factory and the city.”12 The Age of Industry In the second half of the eighteenth century a new way of organizing manufacturing began to emerge in England. Workers were brought together to work in one place for one master, who often was the sole owner of the means of production, as well as the raw materials and the finished products. People who worked for the new entrepreneur were often landless and powerless laborers having nothing more than their labor to sell. Because of that powerlessness, workers were, especially during the first century of the industrial age, forced to work for long hours and live under intolerable conditions. When people are forced to sell their labor because of need, they are more likely to lose self-esteem and become vulnerable to exploitation, if not slavery. The industrial revolution, just like the agricultural revolution of some ten thousand years earlier, ushered in a new wave of change that transformed all aspects of life in every industrial society. For example, workers were no longer free to determine work hours or how to perform their work; tasks were assigned, working hours were specified, regulations were imposed, and hierarchical relationships within the workplace were enforced. Income was tied to work, making survival a function of work availability and workers’ capacity
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to work long hours and endure the pain of performing repetitious, largely boring tasks. For the first time in history, the new workers could own neither the place of their work, the means of production, nor the end products they produced. Their only source of income was their labor, and their labor was the only commodity they could trade. Industrial humans, in fact, were transformed through manufacturing and money making into machines, causing work to become the focal point of their lives. Industrial humans work to live and live to work, causing life to start and end with work, even for capitalists. The new conditions created by manufacturing forced workers to live near their places of work in clustered residential communities that lacked almost all health amenities. As a result, slums emerged and became home for a growing rootless, powerless, and very vulnerable social class, whose appearance was seen by many as inevitable. But intellectuals who were critical of this development saw the appearance of this class as an evil act committed intentionally by heartless capitalists. Consequently, intellectuals called for change but failed to agree on the nature of the desired change, which led them to be divided along two major lines: one utopian, the other revolutionary. But history, being the product of actions and reactions by many social actors and natural forces, moved forward along neither the revolutionary nor the utopian line. It implemented change dictated by its own logic, the logic of the industrial age, where economic forces and interests, or the economic process, had become the dominant force directing social transformation. And despite several attempts to make revolutions and build utopias, history has rendered both utopia and revolution unworkable in the long run. Workers who were most attracted to the new job opportunities in manufacturing were the young whose families had earlier lived on land that was taken away from them by landlords. Being landless in a harsh environment made them rootless; they had to build new communities, plant new roots, and develop new traditions suited to their circumstances. Karl Marx, writing some eighty years after the birth of the industrial revolution, observed that “man’s ideas, views and conceptions, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations, and in his social life, or in the state of his living.”13 However, with the emergence of workers living in crowded slums or ghettos, things began to change in society, and slowly a new working social class emerged and began to seek change. Workers began to form labor unions to facilitate collective bargaining and apply economic pressure to the capitalists and the industrial state. Intellectuals, seeing the intolerable life and working conditions in and around factories, and the enormity of exploitation of children and women, supported the demands of the workers. Gradually, industrial workers developed a strong class consciousness that made them look and
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behave as a distinct social class. Union members who failed to achieve their goals resorted to peaceful demonstrations, strikes, and at times violence, which helped them become more confident and assertive, forcing the state subsequently to recognize and address their grievances. While people were being uprooted and compelled to work and live under appalling conditions, members of the capitalist class were living in affluence and accumulating wealth, causing wealth to be transformed from the domain of land to the domain of capital. Wealth, meanwhile, enabled the wealthy to improve the quality of their lives and exploit more people as laborers and domestic servants. More than a century later, the number of servants living at the homes of their masters was used as a criterion to determine the social class to which the household belonged. But despite the fact that farmers and servants who worked on farms and in their masters’ houses were by the end of the nineteenth century the two largest groups in industrial society, neither group was recognized as a social class. Members of each group were weak and scattered and, despite sharing similar living and working conditions, were unable to develop a consciousness of their own, which is a prerequisite for forming a social class. As the industrial revolution advanced, it expanded and diversified economic activity, causing new jobs to be created and more people to be involved in manufacturing. And this in turn created a need for people to perform related tasks, such as plant supervisors, accountants, labor relations, transportation and trade managers, sales persons, banking and investment officers, technicians to service equipment, and innovators to develop new technologies and products. Consequently, a new class of largely urban dwellers was born; it was neither rich nor poor but in between. Because of its unique social position, economic functions, and relative power, the new class shared neither interests nor traditions with either the rich or the poor; it had to develop its own way of life and claim its place in society as a middle class. Since wealth and power move hand in hand, the new capitalist class was able to acquire more power, often at the expense of the landed aristocracy, but always at the expense of the industrial workers and farmers. And with this shift in wealth and power, the social and economic structures of society began to change drastically, causing traditional cultural patterns to change as well. Though industrial society has developed its own culture and economy, the accumulation of change over time has led society to have three subcultures: one for the rich, another for the middle class, and a third for the poor working class. Official recognition of labor unions and their right to bargain collectively on the one hand, and intellectual support of these rights on the other, were instrumental in facilitating association in society and implanting the seeds
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of democracy. Meanwhile, a middle class aware of its economic interests but limited political power moved to support democracy because democracy guarantees political participation and economic freedom. This in turn gave the middle class a societal role to play and a political forum to air its grievances, protect its interests, and promote change in its favor. And while democracy was being strengthened and labor unions were growing stronger, life conditions in general were improving for all members of industrial society. Several factors contributed to making this development a reality; noted among them: 1. Continued development of new products and technologies that improved productivity, reduced the cost of production, increased sales, and raised profit margins; 2. Increased demand for manufactured goods at home and abroad, which enabled capitalists to make more money and encouraged them to provide better wages and new employment opportunities for workers; 3. Increased state revenues from taxes, which led governments to spend more on public health and education, improve infrastructure, and finance welfare programs; and 4. Official recognition of the need to end labor exploitation, limit monopoly, and expand markets, which caused economic activities to expand and provide more business opportunities and better-paying jobs for members of the middle class. Meanwhile, people migrating from the countryside to urban centers in search of jobs caused the extended agricultural family, or the clan and its traditions, to ultimately disappear. The new communities that emerged in the industrial cities were composed of nucleus families sharing smaller living spaces and facing differentiated life challenges. Traditions and kinship ties that provided the social glue that held agricultural communities together for countless generations while minimizing change were no longer workable in the new environment. Old traditions and wisdom, as a consequence, could not be passed on from grandparents to grandchildren without questioning. Since change is a process through which past experience is critically analyzed and superseded, life conditions changed so quickly that knowledge and wisdom of the past were fast becoming outdated and irrelevant. And because neither tribes nor clans could exist or function in the new industrial society, the state became more dominant in the life of people, and allegiance to it was strengthened. For example, the old family home on the farm lost much of its economic and social role in the industrial society. Being small and urban, the family home could not perform many of the tasks it used to perform in the village.
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The education of children, the making of clothes, the processing of agricultural products, and even entertainment moved almost entirely out of the city home to new institutions run by specialists. Caring for the sick and the elderly also moved gradually to hospitals and special health-care facilities, further weakening the old community structure and mutual social obligations that held clans and agricultural communities together for generations. Change in social and political relations and economic and social structures led to the production of a new civilization: the industrial civilization, with its unique society, economy, and culture. Because these transformations were largely limited to Western societies, the new pattern of life was dubbed the “Western civilization.” Industrial civilization, like agricultural civilization before it, produced its own cultural varieties wherever it took root. Historians and philosophers of history, despite a wealth of books and fieldwork, are yet to agree on the forces that caused the industrial revolution. Some believe that economics and self-interest were the determining factors that led the transformation process. Others argue that the Protestant Reformation, which brought about many bloody religious wars in Europe, leading to the separation of religion and state, was the decisive factor. Still others feel that the enclosure movement, which led landlords to confiscate or repossess land on which farmers had lived and worked, created the first landless, rootless social class that provided the cheap labor whose sweat facilitated the building of the industrial capitalist system. Science, technology, inventions, new ideas, population growth, urbanization, political freedom, trade, and economic liberty are also cited as forces whose contributions to the industrial revolution were momentous. In fact, the industrial revolution was the product of all these forces and many more. The three hundred years prior to the industrial revolution were decisive in giving birth to new forces of change and undermining many of the older ones. These centuries represented a transitional period between the agricultural and industrial civilizations during which traditional systems, institutions, and ways of thinking were invalidated, new ones were developed, and quantitative as well as qualitative societal changes were introduced and legitimized. Karl Marx was one of the first philosophers of history to argue that the underlying economic forces in society are responsible for cultural products such as religion. Max Weber, in contrast, argued decades later that culture produces certain forms of economic behavior and work ethics that facilitate economic progress. Both arguments, while basically sound, are partial and therefore cannot individually provide satisfactory explanations for how societies respond to changes in the economic conditions of life or to transformations in values and traditions that regulate life. In a civilizational setting, culture plays the crucial role in changing attitudes and economic behavior; in
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transitional periods, economic forces and technological innovations lead the way to change and sociocultural transformation. The age of industry not only expanded manufacturing, it also helped agriculture diversify and become much more productive; it also expanded trade in agricultural products as well as in manufactured goods. Agriculture, consequently, became dependent on industry; it could not increase productivity and improve the quality of products without the new machines, fertilizers, improved seeds, and irrigation and farming systems that industry and its technological base had developed. In fact, without the advancement of science and technology, food production would have been less than adequate to support a growing industrial working class and feed urban dwellers. Rendering agriculture dependent on industry has also caused agricultural society in general to become dependent on the industrial society. The natural dependency of the agricultural society on the industrial one thus renders the dependency theory articulated by Latin American intellectuals largely meaningless and useless; it can neither explain lack of development in so many states with dissimilar economies and life conditions nor can it help any poor state transform its economy and overcome dependency and underdevelopment. The discovery of the New World and the triumph of Christian nationalism in Spain at the end of the fifteenth century, which led to the expulsion of Arabs and Jews from Spain, marked the end of agricultural dominance, practically ending the great civilization-empires of the past. For five hundred consecutive years thereafter neither Arabs nor Chinese, nor Indians nor Turks nor Persians, made notable contributions to world civilization. Agricultural society, becoming increasingly dependent on industrial society, could neither challenge industrial society nor undermine its cultural, economic, political, or military dominance. It could not even defend itself against the ideas, values, technologies, and armies of the new society. Because of industrial superiority, tiny England was able in less than 150 years of industrialization to rule over more than half of the world’s population for the next 150 years. The fundamental change in the state and way of human living ushered in by the industrial revolution was so profound and comprehensive that it made the history and the wisdom of all previous eras largely irrelevant. “The physical and mental world we inhabit has changed more—and faster and more often—in the past 200 years than it did in the previous 20,000 years.”14 Agricultural society, feeling threatened by the industrial state and its colonialist enterprise, became inward looking and more protective of its traditional ways of living, leading many nations, such as China and Egypt, to retrench and become more conservative in their thoughts and outlooks and suspicious of the other. This development served to further weaken the capacity of such nations to initiate change on their own and transform their societies and
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economies and industrialize. And due to an expansionist industrial strategy and an aggressive capitalist class and imperialist system, nations living in the agricultural age found themselves functioning within an ever-shrinking and oftentimes besieged political and economic space. The evolution of the industrial age strengthened the economic forces and institutions, giving capital and the capitalist system prominent roles in societal life. Slowly but steadily, the economic process began to assume a leading role in all industrial societies, greatly influencing their cultures, social relations, political systems, and outlooks. The capacity of this process to contribute to every human activity has enabled it to grow in influence and visibility and to eventually replace the political process as the most dominant societal process. The decisive role played by industrial technology and money in winning World War II was instrumental in giving the economic process and its representatives the opportunity to gain the upper hand in industrial society, especially in the United States, and to claim special rights and privileges. Changing the state of human living as described above caused the history and the historical logic of the old agricultural era to come to an end; it no longer had valid experience to share or proven wisdom to give. The new society had to write its own history and depict its logic while its social, political, and economic relationships were being rearranged. Nations that failed to understand this historical lesson were dwarfed by history and made to pay a heavy price in squandered resources, lost opportunities, and increased dependency on others. It must be noted, however, that Japan, North Korea, China, and India have managed, after centuries of stagnation, to face the challenges of our times and experience remarkable economic growth, technological progress, cultural revival, and political influence. Soon after the economic process had become the most influential force of change, concerns began to be expressed regarding the damage manufacturing and mining was causing to the environment and the negative impact that capitalism was having on the poor and social justice. Questions were raised as to the ability of the environment to sustain the prevailing production and consumption levels and meet the needs of future generations. Pollution control, sustainable development, the elimination of poverty, equality of opportunity, and reducing military spending consequently emerged as popular issues motivating intellectuals, scientists, liberal politicians, social activists, and students to challenge the capitalist system and expose its shortcomings. But the worst was still to come. As the capitalist system was becoming more productive, and capitalists were becoming more ruthless, a communications revolution and an information revolution were taking place and changing reality in mature industrial societies in new ways. These two revolutions are linked together and
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dependent on each other, and because of this dependency they form one societal process, the infomedia process. The twin revolutions have transformed the media, leading it to become a powerful tool with the capacity to manipulate the forces of the other three processes and influence the course of change. As a consequence, the infomedia have paved the way for the evolution of a new age, the knowledge age, which began to gradually transform our economic, social, and cultural lives starting in the mid-1990s. In fact, the knowledge age has not yet become a reality; we are currently witnessing the manifestations of the transitional period separating the industrial age from the knowledge age. The Age of Knowledge The age of agriculture lasted about ten thousand years before the industrial revolution occurred. Because of its long duration, it was able to transform the cultures and economic conditions of most tribal societies. When the age of industry arrived in the second half of the eighteenth century, probably 80 percent of the world’s population was already living in the agricultural age. But when the age of knowledge announced its impending arrival around the middle of the 1990s, the age of industry was hardly two hundred years old. Because of that, only about 30 percent of the world’s population was living in the industrial age. Due to the complexity and knowledge requirements of the new age, it is not expected to transform the culture or the economic conditions of any state society at any time. In fact, every state will continue to need people to do certain jobs and be engaged in certain activities that are rooted in the industrial and agricultural civilizations. As the age of knowledge advances, the infomedia process is expected to become more powerful because its services are essential and at times detrimental to the proper functioning of all organizations and institutions and other societal processes. On the other hand, the dynamic nature of the knowledge age will make the creation, commercialization, and utilization of ideas and information the focal point of economic activity. As a consequence, the major source of wealth and power is expected to shift gradually from the domain of capital to the domain of knowledge, and a new type of person, whose job is to create and process knowledge through learning, will emerge. Because of that, knowledge humans learn to live and live to learn. Since knowledge is associated with individuals and institutions more than with groups or families, the individual is fast becoming the unit of the new knowledge society, replacing the nucleus family of the industrial society, which replaced the clan of the agricultural society, which replaced the tribe of the tribal society. As the second decade of the twenty-first century advances, I feel that the transitional period leading to the age of knowledge is still incomplete; it still
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has at least another decade before it ends. Therefore, it may be unwise to describe the expected characteristics of the new era in concrete terms, particularly since it is expected to be an era of continuous change. However, many far-reaching changes have already occurred and can be detected at all levels of individual and societal life. Values, traditions, needs, and convictions that provided the social glue that kept families and communities together throughout the industrial age have begun to fracture; some have become dysfunctional. Basic assumptions that helped economists, political scientists, sociologists, and military strategists to conceptualize, define, and analyze social, political, and economic units such as national economy, the nation-state, society, culture, and class have been either partially or totally invalidated. National cultures, for example, are being divided into subcultures along ethnic, racial, religious, ideological, and socioeconomic lines. Shared traditions, values, languages, collective memories, and even religious convictions are no longer enough to maintain the cohesiveness and unity of any nation. Economic interests, lifestyles, hobbies, professional connections, and educational backgrounds are becoming more important in forming new communities and dividing older ones. And because such communities can and do often transcend political borders and ideological divides, they are producing a unique global culture with its own core of values and traditions and even language. National societies, moreover, are being divided into subsocieties along sociocultural lines in addition to the old socioeconomic ones. Reactions to the developments instigated by the advancement of the knowledge age are deep everywhere. People seem to have become overwhelmed by strange currents of change, and there is a feeling of a general loss of direction and control over unfolding events. The resulting reactions range from denial to bewilderment, from political conservatism and religious fundamentalism to radical nationalism and extremism, from aggressiveness to retreat and retrenchment, from embracing the new values and lifestyles to cultural particularism, from universalism and globalism to tribalism and ethno-nationalism. All of these reactions cause conflict and instigate change and, in the process, create new realities that transform societies and make history more dynamic and irreversible. In fact, the new age of knowledge promises to make the near future look like a world in transition. In concluding this chapter, it is important to reiterate that each stage of societal development represents a unique civilization that comes after a difficult and sometimes long transitional period. Such periods, viewed from a wide angle, represent historical discontinuities that cause history of the passing era to come to an end, while paving the way for the new era to make its own history. And as one history ends, its logic becomes irrelevant, and the wisdom
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of the past becomes of little value to the new age and its peoples. Transitional periods are battlegrounds where war is waged between old values and new ones, between forces of stability and continuity and others of innovation and change. Such periods tend to be workshops for destructive creativity, where creativity is a tool of destruction, and destruction is a precondition for creativity. As the first decade of the twenty-first century ended, almost all nations of the world seemed to be, as Matthew Arnold once remarked, “wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other unable to be born.”15 The transition from the tribal age to the agricultural age lasted about three thousand years and the transition from the agricultural to the industrial age lasted about three hundred years, making the second transitional period about one-tenth of the first one. Based on this observation, the transition from the industrial to the knowledge age should last about thirty years only. Each civilization has produced its own culture, within which similar but not identical subcultures have developed, causing societies living in the same era to have similar traditions, values, attitudes, relationships, and outlooks. In addition, each civilization or stage of societal development was largely dominated by one societal process. Although that particular process did not eliminate the other processes, it dominated them, reducing their influence and making social transformation largely a function of its own dynamics. Since values are the essence of the sociocultural process, and values seldom change, societies dominated by the sociocultural process, such as traditional agricultural society, were unable to experience real change for thousands of years. In contrast, due to the changing nature of interests, which represent the essence of the economic process, industrial society has experienced and continues to experience profound change and transformation. The change in the relative role of each societal process as history progresses from one civilization to another makes history unable to repeat itself, shape the future, or predict its course. Moreover, civilizational change makes it impossible for any societal process to fully regain a role it had lost. As each new civilization was established, the societies of the preceding civilization could not successfully challenge the societies of the new one, and, consequently, they became unable to transform themselves and make real progress on their own. They had to acknowledge the superiority of the new civilization, often implicitly, imitate it, and accept dependency on it, or retreat into their civilizational shells and deteriorate slowly into irrelevance. The history of each stage, as a result, had to end with the transitional period, which marks the end of one history and the beginning of another, each having its own logic and dynamics that are relevant to its own times only. However, the new history and its particular logic will only become clear and easy to understand when the transitional period ends. As a result, all societies
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passing through a transitional period experience confusion, loss of direction, and a serious trust deficit, an issue that will be explained in Chapter 8. The emerging knowledge age is creating a new society that seems destined to live in a state of perpetual transformation. The infomedia process, which emerged at the end of the twentieth century as the leading societal process, is forcing all other processes to react to its unconventional ideas, values, and technologies and become more active. For example, the sociocultural process is resisting some cultural aspects of change promoted by the infomedia and globalization and condemning some of their socioeconomic consequences. In contrast, the economic process is exploiting the economic opportunities created by knowledge to expand globally and promote the free market philosophy. The political process, meanwhile, seems to be lost, unable to decide where to go or what position to take, making decisions that make little sense—decisions that often create new problems instead of solving existing ones. This is the first time in history that the sociocultural, political, and economic processes find an environment suited to their full activation at once. As a consequence, the way has been opened for never-foreseen transformations and unprecedented opportunities for change in all fields of human endeavor. Because no change is neutral, the change societies are experiencing brings with it a lot of pain and gain, which tend to be unevenly distributed, causing some people to get most of the gain while others feel most of the pain. While the farming of the land was the development that represented the historical vehicle through which tribal society was transformed into agricultural society, manufacturing was the historical vehicle through which agricultural society was transformed into industrial society. Today, knowledge that includes many scientific discoveries and developments in the information and telecommunications fields represents the historical vehicle through which industrial society is being transformed into knowledge society. Because each civilization produces its own unique culture, society, and economy, as well as its social and economic structures, capitalism and democracy, being products of the industrial age, will have to change to suit the new conditions being shaped by the knowledge age or deteriorate slowly into irrelevance.
CHAPTER 6
Economy and Society
T
he existence of an economy is essential to the formation and sustenance of society. No society can survive without an economy efficient enough to meet, at the very least, the basic needs of its members. Every economy exists for the sole purpose of meeting the growing needs of people as life conditions change. Economy, therefore, is a component of society; and society is the framework within which economy functions. Because of this relationship, every society has its own economy, and every economy reflects the needs and cultural attributes of society, as well as the major traits of the civilization in which it lives. Economy embodies institutions, goals, relationships, business organizations, and other formal and informal arrangements that cannot exist or function without people. People, at the same time, cannot survive and find real meaning in life without being involved in the economic activities of their society. As a result, people’s values, attitudes, relationships, and traditions, or simply people’s culture, affect the way their economy is organized, the goals it seeks, and how it performs its tasks. On the other hand, people’s involvement in their economy makes them dependent on its institutions and performance, while making their cultures subject to the socioeconomic changes the economy normally instigates, as well as the goals it promotes and seeks to accomplish. In other words, the relationship between culture and economy is a dynamic one whereby each affects and is affected by the other. Society is an entity composed of individuals, groups, and organizations seeking to stay together by sharing traditions, values, languages, interests, and other things. An economy is a space within which most members of society interact with each other and with their environment to improve the quality of their lives. No social relationship is formed and sustained without an economic aspect, and no economic relationship is formed and sustained without a social base. As culture works to tie people together and help them form a
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society, economic interests organize people to meet their material needs and create ties that make them interdependent. Every society tends to create an economy that corresponds to its cultural values and ambitions, and every economy tends to mold and remold people’s cultures and organize and reorganize their relationships to correspond to its mode of production. While culture is the organizing principle of the social aspects of life in society, economy is the organizing principle of the material aspects of life. Since neither aspect can be meaningful without the other, culture and economy are the forces that form and sustain communal life and give meaning to every social and economic relationship. Therefore, culture and economy are society’s heart and mind; no society can survive without having both organs working properly and coordinating their functions with each other. Therefore, when the heart or mind gets sick, the other one gets sick as well, causing the entire body or society to suffer. In the early stages of human development, a hunter-gatherer way of life made economy largely personal rather than communal; it lacked institutions, organizations, division of labor, and production relations. Yet “foraging has been the most generalized and enduring subsistence pattern developed by humans. It is the only strategy proven viable over tens of thousands of years.”1 Nonetheless, it was a primitive strategy dictated by an instinct to survive in a harsh, largely inhospitable environment, rather than a conscious act to engage the environment and change life conditions. But after human settlements became the norm in the agricultural age and economies were organized, the hunter-gatherer strategy was marginalized, and the way of life it supported became hardly sustainable on its own. Agriculture was a new pattern of subsistence that people developed to transform their life conditions and make cultural and material progress. It was a revolutionary development that gave people more security, a more efficient economy, and a new, much different society and culture. “The change from hunting and gathering involved more than a mere change in the subsistence pattern; it represented a complete change in the social and cultural fabric of life.”2 However, the new pattern, while enhancing people’s ability to survive and communities to grow, established a new way of life characterized by rigidity and simplicity, causing agricultural society to change very little over thousands of years. The industrial revolution caused all industrial societies to experience a new wave of change that led, within a century, to the transformation of the totality of life conditions and ways of life in every industrial society. New economic arrangements evolved relatively quickly where capital was separated from labor and where fairly large economic organizations emerged, employing machines and groups of laborers to work together under one roof.
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Meanwhile, the new production arrangements created new relationships between people and machines, capital and labor, one worker and another, and urban and rural communities. The new economy that emerged from this process is what we call capitalism: an economic system characterized by a strong tendency to change and, in the process, transform life conditions and people’s ways of thinking and living. The industrial revolution, just like the agricultural revolution, demonstrated that a profound change in the economic conditions of life causes equally profound changes in the social and cultural aspects of life. But for an industrial revolution to take place in society, the sociocultural context has to be conducive to economic change. The experience of Third World nations in general has demonstrated that economic change introduced by the state could not be sustained while efforts were being made to preserve traditional cultural values. In nations such as Japan and Singapore, where the sociocultural context was transformed first through strategies conceived by the state, economic change was not only possible but remarkably successful. The record of human development from the hunting-gathering age to agriculture, and from agriculture to industry, testifies to the importance of the economic factor in change in general and in sociocultural transformation in particular. In contrast, the experiences of Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and China indicate that sociocultural change is capable of causing equally significant economic changes. This proves that sociocultural change does not have to wait for economic change to take the lead, and that economic transformation may not be possible without a transformed sociocultural environment conducive to economic change. Thus, the old and the new experiences suggest that desired change in society may be initiated by the economic process or the sociocultural process, but no societal development is possible without transforming the economic and sociocultural aspects of life. However, if the economic process is the one chosen to lead change, it must be allowed to proceed and influence the sociocultural environment without interference from either the state or the traditional social forces. Traditional values and attitudes rooted in previous civilizations must neither be protected for the sake of preserving an old way of life nor be permitted to hamper economic and social transformation. Otherwise, the much desired and often badly needed economic change will be limited, temporary, and incapable of achieving its goals. On the other hand, if the sociocultural process is the one chosen to lead change, state intervention would be required to initiate such a change, define the necessary sociocultural changes, and conceive a plan to create an environment conducive to investment and innovation, creativity and freedom.
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This clearly suggests that the relationship between culture and economy is a dynamic one; it exhibits more change than stability, more tension than harmony, and more conflict than peace. However, if both culture and economy were allowed to function freely, their dynamic relationship would cause more progress than stagnation. On the other hand, while economies are closely associated with science and technology, which live lives of continuous change, cultures are more rooted in traditions and belief systems that tend to change very slowly over time. As a consequence, a lag always exists between economic change and sociocultural transformation, which gives the state the duty to slow down the pace of the former or speed up the pace of the latter. States that choose to do nothing or fail to shorten the lag time between the two facets of societal life risk corruption, economic duality, stagnation, failure, and political unrest. “There is a mistaken tendency, encouraged by contemporary economic discourse, to regard the economy as a facet of life with its own laws, separate from the rest of society. But in any modern society, the economy constitutes one of the fundamental and dynamic areas of human sociability.”3 The other fundamentally important, but less dynamic, facet is the sociocultural aspect, whose interaction with the economic facet determines the pace and course of change in society. In fact, no profound economic or technological change is possible and sustainable without genuine sociocultural change, and no meaningful sociocultural change is attainable without economic and technological change. Recognition of the increasing importance of materialism in life has led most historians to consider the economic factor a major force of change in history. Some philosophers, Karl Marx in particular, could not see any other force. Although the collapse of communism at the end of the 1980s has undermined the logic of Marxism and weakened belief in material determinism, fascination with determinism has lately led some writers and political philosophers in the West to espouse cultural determinism. Cultural determinism, just like material determinism, is a form of ideological simplicity that makes analysis easy, conclusions predetermined, and judgment final. However, cultural determinism tends to ignore the importance of the economic factor in human life and to portray culture as a rigid value system and a mind-set incapable of real change. The concept of cultural determinism and the theory built around it will be discussed in Chapter 8. Managing the Economic Problem The economic problem is a social issue related to the allocation of available resources and the distribution of goods and services produced in society.
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Since its discovery thousands of years ago, the economic problem has led human societies to organize their individual efforts and group activities to meet their needs and satisfy their growing desires. However, the economic problem remained small and largely manageable without formal organization until the state was born around the middle of the agricultural age. But as populations multiplied, economies grew in size, creating the need for systems to manage the different aspects of life. By the time the industrial revolution reached maturity in the early decades of the twentieth century, people had lost control over the economic problem, leaving most of its facets to the invisible forces of the capitalist market to manage. Developments precipitated by manufacturing caused the numbers of suppliers, workers, financiers, entrepreneurs, and consumers to multiply rapidly; and this, in turn, caused state control over the economy to be weakened. But despite the loss of state control, the economy kept functioning, production kept increasing, and the efficiency of both the allocation of resources and the distribution of products steadily improved. Consequently, it was concluded that the market has an “invisible hand” that guides its operations and that the logic of a free market economy may be superior to the logic of any other economic management system. Nevertheless, markets remained until the late 1970s subject to state regulations meant to keep them competitive and facilitate the proper functioning of the law of supply and demand. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, most regulations in the West were either removed or relaxed, causing markets to become freer but less competitive and easier to manipulate. And while the proponents of deregulation claim that free markets maximize efficiency and wealth creation, Weinberg says, “One thing that is clearly not maximized by free markets is equality,”4 which seems to have worsened progressively since the advancement of economic and cultural globalization. Nevertheless, societies have used four economic systems to manage their economic problem—tradition, central planning, state capitalism, and free markets. Tradition was, and to some extent still is, the primary economic system used by tribal and traditional agricultural communities that rely heavily on customs to keep society functioning and cohesive. Because of life simplicity, traditions and customs were able to manage the economic problem and keep it under control for a long time. Alongside tradition, some planning and the market spirit played minor roles, supporting feudalism and promoting trade with other communities, respectively. Central planning was, and to a lesser extent still is, the major economic system used by socialist states to manage their economic problem. These states, whose numbers are on the decline, rely heavily on state bureaucracy to determine what is to be produced, how to allocate available resources among
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alternative investments, and how to distribute products and services in society. The nature and extent of the economic problem, therefore, are determined in advance, and the end results are defined beforehand. Nonetheless, the forces of tradition and free markets play minor roles in this economy, providing the system with a sense of direction and some sensitivity to the needs of smaller communities. As for state capitalism, it was conceived by the developing states that sought a path to economic independence and development different from the socialist and capitalist ones. And while this system relies heavily on planning to allocate available resources, it leaves most economic activities, including the distribution of products and services, to market forces and tradition to handle. In the wake of the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, proponents of the free market system declared victory and moved forcefully to convince most other nations to follow their lead. “This triumph has inaugurated—for the first time in the history of humankind— the reign of a single, acceptable way of viewing things in the area of economics, which is considered by its proponents as being universally valid, in both its premises and applications.”5 Harvey Cox sees the market system, through the eyes of its promoters, as God; he says, “The market is becoming . . . the only true God, whose reign must now be universally accepted and who allows for no rivals.”6 However, the Great Recession has revealed that free markets failed to foresee the crisis and manage its consequences, which means that the system has proven its inability to allocate available resources and distribute products in ways that create enough jobs and enable the economy to function properly. Tradition is successful in meeting the needs of small, largely isolated communities and keeping them content, while fostering traditional trust in society; yet tradition cannot build modern economies and improve people’s quality of life. Central planning is successful in launching industrialization plans, but, due to its rigidity, it is unable to deal with surprises and adapt to changing circumstances. The free market system is successful in increasing production, improving productivity, and diversifying economic activities, yet it cannot guarantee fairness and does not care for the common good. State capitalism, by relying on planning and tight state control, has proved its inability to manage the economic problem and meet the expectations of people. The only system that has been largely successful in building modern economies and improving the quality of life without sacrificing equity is the one that relies on both planning and free markets, one which was invented in Japan and adopted by several European industrial states under the name “social democracy.” However, the way Europeans pursue their social objectives differs from the one used by Japan. Nevertheless, all industrialized states
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have moved lately to rely more on the forces of free markets, which seems to have undermined the ability of all systems to be fair and equitable. In societies such as Japan, Singapore, and North Korea, where traditions are observed but not worshiped, and authority is largely hierarchical but not authoritarian, the introduction of a limited version of central planning has proven its utility in helping markets perform well. Central planning was not intended to control the allocation of resources or the distribution of products, but to protect labor, ensure the quality of products, and provide national industries with state protection and assistance to become competitive in a global economy. But as the economies of those nations advanced and diversified, state control was loosened, and both producers and consumers were given more freedom of choice. A market economy can function efficiently in free societies where state intervention is limited to ensuring the proper functioning of the system and its equity. States usually intervene to regulate monopolies, prevent exploitation, provide equal opportunity, keep income and wealth gaps reasonable, protect the environment, and often discourage socially undesired activities while supporting socially desirable ones that are not financially rewarding. The US experience between the 1940s and 1980s proves that state regulations were necessary to guarantee the proper functioning of markets. When economic and financial regulations were loosened, the American economy and society became more vulnerable to manipulation and economic and financial crises. Free markets were allowed to gradually dismantle labor unions, weaken the middle class, widen the income and wealth gaps between rich and poor, and undermine the democratic system. Free markets without state regulation are wild markets that serve the interests of the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and powerless and pay no attention to the common good. Joseph Schumpeter argued in the 1950s that the most damaging consequences of capitalism were the negative effects it had on the values that support the social order in society.7 Schumpeter was right to a great extent; however, he failed to realize that cultures have the capacity to adapt, and values are able to transform themselves to accommodate economic and technological change. Values that prevailed during the 1950s did not disintegrate, and the social order they supported at the time did not collapse; new values emerged slowly, and a new social order formed gradually, creating new sets of sociocultural, socioeconomic, and sociopolitical relationships compatible with the evolving economy. Meanwhile, the excesses of materialism associated with the advancement of industrial capitalism forced society to intervene and enact new laws that made the system less exploitative and more responsible to the common good. However, the consequences of allowing capitalism
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to be hijacked by free market forces in the 1980s have caused the question posed by Schumpeter to be raised again. Culture and economy are tied to each other in a cause-and-effect relationship; each major action taken by either side, and each substantial change experienced by it, destabilizes the relationship, forcing the other side to react to restore balance. But any reaction is in itself a new action taken by the other side, which induces the first one to react in a similar fashion. Because of such dynamics, the relationship between culture and economy continues to change and languish in a state of imbalance. This makes the market economy both an economic system to manage the economic problem and a powerful force to transform society. Capitalism “has taken the form of waves of invention that have altered not only the productive capabilities of society but its social composition, even its relationship to nature itself.”8 Adam Smith was the first economist to understand the dynamics of a capitalist economy and its social implications; he remarked that economic progress brings with it not only wealth but also income inequality. But this consequence was defended at the time because without inequality wealth would lose its true meaning, and the incentive for hard work would disappear. If, for example, the wealth of a nation were to be evenly divided among its members, hardly anyone would be tempted to work for another, and contentment rather than unfulfilled expectations would govern individual and group attitudes, making change slow and uninspiring. In other words, total equality of income would remove most economic incentives and hinder sociocultural and economic transformation. However, if the system allows the rich to get richer, without giving the less fortunate members of society an opportunity to benefit and improve the quality of their lives, the system would ultimately fail to be fair and workable. Materialism Every human being comes to life with a desire to own material things, which leads him or her to invest a lot of time and energy trying to acquire whatever material things are desirable and reachable. In older times, wandering tribal people had very few things to acquire, because they were always on the move and therefore could not carry around many things. But when people settled after the development of agriculture, the institution of private property emerged and began to play an important role in shaping social relations and structures. The hamlets and villages that people built and lived in enabled them to own and enjoy many things. However, private property remained simple and limited to a few items that did not exceed, in most cases, some land, primitive tools, some money,
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a little family house, and at times, claims of knowing the truth about life and death. Two and a half centuries ago, people moved from the agricultural to the industrial age, which led them to become more materialistic and possessive. As a result, private ownership expanded to include many more things, such as industrial plants, capital, real estate, technological knowledge, and things usually used to enhance life comfort, facilitate travel, and expand the range of recreational choices. As the knowledge age advances, people’s desire to own more things has increased, causing materialism to become the ultimate source of individual satisfaction. As a consequence, wealth and greed have become driving forces that motivate most members of the knowledge society to work hard and, at times, to disregard business ethics and violate the law to get ahead of others. Looking at this issue from a different historical angle, we can say that humans have always tried to own everything that lent itself to ownership. In preagricultural times, the ownership of resources was communal and, therefore, materialism did not influence social relations, shape the social or political structure, or influence the course of change. In agricultural times, ownership of resources was semicommunal, which enabled the clans, families, and landlords to share the available resources, with some owning more than others. As a consequence, materialism began to shape social relations, influence social and political structures, divide society into two major social classes, and impact cultures and the course of societal change. In industrial times, ownership of resources and capital became familial rather than communal, causing things to be divided among families and individuals, with some owning much more than others. As a consequence, materialism is able to shape social relations as well as social, political, and economic structures, divide society into three major classes, and largely determine the course of societal change. In the knowledge age, ownership of resources, wealth, capital, and knowledge is fast becoming individual, causing things that matter most to be divided among the rich and powerful, with some owning much more than others. As a consequence, materialism is dividing society into several socioeconomic classes and sociocultural groups, shaping social relations as well as social, political, and economic structures, and determining the course of societal change in general. With every subsequent age in which people have lived, the wealth and power gaps between the haves and the have-nots have widened, causing the socioeconomic gaps separating the rich from the poor to deepen. As a consequence, the cultural traditions and values that usually tie members of society together begin to fracture, forcing different groups, often unconsciously, to develop different subcultures and live different lives in isolation from each other. While the poor in most societies are still attached to community life
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and worry about daily livelihood, the rich have joined a growing global elite that belongs to no particular country and is attached to no particular ideology. Money seems to have become the only god the rich believe in, and the power it generates is the only ideology they belong to. The absence of the institution of private property in preagricultural times made societies largely classless, and that helped people avoid exploitation and slavery to a great extent. But when people began to build settlements and farm the land, private ownership emerged and began to transform itself into a powerful socioeconomic and sociopolitical institution that divided society into two major classes: a rich class of landlords and a poor class of peasants and small farmers. As a consequence, exploitation appeared, allowing the rich to exploit—at times enslave—the poor, acquire more power at their expense, and freeze social change for thousands of years to come. But with the arrival of the industrial revolution, the range of economic activities began to expand and diversify, causing the creation of a relatively large class that was neither rich nor poor. And due to its social position and economic weight, the middle class began to play a constructive societal role, facilitating social mobility and limiting the power of capitalists to exploit the poor and powerless. However, the middle class failed to slow down the growing socioeconomic gaps separating the three classes from one another. And with the advent of the knowledge age and the discrediting of socialism, most Western governments relaxed old regulations, giving the rich the freedom to pursue their material goals and exploit every opportunity and everyone in sight. And to justify their deeds, the rich began to blame the poor for their poverty and miserable life conditions, as if neglect, discrimination, and lack of adequate education and equal opportunity do not matter. This means that every society was more materialistic than the previous one and more inclined to exploit other people for the sake of money and power. In fact, at every turn in human history, wealthy individuals, groups, and nations have resorted to sheer power to suppress others and discriminate against them, employing economic and military power to exploit the powerless and impoverish the poor, without much regard for human values or morality. So, every step toward more materialism and power is in itself a step away from the values of equality, social justice, fairness, and respect for human rights and the dignity of man. Since economic development relies heavily on capital accumulation and science and technology, education and creativity have become major sources of societal wealth and individual satisfaction. People, to work hard and acquire more wealth and get the satisfaction they aspire to, need to feel that they can keep most of the money they earn. So, the absence of the material incentive would undermine the drive of individuals to excel and make more
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money, causing societal development in general to be retarded. As a matter of fact, private property, both material and intellectual, has contributed substantially to everything people have accomplished in life, and therefore it is expected to stay with us for as long as life continues on our planet. Nevertheless, private property and personal wealth and the power they generate should be regulated and directed toward enriching not just the life of the individual but also the life of society as a whole; money and power should never be used as tools to exploit the poor and weak and deny them their legitimate economic, political, social, and cultural rights. The last few decades have shown that as the number of super-rich people increases, the number of poor people increases as well. Meanwhile, greed, jealousy, and envy have intensified, leading the rich to ignore the ethics of fairness and justice, while forcing the poor to ignore honesty and, at times, dignity as well. Consequently, the rich, driven by greed, envy, and lust for money and power—and the poor, driven by need and jealousy—have caused greed, jealousy, envy, and need to emerge as major forces motivating people to work hard, invest, compete, cheat, and sometimes steal to get ahead. By the time the knowledge age announced its impending arrival, interests rather than values had become the organizing principles of individual life, causing materialism to overshadow ethics and most other human concerns. Today, all societies seem to have experienced a dramatic decline in the influence of traditional values, social and business ethics, and the spirit of community that regulated the life of previous generations. Although many forces could be blamed for instigating this development, movement toward individualism and materialism, the slow abandonment of spiritualism and collectivism, and the subordination of politics to economics are the major forces that stand behind the retreat of traditional values and ethics. While rich individuals and societies compete hard to acquire as much material things and power as possible, poor individuals and societies try harder to imitate the rich but do little to acquire more knowledge and reclaim their rights. As a result, more emphasis is being placed on consumption and the appearance of wealth than on education and the essence of living a meaningful, productive life. Since the 1980s, the socioeconomic gaps and sociocultural divides that separate classes and groups from one another have been growing wider and deeper every day, while the state is getting weaker, less able, and sometimes less willing to play its traditional role and ensure fairness and equal opportunity. Meanwhile, a rich class determined to strengthen its economic independence and consolidate its political power has hindered attempts to build a new social order compatible with the economic imperatives of the new age. As a consequence, the need for a new social order capable of balancing the
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relationships between the rich and powerful on the one hand, and the poor and powerless on the other, has not been met. Failure to rebalance class relations and group relations will ultimately lead to social unrest and possibly violence. Under the old capitalistic system, the super-rich were engaged primarily in expanding manufacturing, which drove economic growth and created millions of jobs and a lot of national wealth. The super-rich of today are engaged primarily in creating financial products that create personal wealth but produce few jobs and little national wealth. The former class, because it generated its wealth from manufacturing, had to interact with millions of workers on a daily basis, which led it to become aware of the need to ensure the welfare of its employees and the development of the communities that hosted its operations. In contrast, the latter class, because it derives most of its wealth from dealing in virtual products within virtual communities away from the eyes of the public, seldom interacts with workers or even ordinary people. Due to their particular lifestyles, education, interests, and international interconnectedness, the super-rich have developed a global culture with its own values, ethics, language, and even vocabulary that others have difficulty understanding. Because almost each one of its members has a house everywhere and no home anywhere, they have become a group of aliens having no loyalty to any place, nation, or ideology; the only god they know and worship day and night is money. And to remain faithful to that god, they are willing to manipulate, cheat, exploit, and conspire to get closer to him. Having gained a lot of wealth and power, the super-rich are employing money to influence politics, corrupt politicians, and ensure the continuation of the prevailing unjust social order. As a consequence of these developments, the rich and super-rich have shown little regard for community life and almost no interest in the tragic life conditions of the poor of the world. Nevertheless, the poor and powerless, despite their miserable life conditions, are not expected to revolt soon to reclaim their rights and force the creation of a new social order. During eras of civilizational transformation that usually lead to loss of direction and cause expectations to diminish, ordinary people get confused and become more conservative and inward looking. As a consequence, they begin to seek hope and comfort in religion and traditional values that discourage change, dampen expectations, and encourage contentment. Every system based on materialism and interests only, regardless of its objectives and accomplishments, is unjust because it does not guarantee equal opportunity; and every unjust system is inefficient because it does not utilize the potentialities of all people. In the absence of equal opportunity, the majority of people lose many of their rights, especially the right to discover
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their talents and develop their capabilities and improve the quality of their lives without having to abdicate their dignity. Unjust systems tend also to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few, strip the middle class of the resources it needs to maintain its social position and economic role, and impoverish a large segment of society, leaving the poor in distress. On the other hand, every economic system that is inefficient is also unjust because it wastes natural and human resources and distributes the material and nonmaterial benefits of the production process unfairly among all participants. When an economic, political, or social system fails to be just and efficient, society intervenes sooner or later to restructure the system or replace the prevailing social order. This means that for societal systems to survive, they have to be economically efficient, socially just, and politically fair. Cultural values of honesty, integrity, responsibility, and fairness have the capacity to strengthen every system, foster social peace, and improve the chances of material and cultural progress. In contrast, systems that ignore such values and focus on money are unable to respond to people’s needs and aspirations and, therefore, are destined to fail.
CHAPTER 7
Economy and Globalization
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n expanding free market system, cheaper and more efficient transportation systems, and faster, more reliable communications systems have pushed national economies to link with each other, forming a global economy. Meanwhile, the internationalization of major financial, trade, and investment markets have made economic globalization a dynamic, self-sustaining, ever-expanding process that recognizes no political borders, ideologies, or national sovereignties. In the process, globalization has enabled regions within national borders to move in different directions at different speeds according to their particular strengths and historic connections to exploit available opportunities, causing many national economies to be divided into regional economies with characteristics different from the national one. As a result, some of the economic links that used to tie regions within nation-states together have begun to fracture, and others that link them to foreign markets have gradually strengthened. The circumstances that enable national regions to move at different speeds and create special links with other countries cause income and knowledge gaps in society to widen; consequently, they undermine people’s desire to cooperate for the sake of a national interest. Defending globalization at the expense of the common good, Robert Kaplan wrote, “The traditional social contract that binds all citizens to the common good is gradually becoming an impediment to participation in the emerging global economy.”1 As global economic change accelerates, it causes knowledge and incomes to be unevenly divided among states, regions, and cultural and ethnic groups within states. Only states, regions, and groups that have the right knowledge, the right attitudes, and solid social and physical infrastructures are able to reap the full benefits of globalization. In contrast, societies that lack such assets are more likely to feel the frustration of change without tangible benefits.
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Globalization is an evolving state of world economic and cultural affairs that has its own infrastructure, superstructure, institutions, and rationale. Its infrastructure is composed of the telecommunications and information networks that include the Internet and social media; its superstructure is international laws and treaties governing international trade and the creation and management of free trade zones and economic communities; and its major institutions are the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization. As for its rationale, advocates of globalization claim that free markets encourage international trade, and trade accelerates the pace of economic growth, which benefits the poor everywhere. While this argument sounds rather logical, the experience of the first fifteen years of the twenty-first century refutes this assertion. The global economic elite, driven by greed and shortsightedness, have caused most people in the world to feel worse off than ever before, losing both satisfaction and social recognition. The poor workers of the world in particular are being forced to compete with each other in a global market that forces wages to sink to low levels. A survey conducted in the United States in 2012 reported that more than 60 percent of Americans said that they were poor or feeling poor. Since economic change affects societies whenever it happens, a changing global economy affects national economies and societies as well as cultures. As it moves forward, globalization forces societies to experience sociocultural, socioeconomic, and sociopolitical changes that bring with them benefits as well as vulnerabilities, winners as well as losers. Winners tend to have an international outlook and interest in the emerging global economy and its culture and little interest in political power; whatever interest in politics they may have appears to be limited to its usefulness as a tool to manipulate states, politicians, and laws to maximize their economic gain. The losers, in contrast, tend to have more interest in the power of politics to undo the perceived negative consequences of globalization. George Soros, who is critical of the current trends of globalization, says, “The benefits of the present global capitalist system can be sustained only by deliberate and persistent efforts to correct and contain the system’s deficiencies.”2 He groups the deficiencies under five main headings: 1. The uneven distribution of benefits among nations and socioeconomic classes; 2. The instability of the international financial system because of the risks markets take as they react to opportunities and crises; 3. The incipient threat of global monopolies and oligopolies that limit competition;
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4. The ambiguous role of the state, which is increasingly being pressured to help losers while its ability to do so is declining; and 5. The continuous undermining of the values that hold societies together, which weakens stability and social cohesion. Adam Smith remarked more than two centuries ago that the division of labor is a function of the size of the market. Thus, the expansion of markets to include most states in the world is causing an international division of labor. The Internet, for example, has created a new labor market, allowing industrial and knowledge workers in particular to compete with each other across international borders and national cultures. E-commerce is expanding at a fast rate, taking business away from established retail chains and causing many of them to close. At the same time e-commerce is saving consumers time and money and changing shopping habits and people’s views of markets. Meanwhile, large corporations have developed corporate cultures that differ from the national cultures of the countries in which they operate as well as from the countries from which they originate. New associations based on shared values, such as human rights concerns and religious beliefs, are forming across political lines, and new socioeconomic groups are emerging on the basis of mutual interests across cultural divides. In the age of agriculture, particularly toward its end, commerce regionalized food products, enabling agricultural products to travel across towns, cities, and national borders of neighboring states. The age of industry, while reinforcing the old trend, internationalized manufactured goods, capital, and financial services, enabling them to seek markets and investment opportunities in countless places. The fast-emerging knowledge age is not only reinforcing older trends, it is also internationalizing talent, technology, information, and ideas that benefit everyone. These facts seem to suggest that the answer to the inequalities and the unsettling cultural consequences of globalization is not rejecting globalization but understanding and managing it. Commenting on the economic success of Asian nations in an age of increasing globalization, Joseph Stiglitz wrote, “It was their ability to take advantage of globalization, without being taken advantage of by globalization that accounts for much of their success.”3 Generally speaking, states and regions belonging to the First World of knowledge have open societies and free economies that are rich, highly competitive, and very dynamic; they are also increasingly becoming high-tech and service oriented. States and regions belonging to the Second World of industry have largely open societies and free economies that tend to be rich, competitive, and dynamic; they are also increasingly becoming more democratic and globalized. States and regions belonging to the Third World of the
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preindustrial age are largely poor and have traditional economies and political systems that lack democracy and dynamism. This suggests that the state of the economy and the degree of its dynamism reflect each society’s state of living and way of living, as well as how much freedom people usually enjoy. Today, sociocultural groups within states are changing at different speeds and making progress according to their particular stock of human, social, technological, and natural resources. Because of these differences, almost all societies are being divided into subsocieties living in different civilizations with dissimilar cultures. The American society, for example, is divided into three general subsocieties: a small but growing subsociety that belongs to the rich and dynamic First World of knowledge; a large but shrinking subsociety that belongs to the financially comfortable Second World of industry; and a small but growing poor subsociety that belongs to the Third World of preindustrial times. On the other hand, China, India, Brazil, South Korea, and several other nations are being divided into industrial and agricultural subsocieties belonging to the Second and Third Worlds, respectively; all such societies also have shrinking poverty-stricken subsocieties that lack the right education, motivation, and opportunities, as well as small but growing knowledge subsocieties. People living in the First World of knowledge tend to be individualistic, materially oriented, and greedy, and the economy where they function and excel is dominated by a service sector based on advanced knowledge, telecommunications, and financial services that cater to the world at large. People living in the Second World of industry tend to be nationalistic and communal, allowing ideology and culture to influence their attitudes and ways of thinking; politics and the state play important roles in their lives, defining the frameworks within which they function and pursue their goals. People living in the Third World of agriculture tend to be traditional and conservative, allowing religion, traditions, and ethnicity to shape their attitudes, worldviews, and social relations; politics is hierarchical and, therefore, it dominates society and economy and uses available resources to enrich the political elite and foster the ideological superstructure of society. The politics of unity is preached, social and cultural conformity is imposed, personal initiatives are often discouraged, and individual freedoms are curtailed. Wherever and whenever economies are free of political control, both society and economy tend to be dynamic and amenable to change. Wherever and whenever economies are controlled by politics, both society and economy tend to be traditional, allowing racial distinctions and ideological differences to influence social, cultural, and economic activities and relationships. Although economic structures and production relations tend to determine the standards of living in society, such structures and relations are largely a
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function of both culture and technology. “The rich are never rich enough . . . to have enough is simply to be content with what you have rather than to have what you want. When wanting comes first, you can never have enough. If contentment is placed first, it does not matter how much you have.”4 Culture, therefore, sets the priorities and leaves the burden of achieving them to economics; economics in turn forces culture to rethink its priorities and restructure its value systems to accommodate economic change. Wherever a materialistic culture of money making prevails, life is dynamic and more free but not necessarily fair or respectful of business ethics or morality; money making is a self-sustaining, self-fulfilling process that seldom cares for nonmaterialistic ideals. Wherever a nationalistic culture prevails, life dynamics are self-centered and progress is seen more in political and cultural terms than in economic ones. And wherever culture is value oriented and faith based, people are comfortably placed on a downward-moving escalator, while their competitors are either holding their positions or walking upward. Economic and cultural globalization have changed both the way of life and the conditions of life in most states, causing the assumptions upon which economic models and theories are based to change, often drastically. As a consequence, most theories and models of the past have been invalidated, creating the need for a new economic theory suited to a globalized economy where every economy is influenced by the actions and reactions of other economies. There is a need for a “theory appropriate to a world economy in which knowledge has become the key economic resource and the dominant, if not the only source of comparative advantage,”5 argued Peter Drucker almost two decades ago. Economic Concepts and Models Economic independence, one of the models now rendered obsolete, was frequently sought as a strategy to build national economies to free developing nations from dependence on foreign imports. Import substitution, protection of national industries, and export subsidies were used to foster economic independence. Yet, no nation has succeeded in building a modern economy on the basis of import substitution; and protectionism has had only negative consequences. Protectionism gives national industries captive domestic markets that shield them from foreign competition, and thus deprive them of the challenges they often need to innovate and be creative and competitive. Protectionism weakens the desire of national industries to expand and diversify, and thus limits their capacities to create new jobs. Economic independence is an attractive political slogan but a bad economic strategy; it can neither cause economic development nor free people from need and dependency.
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National leaders and Third World intellectuals in general tend to claim that economic dependency has hindered the development of the economies of poor nations. Consequently, ending dependency has come to be viewed as a prerequisite for the revitalization of national economies. But since the fifteenth century, the expansion of trade and the uneven distribution of technology, knowledge, and capital in the world have rendered all states economically dependent on each other. And while the age of industry has forced all industrialized economies and markets to become interdependent, the emerging age of knowledge is leading the major world industries and markets to move beyond interdependence and into a virtual state of integration. As a consequence, globalization has made any national strategy based on economic independence unworkable if not harmful. In short, economic independence was a misconceived idea, based on unrealistic assumptions born during an age of increasing interdependence. It did not work in the past, and it cannot work in the future. Economic viability is another concept that was misconceived and misused from the very beginning. Viable economies, it had been thought, are economies that have adequate natural resources to provide the necessary raw materials for manufacturing and sufficiently large markets and populations to support modern industries and attract investment capital. The economies of poorer and smaller nations, consequently, were considered not viable, causing several nations aspiring to political independence and development to be treated unfairly. The national resources of such countries, as the economic viability argument goes, could not support the formation of politically independent and economically viable states. Singapore, a collection of small islands with a small population and lacking in natural resources, was considered one of those poorer nations incapable of building viable economies and states. But Singapore, with a population about 5.5 percent of Egypt’s population and a land area equal to one-thousandth of Egypt’s, has built an economy that was in 2012 about 10 percent larger than that of Egypt. Similarly, Singapore presents another interesting contrast to Nigeria, a rich country in natural resources and energy. Singapore, with a population equal to 3 percent of Nigeria’s and an area equal to onethousandth, has built an economy that was in 2012 about 5 percent larger than Nigeria’s. And unlike both the Egyptian and Nigerian economies, the Singaporean economy is very rich, modern, dynamic, and growing rapidly, while Egypt’s and Nigeria’s economies are poor and largely stagnant. Every economy is viable regardless of its size, its endowment of natural resources, and its production base; all economies throughout history have been and continue to be viable. The tribal economy, which is based primarily on hunting, grazing, and food gathering, rather than food production
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or manufacturing, has proven over tens of thousands of years its viability. Therefore, the relevant question regarding the state of any economy is not how viable it is but how competitive it could be. Economic competitiveness is a function of knowledge, technology, and culture, not natural resources or strategic locations or the size of markets; therefore, it is something that every economy can acquire. I made this argument for the first time in 1989 at Harvard University while presenting a paper during a conference on Middle East economic development and regional cooperation. A year later, I had to make the same argument at the University of London when the issue of economic viability was raised again. Since then, talk about conditions for economic viability has stopped and has been replaced by talk about how to build and foster economic competitiveness of poor nations and emerging economies. Globalization and the emergence of knowledge as a major economic resource have also invalidated theories of the comparative economic advantage in general. Countries, it was thought, are endowed with certain human and natural resources that give them a comparative advantage over others in certain economic endeavors. And this, in turn, enables each country to make economic progress by exploiting its own comparative advantage. But cheap and safe transportation and communications systems, the Internet, and the abundance of knowledge have internationalized almost all markets and thus robbed the so-called strategically located and resource-rich countries of much of their comparative economic advantage. The rules of the comparative advantage are also supposed to govern trade among nations. Groups of countries producing raw materials and energy and surpluses of agricultural products, and others producing surpluses of manufactured goods and advanced services and technologies, were supposed to be natural trading partners. The bulk of international trade, therefore, was supposed to be concentrated among such groups of states or between the developed and developing countries. While this was largely true several decades ago, it ceased to be true in the 1970s. Advanced science, new technologies, and knowledge have reduced dependence on raw materials by producing better, often cheaper, substitutes. In addition, mechanization, modern agricultural methods, and chemical fertilizers have improved the productivity of agriculture in the industrial and postindustrial states and thus reduced their need for agricultural imports. Meanwhile, relatively high population growth rates in most developing countries and failure to raise the productivity of land and labor meaningfully have increased domestic demand for agricultural products. Consequently, the capacity of developing states to generate enough income from raw materials and agricultural exports has declined, causing their relative role in international trade to shrink substantially.
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On the other hand, the economies of the industrialized states have become specialized and interdependent; they now form one larger economy whose components trade with one another as a matter of necessity to ensure efficiency. Mergers and outsourcing have, furthermore, made almost all consumer and capital goods—such as cars, machines, airplanes, and computers—products of assembly plants that import tens, sometimes hundreds, of components from other industrialized countries to make the final products. Because of these developments, the bulk of international trade is now concentrated among the industrialized states and regions, causing the less developed states to become small players in the field of international trade. For example, Arab countries, with more than 360 million people and a tremendous amount of oil and gas exports, account for less than 3 percent of world trade. The labor comparative advantage is a major theory that globalization and knowledge have also invalidated. It was thought that states possessing large pools of labor have an economic advantage that could be employed to produce manufactured goods cheaply and thus enable such states to compete successfully in international markets. But the experience of most states with large populations has proven that labor does not represent by itself an economic advantage. For example, Bangladesh, Columbia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the Philippines have large pools of cheap labor; nonetheless, none of these countries has been able to use cheap labor as a springboard toward industrialization and societal development. Economically competitive labor needs to be not only cheap; it also needs to be skilled, disciplined, responsible, and productive. While cheap labor failed to help Egypt develop, expensive labor did not stop Sweden, Japan or Germany from further development. “Tangible economic and social results do not depend upon abstract potential, but on developed capabilities.”6 Labor capabilities are usually developed through socialization, formal education, and on-the-job training with the aim of giving workers the appropriate skills and the right attitudes to perform well. While certain manufacturing operations, such as textiles, require few skills, most other industries require particular skills and specialized knowledge. Even the manufacturing of textiles cannot be performed properly if workers lack discipline and have no respect for work. John Kenneth Galbraith wrote, “If we look around the world today we see no country with a literate population that is poor and no country with an illiterate population that is anything but poor.”7 However, education is not enough by itself to make workers, economies, and societies competitive; educated workers need also to have the right attitudes to be productive and responsible; otherwise, education is more likely to become a liability rather than an asset, an issue to be examined later.
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The Future of Inflation Inflation is defined as higher than usual rates of increase in the general price level; it occurs when demand for essential goods and services exceeds supply, which could come as a result of increased demand or due to a sudden decline in the supply of such goods and services. Excess demand is usually caused by a large increase in the supply of money in a largely closed economy, or due to fear of supply shortages because of a monopoly exercised by merchants and producers, or due to unusual circumstances characterized by unrest and lack of security. Inflation could also be caused by a large increase in the cost of production due to labor shortages or rising prices of major raw materials or energy. If the supply of and demand for essential goods and services were to be elastic enough, neither inflation nor its negative consequences would occur. Inflation is a socioeconomic problem that complicates economic management and causes incomes to be redistributed in ways that deepen inequality in society and hurt the needy. It raises the prices of goods and services in general, causing the purchasing power of money to decline and reduce the living standards of people whose incomes are fixed and others whose incomes do not increase as fast as the rate of inflation. Sometimes inflation raises the prices of some necessities of life beyond the reach of some people, causing poverty to spread and the quality of life of the poor to deteriorate, leading to popular unrest. Inflation also causes interest rates to rise, which increases the cost of borrowing, adversely affecting decisions regarding investment, credit financing, and consumer spending. State intervention to contain inflation seldom waits until inflation is a reality and its negative consequences are widely felt; most states have in place monitoring agencies to anticipate inflation and policy mechanisms to deal with it and limit its negative social and economic ramifications. Policy measures to fight inflation have one major objective in mind: to maintain or restore balance between the supply of and demand for goods and services that represent a substantial portion of the cost of living and production. This objective is usually sought through the implementation of certain fiscal and monetary measures, such as raising taxes to reduce the disposable incomes of consumers, reducing government spending to moderate economic growth rates and demand for labor, raising interest rates to discourage borrowing and encourage savings, and implementing price controls to prevent inflation from escalating. The roots of inflation are to be found in changes in the supply of and demand for economic goods, labor, and money. In today’s global economy, goods, labor, and money are becoming increasingly mobile and abundant;
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they are quickly losing their national identities, places of residence, and ideological attachments. And because goods and services as well as capital and knowledge are able to move across political borders with ease, no major shortages of such goods are likely to happen in the near future unless this movement is restricted by state regulations. As for the major raw materials and energy, their production is either increasing or holding steady, their prices are either stable or hardly increasing in real terms, and more substitutes are being developed and used successfully. Only oil and food supplies represent a less manageable problem. But since the cost of oil does not constitute a substantial portion of the overall cost of living, it does not present a major problem. In fact, the near trebling of oil prices between 2005 and 2006 has not affected the prices of most goods substantially enough to cause inflation; only prices of air travel were raised, but without discernible impact on the general price level. Food supplies, however, represent a less manageable issue because they are subject to environmental forces that are beyond anyone’s control. It is worth mentioning that the price of a barrel of oil which reached one hundred forty-six dollars in 2008 declined to less than forty-five dollars in 2015. Therefore, serious shortages of most economic goods have become a thing of the past, at least for decades to come. And because knowledge is abundant and increasing and has proven to be a good substitute for labor, land, and capital, inflation has become more of a ghost than a reality in most countries. The North American, Western European, and Southeast Asian industrial states have passed the stage of serious inflation. Nevertheless, state policies aimed at protecting national industries or limiting labor movements across national borders, and policies to engineer economic expansion to fight unemployment, could revive moderate inflation. States still functioning outside the realm of the global economy are likely to experience the recurrence of both inflation and recession and to suffer their socioeconomic and probably sociopolitical consequences. These are states that follow failed economic policies that emphasize economic independence, not knowing that such policies are only able to further isolate their weak economies and penalize their largely poor peoples. Nevertheless, inflation is still feared in the West by those who experienced it in the past, like the Germans, and by others whose incomes are largely fixed and whose skills are in low demand. In 1999, as the American economy grew faster than expected and the unemployment rate declined to 4 percent, the Federal Reserve, fearing inflation, began to raise interest rates to discourage excess borrowing by investors and consumers and moderate economic growth and demand for labor. But in a global economy, such a policy no longer works. A few weeks after the last increase in interest rates, the Federal Reserve reversed itself and began to
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cut interest rates because the economy had weakened faster and further than anticipated and desired. The reverse policy, nonetheless, failed to work; as a consequence, it took the economy two years to recover from an unintentionally engineered recession. While reducing interest rates may have helped business and consumer borrowers, the retired people who depend on interest earned on time deposits and government bonds to subsidize their often meager social security incomes were hurt. Therefore, the benefits of one sector of the population due to lower interest rates came at the expense of another; it benefited the rich and penalized the poor. In the wake of the Great Recession in 2008, the same policy was repeated, producing the same results: enriching the rich and impoverishing the poor—this time worldwide. In response to the unwise policy of the Federal Reserve in 1999, I wrote a short paper titled “The Ghost of Inflation” in which I argued that inflation has lost most of its teeth as far as the Western industrialized states are concerned; it may still be able to bite, but it cannot hurt. The paper was sent to four major American newspapers, none of which bothered to publish it. Had the paper been published, the Great Recession and the financial crisis of 2008 might have been different. Factors that are at work to control and largely contain inflation include the following: 1. Increased global competition, which leaves little chance for a corporation or a product to gain and maintain monopoly for a substantial time; 2. Increased economic integration, which enables multinationals to offset increases in labor cost in one state by obtaining cheaper parts and services from other states; 3. Increased role of knowledge as an economic resource and a substitute for land, labor, and capital, and the decline in its relative cost and scarcity; 4. Growing pools of knowledge workers and investment capital willing to travel to states where demand for their services exist; 5. Increased power of multinational corporations to influence government policies and labor attitudes regarding taxes, wages, health care, and other benefits in their favor; 6. Increasing labor productivity due primarily to technological innovations, advanced knowledge, better and cheaper information and telecommunications systems, and more efficient systems to manage production and inventories; 7. The establishment of the World Trade Organization as a global body to promote open markets and remove obstacles hindering the expansion of trade; and
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8. The continued industrialization of China, India, Brazil, and a few other nations, which have caused the industrial production capacity of the world economy to exceed the absorption capacity of the world’s peoples and economies. Germany, which fears inflation more than any other state, spent hundreds of billions of dollars within a few years during the 1990s on German reunification without igniting inflation. In response to the Great Recession, the US government and the Federal Reserve increased the supply of money by approximately $4.5 trillion within a few years, also without igniting inflation. Nonetheless, inflation remains a threat to poor states struggling to feed their needy populations and revive their stagnating economies and where states are largely corrupt and essential commodities are monopolized by small groups of greedy merchants. Therefore, no one should pronounce inflation dead. Political uncertainty, war, financial instability, monopoly, currency manipulation, and bad governmental policies could reignite moderate inflation anywhere; nevertheless, no serious inflation is expected in any industrialized country. The most important step that needs to be taken to vastly reduce the threat of inflation is to help Third World nations complete their economic and sociocultural restructuring, increase domestic food production, enter the Second World of industry, and be fully integrated into the global economy. This would enlarge all markets for all products, integrate the economic interests of participating nations and industries, and reduce the vulnerability of most economies to inflation and recession. Therefore, the threat of inflation should be dealt with in a manner that helps rather than hurts the poor. For example, wherever and whenever shortages of labor occur, more foreign workers should be admitted and allowed to join the labor force. Such a measure would ease labor shortages in states in need of labor while ameliorating the social and economic problems in states where unemployment is high; it will also enable the guest workers to acquire new skills and positive attitudes that make them more productive wherever they go. A policy to help the poor would also accelerate the pace of economic growth everywhere and make the benefits of globalization felt by more people in the world. Social and economic activities and relationships are important aspects of everyday life; they represent society’s body and soul. While no society can survive without solving its economic problem, no economy can manage its resources without people’s active involvement in its activities. This makes the link between society and economy strong and the dependence of their relationships mutual. Economies do not function in a vacuum but within political and sociocultural frameworks that define their limits, influence their structures, and affect their performance. While cultures and social structures
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cause economies to be more or less productive, more or less equitable, and more or less dynamic, economic structures and production relations cause societies to be more or less open, more or less progressive, more or less democratic, more or less fair, and more or less cohesive. Therefore, neither culture nor economy can stay the same while the other changes; and neither one can change without affecting the other.
CHAPTER 8
Perspectives on Development
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ercantilism was probably the first theory of economic development the European nation-states invented; it called for the development of industry, the promotion of exports, and the limitation of imports through protectionism. But as these policies were being pursued with a vengeance, a world of interdependence was slowly emerging and making mercantilism controversial. Adam Smith published his thesis The Wealth of Nations in 1776, which brought new economic ideas and paved the way for the development of the classical economic theory. David Ricardo developed the comparative economic advantage concept, which states that each country has an economic advantage over most other countries in one respect or another. Because of this, Ricardo argued that each country should specialize in producing the goods in which it has a comparative advantage. Specialization based on the comparative advantage would enable each country to produce some goods at lower cost than most other countries, making trade beneficial for all nations involved. Ricardo argued convincingly that mercantilism limits trade and denies society the benefits of cheaper and often better foreign goods. The Corn Laws, enacted by the British Parliament in 1815 to protect Britain’s landed aristocracy from foreign competition, were consequently revised in 1832 and repealed in 1846. The ideas articulated by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations were instrumental in developing the classical economic theory. Two of the most enduring ideas formulated by Smith are the law of supply and demand and the free market “invisible hand.” The first concept says simply that the price of any commodity is determined by the amount supplied by producers and the amount demanded by consumers. In other words, the price of each commodity is determined by the amount offered for sale by its owners and the amount desired by its potential buyers. When the supply of a commodity increases in excess of what is demanded, its price declines; when the demand for a
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commodity exceeds what is being supplied, its price increases. So, to have stable prices, supply and demand need to be in balance, which the forces of a free market are able to manage. As for the invisible hand, it is created by the workings of supply and demand, which give the free market the capacity to allocate available resources among the many investment opportunities and distribute products among the many consumers and users. In the 1950s and 1960s, traditionalism was perceived as causing underdevelopment in the Third World, and modernization was perceived as the solution to that problem.1 As a consequence, modernization was associated with Westernization and development with industrialization, causing development to be seen as an automatic process that follows the Western model of economic change. As a result, many economists argued that all that was needed to launch Third World development was to create an economic process and put it on the right path. John Kenneth Galbraith, for example, wrote development “is the faithful imitation of the developed.”2 But for many reasons the Western experience could not be replicated. Peoples of the Third World in general tend to oppose modernization because they view it as a facet of colonialism pursued through foreign investment and large corporations. Another factor that contributed to the failure of the modernization theory is its emphasis on the economic aspects of life and lack of interest in most other aspects; modernization theorists tend to think that while everything in life matters, economics matter most. The World Bank built its programs on the premise and promise of modernization, which calls for transforming traditional states of life and ways of life through investment in infrastructure, industry, and education; it also calls for the application of the capitalist model of economic growth with emphasis on savings and trade. While the good intentions behind modernization provided Third World peoples with better health-care services, sanitation, and education, they caused problems associated with high population growth rates, rising expectations, urbanization, and authoritarianism to be aggravated. As a consequence, modernization became more of a bind tying people to things they could not afford, like consumerism, and less of an open space to free them from traditions and authority and unleash their creative potentialities. Moreover, modernization caused many of the treasured traditional values and social and political systems to be corrupted without developing alternative values and systems to replace them, creating a trust deficit. And despite the introduction of modern education, the new system failed to produce well-trained and disciplined workers or establish stable political systems that recognize peoples’ rights and respect the law. Aspects of modernity that Third World nations have generally borrowed were instrumental in giving a small
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segment of each society a lifestyle that made them look modern on the outside but hid a great deal of sociocultural traditionalism and political authoritarianism inside. Generally speaking, there are three major perspectives on development. The first is a classical one that follows a traditional capitalist approach and emphasizes economic liberalism. The second is a socialist one that emphasizes state intervention and economic planning to manage national resources. And the third perspective is a cultural one that emphasizes the role of culture in determining the pace and fate of development. While the first perspective sees development as an evolutionary process moving economy from traditional agriculture to industry, the second sees development as a revolutionary program to undo the impact of colonialism and end dependency on the capitalist system, and the third perspective sees culture as the most important factor that determines the fate of societal development. Nonetheless, all perspectives are largely based on assumptions that view economies as national entities functioning within specified borders and view the nation-state as a power controlling most decisions including the economic ones. Consequently, the primary market in which economy functions is national and so are the major obstacles it faces. And since the state is in control, it has the capacity to overcome obstacles and influence the course of economic change. But due to economic and cultural globalization, free trade, common markets, and knowledge, this presumed reality has been changed, causing the assumptions upon which development theories are based to be largely invalidated. After the development of Europe following the industrial revolution, no nation could develop on its own; every nation became, in one respect or another, dependent on Europe. And once dependency develops, it becomes difficult to overcome. Attempts to start indigenous processes of development, while ignoring what the developed nations have already accomplished in the fields of economic ideas, management, and technology, are self-defeating. Since advanced technologies and knowledge are today available and rather easy to get, developing nations need to get as much of them as possible; these are two critical agents of economic growth that can facilitate economic and sociocultural transformation. However, development must be understood and approached as a comprehensive process of societal change that exists and functions in a global environment. The Classical Perspective The first generation of development theorists viewed development as economic growth only, and, therefore, they emphasized the role of capital and
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investment in accelerating economic growth, which led them to call for raising national savings rates and building the physical infrastructure. The neoclassical theorists emphasized not only the role of savings, investment, and infrastructure but also technology and education. They saw a strong connection between savings and capital accumulation and believed that for capital to be productive it needs modern technology. Utilizing modern technologies makes it possible to produce a larger amount of goods using the same amount of inputs, as well as producing the same amount of goods using a smaller amount of inputs; it also makes it possible to produce better, more competitive goods and services. To the classical theorists in general, development is an automatic process caused by investment. Since no investment is possible without capital, higher levels of savings were needed to cause capital accumulation and thus investment and economic growth, making the availability of investment capital the primary factor that determines the fate of development. And for investment to be effective, classical theorists gave priority to infrastructural projects and basic industries. Not much was said about noneconomic factors, such as culture or politics, and their potential role in inducing economic development and hindering sociocultural change. Nonetheless, classical economists recognized the role of the entrepreneur and education in influencing the pace of development. If such factors were adequate, some argued, development would follow without much delay. The entrepreneur, according to Joseph Schumpeter, is the one who directs investment and determines where and when to invest. Since the entrepreneur is the one who takes the risk of making decisions, he becomes an indispensable player in the development process. Education, meanwhile, was emphasized as a critical factor in raising labor productivity. However, while education increases the knowledge of workers, it does not necessarily lead to transforming workers’ attitudes, and if attitudes do not change, productivity will not increase. By acknowledging the positive role of education only, classical theorists failed to see the other side of education that can, under certain conditions, make it a liability. And by ignoring culture, they failed to see how traditions, values, religion, attitudes, and social and political structures affect change in society. B. F. Hoselitz said, “The main problem in the theory of economic growth, which arises as a consequence of relating social-structural and cultural factors to economic variables, is to determine the mechanisms by which the social structure of an underdeveloped country becomes altered and takes on the features which characterize an economically advanced country.”3 This clearly indicates that Hoselitz understood the critical role of the sociocultural factor in development; however, he provided no plan to address this issue within a
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theory of development. The dilemma that Hoselitz and others faced in dealing with the sociocultural aspect of life led classical theorists to concentrate on savings, investment, technology, and entrepreneurship as primarily economic variables. But despite the importance of these variables, they cannot be harmonized because decisions dealing with them are taken by different people who often have little in common and rarely have contact with one another. Moreover, the emergence of the large investment bank, the multinational corporation, and the numerous aid agencies and not-for-profit organizations have complicated all decisions; they made decisions regarding savings and investment and technology transfer beyond anyone’s control. For example, money deposited in a small bank anywhere in the world is usually transferred within hours to one of the larger European, American, or Asian capital pools, where bankers act on their own and make investment decisions without feeling an obligation to consult with depositors or governments. People who control money today do not know who owns the money they control, and they do not seem interested to know. In 1960, W. W. Rostow published The Stages of Economic Growth, in which he provides a theory of development. The book, which gained unusual attention at the time, outlines five stages through which underdeveloped economies are supposed to go to become fully developed. Rostow called his book a noncommunist manifesto, claiming that his approach, and not the Marxist one, provides the right strategy for the underdeveloped countries to join the developed world. Rostow’s approach was not much different from the approach advocated by classical theorists; it was only more detailed and deterministic. The sense of determinism the strategy contains was apparently necessary for Rostow to call it a noncommunist manifesto. The stages of economic growth as outlined by Rostow are as follows: the traditional stage, the preconditions for take-off, the take-off, the drive to maturity, and the mass consumption stage. Each stage has its preconditions and accomplishments, and accomplishments serve as the preconditions for the succeeding stage. Rostow, nevertheless, has difficulty explaining how economies and societies move from one stage to another and identifying the major obstacles that face development at each stage. And while emphasizing savings as other classical theorists did, he fails to explain when and why people start to save more and when and where they start to invest. In addition, Rostow largely ignores the role that noneconomic factors, such as traditions, values, institutions, and politics, play in influencing decisions related to savings and investment. Nevertheless, Rostow acknowledges that many economic changes come as a consequence of noneconomic human behavior. He interpreted human behavior as “an act of balancing alternative and often
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conflicting human objectives in the face of the range of choices men perceive to be open to them.”4 The stage interpretation of development outlined by Rostow implies that all economies are destined to advance along the lines described by his theory. But such interpretation fails to explain why many economies have remained in the traditional stage while others have passed it or why some economies have reached the preconditions for take-off and remained there for decades unable to make further progress. Furthermore, Rostow’s analysis gives the impression that a less developed country is advised to start with the agricultural sector before launching a rapid industrialization program. While this advice sounds logical, it ignores the following: 1. That industry is a major force in agricultural development because of the modern tools, irrigation systems, and improved seeds and fertilizers it makes available for farmers to raise productivity and utilize land more efficiently; and 2. That waiting for agriculture to develop may complicate the situation by increasing unemployment and lowering the land per capita ratio, especially in densely populated regions of the world where population growth rates are usually high. Egypt is a good case that proves the utter importance of the sociocultural factor. The Aswan Dam, which was completed in 1969, was supposed to expand the irrigated land area by one-third and keep pace with population growth, giving the industrial sector the opportunity to expand and create new jobs for the unemployed and the new entrants to the labor market. When industry failed to develop as fast as anticipated, despite the availability of electric power generated by the dam, the Egyptian development strategy failed to materialize. Consequently, the land per capita ratio declined, unemployment rose, poverty increased, and illiteracy rates remained high. When the Egyptian minister of planning at the time (1969) was asked by this author during a meeting in the minister’s office in Cairo in July 1969 about the reasons for the failure of the industrial sector to exploit the electric power produced by the Aswan Dam, his answer was simple and instructive: “Since we doubted the sincerity of the Russians to complete the dam, we did not develop industrial projects to utilize the anticipated electric power; our rationalization was, let the Russians complete the dam first and then God will take care of the rest.” But since God had not been consulted before work on the dam started, he seems to have declined to help after the dam was completed. Development is not a process that can start by itself and move under its own weight to a predetermined destination; rather, it is a conscious process of
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sociocultural and economic change created by society to accomplish certain economic and noneconomic goals deemed desirable. But for people to act, they need incentives to do so, be it to please God, appease authorities, make money, learn more, or change their status quo. The question is how to create enough incentives for people to act in the way societal development requires them to act. The need, therefore, is for a theory of development that sees economy as one aspect of societal life that cannot escape being influenced by all other aspects, and sees economic and sociocultural restructuring as two faces of one societal process. Classical economists had correctly emphasized the need for savings, because economies at the time were largely closed, forcing savings to stay at home and be invested in national economies. Today, people save and deposit their savings in local and foreign banks, while investment is made by nationals and foreigners alike. As a consequence, the role of national savings in facilitating investment is no longer as critical as it once was. In fact, capital has been investing in industries such as gold and silver mining, oil exploration and production, and railroads in foreign countries for a long time. Another example that demonstrates that national savings no longer play the crucial role they once did can be explained by looking at the American economy. For years, Americans kept consuming and investing in their economy about 6 percent more than what they were producing. Foreign investors, fearing political instability in their countries, have been sending to the United States more than two billion dollars a day. “As a nation,” wrote Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board, “we are consuming and investing about 6 percent more than we are producing . . . What holds it all together is a massive and growing flow of capital from abroad, running to more than $2 billion every working day.”5 In contrast to most classical theorists, H. Myint was able to see the relationship that ties populations to national resources and thus economic growth. Underdevelopment, Myint says, is caused primarily by fast population growth rates that resulted from colonial rule. “The introduction of an orderly framework of administration by the colonial governments and the provision of basic public services, especially public health, have reduced the death rates and caused a rapid growth of population. This has disrupted the traditional balance between population, natural resources and technology.”6 Myint argued further that the migration of labor from rural areas to cities, where services and employment opportunities usually exist, has caused the disguised agricultural unemployment to become open unemployment in the shanty towns around the big cities.7 Myint provides good analysis of the consequences of higher population growth rates and their negative impact on economic conditions, but he does
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not tell us how to escape the population trap. He views traditionalism as an obstacle to economic development; therefore, he says, “There is the problem of choice for the mass of people in the underdeveloped countries between having higher material incomes and a faster rate of economic growth and preserving their traditional social, cultural and religious values and ways of life.”8 Nonetheless, Myint does not provide concrete ideas to restore the old balance between population, resources, and technology or change the traditional social and cultural values to make them compatible with modern science and technology. He seems to say to the poor people living in the developing countries, “You have a choice: higher material incomes and a faster rate of economic growth or preserving your traditional ways of life.” Since most poor people fear the unknown and tend to resist change that undermines their values, traditions, and way of life, such advice is unlikely to find people willing to listen to it. Another theory that gained some recognition for a while is the “Big Push.” Advocates of this theory argued that all economies are capable of following the path traveled by the Western nations and achieving economic development. However, underdeveloped economies suffer from certain constraints and insufficient incentives to grow, which makes them in need of a big push. This push, often seen in the development of a major industry or an economic sector, is required to invigorate the national economy and give it enough power to gain momentum. But a big push that leads to the building of a major industry is more likely to cause economic duality and deepen the socioeconomic gaps in society; it will ultimately fail because no industry can function in isolation of other spheres of life where it recruits workers, buys raw materials, and markets its products. Yusif Sayigh argued, “Societies are not believed to be in a continuum leading from primitiveness to traditionality to modernity, but to have islands of modernity alongside and concurrently with areas of traditionality, while others stand in distinctly transitional stage.”9 The Neoclassical Perspective While the 1970s witnessed the failure of the classical approach to development, the 1980s witnessed the failure of the socialist approach. All capitalist and socialist theories had failed to identify the obstacles hindering development, and because of that, they were unable to articulate workable plans to enable poor nations to overcome underdevelopment. Consequently, a new liberal school emerged to lead the debate regarding the right strategy to Third World development. This neoclassical school bases its arguments on the magic of free markets. While this approach has its roots in classical thinking, it reemerged to reclaim the future as a consequence of five major developments:
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1. The economic success of the Asian Tigers, which is based on a strategy that combines state intervention with the free enterprise system; 2. The failure of socialism and revolution to achieve development, political freedom, or economic independence; 3. The debt crisis that proved that Third World leaders were largely corrupt and unable to manage their national economies; 4. The growing global economic power and reach of the multinational corporation; and 5. The writings of economist Milton Friedman, who said, among other things, “In [a free economy] there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game.”10 “The neoliberal consensus assumes that domestic policies of the less developed countries are the cause of their failure to grow,”11 says Sunil Kureja; and therefore the neoliberal economists emphasize privatization, deregulation, free trade, and export-led economic strategies. Both the World Bank and the IMF were quick to articulate a program in the 1980s called “structural adjustments” and to move vigorously to impose it on poor states, particularly the highly indebted ones. Adjustments included currency devaluation to encourage exports, reduction of state’s spending and food subsidies to reduce budget deficit, and privatization of state enterprises to attract foreign capital and improve productivity. However, the only tangible results the structural adjustments have produced are to be found in widening the income and wealth gaps between rich and poor, spreading corruption, deepening dependency on foreign capital and imports, and causing the state to lose ownership of the assets that were generating some income. Although the ideas promoted by the neoliberal theorists had no track record of success, they were able to gain wide acceptance. Most people in the Third World had by then lost faith in their governments, and therefore they were willing to try a different approach. Governments had no choice but to accept the prescribed medicine due to World Bank, IMF, and US pressure, which made the adoption of such measures a precondition for further financial aid and new loans. And with the collapse of communism at the end of the decade, all potential challengers to the free market philosophy were removed. However, the only export-led strategy that proved its utility was the Asian Tigers strategy. This strategy—to be reviewed after the next section—was based not on neoliberal ideas but on ideas borrowed from both free markets and state capitalism.
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The Dependency Perspective Socialist intellectuals in general and Third World nationalists in particular claim that economic dependency was caused by colonialism. They argue that colonialism has exploited the resources of poor nations and made their economies dependent on the international capitalist system, and, as a consequence, they deprived poor nations of the opportunity to develop on their own. The dependency theory sees the world divided into centers and peripheries, where the first exploits the second, and the second is forced to serve the interests of the first. Dos Santos defines dependency as “a situation in which the economy of one country is conditioned by the development and expansion of another to which the former is subjected.”12 In other words, dependency theorists such as Raul Prebisch, Andre Gunder Frank, Theotonio Dos Santos, and Samir Amin say that dependency is a relationship between the center and the periphery whereby the periphery is subjected to decisions taken by the center, not in economic matters only but also in matters related to domestic and foreign affairs. And while the center represents the industrialized nations, the periphery represents the underdeveloped and largely poor ones. Dependency theorists also claim that the diffusion of capitalism to the world outside the developed states causes underdevelopment rather than development. As a consequence, they believe that the world’s capitalist economy poses the biggest obstacle to the development of poor nations, and that the unevenness of development is a consequence of the control that capitalism has on the world economy. Therefore, the underdevelopment of the Third World is not a natural consequence of continued global economic change, but a consequence of the negative impact of world capitalism and the division of international trade, which enabled the center to dominate and exploit the periphery. This domination and exploitation, according to dependency theorists, is primarily due to the rich countries controlling capital, technology, and trade, which enable them to confiscate the poor countries’ surpluses and limit their ability to develop their economies. There is no doubt that the Western capitalist nations and their corporations have worked hard to deepen the dependency of Third World economies on their own, and because of that, colonialism did contribute to hindering the transformation of Third World economies in general. Nevertheless, there was nothing that agricultural society could do to avoid dependency on the industrial one; dependency was and still is a natural historical development that no agricultural society could escape. Dependency theorists tend to generalize and thus overlook the particularities of each economy, and in their zeal to blame the former colonial powers for all ills, they fail to recognize that not all poor nations of today were
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colonies in the past, and not all colonies of the past have remained poor today. For example, Yemen was not subjected to colonialism but still failed to develop and enter the industrial age, while Singapore and Malaysia, both of which were subjected to colonialism, were able to industrialize and join the community of developed nations. If the dependency theory is able to explain underdevelopment, as its proponents seem to claim, it would be foolish to expect any poor nation to develop in the future, because economic, political, and technological dependency has deepened its roots and become structural. To free poor nations from poverty and dependency, socialist intellectuals called for severing the bonds that tie Third World nations to the international capitalist system. To achieve this goal, they advocated the nationalization of large domestic enterprises and financial institutions, the adoption of central planning, and the implementation of an economic strategy based on import substitution and protectionism. States that adopted this strategy showed some improvement at the beginning but failed to develop further, reduce dependency on the capitalist system, or decrease poverty in a meaningful way. Meanwhile, lack of investment capital forced many of these states to borrow from foreign sources to finance their economic plans. And when their economies failed to perform as expected, most of them failed to generate enough funds to service their debt, forcing them to seek help from the international financial centers of capitalism they were supposedly trying to sever ties with. For example, due to a steep decline in the prices of agricultural exports and energy in the early 1980s, most indebted Third World nations faced a serious debt crisis that forced them to comply with the dictates of the IMF and the World Bank and lose in the process whatever economic freedom and political independence they may have had at the time. Meanwhile, nationalization, import substitution, and protectionism led to fostering authoritarian rule and widening the income and wealth gaps separating the powerful rich from the powerless poor. Chester A. Croker wrote “what sovereign rights, if any, do governments have to prevent outsiders from telling them how to treat their people, their economies, and their environments?”13 The drive to blame the other for Third World underdevelopment led dependency theorists to overlook the role of indigenous cultures in resisting change, as well as facilitating popular submission to foreign dictates and national dictators. So, instead of examining the complexity of traditional cultures and their socioeconomic and sociopolitical roles, some dependency theorists called for relying on indigenous knowledge and traditional ways of living to develop and restore a sense of happiness to people. There is no doubt that indigenous cultures are a source of happiness, but there is also no doubt that living in the past and imitating times long gone cannot help nations develop or restore lost status in a world dominated by competitive
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economic and political players; it also cannot restore happiness to people who have become aware of the world around them and the many comforts of life it offers. Indigenous cultures and traditional ways of living are capable of bringing to people a sense of tranquility and contentment but cannot free them from dependency, poverty, need, or authoritarianism. In fact, dependency on foreign technologies has become the shortest and least expensive way of getting access to many of the necessities of life, such as medicine, food, modern communications systems, and capital goods, which are indispensable tools to enabling citizens of poor nations to develop their economies, live a decent life, and die a dignified death. As a consequence, the dependency theory is neither able to explain Third World underdevelopment nor provide a road map to achieve societal development. It is rather a sophisticated argument to blame others and unconsciously justify failure. David Landes described the dependency theory as “Latin America’s most successful export.”14 There is a big difference between being content and being happy; contentment reflects acceptance of life conditions as they are, while happiness reflects enjoyment of life as being shaped by people. Contentment in this age, I believe, reflects more ignorance than happiness; it reflects a lack of understanding of science and technology and the role they play in making people’s lives more productive and enjoyable. Because of this ignorance, impoverished people usually lack the drive to change their way of life, develop their economies, and change their traditions. Since no one can escape the traumas of our times, happiness can no longer be found in contentment alone; it can only be sought in freedom, liberty, respect for human rights, and getting access to good education, rewarding jobs, and other things that enrich life. Optimism is an important aspect of happiness; to realize optimism and happiness, people must have an eye on the future, not on the past, and work hard to shape it through education, sociocultural transformation, and active participation in the development process. Nevertheless, dependency theorists have called for reforming the international economic system and establishing a New International Economic Order. Raul Prebisch, for example, “was instrumental in founding, under the auspices of the United Nations, the United Nations Committee on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) to monitor and recommend policies that would help redistribute power and income between Northern developed and Southern developing countries”15 in a more equitable fashion. But due to resistance by the industrialized Western nations, all efforts have failed to accomplish the UNCTAD objectives, causing the situation in many poor countries to deteriorate further. As dependency theory and theorists were becoming popular, a successful experiment in development that defied the classical, neoliberal, and socialist
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thinking was unfolding. The Asian Tigers were proving that underdevelopment, poverty, and dependency could be overcome, and unprecedented economic growth rates could be achieved in a relatively short time. Neither dependency, nor low per capita income, nor abject poverty, nor lack of investment capital seemed to present a real obstacle. The center-periphery dichotomy, therefore, could no longer hold. In response to that challenge, Emmanuel Wallerstein developed the world systems theory, or the semiperiphery concept, in which he claims that nations representing the semiperiphery are neither fully developed nor underdeveloped; they are nations in transition. As such, they are neither victims of exploitation by the capitalist system nor a part of it engaged in exploiting the periphery. Instead, they are seen as playing both roles at the same time. Wallerstein argues that the modern world system goes back to the sixteenth century, when Europe adopted capitalism as an economic system and began to emerge from the agricultural age and move into the industrial age, creating a core of industrial states and a set of periphery and semiperiphery states. Within this perspective, Wallerstein sees exploitation as an inherent characteristic of the structure of the capitalist system, and, therefore, exploitation does not exist between the core and the periphery only but also within and among the core, periphery, and semiperiphery states.16 The New Development Theory Recognizing the shortcomings of the different approaches to development, some economists and practitioners developed what might be called, as Gerald M. Meier suggests, the “New Theory of Development.” This theory recognizes that the economic aspects of life are tied to the social and cultural ones, and that no development is possible without taking into consideration the role that culture plays in societal life. Proponents of this theory seem to acknowledge that production is a function of many factors, some of which are economic, others scientific and technological, and many more cultural and political in nature. As a consequence, they tend to emphasize the importance of information, institutions, and incentives in development. For example, Peter Drucker argued that knowledge has become the most important factor of production, more important than labor and capital combined. Gerald Meier recognizes the value of knowledge and information but adds that it is highly specific. “Innovations depend on incentives, they must be diffused, and there must be absorptive capacity.”17 While knowledge is fast becoming easy to acquire, most developing nations have failed to appreciate its critical role in economic development and sociocultural transformation. As a consequence, they have failed to build a capacity to absorb knowledge
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and diffuse it in ways that impact production, improve labor productivity, and benefit the poor and the unemployed. Without building the right institutions to acquire, produce, and diffuse knowledge, the developing nations are more likely to continue to lack the capacity to use information efficiently and employ knowledge to develop their economies, transform their cultures, and make progress. Appreciation of knowledge and its role in society is a function of education, attitudes, and public policy, which culture largely shapes. And because cultural values, traditions, and attitudes are not the same everywhere, the ability of underdeveloped nations to adopt and adapt knowledge and innovate varies from one nation to another, causing their capacities to make progress to vary as well. To take such factors into consideration, the new development theory has built models to incorporate as many variables as possible. For example, the theory realizes that capital means much more than physical capital; therefore, instead of emphasizing physical capital only, it emphasizes human, technological, and social capital as well. While physical capital is easy to measure and build, human capital is difficult to quantify and build. Improving the productivity of human resources is still more difficult; it requires formal and informal education and the adoption of values and attitudes that appreciate hard work and value time and money. Technological capital means the quantity and quality of technical, scientific, and managerial know-how acquired by society to raise the productivity of labor, machines, and the overall production process. Technological capital, therefore, involves most aspects of knowledge that include institutions of scientific research and development, schools and universities and training centers, information and communications systems, and modern management systems. Social capital is probably the most important but the least understood type of capital. It is often assumed that it is an aspect of culture, but social capital is not an aspect of culture only; it is a social characteristic that is partially created and partially inherited. Social capital involves laws and regulations, public policy, culture and societal systems, and therefore it is a function of how far laws and regulations are developed, how far the state is willing to go to enforce the law, the nature and intentions of public policy and how it is perceived by the public, as well as the sophistication of societal systems and people’s attitudes toward science, technology, and the other. Social capital, broadly defined, is the formal and informal relationships and networks and institutions, and laws and contractual arrangements that facilitate and regulate formal interactions in society and shape the behavior of participants in everyday life. The new development theory is probably the most realistic one; however, the models it has built have not produced tangible results to prove its utility.
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As a consequence, most poor nations are still searching for a new strategy to invigorate their largely stagnating economies, improve the general living standards of their peoples, and enable them to overcome the obstacles that hinder their development. This simply means that there is a need for a strategy that sees economic restructuring and sociocultural transformation as two inseparable parts of one comprehensive societal development process. The Asian Tigers The Asian Tigers began in the 1970s to change course and devise a development strategy along capitalist lines with active state involvement; they formulated new visions, set new priorities, drew new economic and educational plans, and implemented them with a vengeance. The Tigers sought to accomplish their national goals through building state institutions, controlling corruption, arming their labor forces with the right skills and attitudes, and creating new social, legal, and political environments attractive to foreign investment. These states, whose numbers have continued to grow, followed a strategy based on export promotion and protection of domestic markets and national industries. It was a strategy to consciously engage rather than disengage the international capitalist system, and its success demonstrates that neither private enterprise alone nor government ownership of national means of production by itself is capable of transforming economic realities on the ground. The major components of that strategy are: 1. Improving economic and labor competitiveness through educational programs that sought to change individual attitudes and enhance workers’ skills; 2. Producing consumer durable goods of high quality destined for export; 3. Protecting domestic markets and infant industries from foreign competition; 4. Planning and financing economic expansion and exports ; 5. Making exports more competitive internationally and making foreign imports less competitive domestically, through currency devaluation; and 6. Encouraging savings and domestic and foreign investment. These measures, while causing economies to grow rapidly, were instrumental in achieving other objectives: low inflation rates and budget deficits, high savings rates, and investment in research and development. As this strategy was being implemented, the sociocultural and legal contexts were being transformed to accelerate societal change. Heavy investment in human
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resources, technical training, and fighting corruption ensured industrial success in the short run and attracting foreign investment in knowledge-based industries in the long run. Investment in education and technical training usually produces quality labor forces capable of contributing to industrial flexibility, high productivity, greater income equality, as well as appreciation for hard work, life, freedom, and independence. This export-led economic strategy could not have succeeded without state leadership in planning and financing economic expansion, protecting the rights of people, enforcing the law, and ensuring economic and trade performance. As the state assumed these responsibilities, foreign corporations provided a good portion of the investment capital needed to make development a reality. In fact, foreign direct investment since the 1970s has become the major source of finance, technology, management systems and skills, and knowledge that continues to help several Asian and non-Asian states grow their economies. However, the export-led strategy has transformed the nation-state in Asia into a “trading state” interested in maximizing economic gains only. In the 1980s and beyond, the new trading state emerged as a huge economic enterprise committed to exporting whatever it produces and getting as much for it as it could. Consequently, the trading state has failed to develop interest in the cultures of peoples it trades with, limiting its interest in such peoples to studying their habits to produce the kind of goods that meet their needs and satisfy their desires. In addition, the trading state has generally failed to promote its own culture in societies it depends upon for their markets or offer needy client states financial aid or technical assistance to alleviate poverty and develop their economies. The trading state model started with Japan but was adopted by South Korea, Taiwan, and China; India seems to be on its way to adopting the same strategy of taking as much as possible and giving as little as it can in return . While classical economists gave more attention to the financial aspects of development, dependency theorists gave more attention to the political aspects of underdevelopment. Both groups of theorists, however, have largely ignored culture—its societal role and capacity to facilitate economic development and hinder political change and sociocultural transformation. Economic and noneconomic forces in society interact with one another continuously, and through their interaction the pace and fate of societal development is determined. Without taking the economic, cultural, and political variables into consideration, any theory of development will be deficient and hardly relevant. On the other hand, the neoclassical theorists gave priority not to developing the means of production but to private ownership of the means of
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production and thus to freeing markets from state regulations. And this, in turn, gave the free market system, the multinational corporation, and globalization the big push they sought to become the major forces driving global change and influencing the fate of nations. David Korten criticized this development, accusing the new global system of favoring the rich and powerful while discriminating against the poor and powerless. “A globalized economic system has an inherent bias in favor of the large, the global, the competitive, the resource-extractive, and the short-term. Our challenge is to create a global system that is biased toward the small, the local, the cooperative, the resource-conserving and the long-term—one that empowers people to create a good living in balance with nature.”18 The ideas of Milton Friedman, despite their popularity within the international circle, are misguided. The Great Recession has proven that corporate maximization of profits means the minimization of public welfare. By giving more power to the private sector and the multinational corporation, the new system gives little economic power to the state and none to the working class and the poor. Having the freedom to invest anywhere with little or no state supervision, multinationals are increasingly opting for investments that serve their interests only, concentrating on industries in which they have a competitive edge and services that foster their global reach. As a consequence, the multinational corporation, just like the trading state, is unable to develop interest in other peoples’ cultures or living conditions or pay attention to their legitimate concerns and needs. The rising popular opposition to Chinese investment in Africa is a sign that the trading state strategy is not viable in the long run. Today, most capital accumulation is done at the international and not at the national level. And though multinational corporations own but a fraction of that capital, they are the entities that have access to it and control most decisions related to its allocation among alternative investments. Consequently, multinational corporations have become the primary actors that make decisions regarding when and where to invest, where to establish production facilities and distribution centers, and how much to invest in each country. They are also the ones that decide what types of jobs to create and where to create them. And because they own most of the commercial patents and modern technologies and management systems, it has become counterproductive for any state to deny them access to its markets. Recognizing this fact, poor nations seem eager to get multinational corporations to invest in their economies and are more inclined to offer them preferential tax treatments and oftentimes subsidies to encourage them to do so. However, poor nations lack the ability, and sometimes the knowledge, to take advantage of what corporations are able to offer while avoiding being taken advantage of by corporations.
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International organizations struggling to eradicate world poverty, promote political freedoms, protect the environment, and cancel Third World debt tend to see globalization as the last phase of imperialism pursued through the multinational corporation. Though the antiglobalization movement is itself a by-product of globalization, it is creating the first effective global forum in history for the have-nots to air their grievances, promote their causes, and organize to regain their rights. Despite the growing power of the multinational corporation, the future, I believe, is on the side of the poor and their supporters; the spread on poverty and injustice in most parts of the world is undermining the very system the multination corporation is working to build and foster. Relevance of Development Theories Every Third World nation has its own particular culture, as well as its political, social, and economic systems. Therefore, no theory of development can answer all questions and meet the basic requirements of every country; and no theory can describe the prevailing conditions and identify all obstacles that face development. Dudley Seers wrote decades ago, “The existing body of theory cannot explain what has to be explained, nor can it give the help that is politically essential.”19 Gerald Meier adds, “Conventional economics does not have a great deal to offer by way of advice.”20 Michael Edwards goes further to say, “Many of us who are involved in the field of development studies have become part of the problem of underdevelopment rather than part of the solution to these problems.”21 Since economic theories developed by Western thinkers are largely based on the European experience, they are neither able to capture the essence of Third World underdevelopment nor prescribe the right medicine to treat it. “We cannot change the world successfully unless we understand the way it works; but neither can we understand the world fully unless we are involved in some way in the process that changes it,”22 wrote Michael Edwards. Gerald Meier adds, “An intuitive knowledge of the basic cultural traits of a community is indispensable for laying out the basis of its economic theory.”23 While this is true, little has been done to correct the deficiencies that development theories suffer from. No theory was able to capture the essence of underdevelopment, not even the dependency theory, which originated in the Third World. Paul Ormerod criticizes theories of development in general; he says that the prescriptions they “so freely offer are no longer relevant in many situations.”24 Conditions that prevailed in Europe at the time of the industrial revolution and made economic development possible do not exist in the less developed countries today, namely
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social, political, intellectual, and economic freedoms, the separation of religion and state, and a relatively advanced level of indigenous technological and scientific knowledge. Generally speaking, people of the Third World tend to consider Western colonialism, political corruption at home, and globalization the major forces responsible for their sad state of underdevelopment. On the other hand, traditional intellectuals tend to place problems of underdevelopment in certain historical and often religious contexts that make them too complicated to analyze and understand; and what one cannot understand, one is unable to deal with. Consequently, it has become difficult for Western economists and organizations like the World Bank and the IMF to diagnose the conditions of underdevelopment accurately and make culturally sensitive recommendations that could be helpful to people and acceptable to their traditional leadership. Albert Hirschman wrote, “As we have become used to looking at reality through certain theoretical glasses, we may for a long time be unable to see it as it really is.”25 Since the failure of the World Bank to help poor nations develop, almost all theories of development written in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s were abandoned. As a consequence, new books on development tend to deal with issues of development rather than with the process of development (issues such as freedom, corruption, poverty, inequality, culture, economic freedom, the role of government, and the like), thus avoiding the complicated issue of societal development. Emphasis on issues of development enables us to gain a better understanding of the root causes of underdevelopment, but it leaves the discussion about sustainable societal development to move in all directions without a sense of direction. While there is no single path to development, culture and how to transform it remains the main issue. No poor nation needs to start from where Europe started; poor nations can learn from the developed ones and start their own development processes, relying primarily on borrowing ideas and technologies that work for them. Development theories need to provide tools to analyze existing situations and identify obstacles that hinder societal change, and they need to construct models to overcome obstacles and transform reality to be conducive to development. Successful theories must be able to chart a new path to cultural, social, political, and economic change and create processes that lead to development. Change needs to have incentives to motivate people to work hard and be involved in the development process; it also needs a strong political will to do what it takes to remove the hindrances that retard economic change and sociocultural transformation. Since it is easier to criticize than analyze, prescribe than describe, destroy than build, old development theories written
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in the West have failed to do what they were intended to do. As we pass through the transitional period separating the industrial age from the knowledge age, all economic theories and models are fast losing whatever relevance they may have had in the past. New times demand new thinking; and new challenges require new thoughtful answers.
CHAPTER 9
Cultural Theory of Development
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hough the concept of social capital has been with us for decades, its importance and relevance to societal development was recognized only recently. Today, social capital is viewed as an important factor of production, just like physical and human capital. Interest in culture and the role it plays in the development process led to the crystallization of the social capital concept; however, theorists promoting this concept tend to consider social capital a given aspect of culture. But social capital, unlike values, traditions, and attitudes, is something society creates and nurtures by conscious and unconscious actions; therefore, it is neither an aspect of culture nor a product of it only. Relationships in society are a function of culture and formal arrangements that are created by enacting laws and regulations, building public institutions, and enforcing public policy. Family relations, for example, are more given than created; they are largely governed by values and traditions and nurtured by the upbringing of children at home. Production relations, in contrast, are more created than given; they tend to be governed by business cultures and economic structures, state laws, work regulations, and incentives. Social and business networks are created to seek certain economic and noneconomic goals deemed desirable by their creators. Formal and informal institutions are products of both culture and the law, as well as the stage of societal development in which every society lives. However, fascination with determinism has led some thinkers to articulate a development theory based on what could be called “cultural determinism.” Social Trust and Social Capital
When several Asian nations entered a period of rapid and sustained economic growth in the 1980s, questions were raised regarding the secret of the Asian economic success story. The answer, many political philosophers, economists, and historians were quick to claim, was the Asian culture and its predominant
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Confucian ethics. Francis Fukuyama said, “The important variable [in the Asian economic experience] is not industrial policy per se but culture.”1 Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board, said in a congressional testimony in 1997, “Much of what we took for granted in our free market system to be human nature was not nature at all, but culture.”2 As for the role of Confucian ethics, Fukuyama wrote, “Confucianism has defined the character of social relations within the Chinese society over the last two and a half millennia. It consists of a series of ethical principles that are said to undergird a properly functioning society.”3 But if culture is the determining factor behind the economic success of China and other Asian nations, why did these nations have to wait until the second half of the twentieth century to industrialize? And if Confucian ethics have been embedded in the social fabric of Chinese society for 2500 years, why did Confucianism fail to cause the industrialization of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong for centuries? Why has North Korea, which supposedly shares with South Korea the same culture and religion, for half a century failed to replicate South Korea’s experience and industrialize? Though culture is an important factor that influences the fate of nations and the course of their economic and social development, it is not the only factor. China was the most advanced nation in the world during the European Middle Ages. The printing press, for example, was developed and used in China and Korea at least one century before it was invented in Europe. China also had the best and most complete records regarding its past and bureaucratic system, and it is said to have been the most sophisticated state in older times. “Consider China at the outset of the fifteenth century. Its curiosity, its instinct for exploration, and its drive to build and create all the technologies necessary to launch the industrial revolution—something that would not actually occur for another 400 years.”4 Personal and group trust in society is an aspect of culture, but not social trust. Since cultures differ from one another, expressions of trust also differ from one culture to another, from one society to another, and from one time to another. Where trust is a shared habit, society acquires “social capital,” the presence of which is important to economic development. Fukuyama defines social capital as “a capability that arises from the prevalence of trust in society or in certain parts of it.”5 He argues further that there are societies with more social trust than others (high-trust societies), and there are societies with less social trust (low-trust societies), and that societies with more social trust produce more social capital and therefore are better equipped to make economic progress and achieve prosperity. Social capital, which is a function of social trust, facilitates the creation of associations in society whose presence is indispensable to economic growth.
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However, “social capital, the crucible of trust and critical to the health of an economy, rests on cultural roots,”6 Fukuyama asserts. This simply means that culture determines the depth and breadth of social trust; and social trust determines the capacity of society to acquire social capital, which, in turn, determines the ability of society to create the kind of organizations and associations needed to facilitate economic development. And since “trust is culturally determined,” as Fukuyama claims, culture becomes the most important factor determining the economic performance of society. David Landes says, “If we learn anything from the history of economic development, it is that culture makes all the difference.”7 Arguments made by Fukuyama, Greenspan, and Landes support the one advanced by Max Weber about a century ago; however, they contradict the argument made by Karl Marx half a century earlier. To Karl Marx, economic conditions and structures shape cultures, but to Weber and Fukuyama, cultural forces shape economic conditions. This simply means that there are people who think that economic circumstances and production relations are the forces that shape peoples’ cultures and determine their destiny, while others think that cultural habits and values are the forces that shape economic conditions and determine people’s future. In fact, there are still others who claim that culture is genetically determined and, therefore, incapable of changing. In other words, these people seem to say that there are nations that are destined to succeed due to their cultural genes, and there are other nations that are destined to fail due to their cultural genes, and that little can be done to change this reality. Max Weber, observing the various economic achievements of different American religious communities, was correct to argue that different religious beliefs, values, and work ethics are largely responsible for different economic outcomes. Karl Marx, observing the disruptive and corrosive influence of capitalism on people’s ways of life as well as on social relations, was also correct to argue that changed economic conditions and structures are largely responsible for changing people’s ways of living, attitudes, and values. This simply suggests that neither culture alone nor economic conditions by themselves are capable of explaining the socioeconomic, sociocultural, and sociopolitical transformations of any society. As explained earlier, culture and economy are two facets of society, and therefore they are tied to each other by a dynamic relationship where each affects the other and is affected by it. For example, the development of agriculture, which changed society’s economic conditions, led also to changing the culture of the people who adopted it. The practice of agriculture transformed the social and economic structures of the old society, creating a new society, a new culture, a new economy, and a more advanced civilization. But
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once the new civilization was established, culture became the major organizing principle of society and the social tool to deal with life challenges and changed circumstances. Consequently, culture began to shape people’s attitudes toward humankind, nature, and economic activities. Trust, being a cultural habit, exists in every society, in the poor as well as in the rich, in the traditional as well as in the modern. No relationship can be established or sustained without a degree of trust large enough to enable participants to feel comfortable working with each other. The form of trust, however, differs from one society to another because of differences in social structures and civilizational settings. In traditional societies living in preindustrial times, trust is more of a habit that reflects values and beliefs embedded in the sociocultural fabric of society. In societies living in the industrial and postindustrial ages, trust is more of an attitude that reflects rational thinking and enforceable laws and regulations. The former is traditional and, therefore, tends to be concerned primarily with social relationships shaped and regulated by values and belief systems. The latter is social and, therefore, tends to be concerned primarily with economic relationships shaped and regulated by interests, laws, and ethical codes of conduct. Traditional Trust and Social Trust Traditional trust prevails within largely closed circles, such as families and communities of faith. And since relationships within smaller circles such as these tend to be stable, traditional trust tends to be stable as well, playing similar roles in all such relationships. Nontraditional trust, or social trust, prevails in largely open circles, particularly in organizations and within relationships built around interests; therefore, it tends to change as business interests and laws change. Thus, it plays different roles in the lives of different societies and organizations. Traditional trust is a function of culture, which seldom changes within one’s lifetime; social trust is a function of interests and public laws that normally live a life of continuous change. In an increasingly complex world, where global transactions are numbered in the billions every minute, no system can function without social trust. Traditional trust would certainly make things easier and life less stressful, but trusting people who place different values on the same things is not rational. Only social trust based on enforceable laws and contractual agreements will do. However, as societies move from the agricultural to the industrial age, life becomes more complex, relationships multifaceted, and interests more prevalent and relevant, causing old traditions and values to fracture. Since cultures change slowly and have always resisted change, all societies in transition experience chaos and a trust deficit. “Trust deficit,” a term I coined, is defined as
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situations where trust in society or in a major portion of it is weak, and laws are inadequate to enforce contractual agreements and guarantee performance and adherence to ethical standards. During transitional periods from one civilization to another, while traditional trust loses ground as its space shrinks, social trust is still weak because its legal base is yet to be fully developed and accepted. A trust deficit is created, allowing an environment of corruption, hypocrisy, and opportunism to grow and prevail. Nevertheless, some people could still be trustworthy in the traditional sense yet untrustworthy in the social sense. Nepotism is only one example of a behavior exhibiting commitment to traditional family ties and blood relationships and, at the very same time, disregard for the law, the public interest, and other people’s rights. While personal, familial, and tribal loyalty may continue and even strengthen in an environment characterized by political corruption and nepotism, national loyalty, social responsibility, and honesty are always weakened. Most great nations of the past, including the Chinese, Arab, Indian, and Persian nations, had entered a state of stagnation in the fifteenth century and remained there until the second half of the twentieth century. Now that they are being awakened by strange currents of change that include population explosions, urbanization, high unemployment, consumerism, poverty, and economic and cultural globalization, they are experiencing large trust deficits. While traditional trust is being weakened, especially in large cities, laws and regulations are not being developed quickly and comprehensively enough to compensate for the loss of traditional trust, and while people tend to ignore new laws developed to create social trust and facilitate formal transactions, states tend to lack the capacity and often the will to enforce such laws. If you were driving a car in a Third World town where you knew most of the people, you would be less likely to trust drivers facing you on the road, even drivers you knew personally. In contrast, if you were driving in a large American or European city where you knew no one personally, you would be more likely to trust drivers facing you on the road, even drivers whose age or gender you did not know. Generally speaking, drivers in underdeveloped countries tend to ignore traffic regulations and disregard the law, making it less safe to drive in such places. In contrast, drivers in Western societies, in general, respect traffic regulations and abide by the law, making it safer to drive in such places. So, in the first case, you have little or no trust in the driving habits of other drivers because you know they tend to ignore the law and often do not understand it. However, in the second case, you trust the driving habits of other drivers because you know they understand the law and seldom violate it. Trust in the first case is traditional based on personal knowledge of established habits; trust in the second case is social based on
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enforceable laws and regulations. Therefore, social trust emanates from trusting that others respect the same laws, agreements, and arrangements that we respect and abide by. The so-called “low-trust” societies have plenty of traditional trust but little social trust; the so-called “high-trust” societies have plenty of social trust but little traditional trust. Since social trust is more important in industrial and postindustrial societies, traditional trust alone is not enough to govern all relationships because it lacks the capacity to manage complicated transactions that characterize life in such societies. Traditional societies lacking adequate social trust are unable to manage complicated systems and organizations that characterize industrial societies; therefore, they are less able to develop their economies and cultures and make progress. Yet, they are better equipped to define their particular identities and maintain the integrity of their families and cohesiveness of their blood and faith communities. Minorities whose members are tied to one another by faith and age-old values tend to exhibit strong allegiance to their traditions and communities but not to the state; they also lack what it takes to make enough scientific and economic progress to live the age and enjoy what it has to offer. In fact, there is no religiously conservative minority anywhere in the world, be it Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or Hindu, that enjoys high standards of living and can relate to the modern world in a truly rational manner. The Great Recession, which hit the United States in 2008, is an indication of a trust deficit caused by the transition of American society from the industrial age to the knowledge age. People in banking and finance, mortgage lending and insurance, driven by greed and lack of social responsibility, were able to manipulate, at times violate, old laws and regulations, create new, highly complicated financial products, and take unwarranted risks, causing a severe financial crisis. The health reform bill passed by the US congress in 2009 and the financial reform bill passed in 2010 are unconscious attempts to close that trust deficit. But since this deficit is, in my view, larger and deeper than most people think, the reform bills are unlikely to prevent another financial crisis and a grave recession from happening in the near future. In fact, no one I know understands the meaning and importance of a trust deficit; therefore, they do not know where and when such deficits occur and how to deal with them. According to Fukuyama, Japan is a high-trust society with plenty of social trust. As such, Japan is supposed to be more able to organize its economy and economic relationships in ways that improve the productivity of workers and increase the efficiency of business operations. And because of its “propensity for spontaneous sociability,” Japan is supposed to be more innovative in creating and managing new systems and relationships. In other words, high-trust
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societies are supposed to have more dynamic economies, more innovative business communities, and faster wealth-generating institutions. But for over two decades, starting in the 1990s, Japan has been living in an unusual state characterized by a largely stagnant economy, a mostly conservative business community, and a slow wealth-generating society. In an open society with a dynamic economy, people are more concerned with interests than with values, causing social trust to be more important than traditional trust. In such a society, which the United States represents, contractual arrangements become the norm, and winning, just like losing, becomes an ordinary occurrence with minimal social consequences. In a rather conservative Japanese society, several businessmen committed suicide in the 1990s due to business failures and the social stigma that comes with failure. In the United States about 1.1 million people declared bankruptcy in 2013 with no American committing suicide because of this apparent failure. Meanwhile, many people who were convicted of stealing public money, defrauding investors, and committing sexual and other crimes in the United States became celebrities. The United States is a country where an infamous person has a good chance of becoming rich and famous, while an honest person has a better chance of dying without money or fame. Fukuyama says that Chinese society “is regulated not by a constitution and system of laws flowing from it but by the internalization of Confucian ethical principles on the part of each individual as a process of socialization.”8 The same socialization process of ethical principles pervades Islamic countries such as Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia as well as Catholic countries such as Bolivia, Croatia, Mexico, and the Philippines. The fact that Chinese society was able to achieve genuine economic development in the last thirty years, while most Muslim and Catholic societies were unable to do the same, has little to do with Confucianism, Islam, or Catholicism. Only when China did what Japan had done a century earlier—launched a plan to transform its culture and economy—was it able to make meaningful progress; it must be noted that China had also abandoned Marxism as an economic management system. So, the key to economic development is not reviving old cultural values and traditions but transforming existing ones. About 150 years ago, German philosopher Georg Hegel described the old Chinese ethics, to which much credit has been given by Fukuyama and others, as deceptive and fraudulent. Hegel wrote, “No honor exists and no one has an individual right in respect of others, the consciousness of debasement predominates. [The Chinese] are notorious for deceiving whenever they can. Friend deceives friend and no one resents the attempt at deception. Their frauds are most astutely and craftily performed.”9 Such a judgment, while harsh and racist, describes ethics that could not engender social trust or be
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responsible for the rise of any nation. No one at the time, however, asked Hegel if he had lived in China long enough to understand the Chinese culture or if he had interacted with a Chinese farmer to understand how he thinks. Large Third World cities like Cairo, Calcutta, Lagos, and Mexico City are places where traditional trust is dying and social trust is unable to be born; large industrial cities like London, New York, and Rome are places where social trust is decaying and no one is aware of what is happening to it. The microcredit enterprise that started in Bangladesh and became a global phenomenon in a few decades could not have happened without trust, because loans are made without collateral. And though poor women are the major recipients of these loans, the rate of default is near zero, not because of social trust but due to the prevalence of traditional trust in small communities and the shame that accompanies dishonesty and failure. Cultural values, traditions, and attitudes are generally valid only within their civilizational contexts, and more so within their societal contexts. Therefore, values, traditions, and attitudes are relative and should not be judged outside their particular societal contexts. For example, while it is possible and largely fair to compare certain Indian traditions with similar ones in Egypt, it is neither possible nor fair to compare aspects of Indian or Egyptian culture with those of Germany or the United States. For example, an attitude that tolerates casual sex in the United States is considered immoral by cultures rooted in the agricultural age. In contrast, a tradition that punishes political dissent in Egypt is considered unlawful in the United States. The high-trust/low-trust model articulated by Fukuyama is an attempt to explain the differences in economic achievements among nations. However, it ignores three important facts that make its assumptions largely unrealistic and its conclusions highly unreliable: 1. It ignores the fact that cultures are products of civilizations that change greatly and profoundly as society moves from one civilization to another; 2. It ignores the fact that all industrial societies have similar cultures and live in the same civilization and that their economic and technological achievements are at roughly the same level; and 3. It fails to realize that the impact of economy on culture when society is industrializing is nearly as important as Marx argued; and the impact of culture on economy when society is in a largely stable civilizational setting is nearly as important as Weber argued. Every person has a need to belong to a group in which he or she can seek and receive recognition. Yet, while seeking social recognition, most
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individuals find themselves belonging to several groups starting with the family and moving outward to larger circles that usually end with the state. As one moves from the smaller, more intimate circles to the larger, less personal ones, his or her sense of belonging weakens progressively. The rules of belonging within smaller circles tend to be well defined and strictly observed, but loose and flexible within larger circles. Consequently, trust, honesty, and collective responsibility tend to be very strong within family circles, good and practical within clans and extended families, weak and often shadowy within big organizations, and largely nonexistent between estranged faithbased communities. Social trust in preindustrial societies, therefore, is very weak not because of culture or religion but because of social and economic structures and lack of proper laws. Association in such societies is largely vertical, not horizontal, and this limits individual social mobility and freedom as well as opportunities for socialization. Traditional trust and social trust are largely incompatible; where traditional trust is strong, social trust tends to be weak; where social trust is strong, traditional trust tends to be weak. While the prevalence of traditional trust deepens mutual obligations within smaller circles or groups, it weakens social trust and social responsibility within larger circles or organizations. Members of each circle or group, while having a good deal of trust in each other, tend to vest little or no trust in members of other groups, especially competing ethnic, religious, and interest-based groups. However, the prevalence of traditional trust and the mutual obligations it engenders serve to strengthen families and communities, particularly communities of faith, helping them control crime and social vice. They also provide a strong support system for the poor and the elderly, preventing them from drifting in large numbers into drug addiction, poverty, despair, and homelessness. For example, the 21 Arab states have a population of about 360 million, compared to 317 million for the United States, and a per capita income about 10 percent of that of the United States. But while the United States has millions of homeless people, the homelessness phenomenon hardly exists in the Arab world. Yet, mutual suspicion between different ethnic and religious groups on the one hand, and a general lack of social trust in society on the other, make conflict in traditional Arab and non-Arab societies easy to ignite but difficult to contain. Where vertical association is the norm, as is the case in traditional agricultural societies, authoritarianism normally thrives and democracy suffers; and where horizontal association is the norm, as is the case in mature industrial and postindustrial societies, democracy normally thrives and authoritarianism suffers. Where vertical association is the norm, no member of a small ethnic or religious group is usually able to get more recognition unless someone
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else gets less. The game in such societies is more of a zero-sum game that facilitates neither social change nor social mobility nor encourages personal initiative. In contrast, where association in society is horizontal, most people are able to get more without necessarily causing others to get less, because the game in such societies often produces positive results. Historical records show that since the industrial revolution, the relative number of losers in all postagricultural societies has decreased as the relative number of winners has increased. For example, the United States created more billionaires in the 15 years between 1983 and 1998 than it did in its entire previous history. While the number of billionaires was only 13 in 1982, it reached 189 in 1999,10 and due to the information and communications revolutions, and the recovery of the American economy, the number reached five hundred in 2014. People living in preindustrial times are less able to produce and accumulate wealth, even when capital arrives without much effort; they are more capable of spending it senselessly than investing it wisely, as the Spaniards demonstrated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the oil-exporting Arab, African, and Latin American states have demonstrated since the 1950s. While most rich Arab states were able to build their infrastructure, they have failed to develop their human and social capital. Economic restructuring needs sociocultural transformation to cause societal development and facilitate progress that touches the lives of all members of society. Robert E. Lucas predicts that the twenty-first century will witness the development of all societies, because people can learn from each other and ideas can be imitated and because knowledge and resources flow from one place to another in search of higher returns. While it is true that almost every nation can learn from others and catch up, not every nation has the capacity to absorb and apply technological and scientific knowledge; most nations are still hampered by rigid social, cultural, and political systems that cause them to stay behind. Most Eastern European nations are good examples of societies that were lagging behind in technological know-how and managerial skills but well developed socially, culturally, and scientifically, and, because of that, they were able to accelerate economic growth and make substantial progress after being freed from Soviet hegemony. In contrast, Central Asian nations that were also freed from Soviet hegemony were unable to duplicate the Eastern European experience because they turned their attention to reviving their cultural heritage instead of imitating the West, focusing on the past rather than on the future. Social trust does not flow automatically from culture, and social capital is not an aspect of social trust only; both have to be consciously created by society. For a traditional culture to nurture social trust and create social capital,
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it has to be transformed, which economics, politics, and education can do. There is no doubt that certain traditional cultures, particularly cultures that have no religious cores or weak ones, are easier to transform than others; they have more cultural capital to produce a modest degree of social trust but not enough to produce a good amount of social capital to facilitate transformation and societal development. Cultural capital is defined as the capability of culture to be flexible enough to adopt new ideas and technologies and adapt to new life conditions and changed circumstances, while remaining faithful to the spirit of its roots. According to this definition, societies like the Vietnamese, Indonesian, Russian, and most Arab and African societies have adequate amounts of cultural capital. Therefore, cultural capital has to be added to physical capital, human capital, technological capital, and social capital. Otherwise, social trust and consequently social capital will continue to be misunderstood, and their relationship to culture will remain murky. Societal development, as will be explained later, is like a bird: it has to have two healthy wings to fly and navigate the blue skies: economic restructuring and sociocultural transformation. With only one wing, the bird is able to jump and hop, but it can neither fly nor stay healthy.
CHAPTER 10
Obstacles to Development
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hird World nations in general have much difficulty activating their largely stagnant economies and meeting the challenges of feeding, educating, and housing their growing populations. Problems facing the less developed nations are many and multifaceted; some nations face very difficult obstacles that require new visions and sustained efforts to be overcome. Nevertheless, all such nations face problems that emanate primarily from attachment to outdated values, attitudes, and ways of thinking, as well as lack of appreciation for time and work. Many also face challenges emanating from high population growth rates, often high illiteracy rates, ethnic and religious conflict, outdated traditional education systems, and political corruption. The major problems, however, can be grouped under the following headings: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Colonial legacy; Sociocultural heritage; Economic structure; Sociopolitical structure and organization; The political context; and Conceptions of time.
Colonial Legacy Most Third World nations lived under colonial rule for a long time and were subjected to political suppression and economic exploitation, oftentimes for generations. This legacy of a hated past was used and continues to be used by traditional intellectuals, religious leaders, and nationalist forces as an excuse to resist Western ideas, reject progressive values and new ways of thinking, and undermine authentic calls for political reform. Traditional leaders tend
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to claim that the West has no real interest in helping poor nations develop their economies; instead, it is interested in reasserting its political influence, economic hegemony, and cultural domination. Because of such claims, the masses have been more inclined to stick to older cultural values and traditions, oppose social and cultural change, and suspect new ideas, creative economic thinking, and nontraditional political systems. Even democracy, despite its liberating promise, is yet to be fully embraced by the masses or honestly promoted by the corrupt and bankrupt political elites in most developing states. Colonialism has also created another obstacle that continues to outlive colonialism itself; it created an economic elite whose role was to mediate between the colonizer and the colonized masses and enable the former to exploit the latter and control their fate without having to interact with them. As products of colonization, and because they remain closely tied to the former colonizer’s business interests, members of this elite have amassed too much power and wealth. And due to their social roots, education, and connections, they are able to control the economic process and work with those controlling the political process to keep the masses largely poor and submissive. Members of this elite include importers and exporters of major commodities, agents of foreign corporations, traditional leaders, and real estate owners who have little interest in industrialization because they normally lack the necessary entrepreneurial skills that manufacturing requires. And because they have enough wealth and power to enhance their prestige without having to change, they have little reason to initiate or support genuine economic or political reforms. Under colonialism, modern health-care systems were introduced in underdeveloped countries, causing life expectancy to rise, child mortality rates to decline, and rates of population growth to increase rapidly. But while these developments were taking place, no new technologies and training programs were introduced to raise the productivity of labor and land to keep pace with population growth. As a consequence, the traditional balance between resources, population, and technology was undermined, leading to widespread poverty, higher rates of social dependency, and sociocultural stagnation. With the advent of globalization and the Internet, consumerism invaded most societies, causing traditional cultures to lose many of their old traits. As a consequence, the balance between population, resources, technology, and culture was disrupted, causing the old problems to become much more complicated and challenging. Sociocultural Heritage Generally speaking, people tend to respond positively to economic incentives. However, most people belonging to old cultures tend to slow down or
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stop working at certain levels of income and wealth, preferring less work and more leisure time. Since the most important goal of such people is to satisfy their basic needs, they often see no reason to continue working after such needs are satisfied; contentment rather than unfulfilled expectations governs the attitudes of most Third World peoples toward work. As a consequence, some development economists were led to believe that certain cultures represent, by their very nature, formidable obstacles to development and material gain, and therefore trying to incentivize people belonging to such cultures to do otherwise is a waste of time. People living in the agricultural age tend to work to live, not live to work, as most people in the industrial age do. The first see work as a means of generating enough money to buy food, meet basic needs, and be happy, rather than a process to gain and accumulate wealth. But for people living in the industrial age, work is the primary source of personal satisfaction and social recognition. “Too many of us work to live and live to be happy. Nothing wrong with that; it just does not promote high productivity. You want high productivity? Then you should live to work and get happiness as a by-product,” wrote David Landes.1 People of the developing world, therefore, should be educated to view work as an end in itself and a source of happiness, or as Jubran Khalil Jubran once remarked, “Work is love made visible.” Culture is very important to economic and noneconomic development; however, it is neither the only determinant of development nor the only obstacle hindering change. “The question is not whether culture has a role but how to understand this role in the context of the broader determinants of prosperity.”2 Culture matters more in some societies than in others, because some cultures tend to resist certain ideas more than others, to change faster in some countries than in others, and to assume a more active role under certain circumstances than others. To understand culture and its role in society, we have to think of it as a living creature that changes as circumstances, life conditions, and incentives change. Culture was created by humankind in the distant past to meet communications and socialization needs and to help people deal with life challenges emanating primarily from the social environment; as life conditions changed over time, cultures changed as well. To realize the extent of that change, we have to remember that at one point in our history all of us were hunters-gatherers before becoming farmers and industrialists, artists and thinkers, doctors and entrepreneurs. For culture to play a positive role in societal development, the values and traditions it espouses and the attitudes it nurtures in young people must be changed to become compatible with the economic system and the goals it seeks to accomplish. A culture prevalent in an agricultural society, where contentment is a virtue, is not compatible with an economic system based on
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thrift; therefore, it cannot facilitate the introduction of manufacturing or encourage the pursuit of happiness through hard work and material gain. The social and economic formations that industry requires to make progress are not part of traditional cultures. Therefore, culture needs to be transformed to become hospitable to new economic ideas, institutions, and activities associated with manufacturing and the financial arrangements that industrial economy requires to function properly. Attitudes toward time and work, and menial work in particular, have to change, otherwise industries and services requiring menial work will suffer and hinder development. For example, cleaning public places like streets and health facilities is an undesirable job in most developing countries. Locals in Arab countries do not normally seek such jobs; therefore, it is difficult to entice people to do them. While streets and public facilities almost always get cleaned, the people who do the cleaning are usually members of small, often shunned, minorities or foreign workers. And since cleaning public places is considered demeaning, standards of cleanliness are almost always below accepted health standards. Jobs that require serving people in hotels and restaurants are also not desirable, and people who perform them often appear unhappy and at times resentful. As a consequence, most people performing such jobs seldom enjoy their work or try to make a career of it. And what people do not enjoy doing they are unlikely to learn how to do more efficiently. A visit to a middle-class home in Cairo, for example, would reveal that the inhabitants care a lot about their house; they keep it clean and tidy at all times. Cleaning, however, is usually performed by housemaids. But on the way to the house, you are likely to go through streets that are largely dirty and surrounded by decaying residential buildings. People who inherited their values from the agricultural age, be it in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, or Latin America, tend to consider the doors of their homes the boundaries where their concerns and responsibilities end and where the misuse and abuse begin. As a consequence of this attitude, the environment suffers and feels the neglect; it does not receive the attention it needs or the care it deserves. A small country like Jordan, with only six million people and an official poverty rate of some 15 percent, has more than one million foreign workers or about 40 percent of its labor force. This fact might give the impression that Jordan has full employment and that its economy is thriving and in need of guest workers. On the contrary, the rate of economic growth in Jordan is low, and the official rate of unemployment is over 13 percent of the labor force, despite the lack of active participation by women. Most foreign workers in Jordan come from Egypt and a few Asian countries. While Egyptians clean the streets, man residential buildings in the capital, farm the land, and perform most maintenance work, the over seventy thousand maids brought
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primarily from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and the Philippines take care of children and clean the houses of the rich and the not-so-rich. Chinese, Korean, Sri Lankan, and Bengali workers, meanwhile, work in the textile industry, Jordan’s major export industry. In 2006, the Jordanian government acknowledged that the participation rate of Jordanian workers in the major industrial complex had declined to 30 percent, despite an unemployment rate in excess of 25 percent in and around the city where that complex is located. In traditional, largely agricultural societies, participation of women in the labor force is low. Neither traditional values nor religious beliefs normally accept women as equals to men. This discrimination against women robs society of a good portion of its human capital and creates a relationship between the sexes that gives men a dominant role in society, allowing them to often exploit women and sometimes enslave them. Such discrimination is seen in assigning jobs to women that most men detest, in paying them much less than men for performing the same tasks, and in the higher illiteracy rates among women. In light of the low productivity of labor in general, denying women the right to equal work, pay, and education represents another obstacle that hinders change and retards societal development. Moreover, there are other sociocultural obstacles that are politically sensitive but need to be addressed to give development a chance. Such obstacles include a traditional education system that gives priority to perpetuating old ideas and bad habits instead of promoting critical thinking and scientific branches of knowledge. Religious teachings that impel believers to be content and accept whatever happens to them as fate are not compatible with risk taking, wealth generating, and capital accumulation. Religious teachers in Islamic countries in general tend to believe that their major role in society is to prepare believers for the afterlife rather than for life itself. Such a role needs to be transformed to motivate people to work and enjoy life before death arrives to put an end to their lives and dreams. Due to improved health care and awareness and high population growth rates, life expectancy has risen in all traditional societies, causing social dependency in those societies to rise as well. People in Third World countries today have more children and live longer than at any time in history. And in view of the ever-weakening traditional family ties and mutual social obligations due primarily to cultural globalization and satellite TV, poverty and dependency are becoming two major obstacles facing efforts to improve the general quality of life. Meanwhile, lack of adequate social security systems in most states has caused these problems to be aggravated and to become structural. And since labor productivity is low and women’s participation in the labor force is modest, the future of the elderly and the poor in most Third World states looks bleak.
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Thus, an effective development strategy would have to take into consideration, among other things, problems related to low labor productivity, the relationship between men and women, the role of religion in society, population growth rates, and addiction to bad habits like smoking, all of which are products of traditional education systems and cultural values that do not nurture the right attitudes in people. There is also a need for new laws and regulations to address the trust deficit that is growing due to declining traditional trust and increasing life complexity in urban centers. The issue of trust and how and why a trust deficit is created is explained in Chapter 8. Economic Structure The rich and poor in developing countries live in two different worlds separated by income, education, culture, knowledge, and often concrete walls. The socioeconomic, sociocultural, and sociopolitical gaps separating the former from the latter represent an incredible obstacle to development as well as to political stability; they limit the potential size of domestic markets and create negative feelings among the poor that cause resentment and often apathy. Resentment and apathy weaken workers’ desire to work hard and be productive and loyal to the businesses and public organizations they work for. Moreover, the income and educational gaps separating the rich from the poor undermine efforts to develop middle classes capable of playing active roles in the economic life of society; they often make the poor feel that no matter how hard they may try to improve the quality of their lives, life conditions will not change. Contrary to conventional wisdom, no developing nation has or ever had a middle class, and no nation is capable of producing one at this time. What might appear to “experts” as a middle class is actually a collection of smallscale merchants and employees who work for organizations that have different, often contradictory goals; they include business entities, government agencies, educational institutions, and the military. People who work for these entities and receive decent incomes that qualify them for middle-class status have no shared interests or causes to tie them together; therefore they have no class consciousness to motivate them to feel and act as a social class. As a consequence, they are unable to engage in economic or political activity to protect a shared interest or advance a common cause. Richard Gill argues that nations that are poor are unable to develop, and nations that do not develop stay poor. He also asserts that traditional cultural values are obstacles that hinder development. “In reality, many of the deepest and more difficult problems arise in connection with society’s attitudes and institutions.”3 There is no doubt that poverty and ignorance reinforce one
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another, and their prevalence among the majority of people in Third World states constitutes a serious social and economic problem. But despite such assertions, the experience of states like South Korea, Taiwan, and China has proven that poor nations can develop and overcome poverty and ignorance, and traditional values and attitudes can be transformed and made conducive to sociopolitical change and economic development. More than forty years ago, Robert E. Baldwin saw wide income gaps and low per capita incomes as major causes of economic underdevelopment. He also saw problems hindering development as emanating from high birth rates, less education and skills, less technology, and the absence of entrepreneurship. He said, “The problem for those who want to devise policies for accelerating development is to discover the key variables and relationships in the development process.”4 But variables and relationships that constitute obstacles are not technical and socioeconomic only; they are also political and cultural. If traditional cultural values and state policies were to promote equality and social justice, good education and the right attitudes and work ethics, poorer nations would be able to gain a competitive advantage, and entrepreneurs would be encouraged to invest and create jobs for the educated and the undereducated; this, in turn, would cause income gaps to shrink, markets to expand, and further development and progress to be made. There is a need for a national commitment to overcome economic, cultural, and political obstacles that hinder societal development. Such a commitment, however, can only come through the articulation of a clear vision that acknowledges the cultural and noncultural obstacles, defines the desired national goals, and devises practical plans to overcome the obstacles and pursue the desired goals with determination. Visions should take into consideration the facts on the ground, the state of technology in the world, the experiences of other nations, and where society needs to go; plans, meanwhile, should be devised to include the transformation of society, everything it intends to accomplish. Visions without plans to realize them are mere daydreams that might be enjoyable but will end up wasting time. Carrying out plans without vision is like walking in the dark and hoping for good luck, which might turn out to be a nightmare. Sociopolitical Structure Following independence, many Third World leaders adopted socialism and economic planning as a strategy to develop their economies and attain economic independence, not knowing that economic independence was a misconceived idea and that it ceased to be an option since the sixteenth century. But driven by a legacy of colonialism and the struggle for independence, and
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encouraged by the Soviet Union, rulers of many newly independent states in Africa, Asia, and Latin America moved to reject the capitalist system and adopt state capitalism and central planning in its stead. And since democracy is a Western idea, it was portrayed and sold to peoples suffering from illiteracy and ignorance as an alien idea, incompatible with their indigenous cultures and belief systems. Soviet encouragement and Western indifference made it possible for such rulers to ignore democracy and its system of checks and balances. And due to the Cold War’s security imperatives, both superpowers were mainly interested in recruiting surrogate states and foreign agents, regardless of the states’ authoritarian rule and lack of commitment to freedom, social justice, human rights, and political participation. Dictators are rulers who often lack political legitimacy but act as gods that see their peoples as slaves, not worthy of political or human rights. Their sense of greatness and condescending attitudes make authoritarian rulers feel as if they are the only people entitled to rights. Rights of others, as a consequence, become prerogatives that leaders control and can grant or withhold as they wish; rulers are the ones who decide to give citizens passports or not, to allow them to drive cars or not, to provide them with jobs or not, and sometimes to let them live or not. In many developing states, rulers have no problem sending people to live and die in exile, denying them the right to live in their homelands and die among their families and friends. And where ideology controls politics, dictators’ cruelty is often beyond comprehension. Ideologies tend to create mass movements, superleaders, and national heroes that cause the sociocultural and socioeconomic gaps separating people on the top of the sociopolitical ladder from the rest of the population to widen, while creating new relationships that reduce the humanity of everyone involved. People on the top tend to develop a sense of superiority and divine inspiration that leads them to lose touch with reality and belittle the lives of those struggling at the bottom. But sadly enough, most of those at the bottom tend to feel that their lives are only worth what they can do in the service of their revered leaders and holy men. The bulk of the masses are thus led to accept the unacceptable, like dying for the sake of mysterious causes, and believe in the unbelievable, like unproven miracles. Meanwhile, social and political critics, intellectuals and free thinkers, are treated as liabilities whose suppression or outright elimination is a legitimate act to maintain political stability and ideological purity and ensure complete domination of the masses. In fact, many rulers, including the majority of Arab and African rulers, and some Asian and Latin American rulers as well, have long treated human resources in their countries as liabilities, not assets. As liabilities, human resources become a burden to be lightened, not an asset to be developed
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and harnessed. The educated in particular often have been treated not just as liabilities but as threats to political stability, religious values, and traditional ways of living; as a consequence, the Third World creative minds and the knowledge and economic potential they possess have been largely wasted. Generally speaking, Arab regimes view every independent thinker as a threat; they tend to say, “He thinks, so he is a traitor”; and traitors usually face one fate: isolation and depravation or imprisonment in dark prison cells. As for the traditional nationalists, they tend to view every thinker who calls for freedom, democracy, and equality between men and women as a foreign agent not to be trusted; they tend to say, “He thinks, so he is a foreign agent”; and foreign agents usually have one fate: to be shunned and discredited. Meanwhile conservative religious forces view such individuals as infidels betraying religion; they tend to say, “He thinks, so he is an atheist”; and atheists have only one fate: to be eliminated or, if they’re lucky, to end up living in exile and dying in obscurity.5 Because of this treatment, a large portion of highly educated Arab men and women were forced to leave their homelands and seek refuge in Western countries. In addition, millions more, despite being largely unskilled and uneducated, had to emigrate to earn a living and get a taste of the freedom others enjoy.6 Most Third World nations today suffer from a serious brain-drain problem, which makes attempts to develop national economies and transform cultures very difficult indeed. Dictators who emerged in the wake of national independence made most citizens victims of cruel political systems and prisoners of unenlightened social orders and oppressive cultural environments. Human rights are abused, dissent is suppressed, freedoms are confiscated, and rights of people are a privilege that rulers monopolize. The concept that rights are given at birth and that all people have equal rights was never established, promoted, or even seriously considered by such rulers. And since absolute power corrupts absolutely, political and economic corruption spread and became structural; and with the passing of time, corruption became a state of mind shared and accepted by most citizens. Traditionalism has played a role in encouraging new rulers to become authoritarian, allowing them to monopolize political power and use it to gain economic power, and to employ both to suppress and oppress the masses. Nepotism is only one aspect of traditionalism that regards favoritism and discrimination against the other as legitimate. People with the right political and social connections are likely to get the jobs they desire and whatever favors they may ask for. People without the right political or social connections are unlikely to get the jobs they deserve or be granted favors they may badly need. And to get what they are entitled to in an unjust society, ordinary people are often forced to pay bribes and accept denigration and humiliation as well.
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By controlling politics and economies, suppressing freedoms of speech, and treating human resources as liabilities, the average Third World state has managed to transform itself from an agent of economic change and political liberation to an obstacle to societal development, sociocultural change, and scientific and technological progress. Consequently, capital accumulation, the accumulation of knowledge, the development of human and social capital, and economic and political freedoms were never given a real chance, causing underdevelopment to become an oppressive state of mind and an unjust state of socioeconomic and sociopolitical affairs. A state system that controls the economy and uses it to serve politics encourages capital flight and brain drain and perpetuates underdevelopment and injustice. For political freedom to prevail and be meaningful, it needs a just system where human rights and private and intellectual property are respected and protected by law. And for societal development to have a chance, political, social, cultural, and economic freedoms have to be recognized as agents of change and rights that all people should enjoy. People whose freedoms are confiscated against their will tend to hate their rulers and sometimes their countries as well; they often feel that states exist for the sole purpose of exploiting and denigrating them and keeping them suppressed. Since development is a participatory process, people living in states where freedoms are lacking are more likely to distrust governments and ignore whatever appeals for change governments may make. Under authoritarian rule, no freedoms are guaranteed, and their absence makes societal development a rather alien proposition that is hard to conceive and harder to implement. People living in poverty and ignorance in police states do not know what they are missing or what they are entitled to in a just society. A citizen in a developing Arab, Asian, African, or Latin American country is more likely to stand in line for hours to renew a passport or obtain a birth certificate; and in the process, he or she is more likely to accept humiliation by state officials without complaining; such people seldom feel that their rights are being abused and their time wasted. And what people do not miss having, they are less likely to ask for, and what people do not ask for, they are unlikely to get, especially in an authoritarian state. Polls taken in Egypt following the downfall of Hosni Mubarak and the end of his dictatorship indicated that over 70 percent of the people who supported the revolution did so for economic reasons, and less than 20 percent participated in the revolution for political reasons. Outside help to make people more aware of what they are missing, and international pressure to impel dictators to give people their rights, are needed to pave the way for change. “So powerful are the barriers to evolutionary social change that fundamental institutional change typically results from external
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shocks rather than from internal evolution.”7 Meier says, “While economists can specify how to create efficient economic markets, it is a more daunting and ambiguous task to determine the conditions for ‘efficient political markets’ that will determine the development of the new economic markets.”8 Nevertheless, the Great Recession has proven that American economists have failed to create efficient economic markets, and American politicians have failed to create efficient political markets. This implies that even Western states need to restructure their economic and political markets to make them fair and efficient, which cannot be done without transforming their national cultures. The Political Context Low economic growth rates is a phenomenon most developing nations, with few exceptions, share. Yet, these are nations that have little in common in terms of natural resources, capital accumulation, population size, literacy rates, quality of education, technical and scientific knowledge, history, or culture. In fact, neither natural resources, nor populations, nor any other factor could explain by itself the causes of development or lack of development in any country. There is no doubt that each factor has a role to play in facilitating or hindering development. However, the role of politics in the development process has received little attention. Politics in most countries represents the larger context within which the economy and most other systems function. When politics dominates society, it dominates the economy as well, enabling politicians to use the economy as an efficient tool to serve their interests. And as economies grow and their role in societal life expands, the dominant political elite in every developing society is able to gain a great deal of power and wealth, controlling both politics and economics to enrich itself at the expense of individual rights, the poor, the environment, the country, and the future of generations to come. For example, the economic performance of Nigeria, which is rich in natural resources and has a large population and substantial revenues from oil exports, is less impressive than that of Bangladesh, which is densely populated and has less land and natural resources and no oil. Saudi Arabia, with a relatively small population, a vast land area, and a tremendous income from oil exports, has failed to perform as well as Taiwan, which is largely resource poor and has more people. Austria and Hungary are close in population size, culture, location, and resources, yet they differ in terms of standards of living and quality of life. While natural resources, technology, capital, education, and populations play important roles in determining the capacity of each nation to develop, they cannot by themselves explain the vast differences
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in the levels of development achieved by so many diversified countries and peoples. Theories of economic development in general have failed to seriously consider the role of politics in societal development; politics can be a force to invigorate economic growth as well as an impediment retarding sociocultural transformation. The interaction between the political process and the economic process is a major factor influencing the wider issues of social peace, poverty, social justice, security, freedom, economic dynamism, and political stability. Most developing nations, due primarily to political instability and authoritarian rule, are neither at peace with themselves nor at ease with the world around them; they seem unable to develop workable plans to initiate sociocultural change or economic development. Political stability, social and religious freedoms, and social peace contribute to enhancing democracy and creating environments conducive to attracting foreign investment; they enable intellectuals, educators, and social activists to debate issues such as economic restructuring, educational reform, political corruption, and the institutionalization of knowledge in society. When a nation is at peace with itself, it tends to be more concerned with economic issues and therefore tolerates political dissent and cultural diversity but not governmental mistakes, bureaucratic misconduct, and business corruption. In contrast, when a nation is at war or under threat of war, it tends to be more concerned with political and security issues and, therefore, more tolerant of governmental mistakes, even abuses of power and individual human rights, but less tolerant of political dissent. Patriotism demands solidarity and sacrifices in times of war but calls for open debate and accountability in times of peace. The two decades following World War II witnessed the independence of many African and Asian nations and the emergence of the Third World. But instead of imitating the industrialized West, the new states, due primarily to their experience with colonialism, decided to reject capitalism and democracy and limit foreign investment in their countries. And to strengthen economic independence, many states moved to nationalize their major industrial and service enterprises, causing a new system of state capitalism to emerge. State control of these industries was viewed as a symbol of independence and liberation from foreign hegemony. Consequently, the state bureaucracy was put in charge of managing the newly born national economies, causing the size of bureaucracies to increase substantially. Bureaucracies, however, are ill equipped to manage largely poor and struggling economies in need of new ideas and a sense of direction. Bureaucracies, by their very nature, tend to be conservative and to lack imagination; they are usually managed by officials trained in the art of running stable systems. Since modern economies grow
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as a result of decisions that involve risk taking, bureaucracies have failed to lead, causing most economies to suffer serious setbacks and miss their goals. “In 1973, European-owned small- and medium-sized businesses in trade, agriculture and light industry [in Zaire] were confiscated. But instead of being sold to experienced African entrepreneurs, they were mostly given to about 2000 ‘acquirers’; powerful members of the governing political elite and bureaucracy closely linked to, and dependent on Mobutu’s system of authoritarian personal rule. There followed a period of severe economic disruption caused partly by the incompetent and avaricious way in which this commercially inexperienced class of acquirers managed their enterprises,”9 wrote Paul Kennedy. The example of Zaire was repeated in several other countries, causing national economies to be disrupted, per capita incomes to often decline, income and wealth gaps to widen, and poverty to spread and become endemic. In Latin America, for example, the decade of the 1980s was a lost decade during which inflation rates skyrocketed, per capita incomes declined, corruption spread, and political instability worsened. Recent international economic indicators show that many Third World nations have suffered steep declines in their per capita incomes since the early 1990s. Feeling threatened and incompetent, the ruling classes in most developing countries moved in the 1970s to tighten political and security control over the masses and concentrate economic and political powers in their hands. Building strong armies and well-trained security agencies, controlling the media, and using coercion to co-opt intellectuals and silence dissent became standard procedures used by dictators to stay in power. Subsequently, the new state system emerged as a criminal enterprise to repress the masses, exploit national economies, and perpetuate individual injustice and collective inequality. Through its five major organs: the army, the police force, the secret service, the bureaucracy, and the mass media, the state became a major obstacle to change, suppressing individual initiative and creativity and stifling scientific and philosophical inquiry. As a result, sociopolitical and sociocultural changes began to move in place without moving in time, causing society to remain mired in a state of underdevelopment, missing one opportunity after the other. The army emerged gradually as the instrument through which political power was seized and maintained; the police force became an effective instrument to harass the masses and perpetuate political control. The bureaucracy became the major state institution through which power was exercised and people’s rights were abused. And the secret service suddenly emerged as a tool to suppress freedom of speech and repress all acts of political dissent; even mild criticism of corrupt state officials was not tolerated. Meanwhile, the media emerged as a machine to undermine the opposition, support states’
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claims of legitimacy, mold and remold people’s attitudes, and falsify their consciousness. Consequently, no authoritarian state that adopted capitalism, socialism, Marxism, or state capitalism was able to achieve its economic goals, free its people from need, or reduce economic and noneconomic dependency on the industrial world in a meaningful way. States that began to develop in the 1970s were able to do so only after abandoning the political and economic philosophy of total control. The politicization of economics by Third World states in general has facilitated the growth of big governments and cancerous bureaucracies. Bloated bureaucracies tend to confuse issues and muddle responsibility, making it difficult to hold state officials accountable; they also cause political and economic corruption to become the norm rather than the exception. To protect elite interests and disguise waste and economic corruption, dictatorial regimes often resort to consolidating political and military powers in the hands of one man and to exaggerating foreign and domestic threats to national unity and integrity. And when faced with mass movements calling for change, they often go to war to silence criticism and demand allegiance to the flag. Thus, keeping a nation at war or under an illusion of being threatened by war has become a favorite game most Third World rulers enjoy playing. During the 1960s and 1970s, most Third World states witnessed the gradual emergence of a consumer society and came to be dominated by authoritarian political and military elites. National savings generated by merchants, agents of foreign corporations, bankers, and politicians were deposited in personal foreign bank accounts instead of being invested in local and national economies. Most of the funds received in the form of loans and foreign aid during that period were stolen by dictators and corrupt politicians and their business partners to further enrich the rich and impoverish the poor. Lord Peter Bauer called foreign aid “an excellent method for transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.”10 For example, in a largely poor Arab country, the financial assets of the speaker of parliament were estimated to have reached three billion dollars in 2006. And when a leader of another economically and politically struggling Arab country was asked by a journalist about the size of his wealth, he answered, “Do you mean before asking me this question or after?” When Mr. Mobutu, the late president of Zaire, died in 1997, his foreign assets were estimated at seven billion dollars, far more than the entire GDP of the country he ruled for decades. Today, attempts by giant corporations to explore every business opportunity available anywhere in the world are leading them to invest in new places, establish operations in foreign countries, and open new export markets. Countries that have well-trained and disciplined labor forces and fairly
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developed infrastructures and enjoy political stability are being favored. States that lack political stability and sufficient physical and social infrastructure and that have poorly trained manpower are being ignored. Nations that lie in between, like most Arab and Latin American states, are expected to experience limited success in attracting foreign capital and significant failures in initiating development processes on their own. Conceptions of Time Peoples living in different civilizations view time differently; some are able to understand the value of time and the imperatives of the times they live in; others are more likely to view time as a problem and treat it as a liability. The first is more likely to utilize time efficiently; the latter is more likely to waste time without feeling the loss of anything of value. Time and how different peoples perceive it and deal with it has affected people’s lives and influenced the degree of progress they have made throughout history. No nation could escape the imperatives of the times, and no future could be constructed without a clear conception of time. Wherever and whenever time is perceived as an asset, people tend to make the best use of the time available to them. And by so doing, they are usually able to make substantial progress in all areas of human endeavor and to get more life enjoyment. And wherever and whenever time is perceived as having little or no particular value, people tend to waste most of it. And by so doing, they fail to recognize opportunities, develop their economies, transform their cultures, and make progress. And wherever and whenever time is perceived as a liability, people tend to feel happy wasting a good portion of their lives and money to get rid of time. While most people appreciate the value of time these days, most people throughout history have had little respect for time. In fact, until recently in human history, time was perceived as more of a liability and less of an asset by almost all peoples of the world. People were not just happy to waste time but ready to devote a lot of their talents and energies to see time vanish. But time does not vanish; it only disguises itself temporarily, and in the process, it penalizes people and nations that fail to appreciate its role in individual and societal lives. The tribal society, which appeared in its primitive form about thirty thousand years ago, had no particular conception of time; tribal people could not understand the challenges time posed to them individually or collectively. Instead of changing their ways of living to face the challenges of time, tribespeople were able to go around time and preserve their freedom, traditions, and customs. But going around time dictated that tribes move from
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one region to another, seeking more hospitable environments, comfortable weather, and better life conditions. Having no clear conception of time had helped tribal society to keep its freedom, but it denied it the opportunity to transform its social environment and economic conditions, develop more efficient means of survival, and enhance its security. When agriculture was developed about ten thousand years ago, people began to settle down; build villages, towns, and states; and develop new ways to manage their farms and water resources. In order to improve their chances of survival in good and bad times, farmers began to invent new farming and irrigation systems and tools, build better houses more resistant to cold and hot weather, develop new ways to preserve food products, build roads to facilitate trade, and construct dams to store water and protect themselves and their property from seasonal floods. Consequently, agricultural people, slowly but surely, developed a clear conception of time and understood some of its challenges and the role it played in their lives, which led them to adjust their cultures in response to the imperatives of time. Nevertheless, time throughout the agricultural age and among all peoples who lived and still live in that age was largely perceived as a liability, not an asset. People waiting for the arrival of the planting and harvesting seasons and rain wish for time to pass quickly. And to make sure it does, ideas to waste time began to appear and claim priority in people’s minds and daily activities. As a consequence, people were led to invent games and social activities to dispose of time. The challenge posed by time, therefore, was largely viewed as a negative one; and because of that view, agricultural society made little economic and cultural progress over thousands of years. For example, traditional Arab societies whose cultures are rooted in the agricultural and tribal ages have continued to devote precious time to inventing new, often health-damaging habits to waste time. The widespread usage of the water pipe or argeelah in most Arab states is the latest and probably the most socially damaging and economically wasteful invention that has so far been invented by humankind. Its destructive effects go far beyond the financial cost and the creation of serious health and environmental hazards; it nurtures a new generation of Arab youth devoid of work ethics and environmental concerns and with little or no respect for the rights of people who do not smoke. It is a generation that sees self-destruction and time wasting as a source of particular pleasure. But treating the self, time, money, and other such things in this fashion causes addiction to smoking cigarettes and the argeelah to become endemic, which undermines the will of the addicted to resist other socially undesirable temptations of life. As a consequence of these bad habits and attitudes, serious issues, such as reading, working hard, helping the needy, serving the community, and
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planning for future careers have become secondary issues, sometimes nonissues. And what makes the smoking of the argeelah in particular so troubling is that a high percentage of parents encourage their teenagers, boys and girls alike, to engage in it and live its fantasy. This makes the argeelah not a passing phenomenon but a long-term problem that is certain to have negative consequences on Arab culture in general and labor productivity and societal development in particular. A section will be devoted to discussing the issue of smoking and its impact on society in Chapter 12. When the industrial revolution arrived about 250 years ago, a new conception of time that viewed time as money slowly evolved. Farmers who lost their land to Europe’s landed aristocracy had only their labor and time to sell to earn a living and survive. Consequently, the phrase “time is money” was coined, and people began to seek new ways to maximize the utility of their time. Capitalists and managers alike began to invent new systems to maximize the output produced by each worker in any given period of time. Competition, productivity of labor, efficiency of machines, and knowledge became magic words motivating managers to save time and inducing workers to maximize the utility of time. In Japan, for example, workers brag about the amount of extra time they give to their companies; Japanese workers tend to believe that job security and personal welfare is a function of the welfare of the companies they work for. The same attitude is fast becoming the norm rather than the exception in China. Today, people who are deeply involved in making the knowledge age a reality are engaged in the most intensive processes to invent ways to utilize the fraction of the second. As a consequence, time has become the most valuable asset that knowledge workers such as scientists, inventors, entrepreneurs, advertisers, financial and corporate managers, and thinkers have. And with this much awareness of the value of time, the income and wealth gaps separating traditional tribal and agricultural societies from the industrial and knowledge ones have widened further. For example, it is estimated that the richest 20 percent of the world’s population consumed in 2005 about 77 percent of the world’s total consumption, while the poorest 20 percent consumed 1.5 percent of that total.11 As for production, it is estimated that the world’s richest countries, whose population is approximately one billion, produced in 2006 about $36.6 trillion of the world’s GDP; the poorest countries, with a population of 2.4 billion, produced about $1.6 trillion. This means that while the richest nations accounted for 76 percent of the world’s GDP, the poorest ones accounted for 3.3 percent only.12 And as income, wealth, production, and consumption gaps widen, the knowledge and sociocultural gaps deepen, making the development of traditional societies a highly challenging task.
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People who see time as a liability tend to emphasize the past and deemphasize the future. In contrast, people who see time as an asset tend to emphasize the future and deemphasize the past. Since the past represents our collective memories, giving priority to memories enables us to avoid facing the challenges of the present, to ignore the future, and to waste our time thinking about how to revive the long-lost “golden age.” But history has no valid wisdom to give or experience to emulate; living its fantasy makes the future a fate to be accepted, not a project to be consciously constructed. In fact, no progress can be made by focusing on the past; only keeping an eye on the future and viewing time as a challenge can help us build a better, more enjoyable life and shape a more promising future for our children and grandchildren. Thus, without recognizing the value of time and the imperatives of the times we live in, we are unable to visualize and conceptualize a promising future for all.
CHAPTER 11
Education and Development
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ince the appearance of early human societies, humankind’s search for food and security has never stopped; and humankind’s capacity to control and manipulate life conditions has never failed to make progress. Factors that contributed to this development included the evolution of private property, which made humankind’s struggle for wealth and against exploitation and slavery an unending story. However, progress toward higher levels of material and cultural achievements has come gradually; the slow development of technological innovations and social, cultural, and economic transformations made progress incremental. On the other hand, the development of agriculture and the formation of permanent human settlements gave birth to the idea of progress and the concept of change. But for people to be willing to change, they have to be aware of the promise and cost of change, which only life experience and education can facilitate. Education is the primary vehicle through which societies produce knowledge and transmit it from one generation to another, preserve certain values and traditions and transform others, and introduce change in the form of new ideas, systems, and ways of thinking. Education systems and research institutions influence the quantity and quality of knowledge available to students and the general public. It is through education that people become more socially and politically aware and develop a capacity to acquire knowledge and use it to improve the quality of their lives and the lives of others. But for education to instigate the desired transformations, it has to have the right institutions, teach the right knowledge, and help students acquire the right attitudes and appreciate the value of work, time, and life. Research institutions that lack the capacity to identify the opportunities and obstacles facing society are incapable of conceiving and leading change. Education that fails to give students the right knowledge, instill in them the right attitudes, and equip them with the right tools to face life challenges can,
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and sometimes does, create a new obstacle to societal development. Without good education systems and curricula, it is difficult for a developing society to experience sociocultural transformation and make meaningful economic progress. Education and Society For people to do anything and do it right, they need to have certain tools, cultural qualities, and special skills and information to make the right decisions. Noted among such qualities and skills are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
The right education; The right tools; The right attitudes; The right information; The right institutions; The right societal systems; and The capacity to do what is right.
The right education, though the most important, is probably the easiest thing to acquire these days; most people have access to fairly good education at home and abroad. Foreign states and international organizations, realizing the importance of education to developing nations, have been offering opportunities to good and needy students to study abroad and giving grants to states and universities to build training and research centers at home. The right tools, however, are not as easy to acquire, because they involve more than machines and scientific instruments to perform tasks and do research; they also involve research institutes, qualified researchers, skilled technicians, and more. Moreover, modern tools cost money and require skills to operate and maintain them as well as systems to integrate them into the larger production processes. As for the right attitudes, they are still difficult to develop and instill in the minds of children and students because they are a function of cultures that tend to resist change. Cultural values and traditions are manifestations of convictions, belief systems, and habits that shape individual and group characters and greatly influence social relationships and associations in society. Traditions, convictions, values and social obligations, and group loyalties form a sociocultural process through which attitudes, trust, work ethics, and ways of thinking are internalized. Therefore, only the right education and the proper upbringing of children can modify older attitudes and replace them with new, more positive ones. Having the right attitudes makes it easy
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to transform values and traditions to be compatible with the changing needs of society and the unfolding developments of the age in which people live. Building the right institutions and societal systems is time consuming, costly, and takes a lot of thinking and planning. Institution building is actually state building, and, because of that, it requires the involvement of the state; the national political, economic, and intellectual elites; and oftentimes outside help as well. Regardless of the many obstacles that society may encounter in developing its institutions, there is a dire need in all developing societies for the establishment of modern educational, social, cultural, political, scientific, and economic systems and institutions capable of meeting society’s growing needs and future challenges. However, the proper functioning of institutions and systems needs societal systems to coordinate the many functions and objectives that society seeks to accomplish. While social systems are a function of cultures, societal systems are a function of scientific knowledge, management, technology, and regulations; therefore, they require continuous evaluation and updating. Societal systems are special systems that coordinate and integrate the functions of other systems in ways that make them more efficient and responsive to people’s needs. The availability of the right information is critical to the success of every enterprise. Lack of adequate information, which only the government and research institutions can produce, increases the possibility of mistakes while limiting the chances of success. No economic plan can be articulated, and no feasibility study for an investment project can be conducted, without sufficient information. Information is essential to evaluating the availability of resources, the short- and long-term needs of society, the nature and size of competition in the marketplace, the availability and cost of labor and money, and much more. As for the capacity to do what is right, it requires that people in charge have the right knowledge and attitudes and the confidence to act to protect their rights and interests and advance the common good. If the required cultural qualities, tools, and institutions were to be ranked according to their importance, the right attitudes and the right societal systems would be ranked first and second, respectively. No system or institution can be productive and competitive without arming its workers and managers with the right attitudes to value work and time and observe business ethics; and no society can hope to achieve genuine progress without developing societal systems to coordinate and integrate the multiplicity of functions that other systems perform. While the development of agriculture and the building of human settlements was the most important revolution in human history, this revolution caused humankind’s freedom to shrink. First, it limited our ability to move from one place to another; second, it paved the way for the development of
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the institution of private property, which led subsequently to feudalism and slavery; and third, it created the need for building the state superstructure, which exercised control over many aspects of individual and group life. To regain a good portion of the freedom people had lost due to this development, they had to fight feudalism, the institution of slavery, state control, empires, authoritarianism, colonialism, racism, and political borders. They also had to acquire the means to wage and win wars, which necessitated the building of armies and the forming of coalitions. There is no doubt that humankind has achieved many of its objectives and recovered much of the freedom it lost; yet, the road in front of us is still long and, in most places, very difficult to navigate. Negative Consequences of Education While the positive consequences of education have long been recognized, the negative ones have not. In the underdeveloped countries in general, the political and economic elites are more likely to be the first generation to get an education. Two generations ago, most people were illiterate, having no formal education, few skills, little knowledge, and no experience dealing with modern life complexities. The elites, having more knowledge and better skills than the majority of their compatriots, usually develop a sense of superiority that translates into condescending attitudes toward the masses. This often leads them to manipulate the needs and fears of the masses and keep them submissive, rather than help them to change, gain more knowledge, and develop their potentialities. “Formal education, especially among people for whom it is rare or recent, often creates feelings of entitlement to rewards and exemptions from many kinds of work.”1 In addition, expanding education where education is recent creates popular expectations the state is often unable to meet, even a rich state like Saudi Arabia. And when education comes without the right attitudes, unmet expectations often cause social and political unrest that complicates rather than facilitates societal development. Nevertheless, faced with high illiteracy rates, most developing states were forced to provide more, largely traditional, low-quality education and create bloated bureaucracies to absorb graduates. Low-quality education nurtures attitudes that weaken prospects for raising labor productivity and facilitating sociocultural transformation. Third World bureaucrats tend to humiliate rather than respect the people they are supposed to serve, exploit rather than assist the poor and powerless, resist rather than encourage reform, and detest rather than welcome creativity and initiative. The contribution of education to sociocultural transformation and economic development depends on the high expectations and aversions it creates
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among the educated as well as on the kind of skills it teaches and the attitudes it engenders. Blindly processing people through schools and universities without paying attention to the quality of education and society’s needs is a good recipe for popular frustration and disillusionment. Education that cannot meet people’s needs and fails to recognize the stage of societal development in which society lives can and often does have negative consequences. Education that comes with the wrong attitudes, such as despising menial work and having no appreciation for hard work and time, is more likely to reduce labor productivity rather than increase it. In contrast, education that comes with the right attitudes, such as respecting work and time, appreciating material gain, protecting the environment, and caring for the poor, is more likely to increase labor productivity. Young men and women armed with the right education and attitudes are not only assets capable of making progress but also valuable social tools to teach illiterate parents and help less educated friends and neighbors to understand and appreciate new facts of life. And by so doing, they lead society to become more economically productive and socially, politically, and environmentally aware. Stages of Education Development As will be explained in the next chapter, society has four stages of sociocultural transformation, and so has the education system. As society moves from one stage to another, the education system moves with it. In fact, the education system often takes the initiative and leads society to where it is supposed to go. This means that the education system’s stages of development tend to correspond with those of the larger society in which it functions. The stages of education development are as follows: traditional wisdom, imitation and memorization, critical thinking, and innovation and creativity. As for society’s sociocultural stages, they are as follows: traditionalism, to be found in traditional agricultural societies; casual change, to be found in mature agricultural societies; behavioral change, to be found in societies in transition from the agricultural age to the industrial one; and attitudinal and institutional change, to be found in maturing and mature industrial societies. Economic and cultural globalization and the increasing use and misuse of modern communications systems have enabled the poor nations of the world to realize the extent of their poverty as well as the achievements of the rich nations in the fields of science, technology, economics, education, and culture. Awareness of what exists on the other side, and admiration of the rich nations’ lifestyles and means of comfort, led most poor people to conceive their future in terms of what the rich have already accomplished. To catch
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up with the advanced nations, the poor moved to imitate the lifestyles of the rich, concentrating primarily on acquiring the appearance of wealth rather than the necessary means to create and accumulate wealth. Consequently, a consumer society is created without a production base to support it, making societal development more difficult than before. Leaders in each society are a product of its educational institutions and culture. For leaders to agree on a course of action, they have to share common values and adopt similar attitudes and views regarding issues of public concern. While traditions and traditional belief systems are capable of providing common ground for consensus to be reached, people operating from this mind-set are more likely to view most issues from the prism of the past, not the future. And since societal development is a process to free people from the binds of the past and the poverty of the present, traditionalism in thought and attitude is unable to lead society forward. Therefore, a society grounded in traditionalism needs, among other things, a creative education system to produce new leaders to lead change. Recent experience proves that the youth in poor societies are capable of teaching their parents and older people how to use technological devices and help them become aware of important issues, such as health and the environment. The patterns of change followed by society tend to mirror the ones advocated by its educational institutions and trusted leaders. Changes that societies feel compelled to make are usually articulated by intellectuals and crystallized by the climate for change that educational institutions create and foster in society. This means that the impact of education on society, especially on the nature and course of societal change, is substantial. However, for educational institutions to become creative and capable of producing enlightened leaders, they will have to undergo profound conceptual and organizational restructuring. Since borrowing an existing body of knowledge is easier and less expensive than going through the process of creating a new one, developing countries have adopted borrowing as a way to build modern education systems and institutions. As a consequence, education systems in developing countries in general have found themselves moving through a number of stages on their way to maturity. These stages are discussed below with emphasis on the experience of Arab societies.2 Traditional Wisdom Traditional wisdom is based on peoples’ past experience, religious teachings, popular stories, and fairy tales; these are the things that constitute the bulk of knowledge society usually has at this stage of development. Due to its
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attachment to the past, society feels compelled to preserve such knowledge and transmit it to successive generations. Since traditional societies are generally conservative and religious, they prefer education that reinforces traditional values and convictions and validates rather than challenges what they believe in. People still living in preindustrial times rely heavily on traditional wisdom to manage their daily lives and deal with the unknown. But since such wisdom reflects life experiences of generations long gone, traditional education has become a convenient tool to perpetuate traditional ways of thinking and largely outdated but comfortable ways of living. It gives priority to religious and cultural subjects over most other branches of knowledge and tends to glorify the past and allow it to overshadow people’s interest in science and the future. Education at this stage reflects the ideas predominant in societies where economies are basically agricultural, life is simple, social relationships are based on values and traditions rather than on interests, and authority is hierarchical. Traditionalism as a state of mind dominates societal life in general and employs a traditional education system to reinforce its ideas and perpetuate itself. As a consequence, traditionalism is able to maintain simplicity of life, continuity of tradition, and peace of mind in the face of a turbulent world characterized by dynamism and increasing life complexity. All traditional cultures that have their roots in preindustrial times tend to believe in faith and fate and to accept certain myths as facts and particular acts of magic as science. Because of such attitudes and convictions, traditional societies tend to be content and inward looking, which causes them to fear the unknown and resist change. Moreover, traditional societies tend to rely on conventional wisdom to evaluate new ideas and values, which leads them to look at new things through a narrow prism that takes them back to the past and its experience. Looking at scientific knowledge through an empirical lens is certain to disturb their peace of mind and force them to question some of their deeply rooted convictions. And this, in turn, increases the challenges they face at a time when they lack the tools to understand how the world functions and how to deal with the manifestations of global change. Traditional wisdom, being a product of faded memories and a life experience of long-gone days, is not relevant or helpful to any old or new society. It cannot teach science or economics, deal rationally with scientific knowledge, explain modern life complexity, or prepare students to face the challenges of their times. Traditional wisdom often defies reality and rational thinking, and, because of that, it has become an obstacle to sociocultural change. And unlike scientific knowledge, which is a liberating force and an agent of sociocultural transformation, traditional wisdom is a force of repression and an agent of underdevelopment. Only the right education and the proper
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upbringing of children can arm individuals with the right attitudes while providing society with enlightened leaders who have the right knowledge and tools to evaluate needs scientifically and view their place vis-à-vis the other and the world rationally. Imitation and Memorization The first efforts at modernization tend to produce education systems that try to imitate those of the advanced societies and copy some of the teaching techniques and programs developed in the West or in more advanced Third World states. Schoolchildren and college students are given thousands of facts and unrelated pieces of information to memorize, oftentimes without understanding their meanings. Students’ inability to see the potential utility and applicability of the knowledge they learn causes a high proportion of them to drop out of schools at all levels. Teachers and professors tend to cling to specific innovations instead of applying the principles of innovation, causing the system to be rigid, to lack imagination, and to be authoritarian. Students in this stage do not get the opportunity to learn the research skills that enable them to find the information they need when they need it; instead, they are given information to memorize and theories to adopt as frameworks for thinking. Most schools and universities tend to treat students at this stage as children unworthy of much respect. Memorization, together with an authoritarian method of instruction, serves to inhibit rather than encourage students to think critically, be creative, and take initiative. Memorized information is all that students need to pass examinations. During examinations students are expected to regurgitate on paper the information they were asked to memorize. A hypothesis may remain untested and be accepted as a fact long after it has been invalidated. The system’s rigidity and conservative nature makes it less relevant and less able to respond to the pressing needs of students and changing life conditions of society. But regardless of the limitations of the system, imitation and memorization bring imitators and borrowers closer to the realities of life in developed societies. Thus, education based on imitation does help make a little difference in the life of students and the outlook of college graduates. Nevertheless, the capacity of education to invoke societal change and harness students’ capabilities to develop realistic and imaginative solutions to whatever problems they face remains very limited. Around the end of 1994, Baghdad University invited me to visit and give a few lectures to graduate students and faculty members in international relations. Students and faculty members were very interested in what I had to say; they asked questions similar to those asked by students in Western
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universities. However, to my surprise, I discovered that the Iraqi government had stopped buying new books since it went to war with Iran 14 years earlier, and the university’s library did not have current references dealing with global issues being debated at the time. Students were expected to teach and explain current issues and international developments upon graduation; however, all references they were using predated the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and globalization by years. Education in the imitation and memorization stage reflects the dynamics of life in a post-traditional stage of development, a stage characterized by casual change, where social and cultural change is a novelty and new ideas and scientific facts are suspect. However, an education system based on imitation and memorization is most suited to meet the needs and objectives of traditional political leaders in the casual stage of sociocultural transformation. Using such a system, traditional leaders are able to show modernity without being modern, claim change while enforcing conformity, and employ new teaching methods to legitimize outdated and largely irrelevant interpretations of the past and its cultural heritage. Critical Thinking The education system in this stage stops copying blindly from advanced societies and starts to be selective. Knowledge imported is evaluated according to its relevance to society’s needs in light of the development stage in which society lives. Students are taught that two differing viewpoints may have equal validity, a question might have more than one answer, every new idea should be critically examined before being accepted or rejected, and no theory should be taken for granted as a fact; students are also taught that practical knowledge is as important as theoretical knowledge and that the same knowledge can be used in different situations to serve different causes that might be seeking contradictory objectives. In order to maximize the benefits from knowledge, major educational institutions find themselves compelled to make structural adjustments and behavioral changes. Such changes are usually reflected in students’ ways of thinking and attitudes toward science, technology, life, time, the environment, and the future. Education becomes a tool to understand society and the world and a means to improve the quality of life, both materially and culturally. Education is also used as a model to explain the many systems that manage societal affairs in general and regulate social, political, and economic relationships in particular. Questioning the relevance of old institutions, traditions, and ideas is one way through which students express their interest in knowing their society and participating in shaping its future.
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While universities in the previous stage concentrate on borrowing and imitating only, they begin in this stage to select, adapt, and synthesize the best features of teaching methods they adopt. They also begin to question the validity of imported social theories and the desirability and applicability of foreign systems of political and sociocultural management. Moreover, education ventures into evaluating traditional values and ways of thinking and examining their roles in encouraging economic change and inhibiting sociocultural transformation. Institutions of higher education usually seek to perform such tasks through intellectual interchange among people inside and outside university campuses. Education in this stage reflects the depth and breadth of the transformations societies experience during the stage of behavioral change. Innovation and Creativity The ability of education systems to make choices among alternative ideas and methods leads them eventually to take the initiative and introduce changes as needs arise and thus move into a new stage of education development. The objectives and curricula of the system in this stage are evaluated and updated regularly to be more relevant, not only to the present needs but also to perceived future challenges. Since needs of different societies vary according to their circumstances and aspirations, the system designs its programs to actualize the potentialities and meet the particular needs of its society. Research institutions dealing with specific problems and futuristic issues are established and encouraged to go beyond the traditional and the obvious; and as society climbs the civilizational ladder, the education system gains public recognition and invites wider popular appreciation. The system’s ability to deal with different challenges at different times leads it to make original contributions to most fields of knowledge, provide home-grown solutions to national problems, and become innovative and creative. As the system becomes innovative in its approach and futuristic in its outlook, it begins to establish special programs to train graduate students to become scientists, creative thinkers, artists, and committed leaders. The university emerges in this stage as a dynamic organization that acknowledges the perishable nature of its offerings, which impels it to innovate to remain competitive. New knowledge is sought regularly to upgrade the upgradeable and replace the obsolete, and old programs and curricula are changed in response to changing national and international circumstances. Being innovative and creative, the education system becomes a leading force, invoking change and facilitating sociocultural transformations needed to reach the attitudinal and institutional stage of sociocultural development.
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Education and the State The seriousness of the tasks education undertakes in shaping the future of society puts it at a great disadvantage vis-à-vis the traditional cultural and political establishments in developing societies. Those in power, having realized the role education can play in molding and remolding people’s attitudes and views, usually seek to keep the system and its population under tight control. Government and university officials often intervene in students’ affairs, even in elections of officers of social clubs. Intervention has only one objective in mind: to ensure that student organizations do not become cells for political activity and centers for dissent. But in so doing, the state limits free speech and practically undermines the education process’s drive to discover and train the nation’s future leaders. For example, during the early stages of the struggle for independence, African and Arab national liberation movements used high schools and universities effectively to rally the masses around them and against their colonizers. But after national independence was obtained, educational institutions found themselves in a crisis; the state failed to give them the freedom, the financial resources, and the backing they needed to play the role they were supposed to play in leading society toward change and development. Consequently, educational institutions were unable to prepare students to face the new life challenges. And while education was failing its constituency, the political and psychological changes that followed independence were causing a revolution of rising popular expectations. The public expected more and better services, universal health care, rewarding jobs, free education, and more, causing the challenges facing the state to increase and become complicated. In light of this development, most governments moved to expand education at all levels, provide health-care services, and hire more people and thus enlarge the size of bureaucracies without giving much thought to the sociopolitical and socioeconomic and sociocultural consequences of their deeds. Consequently, the quantity of college graduates was given priority over the quality of education, creating an army of unemployed and largely unemployable graduates. State policies to give all citizens access to a free college education served unconsciously to transform universities into assembly plants whose job was to mass-produce graduates, causing graduates in most instances to become liabilities, not assets. And as states failed to provide the jobs they had promised, graduates formed an underclass of angry young men and women in despair. Fearing the consequences of their foolish policies, Third World states in general moved quickly to develop state institutions of repression to keep the masses under tight control.
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As the capacity of the state to service its citizens declined during the last decades of the twentieth century, commercial education invaded school and university campuses. Being commercial enterprises, the new schools and universities began to treat students as valued customers, causing professors to become salespeople whose job is to serve rather than educate students. As a consequence, traditional ideas made a great comeback in classrooms, and the badly needed changes in attitudes and ways of thinking never materialized. Knowledge developed and adopted by Third World societies in general is limited in scope and lacks relevance to most economic, social, and political needs of people. Institutional knowledge is yet to be implemented, and national awareness of its value is decades away. The role education could and should play in the development of nations is not only lacking but also greatly unappreciated by both state and society. Nontraditional educational institutions in many cases were built by the colonizing powers to train state employees to serve them and facilitate the exploitation of the masses. And despite decades of independence, the nation-state in most previously colonized countries has failed to change the mission and content of higher education, leading universities to produce graduates who expect government jobs, lack initiative, and are ill prepared to work in the private sector. Some graduates refuse to even consider working for the private sector, let alone take the initiative and start new businesses to create jobs for themselves and other people. An unemployed college graduate in Morocco was recently quoted as saying that he would prefer to die rather than work for a private company. Most leaders of nations are shaped by their own education experiences and cultures. Therefore, if education fails to perform well today and produce enlightened leaders and trained professionals, neither economy nor country will perform as desired tomorrow. Meeting the increasing challenges of educating younger generations today is the only insurance policy to guaranteeing that both society and country will have a better future. Students and University University is an institution that provides students with an environment conducive to learning and living a unique life experience. It is the place where students usually get a chance to discover and develop their talents and receive the training they need to think critically and be creative, behave rationally and be innovative, work hard, and be productive. Above all, university is supposed to help students learn how to learn, how to continue to learn, and how to enjoy learning and knowing. Any university that fails to perform most of these tasks wastes valuable human and financial resources and misses an
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opportunity to produce enlightened citizens and capable leaders. But for the university to perform its tasks, students have to be ready to listen, eager to learn, and willing to seek knowledge and work hard to acquire it. Students, moreover, need to regard the acquisition of a good education as the primary objective of attending college. Students who fail to get involved in university academic and nonacademic activities and shy away from seeking more knowledge and new experiences are less likely to succeed in life. While it is the responsibility of university to provide students with the right education and train them to think critically and creatively, homes and schools bear the primary responsibility for providing students with the right attitudes and preparing them for college life. Programs to teach students reading as a tool to gain knowledge and enjoy life must be designed and implemented in all schools and universities. Students entering college for the first time are more likely to ask themselves and their families and friends questions about the best or most rewarding fields of study. No question of this nature has one good or even satisfactory answer. For every field of study there is a need, and in every profession there are successful professionals as well as failed ones. Students who give the field of study they choose the attention it deserves are destined to get the best education available and succeed in life while enjoying what they do. In contrast, students who choose their subjects based on the promise of material returns only are less likely to enjoy what they study as well as what they do in life, even if they succeed in making a lot of money. A good hairdresser who loves his or her work can and often does attract good customers, some of whom would drive across town to get the service they need and deserve. A badly trained physician, in contrast, is unlikely to attract the number of patients he or she seeks, even if the services are offered largely for free. The first is more likely to make good money, get self-satisfaction, be appreciated by society, and enjoy life. The latter is less likely to have a good income, get the social recognition and self-satisfaction aspired to, or enjoy life. Students, therefore, should study whatever they like and enjoy most; they should follow their hearts and instincts without much regard to market demands and trends, unless such demands and trends are compatible with their inclinations. But to succeed in life, students must work hard to develop their talents and do every assignment with enthusiasm; they need also to recognize that learning is a continuous, ever-challenging, and never-ending process. Every person, regardless of socioeconomic and sociocultural background, has unique qualities and special talents that could be discovered and developed under certain conditions. Though the discovery and development of talents is not easy, it is nevertheless achievable and worthwhile. However,
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it requires open-minded families, good schools, well-equipped and financed universities, and committed faculty members, as well as societies that appreciate unconventional ideas and talents. While homes and schools bear the responsibility for discovering pupils’ talents, universities bear the responsibility for giving students the opportunity to develop their talents and enjoy doing so. Getting a college diploma, even a PhD, is, just like getting a driver’s license, an acknowledgment by society of certain accomplishments that entitle its holder to privileges unavailable to everyone. However, a new driver is usually an unreliable driver, only good enough to irritate other drivers on the road. A new driver may even be a reckless one, especially in countries where drivers’ licenses are often obtained for a bribe. A few years of experience are needed to make a new driver a good, safer one. Lack of practice is likely to make any driver rather dangerous, capable of hurting him- or herself and others on the road. A college graduate is a person ready to enter life armed with some knowledge and skills to make a difference. A few years of work experience and further learning and training would make such a person a specialist in his or her field. But sitting back after graduation and making no effort to upgrade information and skills is a good recipe for losing whatever was learned in college. In fact, doing nothing to gain added knowledge causes every graduate, regardless of age, intelligence, and achievements, to lose confidence in his or her knowledge and often develop a largely unproductive and socially harmful attitude that transforms him or her into a liability. People familiar with my work and writings always wonder about my ability to write so many books about different subjects. Whenever such a question is raised, my answer has always been simple and direct: at least 90 percent of the knowledge I have today has been acquired after receiving my PhD, not during my college years. Reading, research, travel, work, writing, interaction with others, and deep thinking have made a huge difference in my stock of knowledge and life experience. And because I believe that knowledge not shared is knowledge wasted, most of my writings, ideas, and thoughts are made available on my website for everyone to read, download, and share free of charge. Smart students and ambitious college graduates do not sit back and let things happen to them; they do not wait for opportunities to come knocking at their doors. Instead, they get involved, take the initiative, and make things happen for themselves; they are always focused on their academic work and future careers, able to recognize and even create new opportunities to exploit. They do every task with enthusiasm and passion as if they are doing it for the very first time, always striving for excellence and perfection.
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Knowledge and Society In the postindustrial era, knowledge has become a major individual and societal resource whose wealth-generating potential exceeds the combined potential of natural resources and capital. This new development has aggravated problems of both income inequality and sociocultural disparity. “During this period of increasing income inequality the value of a four-year college degree has dramatically increased. Those with one have continued to move ahead; those without one have fallen further behind.”3 While this was true during the 1980s and 1990s, things changed during the first decade of the new millennium. Income and wealth today are concentrated in the hands of a small group of people who managed to enrich themselves and cause the incomes of almost everyone else, including most college graduates, to freeze or decrease. As a consequence, getting ahead has become a function of not just what you know but also whom you know. Nonetheless, no one is able to compete in the knowledge age without a good education and the right attitudes. People working and living in one society usually seek satisfaction and recognition through their relationships with one another. In traditional agricultural societies, satisfaction and recognition are normally sought through the farming of the land, the worshiping of gods, and the raising of children. In the new age, money alone seems to have become the means of obtaining material satisfaction and social and political recognition. But money can only be legitimately obtained through gainful employment and, to a lesser extent, through inheritance. People lacking the skills to get and hold rewarding jobs are unable to make enough money to gain the satisfaction and recognition they need and often deserve. “Unemployment not only deprives one of an income but also of his status in society. He is thus denied all social existence, which in most societies is directly linked to the holding of a job.”4 When economic recessions occur, unemployment rates usually rise, causing a lot of people to lose their jobs and often social recognition and social existence as well. People without the right education are unable to find good and financially rewarding jobs, and people without good sources of income are less likely to get quality education. “The technological revolution of the past few decades—which has made knowledge an essential raw material for employment in new industries and has partially freed industry from its dependence on basic commodities—has brought about a twin movement toward social polarization and marginalization of disadvantaged individuals.”5 This simply means that poverty nurtures ignorance, and ignorance feeds poverty, while wealth and knowledge reinforce one another, enabling people with knowledge to increase their wealth and wealthy people to gain more knowledge. On
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the other hand, while social polarization provokes political conflict, economic marginalization provokes radicalism that often invites crime and lawlessness. The positive role of knowledge as far as the individual and economy are concerned usually translates into socioeconomic disparity and less social cohesion. People with knowledge are being empowered economically, socially, and politically; people with little or no knowledge are being weakened, marginalized, and largely neglected. So, to stop this trend and strengthen social cohesion and contain socioeconomic disparity, society must intervene to narrow the knowledge gap and create incentives for people with little knowledge to gain more. Institutions of higher education engaged in teaching and research are homes for knowledge and producers of knowledge; they are social machines to enlarge society’s stock of knowledge and enhance its ability to meet its needs for specialized knowledge. Universities play a pivotal role in training future leaders and knowledge workers to become more resourceful, more respectful of work and time, and more inclined to work in teams and accept change as normal. Universities are also able to teach students to be tolerant and committed to social causes such as helping the poor and protecting the environment. And as they try to achieve these lofty goals, educational institutions work, often unconsciously, to undermine outdated values and attitudes and weaken unproductive relationships and forces. This makes the education system the primary institution to produce knowledge and deliver it to people, while arming graduates with the right attitudes that impel them to help themselves and others and improve the quality of life for all. People engaged in the development of knowledge in particular are faced today with a unique challenge. They need to make themselves understood by those who have little knowledge, and they need to make knowledge affordable and accessible to those with little money to buy it. They also need to make knowledge itself capable of addressing the particular needs of people who need knowledge most but can afford it and use it least.
CHAPTER 12
Stages of Sociocultural Transformation
I
n this chapter and the one that follows, a new theory of development will be outlined, and a plan to achieve sustainable societal development will be articulated. Both the theory and the plan recognize that culture, the values it espouses, and the attitudes it nurtures in people play a decisive role in determining the extent of societal development. The theory also recognizes that cultures are living entities, developed by people; they grew and changed in the past, continue to grow and change today, and will grow and change further in the future. In fact, cultures will never stop growing and changing. However, some cultures are more amenable to change than others, and therefore the capacity of culture to change differs from one society to another depending on the culture’s ideological core and the civilizational context within which it lives. Cultures, generally speaking, tend to change under the influence of their own dynamics as well as the influence of changing domestic and global conditions. The ideological core of each culture determines the degree of its resistance to change, or how much cultural capital it has, while the civilizational context determines its nature, sophistication, and dynamism. The claim that certain cultures naturally possess a capacity to change while others do not possess such a capacity is a misconceived idea based on biased attitudes rather than on historical facts. Most traditional cultures rooted in the preindustrial age have ideological cores that make them largely simple and rigid. People belonging to such cultures tend to believe in faith and fate, accept certain myths as facts, and have a prominent spiritual aspect to their lives, which leads them to feel content, regardless of their living conditions. Because of such attitudes and convictions, traditional societies in general tend to fear the unknown and resist change. Members of such societies have neither the social tools, nor the technical know-how, nor the proper level of understanding to
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deal with socioeconomic and sociopolitical environments characterized by complexity and dynamism. However, no economic development is possible without sociocultural transformation; and sociocultural transformations are unlikely to happen without enlightened political elites to lead change. State hesitance in most countries to reform their institutions, initiate change, and facilitate sociocultural transformation has made economic development a difficult, largely unattainable goal for traditional societies. Fear of the unknown and possible loss of identity has caused resistance to social change to become a virtue in most traditional communities. Traditional Arab intellectuals, for example, call for the development of a “culture of resistance” to face globalization and economic restructuring plans as well as Western values. However, such intellectuals do not seem to know what they are supposed to resist and for what reasons. In fact, rejectionist forces throughout history have been able to define with clarity what they stand against but have failed to define with the same degree of clarity what they stand for; and whoever does not have an alternative plan has no plan at all. Therefore, to create the conditions conducive to sustainable societal development, traditional cultures need to be transformed to become more open to social, economic, political, and scientific change. Since religion represents the core of cultures in traditional societies, the values and convictions it espouses and relationships it usually creates must be transformed. Otherwise, neither sociocultural transformation nor economic development will take place. Historians and social philosophers in general seem to agree that the technological and scientific developments, the separation of church and state in the seventeenth century, and the sociocultural transformations witnessed in Europe between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, were largely responsible for causing the industrial revolution. Those three centuries represented a transitional period between the ages of agriculture and industry. England, which by the middle of the eighteenth century was the most advanced trading nation in the world, was the first state to enter the industrial age and reap the fruits of an economy based on manufacturing. England had at the time a liberal political and economic atmosphere that gave traders enough freedom to conduct business without much state interference. And this in turn enabled merchants to participate in the development of banking and finance that facilitated the expansion of international trade and led to the development of manufacturing. It must be noted, however, that these developments came after numerous scientific discoveries and technological innovations and many social, cultural, and political changes, of which the Protestant Reformation was the most important. The Reformation helped transform the European sociocultural landscape, separating religion from state and introducing new work ethics
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and cultural values. The new work ethics and values challenged people to work hard, save more, consume less, value time, and think and act as free people concerned more with life before death than with life after death. Such values were instrumental in convincing people to believe that the pursuit of wealth and happiness was not only a good thing to do but also a religious duty and a sign of election by heaven. “Anyone could be chosen, but it was only reasonable to suppose that most of the chosen would show by their character and ways the quality of their souls and the nature of their destiny.”1 Technology and Change Developments that enabled the human race to transform economic conditions and move from the hunter-gatherer stage to the agricultural stage were largely the result of historical accidents. The majority of technologies responsible for increasing land and crop productivity during the early stages of the agricultural age were also discovered by accident but developed further over a long period of time. Only during the last few centuries of the agricultural age did need become an important instigator of invention, causing regular change to become possible. As agricultural society approached the industrial age, the pace of technological invention accelerated; it became the product of organized efforts to develop new weapons and navigation tools, expand trade and manufacturing, and make and accumulate wealth. As industrial society moves toward the knowledge age propelled by the infomedia process and driven by the information and telecommunications revolutions, scientific research and technological development have become institutionalized. And while need served as the mother of invention during previous times, invention has emerged as the father of need during the last few decades. Most inventions today are products of imagination, individual drive for excellence, and social and economic incentives that motivate talented people to think, invent, compete, and be successful. And due to the nature of our age, teams of knowledge workers are formed to coordinate the work of their members and synthesize the ideas of creative individuals scattered around the globe, thus enabling them to create attractive products that consumers like to own and can buy and often benefit from. Since human networks are social organizations, the ability of knowledge workers to make progress depends largely on the relationships they forge with each other as well as on the shared interests that hold them together and motivate them to work hard. Social networks are products of values, interests, and technology that function within cultural and political contexts that define the extent of the freedom people enjoy. Culture and politics, therefore, determine the nature of the inhibitions and incentives that make economies,
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organizations, and relationships more or less dynamic, more or less free, more or less progressive, and more or less productive. Every society must see the benefits of change to accept it, appreciate the value of research and development to fund it, and have the right institutions to make progress. Societies that lack social awareness and the right attitudes and institutions are unable to climb the civilizational ladder in an orderly and timely manner. Nevertheless, all societies, regardless of the sociocultural inhibitions and lack of institutions and often poor natural resources, will ultimately make it to the next civilization and attain higher standards of living. But since groups within societies differ in their capacities to acquire and use knowledge, they are unable to move in tandem. Consequently, lags are created, allowing some groups to develop faster and make more progress than others and thus enjoy more wealth and power. The Road Most Traveled The modernization theory was a serious attempt to help the less developed nations join the more developed and prosperous ones. But modernization failed to achieve its objectives due in large part to three reasons: its inability to encourage the traditional and political leadership of the less developed nations to reexamine their past, induce them to question their traditional knowledge and wisdom, and help them see the image of their future as a moving target with a changing face and demanding character. The modernization theory, nevertheless, induced economic theorists and international institutions to build models and articulate plans for economic change with emphasis on the factors that were instrumental in causing economic development in Western countries. They saw European social and cultural change and patterns of economic development as inevitable outcomes of a natural process that need only be activated and sustained. The World Bank, until recently, invested most of its money in building roads, dams, irrigation systems, power stations, schools, modern transportation and communications systems, and some industries. But after seventy years of active involvement in Third World development, the bank still has no success story to tell. It has failed to help any nation develop its economy and institutions to the point where it could enter the industrial age. The World Bank did not only fail to help poor nations develop, it also failed to judge the economic potentials of several poor nations; for example, it considered South Korea in the 1950s a hopeless case, yet South Korea was able to become within fewer than 50 years one of the leading 15 industrial states of the world. It succeeded not only without the bank’s assistance, but also despite its gloomy predictions.
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A World Bank report issued in 1997 admitted this failure, stating that not keeping up with the changing world economy “has resulted, over time, in a severe deterioration—indeed a crisis—in [the bank’s] effectiveness.”2 Another study authored by two of the bank’s economists acknowledged that “the billions of dollars in foreign aid showered on poor countries since 1970 have produced no net impact on the overall economic performance of the Third World, or on the economic policies of the recipient countries.”3 In an attempt to emulate the industrial West, most Third World nations moved in the 1950s and 1960s to borrow some of the technologies, institutions, consumer habits, and lifestyles developed in the West. But since things borrowed are aspects of a different way of life produced by a different civilization, the borrowing has had an unsettling impact on the lives and cultures of the imitators; it caused socioeconomic gaps to widen and sociocultural divides to be created without meaningful economic progress. People who borrow and imitate blindly, or adopt without adaptation, find themselves forced to change their traditional ways of living without the know-how to benefit from whatever change they introduce into their lives. The process of imitation and borrowing, by its nature, is selective, and selectivity often leads people to borrow what is easier to use, not what is most beneficial to adopt. As a result, not every imported product contributes to positive change; some, in fact, have fostered authoritarianism and traditionalism, making sociocultural transformation more difficult to initiate. Selectivity gives the political and economic elites the power to borrow what suits their tastes and serves their interests, oftentimes at the expense of the poor, the illiterate, and the common good. For example, the building of large armies, the establishment of efficient police forces and secret service apparatuses, and the development of large bureaucracies have given the Third World state more power to control the masses, greatly limit their rights, and suppress dissent. Consequently, the adoption of these institutions has served to hinder rather than encourage sociocultural transformation and prevent rather than facilitate the evolution of new social environments conducive to economic development. So, modernization, the road most traveled, did not lead to heaven as expected; it led to loss of direction and created a new world devoid of much hope. Societal development is civilizational; as society develops it moves from one civilization to a higher one. No society could be considered developed without having entered the industrial age. While it is possible to improve economic productivity and build better transportation and communications systems without climbing the civilizational ladder, it is not possible to achieve societal development without fundamental economic change and sociocultural transformation. Social and economic structures need to change to support democracy, and cultures need to change to value scientific research,
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technological development, and entrepreneurship; these are conditions for further change and aspects of societal development. The sociocultural transformation process goes through four stages before society moves from the preindustrial to the industrial age: traditionalism, casual change, behavioral change, and institutional change. Since development is a societal process, it invites all processes of change and transformation— the sociocultural, political, economic, and infomedia processes—to participate in the process of development. Because the sociocultural and political processes dominate life in traditional societies, the nature of their relationship and the extent of their involvement in the process of change are decisive during the first two stages of sociocultural transformation. This simply means that the activation of the development process requires the involvement of the state, the traditional leadership, and the education system. Traditionalism Traditionalism represents the departure point from which traditional agricultural and semiagricultural societies start their quest for development. The family in this society is the basic social unit around which community is organized and whose survival and maintenance are the major objectives of life. Nevertheless, the extended family, or the clan, plays an important role in society; allegiance to it is usually strong, and mutual obligations within it are an article of faith. Religious beliefs tend to be deep; they influence individual and group relationships in general and tend to subordinate thought, freedom, and often law to their logic. The political system is hierarchical and authoritarian; it lacks the capacity to facilitate change or encourage popular political participation. The economic system is simple, economic activities lack diversity and dynamism, and the state of technology is largely primitive. Illiteracy rates are usually high, education is traditional, and natural, human, and technological resources are underdeveloped and underutilized. Religious and political leaders tend to cooperate to maintain stability, promote cultural homogeneity and social cohesion, and impose ideological conformity. Traditions, customs, values, religious beliefs, myth, and family structure shape individual attitudes and regulate relationships, including the economic ones. Traditionalism represents a state of mind and a way of life; therefore, it influences the state of the economy and technology as well as the political and social structures of society. Traditionalism causes people to lead simple, generally conservative lives, where contentment and belief in faith and fate prevail. Moreover, it tends to discourage personal initiative, regulate individual and group behavior, and resist change in general. Familial and kinship relationships demand unquestioned loyalty from the individual, call for
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respect for the elderly, expect adherence to religious teachings and rituals, and demand obedience to traditional political and religious authority.4 Oral history and traditional wisdom based on past experience and fairy tales constitutes the bulk of knowledge in society at this stage. Problems within society are usually considered fate to be accepted, not challenges to be faced and overcome. Interest in science and technology is a matter of curiosity to be doubted, not a valid proposition to be evaluated and tested. People, consequently, are more likely to believe in things they cannot see and that could never be proven, like claimed powers of saints and magic, and doubt things they can see and that could be proven, like the exploration of other planets and the cloning of animals. As a state of mind and a way of life, traditionalism exerts a great deal of influence over education and determines its contents and state of affairs. Due to such influence, education is usually viewed by society and used by its religious and political leadership as a tool to preserve traditional beliefs and old value systems, spread traditional knowledge and wisdom, and reinforce attitudes that emphasize obedience to traditional authority and deepen collective responsibility. The glorious, largely fictitious past is emphasized and made to overshadow people’s interest in the future. Discipline is strictly enforced in all educational institutions, and students violating regulations are punished, sometimes severely, and often with the blessing of parents, the encouragement of the religious leadership, and the approval of the state. As a result, people find no problem obeying political authority and accepting punishment as normal for whatever mistakes or violations they may commit as well as for unconventional attitudes they may exhibit in public. Education dominated by religious ideology and controlled by political authority serves to perpetuate old ideas and attitudes and undermine the ability of the mind to think critically and be creative and innovative. Change in this stage of sociocultural transformation has to be conceived by the state and led by the society’s intellectuals and educational institutions. But for such institutions to gain people’s confidence and lead, they have to lead by example. Therefore, the transformation of the education system becomes a priority in this stage, and the active involvement of nontraditional social forces in transforming it becomes a must. Educated and experienced nationals trained in foreign countries are likely to have what it takes to conceive change and construct effective processes to transform education. For example, when the emir of Kuwait decided in the 1930s to move his people out of their state of traditionalism, he imported a few teachers from Palestine and later on from Egypt, Iraq, and Syria to build the nation’s education system. Foreign educators played the leading role in educating the first generation of Kuwaiti business, political, and intellectual leaders.
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Societies that are still living in this stage of traditionalism are small and getting smaller in size and numbers. The fast-evolving knowledge age and the impact of satellite TV, instant communications, and globalization on people’s lives has left no society untouched by change and modernity. Even tribal peoples in Africa have given birth to smaller groups or subsocieties that live, without leaving their homes, a life of another, more advanced sociocultural stage. Casual Change In this stage of sociocultural transformation, direct contacts between the more developed nations and the less developed ones intensify and unconsciously encourage the latter to imitate the lifestyles of the former and borrow some of their technologies and consumer habits. The imitation and borrowing, however, is often limited to what is easy to imitate and personally beneficial to borrow. Nontraditional food products, electronic appliances, designer suits, and a few institutions that symbolize modernity are the types of things often borrowed. Airports are built, armies are organized, police and secret service apparatuses are expanded, new systems of transportation and communications are introduced, and a national press is formed under state supervision. Certain household appliances, such as telephones, television sets, and cameras, as well as luxury cars and personal computers, become status symbols. Change engendered by this process is usually haphazard and limited to appearance, not content; therefore, it does not signify technological progress nor does it necessarily imply real change in people’s values and attitudes, ways of thinking, or even basic relationships. Rather, it is change that the ruling elite see necessary to give their countries a touch of modernity while acquiring more power to control the masses. Casual change, therefore, is little more than window dressing meant to attract attention, not a strategy to cause societal development. This stage usually prevails in societies approaching the end of the agricultural age, where almost all developing nations were at the end of the twentieth century. Although such change leads certain individuals and groups to look somewhat modern from the outside and enjoy certain comforts of life unavailable to the masses, they are likely to remain traditional on the inside. Modernizing a nation’s outlook nevertheless enables traditional and political leadership to claim that modernity is compatible with traditional values and established belief systems. But when the outside does not reflect the inside, hypocrisy gradually creeps in, corruption spreads and penetrates deep under the skin of society, and traditional values and relationships disintegrate slowly, creating a trust deficit. Meanwhile, social forces promoting genuine economic reform and sociocultural transformation are often suppressed and viewed as suspect.
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New ideas that question traditional authority and faith-based values compel religious and political leaders to react strongly, sometimes violently, to suppress such ideas because of their potential to undermine leaders’ legitimacy and authority. This creates an atmosphere where social cohesion is weakened, not strengthened; political authority is feared, not respected; and religious authority is accepted but not officially sanctioned, unless, of course, it controls the political establishment. Nevertheless, casual change causes traditionalism to gradually lose its grip on social life, giving more power to the political establishment and the individual. Meanwhile, the state uses its added power not to effect genuine societal change but to tighten its grip on both society and economy. To maintain control, the state usually resorts to building and employing the tools of political and nonpolitical control, or the official institutions of repression and control that cause violence in society to become structural: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
A relatively well-equipped and trained national army; A modern police force; An oppressive secret service apparatus; A large bureaucracy; and An official national media.
Education in this stage tends to emphasize national history and identity and promote cultural heritage more than science. And as aspects of casual change spread and become common, education moves from the stage of traditional wisdom based on traditional knowledge to the imitation and memorization stage. Teaching techniques and educational tools are borrowed from the developed countries, but without adaptation, and students are given thousands of facts to memorize. (See Chapter 11 for more details.) Nevertheless, small and sometimes important changes do happen in this stage of casual change due to individual initiatives and visions of some rulers. When the Kuwaiti leadership decided in the mid-1960s to establish a university, an Egyptian team of experts was hired to develop the university system, write its curricula, and manage its affairs. The team, whose educational experience was largely limited to Egypt, copied the Egyptian curricula without adapting it to the living and economic conditions of Kuwait or to the needs of the Kuwaiti society. Though Kuwait is a desert sheikhdom dependent on oil exports, the curricula did not include a course on the economics of oil or the Kuwaiti economy. In 1970, when the university was hardly five years old, I joined the faculty of the College of Commerce, Economics, and Political Science as the college’s first non-Egyptian professor and the university’s youngest faculty member. In
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view of that curriculum, I began to think about how to change the education system and upgrade the curricula. During my second attempt, I succeeded. Because the story is relevant to sociocultural change in this stage, and because it shows how change can be initiated and under which conditions, the story of changing the education system at Kuwait University is told in the following three paragraphs. The president of the university in 1970 was an Egyptian national; he was a good and decent man and a dedicated educator but with little knowledge of the American education system. Within a week of joining the university, circumstances led me to develop a special relationship with the president, which I used to convince him of the need to replace the antiquated Egyptian system with the American credit system. The president, unsure of how to proceed, asked me to try first to change the system at my college. He initiated the process by asking the chairmen of all five departments at the college to appoint representatives to serve on a special committee to study the feasibility of adopting the American system, and he appointed me secretary. Each chairman appointed himself, and a committee was formed under my supervision. After a full year of trying, I had to give up; no member was willing to consider changing a system that he knew by heart and that gave him the authority to control students as well as faculty members. Two years later, the dean of the college was replaced by a Kuwaiti national who happened to be a friend and a graduate of an American university; he was familiar with my work and intentions and shared my education dreams. Consequently, it took no time to convince him to resume the process to upgrade the curricula and adopt the credit system. But when it came to initiating the process, he suggested, like the president before him, asking the chairmen of all departments to nominate representatives to serve on the designated committee. Since I knew that such a step would not work, I asked him to use his authority as dean and appoint members to the committee; following my advice, a new committee was formed under my leadership, and four of its five members were American graduates. During the time of my service on the first committee, I was able to research the credit system and write a draft of how the system would look and work. Within a year our work was completed; in 1974, the new system was implemented and coeducation was introduced for the first time in an Arab Gulf state. Today, more than a hundred Arab universities use the same system and teach Methods of Scientific Research, a course I introduced as part of the upgraded curricula at Kuwait University. However, the acquiring of knowledge does not necessarily guarantee that knowledge will be used by students or retained by graduates; students attending Arab universities in general are seldom required to write papers or make classroom presentations.
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Coeducation, which was accepted by students and sanctioned by the nation’s political authority at the time, was legally reversed thirty years later. This explains how in the stage of casual sociocultural transformation certain systems can be transformed through adoption and adaptation and due to individual initiatives but with no guarantees that change will last or form a step toward a more developed stage. While the potential for profound change in this stage remains largely limited, it can and does bring the imitators and imitated closer to sharing certain views of life. Gradually, as direct and indirect contacts with the more developed societies continue, interactions with the global economy and its emerging culture increase and multiply. As a consequence, advanced technologies are imported, causing casual change to penetrate deep under the skin of society, and the change in appearance slowly transforms itself into change in behavior and character. Behavioral Change As casual changes spread in society, their effects on people’s lives start to accumulate, leading to qualitative change that manifests itself in behavioral change. Individuals as well as groups and institutions find themselves impelled to modify their views and the way they see things around them. To use the new, mostly imported tools and electronic gadgets, and benefit from the modern health-care facilities and communications systems, people as well as the institutions through which they function feel compelled to change their behavior. Behavioral change begins first to characterize the cultural, education, business, and political elites before it spreads into the larger society. Nevertheless, the traditional leadership and institutions continue to insist on preserving old values, preventing behavioral change from transforming into attitudinal and mental change. For example, most official and nonofficial institutions in Arab countries, including state institutions, are still managed by what I call the dokkan mentality. The word “dokkan” in Arabic is given to every small family-owned and -operated grocery store. In such stores, or dakakeen (plural of dokkan), the owner of the dokkan, or the dokkangy, controls all activities and makes all decisions regarding purchases, sales, prices, and working hours. Working hours in most cases do not follow regular schedules; they are a function of the owner’s mood, health, travel plans, and social obligations. Almost every organization in Arab states, regardless of its size and function, is essentially a dokkan; some dakakeen are large, but most are small. Almost every manager of every organization, due in large part to his upbringing and culture, behaves like a dokkangy, regardless of education and experience. Due to this culture,
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no major decision is taken by a state while its president or king is away; no vital business is conducted in his absence. As a consequence, no manager, minister, head of a company, or even university president is a democrat; everyone is an autocrat. After delivering a lecture on globalization and culture in March 2004 at a university in the United Arab Emirates, a female student from Oman wearing the nikab, or a dress that covers her face, made a penetrating comment; then she asked why a society like hers cannot borrow and learn from the West without being influenced by Western values. After expressing her fear and that of her generation of the perceived threat posed by Western culture, the young woman pleaded for help: “How can we learn Western science and acquire Western knowledge without having to adopt values that tend to undermine our traditional way of life? We need protection; we need someone with authority to tell us what to take and what to avoid taking.” In answering her legitimate question, I said, “Your observation clearly indicates that you see, though unconsciously, a strong connection between what is being borrowed in the form of knowledge and technological devices and the attitudes of users of such devices. Though I agree with you that some Western values must be avoided and even rejected, like greed and consumerism, no society is able to develop an effective mechanism to choose what it likes to adopt and exclude what it does not like to have. The knowledge and technologies developed in the West have come in response to certain needs and life challenges of an industrial society that has a different culture, a different economy, and different life conditions. Since such needs, challenges, and conditions are different from those prevalent in a typical Arab society, utilizing imported scientific devices and knowledge requires changes that affect Arab behavior in general and students’ values and attitudes in particular. But if I suggest to you granting your father authority to determine for us what we should take and avoid taking, I do not think you will go along with my proposition, neither would you accept me as a judge to be given that authority. In fact, you should not accept the authority of anyone, because no one, regardless of his wisdom, education, and commitment, is capable of guiding a nation on issues of morality, ethics, and scientific knowledge. These are issues of great public concern, and society as a whole should regulate them, because they influence the management of the present and the making of the future. Nevertheless, no society can develop the capacity to control its affairs unless it is free and democratic, adopting democracy as a political system and a cultural value.” Casual changes, which are largely caused by the acquisition of new and rather expensive foreign goods, tend to affect the outlook of the upper classes only. However, behavioral changes induced by exposure to Western lifestyles
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and technology usually affect the values and attitudes of the elites and the youth who are regular users of the Internet and social media. Though these two groups are small and somewhat removed from the masses, they are the ones that really count in this stage. While the upper class leads change from the top down, the youth lead change from the bottom up. However, behavioral change usually creates and perpetuates a generation gap in society; generation gaps are manifestations of knowledge, technology, and life experience, not age only. As younger generations attain more education and more exposure to modern technologies and live a different life experience, they begin to think and behave differently, causing a gap to be created between them and their parents and grandparents as well as between them and uneducated people in general. Such gaps usually cause communications among generations, and among friends and neighbors who are unable to access the same technologies and live the same experience, to become difficult and less conducive to trust. Therefore, without the involvement of a state committed to change and armed with a vision for change, behavioral change is likely to cause sociocultural segmentation instead of sociocultural transformation. As behavioral change spreads and deepens its roots in society, traditional forces usually begin to perceive change as a threat to their authority and the values and belief systems they espouse; they are also more likely to claim that change undermines national identity and unity. Feeling challenged and on the verge of losing control, traditional forces often react irrationally to stop change. Nevertheless, behavioral change and the knowledge and cultural gaps it creates are hard to reverse, causing the traditional forces to lose their ability to impose their views on society and secure the automatic respect and obedience of younger generations. Confrontation between the traditional forces and the new ones causes behavioral change to slow down, forcing it to assume three different lives at once: one characterizes the behavior of the masses, another characterizes the behavior of the upper classes, and a third characterizes the behavior of younger generations. And while the first life reflects a love-hate relationship between modernity and traditionalism, the second reflects an adoption relationship between a foreign child and estranged parents, and the third reflects a sweet-dream relationship that neither side wishes to end. Behavioral change is the most important stage of sociocultural transformation; its success leads society to the following attitudinal and institutional stage, while its failure causes society to either freeze at the same stage for decades or regress incrementally toward the casual stage. Stagnation and regression widen socioeconomic gaps and deepen sociocultural divides and consequently delay societal development. Conflict usually erupts in this stage
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between the forces of traditionalism and continuity on one side and forces calling for change, liberalism, and democracy on the other. Since forces of change usually advocate openness, freedom, and political participation, the political establishment usually moves to weaken the forces of change by giving the traditional forces the opportunity to promote their views, often unchallenged, while limiting the freedom of the forces calling for change. Therefore, managing behavioral change and directing it toward achieving the desired societal goals is extremely important; states that fail to understand the critical role of behavioral change risk popular frustration, conflict, and loss of trust and national confidence. In Kuwait, thirty years after coeducation was adopted at Kuwait University, it was legally canceled; a campaign launched by conservative members of parliament ended in passing a resolution to separate male from female students. So, thirty years of behavioral change at home—and profound social, cultural, and technological change abroad—did nothing to move Kuwaiti society from the behavioral stage to the next sociocultural transformation stage. On the contrary, lack of intellectual awareness and state intervention to further transform the cultural landscape caused society to regress while helping traditional forces to make a strong comeback and strengthen their social, cultural, and political influence. As a consequence, Kuwait lost its educational, intellectual, and even business leadership in the Gulf region. The political elite in this stage of transformation are usually faced with three options, none of which is pleasant, at least in the short run: 1. To side with the forces of traditionalism and religious conservatism, making their victory almost certain; 2. To side with the forces of change and transformation, causing traditional forces to be weakened and often alienated; or 3. To stand idly by while the forces of traditionalism and religious conservatism wage a war of ideas against the forces of freedom and liberalism. Religions in their purest forms claim to be social philosophies based on absolute truth and righteous values, causing religious leaders to accept no compromises, share power with no one, and recognize no authority beside their own mysterious gods. Nevertheless, religious forces may show flexibility and express willingness to play by certain rules not dictated by religious dogma in order to gain acceptance and legitimacy. But once they gain substantial power and self-confidence, they usually adopt extreme positions and go for the goals dictated by their ideology. Because of such an attitude, a victorious religious leadership is unlikely to cooperate with the ruling political elite and is more likely to try to co-opt it or replace it, causing conflict that
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could torment society and keep it frozen in time for decades. Algeria provides a good example of this eventuality. In the 1980s, Algeria witnessed widespread corruption, repression, high unemployment rates, and lack of economic opportunity. Consequently, the secular regime came under domestic and international pressure to create more jobs, improve its human rights record, and make a bold move toward democracy. But when it became evident that the conservative Islamic forces were going to win the elections in 1991, the regime moved under pressure from army generals to cancel the elections before all the results were in. Almost instantaneously, the fundamentalist forces launched an armed rebellion to topple the regime and establish Islamic law, causing a long and bloody conflict that claimed the lives of some hundred thousand Algerians. Ten years later, a new president was elected and moved to pacify the religious forces; he pardoned rebel leaders, gave some freedom to the press, and promised new political and economic reforms. A tremendous increase in the price of oil made the president’s job look easy and the promises he made more likely to see the light of day. But looking at what the president has accomplished fifteen years later, I see nothing of value. The new regime has failed to improve the general quality of life, create jobs for the unemployed, or transform the economic or political system, causing all hope to vanish and the national trauma of the 1990s to deepen, threatening renewed violence. If the ruling elite sides with the forces of change, the liberal forces would be strengthened at the expense of the conservative ones, and further sociocultural transformation would follow. However, the triumph of liberalism would make the political elite more dependent on forces demanding freedom and power sharing. If the ruling elite accepted these demands, democracy would be established, causing sociocultural transformation to proceed smoothly. And if the new coalition stayed focused on societal development, society would enter the attitudinal and institutional stage. Meanwhile, religion would be transformed, and its role in society would be reduced from a societal philosophy to a social system of lesser importance, just like what happened in Turkey. In contrast, if the ruling elite rejected the demands of the forces of change and liberalism, the liberal forces would be defeated, and all claims of political reform by the ruling elite would be exposed as mere lies. If the political elite decided to stand idly by while the liberal and conservative forces waged a war of ideas against each other, the power base of the ruling elite would deteriorate gradually with the passing of time. Adopting a neutral policy while the battle for the hearts and minds of people is being waged would cause the ruling elite to lose the trust of all parties, and thereby make conflict with the winning party almost inevitable. Traditional political elites, however, do not normally allow themselves to be swept away by forces
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they cannot control; and because of that, they often resort to a balancing act to deny victory to both forces and remain in control. Though such a policy may prolong the reign of the ruling elite, it is a recipe for failure; it causes society to freeze in time and underdevelopment to become structural. Starting in the early 1980s, the ruling elites in almost all Arab states began to play this game, hoping to contain conservative and liberal forces and retain control forever. But in the process of so doing, all such regimes became more oppressive, losing popular support and legitimacy, and causing both economy and society to stagnate, leading ultimately to the disastrous popular revolts of 2011. In 1979, as Iran was passing through the behavioral stage of sociocultural transformation, it witnessed the defeat of the ruling political elite at the hands of the religiously conservative forces. Repression practiced by the secular regime, corruption tolerated by state officials, and torture committed by the secret service were largely responsible for the fall of the Iranian king. The Iranian intelligentsia, being largely liberal and fully aware of the corruption and criminal practices of the old regime, could support neither the conservative religious forces with whom they had been fighting a war of ideas nor a repressive regime they hated. The majority of the masses, meanwhile, being largely conservative and traditional, and having no intellectual leadership they could trust, were happy to support the religious forces and help them win. And when the secular regime was crushed, all progressive forces found themselves in a minority ruled by a new repressive regime that was supposed to liberate them and establish a free and just society. Forces of religious fundamentalism, as explained earlier, tolerate no dissent, share power with no one, take no prisoners, and listen to no advice, except from their mysterious gods and their self-appointed representatives on earth. For a society to complete the stage of behavioral change, four major developments need to happen: first, the economy needs to diversify and become more productive and inclusive; second, the political system needs to implement meaningful reforms to enable both society and the media to feel free and safe from intimidation; third, interest in science and technology needs to move beyond curiosity to appreciation and adoption; and fourth, the education system needs to move beyond the stage of imitation and memorization and into the critical thinking stage, where teaching is viewed and used as a tool not to change students’ minds, but, first and foremost, to teach them how to use their minds. If these changes fail to materialize, society will also fail to complete the behavioral stage, which will lead it to enter a long period of social, cultural, economic, and political stagnation, if not regression. Teachers and professors in this stage of sociocultural transformation are able to play important roles in students’ lives. A Moroccan woman whom I
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had in two of my classes at Al Akhawayn University in 2003 disagreed with something I said regarding the role of saints in people’s lives. She started her argument saying, “But from God’s perspective . . .” As she spoke, the students listened intently. When she finished making her remarks, I addressed students, saying, “Don’t you think that we are very lucky to have a colleague among us who knows God’s perspective?” Then I turned toward the young woman and said, “Would you please tell us when and where did you meet God, how much time did you spend with him, and how did you get to know his perspective and what is on his mind?” The young woman and all other students were stunned, and before anyone could say anything, I left the room, saying, “See you next week”; I wanted the students to think deeply, not react passionately. A few days later, the woman came to see me in my office; she said that what had transpired in the classroom had changed her life forever, but unfortunately that was not to be the case. Three years later the same woman, who had become by then a PhD candidate at a British university and a part-time teacher at Al Akhawayn University, was pressured by her family to marry a conservative merchant who spends his time transporting agricultural produce from the surrounding villages to the city market where he lives. The woman, in exchange for this respected man to accept her as his wife, had to abide by new rules: she had to wear a headdress and abandon her right to sit with male colleagues or talk with male students on the phone. This was a hard pill for me to swallow, yet it underlined the power of traditionalism and the weakness of isolated pockets of liberal education and lonely intellectuals trying to make a difference in the lives of people they care for. A few years ago, another student sent me an e-mail reminding me of what I once said about teaching: “My intention here is not to make you change your minds, but to help you learn how to use your minds.” He said that this simple statement had been of great help to him during his life and that he was using the same words and method to help others to use their brains. I must add here that what I did and said at Al Akhawayn and Kuwait Universities, and what Arab students sometimes learn from foreign-trained professors, are things not available to Arab students attending public universities. In Morocco, a royal decree in the mid-1990s to establish Al Akhawayn University, which uses English and follows the American education system, had given some Moroccans an education compatible with the age we live in and thus made it possible for many of them to think critically and see old things differently. In general, education that emphasizes critical thinking is a tool to understand reality, a skill to increase productivity, a means to improve the quality of life, and an empirical lens through which to view the world and our place in it. Such an education causes interest in science and technology to become
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a matter of inspiration to analyze the past, explore the future, and deal with both positively and creatively. While questioning the authenticity and relevance of the past and speculating about the future, education invites strong conservative reactions on the one hand and wide popular fascination and intellectual curiosity on the other. But for this to happen, people must be free to express their views and choose the social and economic activities they like to engage in. Positive interaction between people and ideas creates a process that eventually leads, unless aborted, to making life dynamic, the mind creative, and society free and innovative. Attitudinal and Institutional Change Behavioral change represents a marked departure from traditional ways of thinking and living that reflects societal readiness to change and defy traditional values and institutions. Selectivity of imported technologies and ideas, and critical analysis of information, builds societal capacity to question the conventional wisdom as well as the wisdom of blind imitation. When behavioral change becomes the norm, and its logic and manifestations are no longer widely challenged, society becomes more able to see the promise of change, leading it to enter a new stage of sociocultural transformation characterized by attitudinal and institutional change. These changes reflect life conditions in societies entering the industrial age. People’s continued interaction with new inventions and thought-provoking ideas leads them ultimately to change their attitudes and conceive new relationships. Meanwhile, society feels compelled to build new institutions and systems to meet its particular needs and future challenges. Interest in science and technology passes the stage of discovery to innovation and application, and new concepts and institutions are developed to understand the complexity of the world and deal with the consequences of social, cultural, political, and economic change. Since attitudinal and institutional change characterizes societies that have reached a fairly advanced level of economic and scientific progress, it causes individuals, groups, business concerns, and political organizations to interact freely and enter a state of dynamic change. Society, in short, becomes a beehive where all agents of change function, cooperate, and compete largely freely, and where inherited values, traditions, ideologies, and knowledge are subject to scrutiny. Democracy, as a consequence, becomes not only a system of governance but also a cultural value that guarantees popular participation in politics, tolerates dissent, recognizes people’s rights, and protects individual liberties. Education in this stage becomes an independent social system capable of performing tasks that require critical thinking, creativity, and innovation. Its
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curricula and programs include fields of study that are more current and relevant to what society hopes to accomplish. Attempts are made to identify, define, evaluate, and actualize the potentialities of society, while its needs are being anticipated and met. Specialized research institutions and problem-solving teams are formed to participate in leading societal development, enabling the system to become fully integrated in the larger life of society. Institutions of higher education in particular become more aware of the perishable and cumulative nature of knowledge, leading them to work hard to produce free thinkers and artists, develop new technologists, and train researchers, scientists, political leaders, innovative engineers, and entrepreneurs. As societies enter the stage of attitudinal and institutional change, the economic process becomes more dynamic and influential, leading people to view change as a path to progress. And this in turn serves to deny the traditional social and religious forces the ability to impede the overall societal transformation process. Before reaching this stage, however, society could freeze at a previous stage of sociocultural transformation for a long time, particularly at the behavioral stage; it could also regress from that stage to the stage of casual change, at least temporarily. But no progression or regression is capable of carrying every individual or cultural group along the way it travels. Certain groups and many individuals representing the less progressive segment of society are always left behind, moving slowly, while others representing the more progressive segment of society are quickly moving ahead. Dynamics of Development Recent developments in the fields of science, technology, and space have made great advances, while the evolving information and telecommunications revolutions have made scientific and technological achievements accessible to most peoples of the world, causing borrowing and imitation to become a fact of life. Consequently, neither sociocultural transformation nor economic development is possible without borrowing from the more developed societies and learning from their experiences. Traditional societies have no valid experiences to reenact or enough indigenous knowledge to initiate change on their own to achieve societal development in this age. But since borrowing implies dependency, it is difficult for the transformation process to proceed smoothly without encountering problems along the way. Casual change is easy to introduce in society; it can be adopted by most people without invoking strong reactions. In fact, globalization, satellite TV, and instant communications have enabled casual change to sweep Third World societies in general and affect their ways of life and perspectives on life. But since the cost of such change is relatively high, its impact has remained
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limited to certain segments of each society. Behavioral change, on the other hand, is more difficult because it tends to question the relevance of some traditions and traditional relationships. Since such relationships are often based on ideological convictions, behavioral change is more likely to cause resentment and, at times, strong opposition. The socially and religiously conservative forces usually present an obstacle hindering sociocultural transformation. If these forces succeed in creating enough obstacles to abort the process of behavioral change, the door for further sociocultural and economic transformation will close for years to come, causing society, like the Yemeni and Sudanese and many African societies, to stay in the casual stage for a long time. It can even make the resumption of genuine change in the future a trying experience, requiring a revolution to overcome obstacles. However, most Arab societies, including the Bahraini, Egyptian, Iraqi, Jordanian, Kuwaiti, Lebanese, Moroccan, Palestinian, Syrian, and Tunisian societies, arrived at the stage of behavioral change in the 1970s, but several forces have intervened to freeze change at the mid-1980s level; these forces include the forces of religious fundamentalism and cultural particularism, repressive political elites, and outside intervention by Western powers. As a consequence, large segments of Arab societies regressed gradually to the stage of casual change. Though several factors could be blamed for this regression, two factors bear the largest share of responsibility. The first is the discovery of oil in the most backward Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia, and the second is the large and growing remittances that workers in the oilexporting states and Western countries send back home to their families. Arab teachers, physicians, engineers, journalists, and judges who were mostly liberal before going to work in Saudi Arabia came back largely conservative and narrow-minded; the Saudi experience transformed them from agents of social change to obstacles hindering sociocultural transformation. Meanwhile, the remittances sent home by people working outside their countries were instrumental in creating a consumer society in every labor-exporting Arab state, while weakening the productive capacity of every society. The money that migrant workers send home to support family members and sometimes relatives and friends cause the recipients to feel that they can spend and enjoy life without having to work. Remittances, in fact, have caused production and consumption to be viewed by most recipients as two unrelated processes. As a consequence, the productivity of the average Arab worker has declined, and attitudes toward work and time have worsened. And while remittances have weakened the recipients’ desire and need to work, the new wave of religious fundamentalism imported by workers returning home from Saudi Arabia and promoted by the Saudi media have
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spread complacency. Oil money has not only created a consumer society that detests work, particularly menial work, it has also enabled the most socially and religiously conservative rich Arabs to control the new Arab media and spread their regressive antiliberal message, destroying hopes for genuine societal development any time soon. A process to transform the sociocultural and economic landscape of society cannot afford to compromise with narrow-minded and special interest groups. Compromises satisfy neither the conservative nor the progressive forces; they only lead to freezing change at the behavioral level, encouraging hypocrisy, facilitating the spread of corruption, deepening the overall sociopolitical and socioeconomic crises, and creating a trust deficit. Each group, unable to promote its own viewpoint and defend its values openly, is forced to pursue a separate path to change and live a different life. And this in turn creates subsocieties and subcultures that share little with each other and make consensus regarding reform largely unattainable. The far-reaching implications of behavioral change make the fate of development dependent on the success of this stage. And because the socially and religiously conservative forces are unlikely to accept continued change without a fight, the state bears a tremendous responsibility to prevent such fights from getting out of hand; it also bears responsibility to prevent this stage from failing. The state, being the center of power in traditional society, is able to facilitate change as well as to abort transformation, to strengthen as well as weaken the opposition, and to encourage as well as discourage new initiatives and creative ideas. The largely traditional and authoritarian ruling elites usually seek compromises through the promotion of both economic growth and the preservation of traditional values and systems. The conservative forces, in contrast, maintain that traditions and national cultures represent red lines that must not be crossed; they claim that such lines embody the elements of national identity that must be protected. They claim further that prevailing cultural values are compatible with modern science and technology and need not be altered. Yet, traditional values and relationships are traits of cultures that belong to the tribal and agricultural ages and therefore are incompatible with the industrial age. Because of this incompatibility, traditional values and attitudes, wherever they exist, are obstacles to societal development. It must be noted, however, that no traditional values or lifestyles have remained the same; economic and cultural globalization and the spread of consumerism, materialism, and individualism have deformed older values and rendered most traditions and traditional cultures largely faceless. Traditional intellectuals, especially those belonging to nations with glorious pasts, tend to live in a dark tunnel that subjects them constantly to
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powerful images of a beloved but largely fictitious past. They are individuals who master the national language and the art of rhetoric, and, because of these abilities, they are able to influence the positions of the masses on social and political issues. They see themselves as protectors of past history, promoters of its legacy, and representatives of its glory; they also claim to know all that is important about history and culture as well as the nation’s real and perceived enemies. Because of such claims and language skills, traditional intellectuals are able to communicate with the masses, impress corrupt political elites, frighten the young, and intimidate reformers and nontraditional intellectuals. Traditionalism cannot produce true intellectuals; it produces only learned individuals who often know the story of the past, think in the past, live in the shadow of the past, and behave hypocritically. In contrast, nontraditional intellectuals are highly educated and conscious people that live in the present, behave rationally, think globally and act accordingly, speculate about the future, and employ reason when communicating with others. However, the language they normally use, and the new facts and unorthodox opinions they usually express, are often perceived by traditional intellectuals and politicians as a threat to their power base. The masses, meanwhile, tend to see such intellectuals and the ideas they promote and the vocabulary they use as alien things that invoke suspicion and fear, not trust and confidence. As the twenty-first century advances, the sociocultural transformation process in many African, Arab, Asian, and Latin American societies seems frozen in the behavioral stage, unable to overcome the fears and apprehensions of the masses, move to the attitudinal and institutional stage, and enter the industrial age. In certain Arab states, such as Jordan and Lebanon, the sociocultural transformation process entered the behavioral stage decades ago but failed to develop further. In contrast, in states such as India, Chile, Brazil, Malaysia, and Turkey, behavioral change led to attitudinal and institutional change in a few decades, causing industrialization to follow and economies to flourish. In other states, such as South Korea, China, and Singapore, sociocultural transformation and industrialization moved concurrently, causing societal development to become a reality in a short time. In most Islamic and Arab countries, traditional intellectuals are largely in control; they dominate the mass media and use them effectively to promote their ideas and notions of change; their books are widely circulated, and books that challenge their views are either banned or restricted. Meanwhile, education systems and states’ policies unconsciously reinforce the message of the traditionalists through inaction and often ignorance. Liberal intellectuals, meanwhile, are intimidated and denied the opportunity to express their views openly and challenge others’ views on the bases of reason, logic, and scientific
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facts. And since the mass media have become the only venue to express one’s views and reach the targeted audience, the conservative rich Arabs who own the media have transformed media outlets into forbidden territory; no Arab intellectual is allowed to enter. As a consequence, these intellectuals are losing patience and ground; many of them are becoming frightened and being forced to seek refuge in foreign countries, causing some of the best educated and experienced scientists and thinkers to migrate and join like-minded people who work and produce for a global market. Deep sociocultural divides usually make it hard to articulate national policies that enjoy wide popular support; they even make it harder to launch strategies for comprehensive societal development. Nevertheless, there is no developing society that has not been affected by casual change and has not experienced aspects of behavioral change. All traditional societies, with no exceptions, have lived through the casual stage of sociocultural transformation. The majority of developing nations, however, are still laboring in the stage of behavioral change without many successes or major failures. Commenting on the Arab situation, Constantine Zurayk said four decades ago, “In an age of accelerating change, and facing tremendous external and internal challenges, the Arabs will not be able to participate positively in contemporary life and to respond creatively to the challenges of the times without undergoing a total transformation in which the cultural element plays an important, if not a primary part.”5 Nav Prerna School Magazine published an editorial on April 2, 2009, regarding David S. Landes’s book The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, in which five lessons were provided: 1. Make sure that your government enables innovation and production rather than maintains power by massive redistributions of wealth from its enemies to its friends. 2. Hang your priests from the nearest lamppost if they try to get in the way of assimilating industrial technologies or forms of social and political organization. 3. Recognize that the task of a less-productive economy is to imitate rather than innovate, for there will be ample time for innovation after catching up to the production standards of the industrial core. 4. Recognize that things change and that we need to change with them, so that the mere fact that a set of practices has been successful or comfortable in the past is not an argument for its maintenance into the future. 5. There is no reason to think that what is in the interest of today’s elite— whether political, religious, or economic—is in the public interest or even in the interest of the elite’s grandchildren.6
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hird World cultures are generally incompatible with a globalized economy; they belong to a different era whose time has come and gone. If left alone, most developing countries would not be able to make adequate sociocultural and economic change to grow and free their peoples from poverty and need any time soon. Meanwhile, the economic, financial, and international challenges facing the rich nations are consuming their energies and undermining their capacities to provide the kind of assistance poor nations need and expect. A societal development strategy, therefore, needs to be devised to meet the needs of every developing nation and enable them to overcome the major obstacles that hinder change and retard progress. Since obstacles facing nations are not the same, and cultures vary from one place to another, each nation should be viewed as a special case. Nevertheless, any development strategy must recognize that the social, cultural, political, and economic conditions prevailing in Third World countries in general are not conducive to development; most people live under conditions that tie them to unproductive habits, discourage personal initiative, and hinder sociocultural transformation. Moreover, forces in control of the political process are largely corrupt and ruthless; they tend to silence dissent and deny people their rights. As a consequence, connections to them often determine who wins and who loses in society. And while cultural, religious, and ethnic differences make consensus regarding most issues hard to reach, the wealth and education gaps make social mobility difficult and sometimes hazardous. At the same time, winners do not seem interested in helping losers or investing their money in national economies; most winners lack awareness of the economic and social conditions under which the poor and the disadvantaged live. Every Third World nation needs to design a strategy for comprehensive sociocultural and economic transformation and launch it as soon as possible, because waiting is wasting time and causing obstacles to become formidable.
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The road map proposed hereunder recognizes that most developing nations are poor and lack the right education and skills and attitudes and environments conducive to economic and sociocultural change. It also recognizes that Third World men often despise menial work and relegate such work to women and that some societies object to seeing men and women treated equally or working in one place. Cultures of preindustrial times tend to emphasize contentment and leisure, not thrift and hard work. Most people who are wealthy due to inheritance do not mind living their entire lives without ever holding a job. Work in traditional agricultural societies is largely dictated by need, not by a desire to make and accumulate wealth; work, therefore, is not seen as a source of pleasure or considered a path to social recognition. As a consequence, such societies lack the spirit of change, causing societal development to be seen as a proposition hard to conceptualize. The poor in particular are provided with no incentives to start where their skills and education, or lack thereof, qualify them to be. Instead, they are often provided with negative incentives that keep them, along with other unskilled workers, living in poverty and losing time and status. The global media make more people aware of the lifestyles of the rich, pushing the poor and the young to manipulate connections and relationships to acquire some of the things that help them overcome the stigma of poverty. Meanwhile, the Internet and social media tend to encourage the young to join the clubs of smokers and smartphone users. And while older generations among the poor live in a time of diminishing expectations due primarily to traditional values and ignorance, younger generations tend to live in a time of rising expectations fueled primarily by television, imitation, and illusions. Societal change could start at the bottom and move up or be envisioned by the ruling elite and move from the top to the bottom. However, the approach from the bottom to the top is hard to contemplate because ordinary citizens lack awareness of the need for change and tend to resist sociocultural change. Since the state controls all the sticks and carrots in society, it bears the responsibility for change; it needs to set national objectives and priorities, design programs, and supervise their implementation. Otherwise, it will be hard for sociocultural transformation to take place in time to move society beyond the behavioral stage of sociocultural transformation and into the institutional and attitudinal stage. To accelerate the pace of change and ensure success, the state should start from the top and bottom at the same time because such a strategy allows more people to participate in the transformation process. And as it implements a comprehensive strategy for change, it should encourage the more transformed segments of society to share their knowledge and
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experience with others. A general strategy to address issues of Third World underdevelopment should seek to achieve the following objectives: 1. Transforming the political system to become more respectful of individual and group rights, cultural diversity, and freedom of speech and worship; 2. Transforming the education system to produce graduates with the right attitudes toward work and time, the analytical skills needed to succeed in the new age, and an entrepreneurial spirit; 3. Channeling the changing attitudes of younger generations in the right direction by introducing new educational programs and social and cultural activities; 4. Transforming the role of men in society to make them agents of change who recognize the value of time and work and respect the rights of women; 5. Empowering women through education and work and helping businesswomen organize into small groups and be involved in all aspects of the development process; 6. Transforming popular attitudes toward science and technology by changing the message of the national media and the contents of its programs; 7. Creating common economic markets as means to consolidate fragmented regional natural and human resources and enlarge investment, trade, and consumption markets; 8. Creating special labor markets to ameliorate the brain-drain problem and encourage talented, highly educated, and skilled individuals to stay in the regions where their experiences are most relevant and services most needed; and 9. Narrowing the wealth, income, and education gaps that separate social classes and cultural groups and helping the poor and illiterate to gain the right skills and attitudes necessary for gainful employment in the evolving knowledge age. General Awareness Campaign Recognizing the need for sociocultural transformation, the strategy calls for an awareness campaign to be launched by the state in coordination with the national media. The campaign should have the capacity to target each sector of society, with emphasis on students, teachers, opinion makers, the poor, and the unemployed. The primary objective of the campaign is to change attitudes toward time and work in general and menial work in particular and to convince the public that holding a job enables workers to help themselves and others they care for. Work, the campaign should emphasize, generates income and satisfaction and fosters self-confidence and independence, which
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are the most effective tools to empower individuals and elevate their status in society. More importantly, the campaign should try to convince the unemployed and the young that dependence on families and friends for financial support belittles them and that dignity and freedom are achieved through work, education, perseverance, honesty, and financial independence. Undermining bad habits like smoking and wasting time is as important as promoting positive ones. As the former are weakened, the latter become easier to adopt, and as positive attitudes gain respect and become the norm, the negative ones become abnormal. The awareness campaign should initially avoid promoting change intended to undermine the influence of the traditional leadership, because traditional leaders will not tolerate such action; forces behind the campaign would be discredited, causing the campaign’s chances of success to be vastly weakened. Politically and religiously sensitive issues should be addressed gently, and traditional and religious leaders should be given special roles to play in the campaign to secure their support and possibly active participation. Change that empowers the poor economically would not be opposed by such leaders, but expanding social freedoms and calling for equality between men and women is likely to be viewed as a threat to traditions. Nevertheless, equality between men and women and equal education and employment opportunities for the sexes should be adopted as a national commitment by the state and the intellectual community; these are issues of fairness and justice that will affect future generations. Since the strategy calls upon the state to lead change, the political elite need to lead by example; they should begin the process by reforming the political system and changing their attitudes, granting people their rights, fighting corruption and bureaucratic misconduct, and showing commitment to the common good. Smoking and Driving Tobacco smoking is a critical social issue that affects all aspects of life negatively: it causes serious health problems, lowers labor productivity, undermines the future of children, and wastes economic and financial resources. And because it worsens attitudes toward time, work, and the environment, smoking represents an obstacle to social and economic development. The World Health Organization estimates that tobacco consumption caused the death of some one hundred million people in the twentieth century.1 And what makes smoking an impediment to societal development is that it has become a status symbol in underdeveloped societies, particularly among the poor, women, the uneducated, the young, and those who are culturally illiterate. According to the latest report by the American surgeon general, cigarettes
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contain seven thousand different chemicals, and nicotine goes to the brain directly in seven seconds; meanwhile, tobacco companies spend more than a million dollars an hour marketing cigarettes or nearly a billion dollars each year out of the $35 billion they earn annually selling cigarettes. Estimated US annual loss due to smoking is about $300 billion, half of which is due to loss of labor productivity; the other is due to the increased cost of health care.2 According to the WHO, “The tobacco epidemic is one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced. It kills nearly six million people a year of whom more than 5 million are users and ex-users and more than 600,000 are nonsmokers exposed to second-hand smoke. Approximately one person dies every six seconds due to tobacco and this accounts for one in 10 adult deaths. Up to half of current users will eventually die [prematurely] of a tobacco-related disease. Nearly 80 percent of the more than one billion smokers worldwide live in low- and middle-income countries, where the burden of tobacco-related illness and death is heaviest.”3 Smokers, particularly the poor ones, are usually members of large families that live in small, crowded apartments; as they smoke, they cause their children to get sick and develop serious health problems that parents are unable to treat because of lack of money and oftentimes health awareness as well. WHO says that “in 2004, children accounted for 31 percent of the deaths attributable to second-hand smoke.” Moreover, smokers encourage, often unconsciously, other family members and friends to smoke and become addicted. And since cigarettes contain about seven thousand chemicals, of which at least 250 are known to be harmful and more than 50 are known to cause cancer, cigarettes are a major killer. “Tobacco users who die prematurely deprive their families of income, raise the cost of health care and hinder economic development.”4 Smoking does not waste money, time, and health only; it also causes car accidents to happen more frequently and claim more lives. The real effects of smoking and car accidents on developing countries amount to a cruel civil war, yet this undeclared war is often celebrated by officials and those who claim to be intellectuals instead of being condemned. I say here “those who claim to be intellectuals” because intellectualism implies social, health, and environmental awareness, which smokers lack; it also implies a strong commitment to helping the poor and women and defending their rights against tobacco companies that thrive on exploiting them, damaging their health, getting them addicted, and undermining the future of their children. Third World intellectuals who smoke have inherited this bad habit from Western intellectuals who smoked cigarettes and sometimes pot as a form of protest in the 1960s. And while Western intellectuals in general have recognized the damaging consequences of smoking, causing smoking to become
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a symbol of backwardness, most Third World intellectuals do not seem to know these facts. Smoking among women in poor countries is on the rise, including among pregnant women, causing smoking to become a serious threat to fetuses and children. The threat women smokers pose to society is only surpassed by physicians who smoke. Since physicians know the dangers of smoking, physicians who smoke do not seem to care about their health and life, and therefore, they should not be trusted to take care of the health of patients. Every state, therefore, should make the renewal of physicians’ licenses to practice medicine subject to abandoning smoking. Arabs, for example, are among the most addicted to tobacco in the world, not just to cigarettes but also to the water pipe or argeelah; they are also among the most dangerous drivers. WHO reports indicate that about 40 percent of all men in Egypt smoke and that each man spends about twenty dollars a month on smoking. Since more than 40 percent of Egyptians live on less than two dollars a day, a poor man who smokes spends about onethird of his income on cigarettes. In Syria, the Syrian Center for Smoking Research estimates that almost 60 percent of men and over 20 percent of women smoke and that the average person spends about 6.8 percent of his annual income on smoking. “Syrians collectively spend about $600 million per year on tobacco consumption. As of 2010, . . . and 98 percent of the overall population is affected by passive smoking.”5 In Jordan, “a population sample of 3,196 adults aged 18+ years answered an interview questionnaire about their smoking habit and types and amounts of tobacco consumed. Overall 32.3 percent of the respondents reported being current smokers (54.9 percent of males and 8.3 percent of females) and 2.9 percent were ex-smokers. Cigarette smoking was the most frequent type of tobacco smoking (93.0 percent) and one-third of cigarette smokers consumed more than 20 cigarettes per day. Waterpipe smoking was the second most common habit (8.6 percent) and was significantly associated with lower age in both males and females.”6 In 2012, the Jordanian Department of Statistics “issued a report on the status of smoking in Jordan, which showed that spending on cigarettes was on the rise. Total household spending on tobacco and cigarettes in the country reached JD 480.7 million ($680) in 2010, compared with JD 352.3 million ($497) in 2008. The latest study on the prevalence of smoking in Jordan, conducted in 2007, showed that approximately 29 percent of Jordanians above the age of 18 are smokers, in addition to 14 percent of children in the 13–15 age bracket, 23 percent of whom smoke argeelah. Health Ministry figures revealed that smoking cost the country JD one billion ($1.41 billion) last year, including money spent on tobacco and smoking-related diseases.”7
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As for the number of smoking-related deaths in the Arab world, it is estimated at five hundred thousand or 8 percent of the global tobacco-related deaths. And while Arabs represent about five percent of the world’s population, the number of car accidents due to reckless driving in Arab states is in excess of five million a year. Statistics show that in general the average number of deaths per hundred thousand people in the Arab countries is more than four times the average number of deaths per hundred thousand in the Western developed countries.8 However, this ratio rises dramatically to fifty to one when the number deaths per hundred thousand cars is considered.9 In Saudi Arabia, it was reported that the average number of car accidents in 2012 was 67 per hour or some six hundred thousand per year. As for the human cost, it is reported to have reached 19 deaths per day or some seven thousand per year, in addition to causing twenty thousand people to be permanently handicapped annually. As a result, 25 percent of all beds in hospitals are occupied by people who are victims of car accidents, and about 4.2 billion dollars are spent annually to treat the injured and bury the dead.10 This reflects the dangerous driving habits of Arab drivers in general and their tendency to disregard the law and traffic regulations in particular. Transforming Women’s and Men’s Roles The roles played by men and women in society are complementary, and the relationship that ties them together is dynamic. Every change in the role of men affects the position of women, and every empowerment of women affects the role of men. Recognizing the dominant role of men in traditional society and their largely negative attitudes toward time and work, a business plan with specific projects to boost men’s egos should be given priority. In developing societies in general, physicians, engineers, lawyers, bankers, managers, and teachers have traditionally enjoyed high statuses. Training students in such professions and building around them appropriate institutions and organizations would facilitate the evolvement of more productive scientists, qualified lawyers and better laws, trained teachers and business managers and entrepreneurs, as well as an effective civil society. As a result, men would become more aware of the need to transform their attitudes toward everything in life, including women. Projects that can help accomplish this goal include hospitals, health-care facilities, construction companies, environmental studies, computer laboratories, and research institutes. Recognizing the modest social status of women in traditional society, but their potential contribution to economic growth and sociocultural change, elevating their social status should be a national goal. However, elevating women’s status should be pursued through the societal development process
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itself, not apart from it. All women should be given the right to quality education, and economically productive activities should be designed to correspond to women’s education levels and to meet their evolving needs. The aim of this program is to empower women to play a more assertive role inside and outside their homes. Work that men tend to shun should be made available to women, while emphasizing that all work is equal and important to the health of society and economy. Industries and services requiring little or no skills and modest education should be established and made accessible to poor and illiterate men and women, even if it requires the separation of men from women in the workplace. Service industries and manufacturing that suit women with some formal education, such as textiles, food processing, cloth tailoring, and tourism should be designed to attract women. Officials in charge of programs to create jobs for women need to understand that even women with no education and little work experience have talents that can be developed and utilized. The process of creating industries for women to work for and manage should include training programs and activities to discover women’s talents and strengths and help them develop such intangibles. Small and medium-size loans at low interest rates should be made available to enterprising women, and state agencies, international organizations, and professional associations should provide business advice and legal protection to help them succeed. Training centers, preferably managed by women, should be established to train men and women for work in the service sector and industry as well as for management positions. Development experts working with poor women say that women tend to work harder than men, are generally more honest and respectful of time and regulations, and can learn management skills quickly. Studies done in the United States indicate furthermore that women managers are more interested in getting the job done, while men are more interested in getting social recognition. Although such a strategy puts more responsibility on women than men, it has been proven that only education and work can empower women and strengthen their position in society. In addition, women’s active participation in the labor force is indispensable to societal development. Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, wrote on February 28, 2014, in the Washington Post saying, “A study last year found that women’s low economic participation created income losses of 27 percent in the Middle East and North Africa. The same study estimated that raising female employment and entrepreneurship to male levels could improve average income by 19 percent in South Asia and 14 percent in Latin America.”11 Due to the important role women play in the upbringing of children and performing tasks that men often shun, the proposed strategy sees women as a pillar of societal development; it therefore views their liberation as a national
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imperative. Moreover, educating and empowering women is the most culturally acceptable and morally responsible way to reduce population growth rates and raise the age of marriage and thus free millions of young girls from ignorance, enslavement, and vice in many parts of the world. One way to empower women is to organize them in small business groups to work together and lend money to each other in ways that rely on traditions. By working together and lending money to one another, women would be led to view their fate as one, creating a sense of belonging to one community. As a consequence, women involved in such activities would be able to exchange experience and share knowledge and apply it in the upbringing of children, the protection of the environment, enhancing productivity, and making their world a better place to enjoy and share. The motto of such groups should be “Together, we empower each other, create a global power, and change our world forever.” A literate society where men and women are empowered needs more and better schools, universities, and training centers; good communications and information systems; more consumption goods; and new recreation facilities, causing all industries to expand, diversify, and compel the national economy to grow. All of these activities are enjoyable and have a liberating impact on workers’ lives; they are also helpful in transforming workers’ outlooks and attitudes as well as their relationships within and outside workplaces. In fact, a growing class of knowledge workers and professionals creates new job opportunities for others and develops nontraditional venues for personal enrichment and cultural change. Common Markets The creation of common markets and free trading areas is an effective tool to consolidate fragmented regional natural and human resources, invigorate national economies, enlarge investment and consumption markets, and facilitate the transformation of workers’ attitudes while improving work ethics. Though the economic benefits of common markets are known and appreciated by most states, the sociocultural transformational effects of such markets are yet to be recognized and documented. In the 1960s, millions of foreign workers were invited by Germany to participate in making its “economic miracle”; as a result, large numbers of workers came from Spain, Greece, Italy, Turkey, and other countries. Without the new experience, knowledge, and positive attitudes of the returning Spanish and Turkish workers, I believe that the industrialization of both Spain and Turkey would not have happened as soon as it did. Working and living in Germany, Spanish, Greek, Italian, Turkish, and other foreign
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workers were able to acquire new skills and, in the process, become socially and culturally transformed. Attitudes toward work, money, and knowledge usually change as social and economic conditions change. Migration to other states gives people new opportunities to discover their hidden talents and utilize them, acquire new skills and attitudes, make money, and enrich their lives. I personally witnessed this transformational process as a student studying and working in Germany in the mid-1960s. The creation of common markets for goods and labor facilitates the utilization of people’s diversified skills and societies’ competitive advantages. Since almost all Third World nations have serious unemployment problems, the idea of creating regional labor markets is likely to be opposed by national labor unions and states. But a positive change in attitudes is essential to development, and there is nothing that can facilitate attitudinal change faster than changing the sociocultural environments where people live and work. Therefore, it is suggested that neighboring states create multilateral labor exchanges that enable each state to bring guest workers from a few countries in exchange for sending the same number of its workers to other countries. Common labor markets expose workers to different cultures and types of work, facilitate cultural interaction and the learning of new skills, and encourage attitudinal change while paving the way for regional economic integration. Experience with guest workers indicates that non-nationals are always ready to do the work they tend to resist doing at home and to do it more efficiently than nationals do. Cultures that do not place a high value on work, and others who look down on certain types of work, cannot succeed in this age; they give people no real incentive to seek work and work hard. Persons whose economic conditions force them to accept jobs perceived by society as demeaning usually avoid telling others what they do, which often forces them to lie. People who cannot avoid doing what is considered socially undesirable work often leave their hometowns to avoid social stigmatization; they migrate to large cities and foreign countries where they can work and live away from the eyes of people who know them. Being away from home frees such workers from restrictive traditions and gives them an incentive to work hard and make more money. While unskilled and undereducated workers migrate due to economic need and social pressure, knowledge workers are usually pushed to emigrate due to lack of freedom and work opportunity. Generally speaking, workers living in new environments where sociocultural disincentives are weak or do not exist gain an opportunity to do better, get more satisfaction, learn more, and, in the process, become socially and culturally transformed. Large cities and foreign countries give immigrants the opportunity to be anonymous; and anonymous most of them will become soon after settling in
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the new lands. Many, in fact, stay anonymous for as long as they stay away from home. Meanwhile, a strong commitment to return home as early as possible usually gives migrant workers the patience to hold socially undesirable and physically demanding jobs in anticipation of making enough money to join the ranks of the middle class upon their return home. But while they are away from home and engaged in work not particularly attractive to most people in society, they are likely to adopt new, more positive attitudes and values that favor hard work, appreciate the value of time and money, and enjoy living new experiences and learning new skills. While work that is considered demeaning or highly undesirable in most parts of the world nonetheless gets done, it is less likely that such work gets done by professionals who enjoy doing it. For example, unemployed young Egyptians in Cairo show little interest in working as guards in apartment buildings or as sanitation workers cleaning streets. In Jordan, however, practically every person guarding an apartment building or a farm, and almost all janitors, are Egyptians. Being away from home frees people from strict social norms, awakens the economic instinct in them, and helps them realize their potential. Similarly, Jordanians who refuse to work as drivers and construction laborers in Jordan have no problem performing such tasks in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other states. Moroccans and Algerians who detest serving others in restaurants are happy to do just that in France, Germany, Spain, and other foreign countries. However, being strangers in strange lands, undereducated guest workers tend to live in small, mostly isolated communities, forming social and cultural ghettos that prevent them from living a rich experience. This is an issue that needs to be addressed by host states and laws governing the creation of common labor markets; labor exchange programs should be as multilateral as possible to limit the number of guest workers coming from one state and thus reduce the possibility of forming isolated ghettos. I coined the term “cultural ghetto” years ago to describe the way certain cultural and religious groups and minorities live and think. Like-minded people sharing the same ideas and convictions are able today to create a space where they exchange ideas, share new information and conspiracy theories, promote their beliefs, and plan action across oceans without having to see each other or talk to each other. The Internet has enabled people living in different parts of the world to connect with one another, and thus it has facilitated the creation of cultural ghettos everywhere. A traditional ghetto is a place where people live in isolation due to discrimination and poverty that separates them from the rest of society. A cultural ghetto, in contrast, is a space where people think in isolation from the rest of the society to which they supposedly belong. And while members
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of traditional ghettos are forced to live a life of poverty in isolation, members of cultural ghettos choose to live a life of narrow-mindedness in isolation. The more members of such ghettos intensify their interactions with one another, the more culturally illiterate and sometimes radicalized they become. Members of cultural ghettos in particular are only able to hear themselves and like-minded people, speak to the walls within which they live, and listen to the echoes of the words of their ancestors and heroes who died long ago. And while people living in traditional ghettos tend to work hard and learn more to get out of their ghettos as soon as possible, people living in cultural ghettos tend to work harder to remain isolated in their cocoons, becoming in the process more narrow-minded, less enlightened, and largely disillusioned. Economic expansion and diversification usually create labor shortages and demand for workers with special skills and knowledge, which only guest workers can meet in the short term. Common labor markets ease such shortages and help nationals get on-the-job training that leads them to become more productive and to view work and knowledge more positively. The state should assume responsibility for building appropriate training centers to train the unskilled and the unemployed and match their skills with jobs the new economy creates. As development strategies are implemented, they usually cause the cost of housing and life necessities to rise; governments should be prepared to deal with these eventualities in ways that help the poor and needy and make everyone feel a part of a caring community. Easing the Brain-Drain Problem Third World nations in general are major exporters of talent and knowledge workers, which they cannot afford to lose. If the brain-drain problem is to be eased, the conditions and policies that drive highly educated and skilled workers to emigrate must be changed. People usually leave their homes, families, and friends due primarily to lack of economic opportunity and the abundance of political repression. While unfavorable life conditions at home push such people to leave, favorable conditions abroad pull them to immigrate. To ease this problem and transform the negative consequences of immigration into positive ones, holders of certain degrees should be allowed to go anywhere within the region they belong to without a visa, seek work wherever work may exist without work permits, and compete for available jobs without restrictions. In light of the new international environment created by economic and cultural globalization, I believe that talented individuals and holders of certain graduate degrees should be granted special passports to go anywhere in the world to live and work. They should be granted the right to
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work and conduct research wherever they wish, compete for jobs wherever jobs are available, and do business without restrictions. Holders of PhDs from accredited universities; holders of master’s degrees in physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, technology and computer science, education, and languages; as well as holders of MBAs, engineers, physicians, artists, writers, and musicians are examples of professionals in short supply in almost all countries. Such professionals should be given the opportunity to live wherever they choose to live; sell their knowledge, expertise, and talents to whomever needs them; and seek satisfying and rewarding employment wherever such opportunities exist. Taking such a step would facilitate global economic integration, expand cross-cultural fertilization, lessen fear of globalization, preserve talent from neglect and waste, transform attitudes and values, raise worker productivity everywhere, and contribute positively to world peace, mutual understanding, and sustainable global development. Transforming the Economy In designing the economic aspect of the societal development strategy, priority should be given to service industries and manufacturing. Service industries, particularly the knowledge-based ones, are more in tune with global trends, and their value added is relatively high, while their capital requirements are modest compared to heavy industries. Nations that have high rates of unemployment should train the unemployed to have the skills that manufacturing and service industries need, build manufacturing plants around them, and export the surplus to states in need of such skills. North African Arab states, Mexico, China, and many Latin American, Asian, and Eastern European states have engaged in the exportation of skilled and unskilled labor to other countries. Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Iraq have been exporting some of their highly skilled and unskilled labor to the oil-exporting Arab Gulf states for decades; however, the income generated by these people has not been used to finance economic development in their home states. This is due primarily to three factors: first, failure of the labor-exporting states to design investment projects for their migrant workers to invest in; second, the spread of corruption in these states; and third, the existence of formidable economic, political, and legal obstacles that limit the capacity of national economies to absorb the capital migrant workers are able to save and send home. The exportation of labor surplus may be good policy to ease unemployment at home and reduce poverty in the short term. In the long run, however, the labor-exporting states lose some of their highly talented, educated, and motivated workers, whose services are indispensable to societal development. Without knowledge workers, a seasoned business class, and a skilled and
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motivated labor force, no society is able to transform its education system and culture and build an industrial economy. It is suggested, therefore, that service and industrial projects be designed for migrant workers to invest in, with national governments guaranteeing such investments against risk, provided that investment is made in hard currencies; these investments are, in fact, loans provided by nationals to their states at no cost. In the 1950s and 1960s, industrialization was seen as the key to economic development. But development does not have to wait for industrialization; it does not even have to be based on industrialization. The communications and information revolutions and globalization have made the production and marketing of information, knowledge, and financial services the leading economic sectors in advanced states. Knowledge has become a very profitable industry that any nation with a technologically advanced education system and a population armed with the right attitudes can promote and benefit from. The brain-drain issue proves that many underdeveloped nations have a surplus of knowledge workers, not because they produce more than they need, but because they use less than they produce and badly need. Therefore, the launching of a knowledge-based industry should be considered a priority. In addition, tourism should be treated as a prime industry to develop because it requires little capital, brings badly needed hard currencies, and can employ people with modest skills. Tourism, however, requires good infrastructure that many developing countries lack, at least partially. All developing nations, therefore, should give special attention to tourism, particularly nations with distinguished cultural heritages and others endowed with unique forests, animals, beaches, and weather. Tourism is not an economic activity only; it is also a social activity that exposes all people involved in it to different cultures and traditions. And in the process, tourism facilitates the transformation of attitudes and traditions, making society more tolerant of cultural diversity and more respectful of other peoples’ ways of living. But for such a strategy to be articulated and implemented, society needs to have a strong state led by an enlightened political elite. Since Third World peoples in general tend to distrust their governments, the transformation of the political system becomes a prerequisite for popular participation in the development process. Without freedom and respect for the law, and an official commitment to equal educational and employment opportunity as well as to ending corruption and nepotism, no societal development strategy will succeed. A free and educated society can never fail, while no repressed and ignorant society has ever succeeded. In the wake of national independence, and due to economic backwardness and high rates of poverty and unemployment, Third World leaders felt a moral obligation to create more jobs, expand education, and help the poor.
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However, few efforts were made to improve the quality of education, train the unskilled, and transform attitudes and work ethics, causing labor productivity to stay low and national industries to remain uncompetitive. As more people graduated from high schools and colleges, national economies failed to expand and create new jobs, causing more people to become dependent on their families and the state. And instead of planning for societal development, the largely corrupt and incompetent elites began to transform national economies into tools to enrich themselves and manipulate and rule over the masses. A few decades later, economic and cultural globalization arrived and began to change the reality of the present and people’s perceptions of the future, leading both the state and the masses to become confused. Neither political elites, nor college graduates, nor traditional intellectuals were prepared to deal with the new reality or even understand its ramifications. And as the illtrained workers failed to compete on the basis of productivity and discipline, economic conditions at home deteriorated further. Since labor productivity is a function of education and culture, no underdeveloped labor force is able to compete in this age. In an open international system, most uneducated and unskilled workers are forced to compete for the lowest-paying jobs available in a globalized economy that knows no political borders, recognizes no national identities, and abides by no particular traditions or rules of fairness. To compete successfully in this global economy, most job seekers are discovering that they have to have the right education, the right skills, and the right attitudes, which the majority of the unemployed in the world lack either partially or entirely. As a consequence, more jobs are opened than the number of qualified workers to claim them. Two decades ago, skilled and knowledge workers were chasing jobs everywhere; today, new knowledge and industrial jobs are chasing qualified workers. States, therefore, need to abandon policies that commit them to creating jobs for all unemployed workers and adopt new policies that commit them to training and retraining workers to enable them to compete in a globalized economy. But for developing countries to provide the right education and training, they need financial and technical assistance from the outside. If more workers were trained to fill vacant jobs available globally, unemployment and poverty rates would decline substantially, and the world economy would grow faster, create more jobs, and raise the incomes of working people everywhere. The hundreds of millions of largely unskilled and uneducated workers in the world are expected to face rough times in the coming decades, unless world leaders drastically change the way they view money and people’s needs. Since the world industrial capacity to produce most goods and services exceeds its capacity to absorb such things, most states are expected to live
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with structural unemployment and experience recurring economic recessions and possibly financial crises as well. Prolonged unemployment increases poverty, and poverty causes despair and often unrest that sometimes leads to violence. Peoples of the world need to realize that humanity is a shared project; only working together and sharing benefits and sacrifices can create a safe, peaceful, and hospitable global environment for all. Reforming the Education System No society can achieve a satisfactory level of economic, social, cultural, scientific, or political development without the right education. Generally speaking, there is no society with a low literacy rate that is developed and no society with a high literacy rate that is underdeveloped. However, there are some developing societies with relatively high rates of literacy that have failed to industrialize because their education systems are themselves underdeveloped and their cultures are still traditional. Several Arab societies have fairly high literacy rates, yet they are still struggling to complete the behavioral stage of sociocultural transformation. These countries suffer from two major disadvantages: education systems that transform a good portion of their human resources from untapped assets into liabilities, and sociocultural environments that create and perpetuate cultural illiteracy, an issue to be examined in the next section. “Cultural illiteracy” is defined as a lack of general awareness of life conditions and global developments related to health, work, education, politics, economics, knowledge, the arts, literature, and similar issues. To make societal development possible, education should be made compulsory for both boys and girls through at least the ninth grade, and money should be made available to build comfortable schools, adopt modern methods of instruction, and upgrade the contents of curricula. Courses dealing with social, cultural, and economic topics should reflect the goals of the development strategy and what is expected of graduates. The education system needs to recognize that the majority of students do not know how to organize their thoughts and manage their time. Schools and universities, therefore, need to design special academic programs and nonacademic activities to address these issues. The education system must also recognize that teaching research methodology and scientific curiosity starts in the first grade, not in university or even in high school. Changing attitudes through education is possible if education teaches students how to use their brains and learn how to find information they need when they need it, while inducing them to think critically and be creative. Education that uses classrooms to reinforce traditional ways of thinking and glorify the past makes societal development more difficult. For example, Arab
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students seldom read, students usually read required textbooks only to pass examinations at the end of the year, and only a tiny minority shows interest in acquiring reading as a habit and a source of pleasure. Therefore, students need to be taught how to read and enjoy reading because acquiring the habit of reading serves three other objectives: it helps transform students’ attitudes faster, it addresses the problem of cultural illiteracy early, and it invigorates book writing and publishing, which is a financially and socially rewarding activity that creates new jobs. If reading were to become a hobby practiced by students and the public, book publishing would grow quickly and create a large number of new, rewarding jobs annually and, in the process, vastly reduce cultural illiteracy in all developing societies. Cultural Illiteracy The following program to deal with cultural illiteracy was designed with the Arab world in mind. If adopted by all Arab states, the program would cause book publishing to increase by at least five times in the first year and create about half a million new jobs. Thereafter, the book publishing industry would grow by 10 to 15 percent annually, creating about ten million jobs over ten years. About five million of those jobs would come from book writing, editing, translating, printing, publishing and binding, and sales and marketing. Another five million jobs would be created by associated business activities and services, such as finance and accounting, public relations, computer programming, and export-import of books and educational materials, paper manufacturing, and similar activities. And what is unique about this industry and the jobs it creates is that it can be developed without state investment or involvement. All that is needed is a state decision to make reading a required subject, just like math and languages. The Arab population, estimated at 360 million in 2013, still has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world, estimated at 30 percent of the adult population. And while illiteracy rates in some countries, such as Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine, and Tunisia, are low, they are very high in countries such as Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, and Yemen. Illiteracy is traditionally defined as the inability to read and write. But illiteracy should be divided into types: traditional illiteracy and cultural illiteracy, both of which are in need of serious attention. While Arab states and international organizations, particularly UNESCO, recognize traditional illiteracy and acknowledge its drawbacks, cultural illiteracy is still misunderstood; in fact, I coined the term “cultural illiteracy” only a few years ago and explained its nature and implications in a book published in 2010 by the Arab Thought Forum. Since this concept is new,
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awareness of the existence of cultural illiteracy and its negative effects on society is still missing in the world of underdevelopment. I believe that not less than 90 percent of all Arab high school and university graduates are culturally illiterate. This problem was created two generations ago due primarily to the spread of poverty, lack of schools, and traditional cultures. Nevertheless, the building of thousands of schools and hundreds of colleges and universities has not solved this problem—it has, in fact, perpetuated it. Traditional education systems that tend to emphasize memorization of largely boring information on the one hand, and families entertained and educated by TV programs that dull the mind on the other, have caused the roots of cultural illiteracy to deepen and become structural in developing countries in general. The building of thousands of schools since the middle of the twentieth century has reduced traditional illiteracy in Arab states significantly. But the lack of incentive to read during the school and college years causes traditional illiteracy to be replaced by cultural illiteracy and leads most graduates to lose within years most of what they learned in school. People who are illiterate tend to show modesty and accept modest jobs because they realize their limitations. In contrast, college graduates plagued with cultural illiteracy tend to feel that society owes them a great debt, and, consequently, they expect positions with power, which they often use to denigrate and sometimes humiliate the less educated and the poor. Cultural illiteracy leads naturally to scientific and technological illiteracy as well as to health and financial illiteracy. And as the global economy shifts from manufacturing goods to producing knowledge and information, the most rewarding jobs it creates require more learning, specialized skills, and advanced knowledge. People who are scientifically and technologically illiterate are unable to find and hold good jobs, which causes them to feel frustrated and angry. Culturally illiterate people are less able to live productive lives, get enough self-satisfaction, and relate to the larger world in meaningful and intelligent ways. To begin to solve this problem, reading must be made compulsory—a required subject that no student should be allowed to graduate from high school without completing. The proposed program to address cultural illiteracy is envisioned to accomplish four major objectives: First, it will help students change their attitudes and acquire reading as a habit while exposing them to new scientific facts and unconventional ideas and ways of thinking. Second, it will move education beyond the memorization stage and into the critical thinking stage. Third, it will facilitate attitudinal change while reducing cultural illiteracy among the public at large. Fourth, it will create millions of new jobs and better citizens. According to the proposed plan, schools, universities, educators, intellectuals, and the media would work together to make the necessary
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arrangements while the state makes the implementation of such arrangements by schools and universities compulsory. The following describes the proposed arrangements: 1. Students in grades three through six would be required to read at least two books during summer vacations and write a report on each book to be presented to their teacher at the beginning of the next school year. Students would be given a list of six books to choose from; books would be selected by a national panel of educators and intellectuals to cover six different fields of study, such as history, nature, and literature. 2. Students in grades seven through nine would be required to read at least three books each summer and write a report on each one, summarizing the major points and the lessons learned; the report would be presented to the school administrator at the beginning of the next school year. Students would be given eight books to choose from; a different panel of educators and intellectuals would choose these books. 3. Students in grades ten through twelve would be required to read at least four books each summer and write a report on each one, critically analyzing the major points of each book; the report would be presented to the school administrator at the beginning of the next school year. Students would be given ten books to choose from; a different panel of educators, intellectuals, scientists, and businesspeople would choose the books. Some of the books must challenge the intellectual capacities of students and cover topics such as comparative religion, philosophy, economics, and science fiction. In addition, each student would be required to complete at least twenty hours of community service each year, helping the poor, the elderly, or the sick, or working for not-for-profit organizations protecting the environment or caring for animals and the like. All students would be required to write a report about their experience in community service and make a class presentation of their findings during the last semester before graduation. 4. Students in college would be required to read at least two books each semester dealing with topics not related to their majors and present their findings during the last week of the school year. In addition, college students would be required to complete at least twenty hours of community service each semester and two weeks each summer. They would also be required to complete a research project on a topic related to their field of study and present their findings in a report to be shared with and discussed by fellow students before graduation.
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5. As for the university, the following would be required: ● Design on-campus projects to train students to engage in business and develop their work ethics and entrepreneurial spirits and skills. University should make most services, particularly restaurant, security, cleaning, maintenance, transportation, and gardening business projects available to students to work for, manage, and profit from. No student, however, should be allowed to continue working for such projects after graduation; ● Give a financial reward to the best managed project each semester and special recognition to all students involved in it; ● Require that professors assign at least three textbooks or two books and a few articles for each course in the humanities, social sciences, and business; ● Ban smoking and alcohol drinking for all students and faculty members and staff in all buildings, at all times; and 6. Participate in establishing, financing, and managing a new foundation in its country, to be called Foundation for Research and Translation or FRT. Universities would be required to contribute to the financing of FRT by paying the equivalent of one hundred dollars per student per year. As for the state, it would be required to conduct an annual competition for reading for all school students and grant winners financial rewards in addition to taking them on educational trips to other Arab or foreign countries. The business community should be urged to sponsor such a competition and educational trips. The state would also be required to enact a new law requiring all public corporations to pay 1 percent of their annual profits to FRT. FRT would be managed by a board of trustees composed of retired professors, university presidents, and business managers chosen on the basis of competence, integrity, and commitment to scientific research; faculty members of all universities would have equal opportunities to compete for grants. The business community would be encouraged to become a partner in managing FRT and proposing research topics and setting priorities. The foundation would be required to publish no fewer than a thousand new titles each year, half of which would be translations of foreign books. Moreover, a new college to train school administrators should be established. The new college, to be called School Management College or SMC, would be commissioned by the state to do three major things: develop a school management system, train qualified teachers to manage schools, and continually upgrade teaching methods and curricula. The proposed college would grant an executive master of school management (MSM) degree in
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preschool, elementary and middle school, and high school administration. SMC would accept only highly competent teachers who are college graduates and have completed at least five years of teaching experience. Arab countries have about two hundred and fifty thousand schools, but very few of them are managed by competent administrators. If the principal and his or her deputy were required to be MSM holders, replacing all current principals and deputies with professionally trained ones over ten years would require training about a hundred thousand administrators a year. A small country like Jordan, with a population of some seven million, would need more than fifteen hundred MSMs annually. SMC would establish campuses in major cities and have three different programs: an evening program to attract teachers with families, a weekend program to attract teachers who need to travel but are able to devote their weekends to learning, and a summer program to attract young and unmarried teachers willing to commit most of their summer vacations to learning. Each program would have practical and theoretical parts and would include programs to teach administrators how to evaluate the performance of other teachers and school personnel, how to manage libraries, and how to work with teachers and staff to design nonacademic activities to help students discover their talents, manage their time, and enjoy their school experiences.
CHAPTER 14
A World in Transition
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s the twenty-first century advances, life conditions in many countries have reached a dynamic stage; technologies to deal with every aspect of life are being developed at the speed of light, and countless individuals, institutions, and organizations, having varied and oftentimes contradictory interests and goals, are leading this development process. A “world in transition” has emerged, where impersonal, institutional, and profit-maximizing entities and ideologically radical forces are assuming the leading role in instigating change, managing changed situations, and producing transformations of immense proportions and deep societal implications. A world in transition is a world in a state of continuous change, where change transforms living conditions, and living conditions transform ways of life, causing further change. Around the middle of the 1990s, the most advanced industrial societies, particularly the United States, began to enter a new transitional period leading to the knowledge age—a new civilization with a unique society, culture, and economy. It is an age where scientific and technological knowledge is increasingly becoming the most valuable individual, corporate, and national asset. Consequently, a new economy is emerging that is more dependent on science, information, and telecommunications than on any other factor of production. The most rewarding jobs that this economy is creating are knowledge based; they require, in the words of Peter Drucker, “A good deal of formal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoretical and analytical knowledge. They require a different approach to work and a different mind-set. Above all, they require a habit of continuous learning.”1 Knowledge and Society The emerging knowledge society is characterized by complexity, diversity, dynamism, and uncertainty. Complexity causes systems to fail, forcing them
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to restructure or be replaced; diversity deepens sociocultural divides and socioeconomic gaps in society, creating conflict and causing group relations to be in a state of continuous change. And while dynamism makes both change and conflict uncontrollable and unstoppable processes that transform human values and alter relationships and living conditions at all levels, at all times, uncertainty makes future planning a formidable task that no one seems able to master. No ideology, no system, no plan, and no state is therefore able to manage change by itself, and history of the near past is neither able to explain the complexity of the present nor predict the future with certainty. Based on my understanding of history, the knowledge age is expected to reach maturity around 2025, and everyone in the world will have by then felt its negative and positive impacts. Modern knowledge will be accessible to everyone who can afford it and who knows how to use it, enabling societies to increase food production, advance science and technology, and enhance the destructive capacity of weapons. A very complex society, a very dynamic economy, and a very colorful culture will emerge, drastically changing human life, how we live it, and how we perceive it. And as the knowledge age advances, it will expand our horizons and opportunities on the one hand, and challenge our basic and most revered values and convictions on the other. Knowledge workers, for example, are becoming capitalists; they possess valuable social and technical capital in the form of knowledge and unique skills, talents, and attitudes that can be invested anywhere in the world to enrich society and themselves. As a consequence, knowledge workers have become freer, less dependent on others, individualistic, and less committed to national and community causes; they have largely become modern nomads attached to no particular place, and they seldom share collective memory with others. Therefore, they do not mind wandering from one place to another, from one organization to another, and from one country to another to advance technically and succeed materially. Their primary objective is to make the best use of whatever knowledge they have and get the most financial rewards and social recognition for it in the shortest time possible. People who fail to acquire the right education and attitudes are unable to participate in shaping the emerging knowledge economy and securing for themselves decent jobs and incomes at a time when gainful employment has become the major source of personal satisfaction, economic security, and social recognition. Today, a few societies, many communities, and countless groups are passing through the transitional period leading to the knowledge age. Since all transitional periods are times of confusion, chaos, and uncertainty, no society or nation is totally happy or entirely unhappy with the unfolding change. But regardless of what people may think of change, globalization and knowledge have touched the lives of all peoples and continue to transform the lives of
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all societies. People resisting globalization do so because they fear its impact on their traditional cultures and particular identities; yet they continue to welcome the cheap, high-quality products globalization provides. Consequently, no group or nation is able to reverse the globalization process, avoid its impact, or escape its sociocultural and socioeconomic implications. Claims that national cultures and traditional group identities are threatened and therefore need to be protected are misplaced; no one is able to escape the impact of the unfolding global economic, cultural, or political change. Cultural interactions, studying abroad, travel, wars, trade, and exposure to the lifestyles of people living in faraway places have affected the way people think and live their lives in all places. Strictly speaking, indigenous cultures and traditional group identities do not exist anymore; they have changed, sometimes drastically, and the changes they have experienced and continue to endure have rendered most traditions and values of the recent past less genuine, less particular, and often less useful and hardly recognizable. Traditional cultures are unable to re-create the past, preserve the present, or shape the future. What is left of older traditions and values has been deformed by consumerism, materialism, and individualism to the point of becoming faceless. Ideology and Society Throughout history, charismatic leaders have symbolized the great ideas and convictions that left lasting impacts on the lives of many people for generations. Nevertheless, no leader could claim greatness and be recognized as a historic figure without being associated with a grand idea and unconventional ideological convictions. The vast and progressive decline in the role of ideology in society, and the increasing role of institutions and corporations at their expense, have caused the power and stature of all leaders to decline tremendously and irreversibly. While few religious, traditional, and authoritarian leaders in certain states are still able to wield substantial power, they are more able to hinder change and cause conflict and less able to contribute to social, cultural, or economic transformation and progress. The future, therefore, is unlikely to witness the appearance of a great leader or a grand ideology able to change the course of history in a meaningful way. Though ideological beliefs and philosophical views of the past have lost most of their power to cause sociocultural or sociopolitical transformations on their own, they are still alive in many parts of the world. Change that ideologies are still able to produce is being manifested today in more conflict and less freedom, leading some people to believe that history is able to repeat itself and that a new future could be constructed on a vision of a glorious, yet
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largely fictitious, past. Since history has never repeated itself, what old ideologies are capable of creating is more of a bind that ties them to dead ideas and sterile attitudes, able only to distract people and falsify their consciousness. “History, the truly relevant source of change, will not be reversed,” wrote John Kenneth Galbraith.2 When asked about the lack of economic development in his country in late 1999, former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami said, “It is impossible to have economic development in a socially and politically underdeveloped society.”3 While arguing correctly that social and political development is a prerequisite for economic development, the Iranian leader acknowledged, though implicitly, that Iran’s ideologically based political system has failed to accomplish either social or political development. Iranian emphasis on traditional and religious education, and lack of social and political freedoms, has robbed the Iranian people of the opportunity to transform their society and culture, develop their technological capabilities, and make adequate economic and noneconomic progress. Even the prime minister of China warned repeatedly in 2011 that without political reform and freedom, the Chinese economy is likely to slow down, causing political stability to be replaced by instability. Ideas, convictions, values, and belief systems on the one hand, and technologies, science, knowledge, and societal systems on the other, have had a competitive relationship throughout modern times. Wherever and whenever beliefs, traditions, and convictions prevail, scientific knowledge and modern means of communication are constrained and used primarily as means to enhance the power of ideology and ideological leadership, not to enrich the lives of the masses. And wherever and whenever knowledge, science, and institutions prevail, ideology is weak and its adherents are marginalized, allowing meaningful social, cultural, political, and economic change to occur. Thus, the undermining of the power of ideologies and traditional values and the role of belief systems is a precondition for societal development to occur and benefit people. Because of such a development, no society or nation should wait for a great leader to emerge to save it or lead it to “the promised land.” There is no promised land for any nation anymore, anywhere; there is only one world inhabited by one human race. Every society should, therefore, accept life challenges as they are and move to face them with courage. Some of the current challenges, which no society is able to ignore any longer, are economic in nature, others are political, but many more are social, such as social justice, educational reform, poverty reduction, and job creation, which cannot be addressed except in the context of a comprehensive societal development process. But lack of understanding of what development entails in an age of continuous change has made development an elusive goal for most nations.
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No developing nation has all that is needed to launch a successful societal development process on its own; every nation lacks one thing or another. While many nations lack adequate infrastructure, social capital, and knowledge, others lack the right education and attitudes, and almost all nations lack sociopolitical environments conducive to change and development. Societal development, to be feasible, needs more than good education and infrastructure, an abundance of natural resources, and the availability of cheap labor and money; it needs a society whose values are conducive to change, whose human resources are skilled and disciplined, whose leadership is aware of the need for change and has the political will to initiate change, and whose systems and institutions are capable of conceiving and managing change in a world in transition. A nation’s resources are useful only if people know how to evaluate them, how to use them, and how to employ them where they are most needed or where the returns are most rewarding. Though people can and often do learn from others, their previous training in how to learn, how to interpret and apply what they learn, and what kind of knowledge matters most is important to determining the usefulness of the knowledge they acquire. These are questions of culture, values, and belief systems, and education and its contents and methods of teaching. Culture and education, by defining goals, setting priorities, and training people to think, largely determine what is to be learned, how much is to be learned, and how much freedom educated people have to apply knowledge to transform their lives and the lives of others. Intellectuals and the Poor Equality of opportunity, promoted as an alternative to the utopian concept of total equality, can neither help the very poor nor protect the needy. Michael Young argued more than half a century ago in The Rise of the Meritocracy that equal opportunity divides society into two groups: one is capable of seizing the opportunity opened to it; the other is incapable of seizing such an opportunity. Due to this handicap, the second group finds itself moving downward on the social ladder and forming a lower, mostly poor, and largely neglected class. But unlike any other poor class in history, this one is neither enslaved nor exploited, nor even officially excluded. Rather, it is free yet excluded, has opportunities yet is poor, lives in an open society yet lacks mobility. It is, as a result, permanently left behind, deprived even of a cause to rally around. The plight of this class is not the result of certain actions taken by the state; therefore, its life conditions and fortunes cannot be changed by state action alone. Changes in the social, political, and economic structures of society as well as in the culture of the poor themselves are needed to make it possible
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for members of this class to climb the social and economic ladder and be included. The association of wealth with knowledge on the one hand, and the prevalence of outdated value systems to which the poor are attached on the other, are probably the most important factors contributing to creating this class and keeping it permanently poor. People with knowledge, that is people with the right education and the right attitudes, have the capability to seize opportunities, make money, attain social recognition, and move upward in society. Meanwhile, people with wealth, that is people with money and power, have the financial means and leverage to attend the best universities, get the right education, and expand the range of opportunities open to them. In contrast, people with neither wealth nor knowledge are left behind with nothing to enable them to compete and move upward. The future, therefore, is not expected to see people divided between rich and poor only. Instead, it is more likely to see them divided between knowledgeable and ignorant; the first is more likely to be rich and free but hungry for more of the same; the second is more likely to be poor and oppressed but largely content with the little they have. In most cases in the past, voices representing the poor and the dispossessed emerged and gained recognition and often led to alleviating the suffering of poor people. This was possible because societies were small, ethics were strong, and the misery of the poor was noticeable and intolerable. But due to the growth of populations and urban centers, and the rising barriers separating the rich from the poor, reaching the poor and knowing their life conditions has become more difficult and less urgent. Meanwhile, giving the poor the opportunity to express their views and explain their situations has become subject to getting access to the mass media. But access to the media is difficult due to its prohibitive cost and the exclusive culture of media owners and managers, causing the grievances of the poor to be hidden and largely forgotten. On the other hand, the ideas of dissenting intellectuals who have traditionally defended the rights of the poor have mostly been curtailed, forcing them to move within closed circles. The ideas of the rich and powerful, in contrast, have become prominent, influencing everyone’s view of others and shaping public opinions. As a result, dissenting voices are forced to adopt an attitude and develop a vocabulary that expresses more frustration and rejection than constructive engagement. In fact, forces of rejectionism everywhere, on the left and right, in the rich countries and the poor ones, seem today, as they have throughout history, to be more aware of what they stand against but less sure of what they stand for. The ever-widening sociocultural gaps in society, along with the tendency of intellectuals to associate themselves with like-minded individuals, who
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often belong to the middle and upper-middle classes, have caused intellectuals and the masses to be separated by culture, lifestyle, outlook, and language. Due to this divergence in life experience, communications between intellectuals and the masses have become increasingly difficult everywhere. This causes miscommunications and mutual mistrust to spread and deepen, allowing demagogues and ideologues to exploit the fears and needs of the masses, particularly the poor and the poorly educated and the culturally illiterate, and to radicalize some and convince others to accept their lot in life and be content. While the masses are becoming increasingly doubtful of the sincerity of intellectuals in general, intellectuals are becoming increasingly suspicious of the rationality of the masses. This leaves the masses with no enlightened leadership they can trust and the intellectuals without a worthy cause to fight for. Whatever intellectuals do for the world’s poor today is done by frustrated, largely marginalized intellectuals who have neither money nor power, only a tortured conscience that refuses to let them sleep comfortably. Helping the poor in preindustrial times was very useful to the rich; it enabled them to atone for their sins and feel closer to God in a deeply religious environment. Helping the poor during the industrial age was also useful to the rich, particularly to owners and managers of large businesses; it enabled them to show generosity and social responsibility and gain recognition and popularity in a largely nationalistic environment. However, in the emerging knowledge age, where individualism reigns supreme and ideology is dying, and where globalism and money are the new frames of reference, neither helping the poor nor the community is seen to be of use to the rich. And because the poor feel alienated and are being isolated, their needs and grievances are being ignored; they no longer get the attention they deserve or the compassion they need. In the United States, for example, the Census Bureau found that “a stunning 33 percent of the population was struggling to make ends meet in 2010.”4 In the not-so-distant past, society used to care and give when it could and ignore when it could not. Today, most rich societies and groups tend to ignore when their abilities to care and give are good and getting better. Decades ago, substantial investment in foreign markets was both rare and risky, because the prevailing political conditions and economic systems at the time made the transfer of funds and the repatriation of profits difficult. As a consequence, the rich of the poor countries were forced to invest most of their wealth in their homelands, which helped maintain economic conditions at tolerable levels. Today, the globalization of trade, finance, and investment markets has made foreign investment easy, largely safe, and often very profitable, allowing the rich of the poor states to invest in foreign markets and enjoy the fruits of their investments, often without leaving their homes.
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Thus, money owners are able to enrich themselves without contributing to the productive capacity or welfare of their societies. And while the rich become increasingly richer, the poor become progressively poorer. New attitudes and values, new education systems, and new economic arrangements are needed to deal with the problems of the poor and the excluded. Only education that emphasizes work ethics and provides students with the right knowledge and attitudes, and political systems that emphasize fairness and social justice in just societies, can create new environments conducive to giving the poor a chance to improve the quality of their lives. Cultures need also to recognize that life is spiritual as much as material in order to improve the quality of life for all.
CHAPTER 15
Concluding Remarks
T
he historical experience over the last few centuries has defined the path to social, political, and economic development and identified its basic requirements. It has proven that profound sociocultural transformations, industrialization, capital accumulation, technological innovation, freedom, knowledge, and trade are not only aspects of development but also major forces driving the development process. Nations that have attempted to develop since the 1950s but ignored two or more of these elements have failed to achieve their objectives. And because the developed nations have continued to make progress, the gap between the developed and developing nations has widened. These are gaps in scientific knowledge, levels of income and wealth, freedom, cultural achievements, political and military power, and quality of life. Such gaps are being widened at a time when capital as well as the whole body of knowledge and technology developed by all nations is increasingly becoming within reach of all states. To begin to solve our current problems and aim at achieving global sustainable development, we need to first free all nations from the public debt burden that undermines the capacity of many developing nations to feed their poor, develop their human resources, transform their cultures, and grow their economies. The plan to free rich and poor nations from debt should also be a plan to restructure the international monetary system and create new funds to facilitate economic and sociocultural development of poor nations and enable them to become full partners in a vibrant and more equitable global economy. Liberating all nations from the debt burden will not be complete without a program to train a new class of world leaders to make our global village peaceful, more livable and loveable, and to deal with all emergencies that take people by surprise.1 Public debt is a function of budget deficits; when a state’s income is not enough to cover its expenditures, the state experiences a budget deficit. To meet its financial obligations, a state with a deficit usually borrows to balance
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its budget. And while borrowing is a must in the short run, indebted states have three options to fix deficits in the long run: they can raise taxes, reduce spending, or both. Politicians, especially elected politicians, have found borrowing easier and safer than raising taxes and reducing spending, because raising taxes and reducing spending undermines their reelection chances. Politicians often take the short road to winning elections rather than the long one to protecting the interests of their nations. Since incurring debt is a future problem, politicians rarely worry about the consequences of such decisions when they make them. Indebted states often find themselves faced with a serious dilemma: how to stimulate stagnating or sluggish national economies by borrowing and spending while, at the same time, trying to contain fast-growing deficits and public debts. This puts indebted states in a bind; the goals they seek to accomplish are contradictory, and the actions they must take are incompatible. While reducing budget deficits to control debt requires reducing spending and/or raising taxes, stimulating stagnating economies requires more borrowing and spending and/or tax reductions. To resume healthy economic growth, all nations need to cooperate to first repay the global public debt; second, expand world markets in general; third, gain or regain lost economic competitiveness; and fourth, build or rebuild their middle classes and productive sectors. Since these issues involve most nations of the world, solutions have to be sought within a global context, because global problems require global solutions. However, the concentration of wealth and power in a few hands, a pervasive corporate culture of greed, and the influence of money on politics and the media makes economic, political, and sociocultural change difficult to conceive and painfully slow to implement. Adjustments needed to resume healthy economic growth rates are many; to explain such adjustments, problems need to be placed in their global, historical, and societal contexts; otherwise, it would be difficult to understand the nature and extent of global change and its expected social, economic, and strategic implications. And this, in turn, would limit our ability to think about the challenges of our times with clarity and approach them with confidence; it would also make it difficult for us to look the future in the eye and anticipate the major transformations and surprises that are expected to come. Global Context of Change Globalization and the communications and information revolutions of the last two decades have caused national economies, cultures, and politics to be transformed. They have created a global economy that forced economic and
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social structures and production relations in most countries to change and the nation-state to lose control over its economy. They also caused Western societies in general to enter a transitional period leading to a new, much more complex society with its own values, challenges, and opportunities that are yet to be fully developed and identified. During transitional periods that take societies from one civilization to another, it is always easier to describe change than identify its causes, influence its course, or anticipate its outcome. As change proceeds, it invalidates old ideas and certain institutions as well as economic and political theories, causing them to gradually lose relevance and become dysfunctional, while no new ones are developed in time to take their place and deal with the evolving change. They also cause economic, social, and political structures to change and create a trust deficit that causes corruption to spread and complicates business transactions. As a consequence, society’s capacity to deal with the new life reality declines, creating the need for new ideas and visions to guide nations into a largely uncharted future that no one can escape. The experience of a society passing through a civilizational transition is similar to that of a driver entering a rough mountainous terrain. As he takes a long curve on a winding road, he loses sight of the landscape that lies behind, while the mountains he negotiates block the view of the landscape that lays ahead. As his speed and control of the vehicle become subject to the rough terrain, his expectations and confidence become subject to the ups and downs of the road. The familiar landscape that lays behind no longer helps; the horizon that lays along the road is so obscured it provides little or no clues to what lays ahead. The transition that started around the mid-1990s has disrupted life as we knew it and dissolved the connection between the immediate past and the near future. As the industrial age comes to an end, the knowledge age is still being born, leaving the present waiting for the unknown. The present we are living today has been reduced to a mere port where the past is ending its long journey and the future is getting ready to begin its own voyage into a new world. Consequently, people and the systems through which they function and manage their lives are experiencing one crisis after another without much hope of regaining enough confidence to manage them soon. The creation of a global economy has led national economies and security issues to be integrated, causing major national issues to become international and major international issues to become national. There is no major national problem today without an international dimension and no international problem without a national root. As a consequence, the ability of every state to deal with major challenges on its own has been vastly weakened. The debt crisis is one example that demonstrates the intricate and complex
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relationships that tie national and international institutions together and cause even regional approaches to dealing with such issues to fail. In fact, the moment a civilizational era ends, its history and historical logic and pillars end as well, forcing the new era to struggle alone to discover the unique logic of its times and write its own history and construct new institutions. For example, when the industrial revolution arrived with its new society, economy, and culture, the history of the agricultural era and its logic and wisdom ended, causing the viability of the economic, social, and political structures of the old society to end as well. The rapid industrialization of South Korea, China, India, Brazil, and a few other states has caused the global capacity to produce most essential goods and services to exceed the global capacity to absorb such goods and services. Meanwhile, the continued expansion of this capacity has caused global competition to intensify and economic growth rates of most industrialized states to slow, exposing the world economy to recurring economic recessions, financial crises, and higher than usual unemployment rates. This creates an urgent need to expand existing consumption markets and develop new ones to keep pace with the growing production capacity. Since the absorption capacity of the developed states in general is fast approaching its limits, due in part to the decline of the middle class, aging populations, and the spread of poverty, efforts to develop new markets must concentrate on countries where economies and societies are still developing or underdeveloped. Free trade and investment markets have changed the rules that govern relationships between jobs and job seekers, particularly industrial and knowledge jobs. Two decades or so ago, most job seekers had to leave their towns, sometimes their countries, and at times risk dying to reach a foreign country where decent jobs were available to improve their life conditions. While economic migration continues today, most such immigrants lack the education and skills needed to excel in the new knowledge-based economy. Thousands of people die each year trying to reach the shores of Europe and the United States in little boats sailing against turbulent winds or walking across dangerous deserts controlled by criminal gangs and drug dealers. In contrast, knowledge and industrial jobs in the new age are continuously on the move, searching for qualified workers to employ. Industrial jobs travel from one country to another looking for cheap and disciplined labor with the right skills and attitudes to do the work manufacturing requires, while knowledge jobs are traveling, oftentimes virtually, looking for workers with the right education and exceptional talents. Highly qualified and motivated people no longer need to leave their hometowns to get good jobs with corporations that reside in faraway places. Since multinational corporations have abandoned their traditional attachments to country, community, and labor,
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they are willing to hire anyone and invest in any country to maximize profits and enlarge their market share. Therefore, any state that is ready for such corporations will find corporations ready to bring their technology, capital, culture, and management systems to create new jobs for its labor force and help it to industrialize. These developments have caused the economic, social, and cultural conditions of two decades ago to change drastically; and, as a consequence, they have invalidated the assumptions upon which old theories of economic and financial management are based. Such assumptions include the notions that national economies are largely closed, trade is subject to restrictions, foreign investment is subject to regulations, investment requires domestic savings, and that neither labor nor money are free to cross state lines. Since all such restrictions have been fully or partially removed, the traditional tools of managing national economies and dealing with issues such as recessions, inflation, unemployment, and competitiveness have become ineffective. Consequently, the traditional economic theory has become largely dysfunctional. This is why the US Federal Reserve failed to end the Great Recession, create jobs for the unemployed, or restore consumer and investor confidence in time to resume normal economic growth rates; and this is also why all European efforts to deal with the debt issue have failed to end the crisis. Failure to acknowledge the increasing irrelevance of traditional economic tools will cause most economists and politicians to think inside a largely empty box and fail to realize the need for new tools of economic and financial management. While traditional economic thinking may continue for a few more years, it is largely brain dead; it can neither explain the nature of change nor deal with it effectively. Even the law of supply and demand, which represents the core of the capitalist economic theory and provides the justification for free markets, has become partially dysfunctional. For example, due to the large increase in oil prices in the late 1970s, demand for oil declined by 17 percent; however, the almost tripling of the crude oil prices in the 2005–06 period failed to cause even a small decline in demand. Rising prices of cellular phones and phone services and applications do not seem to discourage anyone from using phones; they seem to encourage young people to spend more upgrading their phones and adding new applications. This change is largely due to the deep sociocultural transformations the world’s societies have witnessed since the mid-1990s. The Great Recession and the 2008 financial crisis do not represent another business cycle; they actually signify the end of an era and the beginning of a new, much different one. Decades ago, when most economies were largely national in structure and scope and less dependent on exports and imports, stimulus programs
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worked fairly well. Increased government spending and easy credit were able to encourage consumers to spend more and business to invest more and thus create new jobs at home and cause disposable incomes to rise and consequently increase domestic demand. And this in turn encouraged, at times compelled, producers to invest and expand production further and create new jobs. Reducing interest rates also worked well in the past; it encouraged investors to borrow, invest, and produce more and enticed consumers to borrow, spend, and consume more. However, in a globalized economy, increasing government spending and lowering interest rates cannot have the same effects on domestic demand, employment, or investment. A good portion of any increase in spending will be spent buying foreign goods, while lower interest rates could entice investors to borrow in one state and invest in another where labor is cheap. Therefore, traditional economic measures to create jobs and fight recessions are unlikely to succeed in this age unless combined with other measures that require coordination at the global level. There is no doubt that traditional economic theory has had a solid record of success in helping nations manage their economies in good and bad times throughout most of the twentieth century. Economists have also played and continue to play a major role in debating economic policy, the role of money in politics, the distribution of income, and the impact of these issues on fairness, poverty, employment, the middle class, and the general welfare of nations. However, the moment a theory loses the validity of its assumptions, it loses its relevancy and ability to function properly. Building a theory is like building a house; you start with the foundation, which is the equivalent of assumptions for theory. If the foundation is good, the house will last for a long time, but not forever; if the assumptions are realistic, the theory will last for many years, but not forever. Nevertheless, foundations exposed to earthquakes and floods are unlikely to last long and so are assumptions trying to reflect human behavior and living conditions that never stop changing. Development in this age requires sociocultural transformations to change or reinterpret traditional values, belief systems, and attitudes toward science, technology, work, and time. Europe had to go through sociocultural and political upheavals between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries before it could enter the industrial age. By introducing new ideas, worldviews, and insights, sociocultural transformations reshape traditional relationships and attitudes and create new environments conducive to positive thinking. Positive thinking, in turn, induces the development of new institutions, systems, and relationships capable of dealing creatively with the many economic, political, social, and technological challenges facing society. While science and technology are largely neutral, their applications and consequences are not; science and technology cannot be acquired,
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accumulated, and applied to meet societal needs without the existence of specialized institutions and certain cultural traditions that value science and technology. Nevertheless, every society, regardless of its stage of development and cultural sophistication, possesses a capacity to acquire and apply some knowledge; all societies have developed such a capacity during their journey from traditionalism thousands of years ago to the twenty-first century. However, while borrowing and learning from others is often easy, adapting what is being borrowed to meet local needs is not. “The transfer of scientific and organizational knowledge from one society to another can be accomplished in a relatively short time, as history is measured. Japan is perhaps the classic example of that. In less than a century, it moved to the forefront of science and technology. But to create the whole range of social preconditions for receiving and applying cultural advances is a more formidable task.”2 Nevertheless, what Japan did in a century, China is poised to do in only fifty years. The Corporation As globalization weakens the nation-state’s ability to influence the course of economic change, it increases the power of the multinational corporation. Multinational corporations are giant companies engaged in manufacturing, trade, finance, telecommunications, and arms manufacturing that travel everywhere looking for new investment opportunities to exploit without regard for the social and political consequences of their actions. By the end of the twentieth century, multinational corporations had become the engines of global economic expansion and the best sources of investment capital, managerial skills, and technical know-how. As a result, private capital flowing to developing countries has become many times larger than World Bank loans and all other official foreign assistance. Meanwhile, the ability of corporations to lead the global economy and their intimate connections to the media makes them a force of economic development as well as an instrument of sociocultural transformation. In addition, multinational corporations have become the most reliable source of productive technologies and management systems and promoters of new business cultures that encourage initiative and reward innovation and creativity. However, they have ignored social justice and the plight of the poor. Unlike the state, when corporations attempt to influence politics, they do so with economic considerations in mind; they consider politics and politicians a mere tool to achieve economic ends. In contrast, when politicians make economic decisions, they do so with political considerations in mind. To politicians in general, national economies are tools to gain more material wealth and political power and to stay in power. In states where elections
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are conducted regularly, politicians often stay away from decisions that tend to alienate their constituencies, because their interest in staying in power outweighs their interest in protecting the national interest or caring for the common good. And by so doing, politicians often cause certain social and economic problems to fester and become more complicated. Today, most corporations are better able than most Third World states to make investment decisions based on economic considerations, assemble the needed capital and technology to build manufacturing and service industries, and bring foreign expertise to manage them and in the process create jobs that ease the burden of unemployment in the states they invest in. However, if left alone, the actions of such corporations are more likely to widen the income and wealth gaps in society and concentrate on exploiting the national resources of host states rather than helping them develop their societies and improve the quality of life of their citizens. Nevertheless, for a multinational corporation to invest in a developing economy or relocate some of its operations to that country, the host state needs to meet certain conditions: 1. It should have a fairly developed infrastructure as well as modern transportation and telecommunications systems; 2. It should have a fairly cheap, trained, and disciplined labor force, which cannot exist until the stage of behavioral change is reached and positive work ethics gain respect; 3. It should enjoy political stability and have favorable regulations that encourage foreign investment and promote free trade; and 4. It should have fairly large or growing national and/or regional markets. The former communist nations of Eastern Europe are good examples of nations that completed the stage of behavioral change decades ago. But due to a rigid communist ideology and a centralized economic planning system, they failed in the past to acquire the right attitudes and work ethics and develop management systems and skills compatible with democracy and capitalism. After liberation from Soviet hegemony and communism, attitudes began to change rapidly and economic development became not only possible but inevitable. Every nation that is experiencing genuine behavioral change is an attractive investment market for multinational corporations and is on its way to entering the industrial age. In contrast, the former communist nations of Central Asia, after being freed from Soviet rule, began to focus on the past rather than on the future. As a consequence, they began to move toward cultural particularism and political and economic nationalism and the adoption of outdated interpretations of religious thought, leading the masses to become conservative
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and suspicious of change. Consequently, the process of sociocultural transformation was frozen, and many of the positive behavioral and attitudinal changes of the past were undermined, causing conflict, political instability, and corruption to spread. Such developments usually discourage rather than encourage the multinational corporation from getting involved in a national development process. No nation that failed in the past to experience sociocultural transformation has achieved economic development or technological progress; and no nation that has achieved economic development and technological progress has done so without passing through a sociocultural transformation process. Societal development is like a bird: it needs two healthy wings to fly. While society represents the bird’s body, economic restructuring and sociocultural transformation represent its wings. With only one wing, no bird can fly; it may be able to hop and jump, but it can neither fly, nor stay healthy, nor maintain balance for long.
Notes
Chapter 2 1. Joseph E. Stiglitz, Making Globalization Work (W. W. Norton, 2006). 2. Michael Edwards, “The Irrelevance of Development Studies,” Third World Quarterly (January 1989): 120. 3. Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues & the Creation of Prosperity (The Free Press, 1995), 84. 4. Thomas Sowell, Race and Culture (Basic Books, 1994), 252. 5. Fukuyama, Trust, 21. 6. Robert Kuttner, “The Corporation in America,” Dissent 1 (1993): 40. 7. Jay R. Mandle, “Marxist Analyses and Capitalist Development in the Third World,” Theory and Society 9, no. 6 (1980): 865–76.
Chapter 3 1. Donovan Finn, Our Uncertain Future: Can Good Planning Create Sustainable Communities? (University of Illinois Press, 2009), 3. 2. NGO Committee on Education, Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future, Chapter 2, “Towards Sustainable Development,” http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-02.htm. 3. Michael Thomas Needham, “A Psychological Approach to a Thriving Resilient Community,” International Journal of Business, Humanities and Technology 1, 3 (November 2011). 4. Wikipedia, “Sustainable Development.” 5. “Towards Sustainable Development,” http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-02.htm. 6. http://www.legrand.com/EN/sustainable-development-description_12847.html. 7. B. Cohen and M. I. Winn, “Market Imperfections; Opportunity and Sustainable Entrepreneurship,” Journal of Business Venturing 22, no. 1 (2007): 29–49. 8. “Sustainable Development—Can We Balance Sustainable Development with Growth to Help Protect Us From Ourselves?” Green Planet Ethics, http://green planetethics.com/wordpress/sustainable-development-can-we-balance-sustain able-development-with-growth-to-help-protect-us-from-ourselves/ 9. Ibid.
226 10. 11. 12. 13.
14.
15. 16.
17.
18. 19.
20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.
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Ibid. Wikipedians, eds., Sustainability (PediaPress, n.d.), 107. Ibid. Robert W. Kates, Thomas M. Parris, and Anthony A. Leiserowitz, “What Is Sustainable Development?,” Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 47, no. 3 (2005): 9. NGO Committee on Education, Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future, “Chairman’s Forward,” http://www.un -documents.net/ocf-cf.htm. http://www.legrand.com/EN/sustainable-development-description_12847.html. Joy E. Hecht, “Can Indicators and Accounts Really Measure Sustainability? Considerations for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,” http://www.joy hecht.net/professional/papers/jhecht-sust-ind&accounts-may07.pdf Helen Clark, “Achieving Sustainable Human Development,” May 29, 2012, http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/presscenter/speeches/2012/05/29 /helen-clark-achieving-sustainable-human-development-/. http://www.legrand.com/EN/sustainable-development-description_12847.html. UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, http://portal.unesco.org /en/ev.php-URL_ID=13179&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201 .html. Alejandro Nadal, “Is de-growth compatable with capitalism?” Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, http://links.org.au/node/1803. “Towards Sustainable Development,” http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-02 .htm. Anthony Mango, ed., Encyclopedia of the United Nations, 3rd ed., vol. 4, T–Z and Index, 2503. United Nations General Assembly, “United Nations Millennium Declaration,” Resolution 55/2, United Nations A/RES/55/2, September 18, 2000, page x. Kates, Parris, and Leiserowitz, “What Is Sustainable Development,” 9. Ibid., 12–13. Ibid., 12. Mohamed Rabie, Saving Capitalism and Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), Chapter 9.
Chapter 4 1. Quoted in Hugh Thomas, World History (HarperCollins, 1979), 75. 2. Mohamed Rabie, Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity (Praeger, 1994), Chapter 10. 3. John A. Garraty and Peter Gay, The Columbia History of the World (Harper & Row, 1972), 35–48. 4. John Noble Wilford, “Flutes Offer Clues to Stone-Age Music,” New York Times, June 24, 2009. 5. Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, 270. 6. Ibid., 353.
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7. Constantine Zurayk, “Culture and the Transformation of Arab Society,” in The Arab Future: Critical Issues, ed. Michael Hudson (Georgetown University, 1979), 17. 8. Thomas Sowell, Race and Culture (Basic Books, 1994), 10. 9. Michael Naumann, “A Dialogue of Culture,” Deutschland (June/July 2000): 3. 10. Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary, 353. 11. Jack Weatherford, Savages and Civilization (Ballantine Books, 1994), 26. 12. Ibid., 45. 13. Howard Bloom, The Lucifer Principle (The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995), 223–33.
Chapter 5 1. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies (W. W. Norton, 1999), 92. 2. Charles Van Doren, A History of Knowledge (Ballantine Books, 1991), 263. 3. Joel Rogers and Ruy Teixeira, “America’s Forgotten Majority,” The Atlantic (June 2000): 68. 4. J. L. Sadie, “The Social Anthropology of Underdevelopment,” The Economic Journal 70, no. 278 (June 1960): 294–303. 5. John Garraty and Peter Gay, The Columbia History of the World (Harper & Row, 1972), 23. 6. Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, 92. 7. Jack Weatherford, Savages and Civilization (Ballantine Books, 1994), 46. 8. Ibid., 49. 9. Garraty and Gay, The Columbia History of the World, 52. 10. Weatherford, Savages and Civilization, 50–1. 11. Ibid., 26. 12. Francis Fukuyama, “The Great Disruption,” The Atlantic (May 1999): 56. 13. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 51. 14. Curt Suplee, “Imagine This,” Washington Post, January 2, 2000, B1. 15. Lenichi Ohmae, The End of the Nation State, 10.
Chapter 6 1. Jack Weatherford, Savages and Civilization (Ballantine Books, 1994), 27. 2. Ibid., 49. 3. Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (The Free Press, 1995), 56. 4. Steven Weinberg, “Utopias,” The Atlantic (June 2000): 108. 5. Sophie Bessis, From Social Exclusion to Social Cohesion: A Policy Agenda (UNESCO, 1995), 13. 6. Harvey Cox, “The Market as God,” The Atlantic (March 1999): 18. 7. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Harper Brothers, 1950). 8. Robert Heilbroner, 21st Century Capitalism (W. W. Norton, 1994), 35.
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Chapter 7 Robert Kaplan, An Empire Wilderness (Random House, 1998), 17. George Soros, “Toward Global Open Society,” The Atlantic (January 1998): 20. Joseph E. Stiglitz, Making Globalization Work (W. W. Norton, 2006), 31. Charles Van Doren, A History of Knowledge (Ballantine Books, 1991), 242. Peter F. Drucker, “The Age of Social Transformation,” The Atlantic (January 1998): 22–4. 6. Thomas Sowell, Race and Culture (Basic Books, 1994), 13. 7. John Kenneth Galbraith, “An Interview,” Harvard College Economist (Fall 1993): 42.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Chapter 8 1. John Knippers Black, Development in Theory and Practice (Westview Press, 1989), 15. 2. John Kenneth Galbraith, Economic Development (Harvard University Press, 1969), 3. 3. Cited by Yusif Sayigh, The Determinants of Arab Economic Development (St. Martin’s Press, 1978), 24. 4. W. W. Rostow, Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge University Press, 1965), 149. 5. Paul A. Volcker, “An Economy on Thin Ice,” Washington Post, April 10, 2005, B7. 6. Hla Myint, Economic Theory and the Underdeveloped Countries (Oxford University Press, 1971), 18–19. 7. Ibid., 73. 8. Ibid., 141–2. 9. Sayigh, The Determinants of Arab Economic Development, 108. 10. Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (University of Chicago Press, 2002), 133. 11. Sunil Kureja, “The Neoliberal Consensus on Development,” in Introduction to International Political Economy, eds. David N. Balaam and Micheal Veseth (Prentice Hall, 2001), 333. 12. Theotonio Dos Santos, “The Structure of Dependence,” American Economic Review 60 (May 1970): 231. 13. Chester A. Crocker, “The Global Law and Order Deficit,” Washington Post, December 20, 1992, A21. 14. David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (W. W. Norton, 1999), 328. 15. David Balaam and Michael Veseth, eds., Introduction to International Political Economy (Prentice Hall, 2001), 79. 16. Ibid., 79–80. 17. Gerald Meier, Biography of a Subject: An Evolution of Development Economics (Oxford University Press, 2005), 100. 18. David Korten, When Corporations Rule the World (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2001), 241. 19. Dudly Seers, “The Limitations of the Special Case,” in Development Economics, eds. Kurt Martin and John Knapp (Aldine Publishing Company, 1967), 2. 20. Gerald M. Meier, Leading Issues in Economic Development (Oxford University Press, 1970), 62.
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21. Michael Edwards, “The Irrelevance of Development Studies,” Third World Quarterly (January 1989): 117. 22. Ibid., 124 23. Meier, Leading Issues in Economic Development, 71. 24. Paul Ormerod, Butterfly Economics (Pantheon Books, 2000), 6. 25. Albert Hirschman, The Strategy of Economic Development (Yale University Press, 1967), 29.
Chapter 9 1. Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (The Free Press, 1995), 12. 2. Cited by Jim Hoagland, “All Globalization Is Local,” Washington Post, August 28, 1997, A21. 3. Fukuyama, Trust, 84. 4. Lester Thurow, “Building Wealth,” The Atlantic (June 1999): 63. 5. Fukuyama, Trust, 26. 6. Ibid., 33. 7. David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (W. W. Norton, 1999), 516. 8. Fukuyama, Trust, 84. 9. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History (Dover Publications, 1936), 131. 10. Thurow, “Building Wealth,” 57.
Chapter 10 1. David Landes, “Culture Makes Almost All the Difference,” in Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress, eds. Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel Huntington (Basic Books, 2000), 13. 2. Michael E. Porter, “Attitudes, Values, Beliefs, and the Microeconomics of Prosperity,” in Culture Matters, eds. Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel Huntington (Basic Books, 2000), 14. 3. Richard Gill, Economic Development: Past and Present (Prentice Hall, 1967), 32. 4. Robert Baldwin, Economic Development and Growth (John Wiley & Sons, 1966), 20. 5. Mohamed Rabie, The Other Face of the Arab Defeat (Riyad El Rayyes Publishers, 1987). 6. Mohamed Rabie, Culture and the Arab Identity Crisis (The Arab Thought Forum, 2010). 7. Jeffrey Sachs, “Notes on a New Sociology of Development,” in Culture Matters, eds. Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel Huntington (Basic Books, 2000), 34. 8. Gerald Meier, Biography of a Subject: An Evolution of Development Economics (Oxford University Press, 2005), 137. 9. Paul Kennedy, African Capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 1988), 69–70.
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10. “A Voice for the Poor,” The Economist (May 2, 2002), http://www.economist.com /node/1109786. 11. Anup Shaw, “Poverty Facts and Stats,” Global Issues, http://www.globalissues .org/print/article/26. 12. Ibid.
Chapter 11 1. Thomas Sowell, Race and Culture (Basic Books, 1994), 23. 2. Mohamed Rabie, “The Future of Education in the Arab World,” in The Arab Future: Critical Issues, ed. Michael E. Hudson (Georgetown University Press, 1979), 19–28. 3. Joel Rogers and Ruy Teixeira, “America’s Forgotten Majority,” The Atlantic (June 2000): 69. 4. Sophie Bessis, From Social Exclusion to Social Cohesion: A Policy Agenda (UNESCO, 1995), 21. 5. Ibid., 19.
Chapter 12 1. David Landes, “Culture Makes Almost All the Difference,” in Culture Matters; How Values Shape Human Progress, eds. Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel Huntington (Basic Books, 2000), 11. 2. “Saving the World Bank,” Editorial, Washington Post, April 19, 1997, A20. 3. Paul Blustein, “Foreign Aid That Doesn’t Seem to Persuade,” Washington Post, May 22, 1997, E1. 4. Clark Kerr and John T. Dunlop, Industrialism and the Industrial Man (Oxford University Press, 1974), 94. 5. Constantine Zurayk, “Cultural Change and Transformation of Arab Society,” in The Arab Future: Critical Issues, ed. Michael Hudson (Georgetown University Press, 1979), 10–11. 6. “Lessons from David S. Landes book The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor,” Nav Prerna School Magazine, April 2, 2009 (1:58 p.m.), http://navprerna.blogspot.com/2009/04/2.html.
Chapter 13 1. World Health Organization (WHO), “Tobacco,” Media Centre Fact Sheet No. 339, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/index.html. 2. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “The Health Consequences of Smoking—50 Years of Progress: A Report of the Surgeon General,” http://www .surgeongeneral.gov/library/reports/50-years-of-progress/exec-summary.pdf. 3. WHO, “Tobacco,” http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/index .html.
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4. Ibid. 5. Roueida Mabardi, “Smoking Ban Leaves Cafes Empty and Waterpipes Abandoned,” The Daily Star, Lebanon, April 29, 2010. 6. Khetam Malkawi, “Anti-tobacco pictorials fail to sway smokers,” The Jordan Times, Feb. 24, 2013, http://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/anti-tobacco-pictorials -fail-sway-smokers. 7. Khetam Milkawi, “Jordanians’ tobacco spending on the rise,” The Jordan Times, May 30, 2012. 8. World Health Rankings, “Road Traffic Accidents,” World Life Expectancy, http:// www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/road-traffic-accidents/by-country/. 9. Wikipedia, “List of countries by traffic-related death rate,” https://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate. 10. Mohammed N. Khan, “One death per hour on Saudi road by 2014,” The National, May 29, 2013. See also Farida Jeffry, “19 die daily in KSA road accidents,” Arab News, September 15, 2013, http://www.arabnews.com/news/464678. 11. Jim Yong Kim, “The True Cost of Discrimination,” Washington Post, February 28, 2014, A15.
Chapter 14 1. Peter Drucker, “The Age of Social Transformation,” The Atlantic Monthly (November 1994): 53–80. 2. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Good Society (Houghton Mifflin, 1996), 12. 3. “World in Brief, ” Washington Post, September 4, 1999. 4. Joshua Holland, “4 Bogus Right-Wing Theories About Poverty, and the Real Reason Americans Can’t Make Ends Meet (Hard Times USA),” Alternet.org, http:// www.alternet.org/hard-times-usa/4-bogus-right-wing-theories-about-poverty -and-real-reason-americans-cant-make-ends.
Chapter 15 1. Mohamed Rabie, Saving Capitalism and Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), Chapter 8. 2. Thomas Sowell, Race and Culture (Basic Books, 1994), 24.
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Index
A African agriculture, 49 entrepreneurs, 139 liberation movements, 155 nations, independence of, 138 oil-exporting states, 124 rulers, 134 societies and cultural capital, 125 sociocultural transformation, 182 tribe, way of life, 48 Al Akhawayn University, 5, 177 American, 91, 99 change, industrial society and, 47 communication, 54 consumption and, 27, 101 culture, 42 drivers, 119 economic and financial regulations were loosened, 73 economy, 10, 73, 82, 90, 101, 123–24 education system, 170 globalization and, 82 Great Recession, 137 religious communities, 117 subsocieties, 84 Surgeon General report, cigarettes, 188 Amin, Samir, 104 Amsterdam, 41 Arabs, 60, 119, 121, 124, 130, 136, 140, 141, 150, 160, 170–72, 176, 177, 195, 197
culture, 143, 171–72 cultural capital and, 125 cultural illiteracy, 201–4 education, 148, 200–5 independence, 155 percent of world trade, 88 population, 123 rulers and human resources, 134–35 sociocultural transformation, 162–63, 180–83 smoking, 188–91 traditional societies, 142 transforming women’s and men’s roles, 191–93 argeelah, 142, 143, 190 Arnold, Matthew, 64 Asia, 48, 83, 90, 99, 124, 130, 134, 136, 138, 192, 222 agriculture, 49 communication, 54, economic growth, 115, 116, 197 industrialization, 9 sociocultural transformation, 14, 182, 197 Asian Tigers, 103, 107, 109–110 Aswan Dam, 100 Aztecs, 52 B Baden, John, 18, 19 Bahrain, 180 Baldwin, Robert E., 133, 229, 233 Bangkok, 43 Bangladesh, 88, 122, 131, 137
240
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Index
Bauer, Peter, 140 Beirut, 3 Belgium, 42 Big Push, 102 Bolivia, 41, 121 Brazil, 84, 92, 182, 218 British Parliament, 95 Brundtland Report, 7, 17, 20, 23, 24 Brunel, Sylvie, 19 Burundi, 48 C Cairo, 3, 43, 100, 122, 130, 195 Calcutta, 43, 122 Catholicism, 121 Chile, 182 China, 9, 10, 11, 41, 84, 92, 110, 133, 143 agriculture, 49 culture and economy, 121, 122, 210, 221 economic growth, 61, 116, 197 industrialization, 14, 92, 218 industrial revolution, effects of, 60 sociocultural change, 69, 182 Christianity, 19, 60 Clark, Helen, 21, 226 Club of Rome, 17 Cohen, Boyd, 18, 225 Cold War, 134, 153 Colonialism, 28, 96, 97, 104, 105, 113, 128, 133, 138, 148, 233 comparative advantage, 85, 87, 88, 95 Corn Laws, 95 Cox, Harvey, 72 Croatia, 121 Croker, Chester A., 105 cultural determinism, 70, 115 cultural ghetto, 195, 196 D DAAD, 3 Dependency, 60, 61, 62, 64, 85, 97, 103, 104, 105, 196, 107, 110, 112, 128, 131, 140, 179
Diamond, Jared, 46, 49, 227, 234 Dokkan, 171 Dos Santos, Theotonio, 104, 228 Drucker, Peter, 85, 107, 207, 228, 231 E e-commerce, 83 economic competitiveness, 87, 216 Edwards, Michael, 112, 225, 229 Egypt, 52, 86, 88, 121, 122, 130, 136, 190, 195, 201 agriculture, 49 ancient civilization, 41–2 education, 169–70 exportation of labor, 197 industrial revolution, 60–1 sociocultural transformation, 100, 167, 180 England, 46, Industrial Revolution, 55, 60, 162 Enlightenment, 43 Erfurt University, 5 Ethiopia, 88 Eurasia, 49 Europe, 59, 107, 113, 218 European, 90, 99, 112, 139, agriculture, 49 communication, 54 driving, 119 free markets, 72 Great Recession, 219 industrial revolution, 55, 97, 112, 143 mercantilism, 95 Middle Ages, 116 sociocultural transformation, 162, 164, 197, 220, 222 tribes, 48 F Ferry, Luc, 19 First World, 13, 14, 83, 84 France, 41, 195 Frank, Andre Gunder, 104, 234 Friedman, Milton, 103, 111, 228, 234
Index Foundation for Research and Translation, 204 Fukuyama, Francis, 10, 11, 117, 120, 122, 225, 227, 229, 234 Confucianism, 9, 116 Confucian ethics, 9, 116, 121 G Galbraith, John Kenneth, 88, 96, 210, 228, 231, 234 Georgetown University, 4, 227, 230, 235 Germany, 3, 4, 25, 37, 88, 92, 122, 193, 194 Gill, Richard, 132 Ghost of Inflation, 90–91 Gibbon, Edward, 36 globalization, 5, 11, 13, 15, 22, 30, 43, 45, 65, 71, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 91, 92, 93, 97, 111, 112, 113, 119, 128, 131, 149, 153, 162, 168, 172, 179, 181, 196, 197, 198, 199, 198, 209, 213, 216, 221 God, 51, 72, 76, 78, 100, 101, 177, 213 Great Recession, 72, 91, 92, 111, 120–122, 137, 219 Greek, ancient civilization, 41, 42 Greenspan, Alan, 116, 117 H Harvard University, 87 Hecht, Joy, 21, 226 Hegel, Friedrich, 121, 122, 229, 235 Hirschman, Albert, 113, 229, 235 Hong Kong, 14, 69, 116 Hoselitz, Bert F., 98, 99, 235 I imperialism, 112 India, 41, 42, 52, 60, 61, 84, 92, 110, 119, 122, 182, 218 inflation, 89, 90, 91, 92, 109, 139, 219 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 82, 103, 105, 113 Iraq, 49, 153, 167, 180, 197 Iran, 121, 153, 176, 210
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241
Islam, 121 Islamic civilizations, 42 forces in Algeria, 175 religious teachers, 131 socialization principles, 121 traditional intellectuals, 182 J Japan, 11, 14, 42, 61, 69, 72, 73, 88, 110, 120, 121, 143, 221 Jericho, 2 Jews, expulsion from Spain, 60 Jordan, 5, 130, 131, 180, 182, 190, 195, 197, 201, 205 Jubran, Khalil Jubran, 129 K Kaplan, Robert, 81, 228, 235 Kates, Robert, 19, 25 Kennedy, Paul, 54, 139, 229, 235 Khatami, Mohammad, 10 Kim, Jim Yong, 192, 231 Korten, David, 111, 228, 135 Kureja, Sunil, 103, 228 Kuwait, 4, 167, 169, 174, 180, 195, 201 Kuwait University, 4, 106, 117, 170, 174, 177 L Lagos, 43, 122 Landes, David, 129, 183, 228, 229, 230, 235 Latin America, 4, 54, 60, 106, 124, 130, 134, 136, 139, 141, 182, 192, 197, 234 Lebanon, 3, 182, 197, 201, 231 Legrand Group, 18, 20, 225, 226 Limits to Growth, 18 London, 87, 122 Lucas, Robert, 124 M Malaysia, 105, 182 Manila, 43
242
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Index
Marxism, 13, 70, 117, 121, 140 Marx, Karl, 13, 43, 56, 59, 70, 117 Meadows, Dennis, 117 Meier, Gerald, 107, 112, 137, 228, 229, 236 Mercantilism, 95 Mexico, 42, 121, 197 Mexico City, 43, 122 Middle East, 4, 5, 48, 87, 130, 192 Millennium Declaration, 23, 226, 237 Mobutu, 139 Morocco, 5, 42, 156, 177, 201 Myint, Hla, 101, 102 N Naumann, Michael, 40 Nav Prerna, 183 Needham, Michael Thomas, 117, 225 New International Economic Order, 106 New World, 55, 60 New York, 122, 226, 128 Nigeria, 86, 88, 137 Nile River, 3 North Africa, 5, 192 North African Arab states, 197 North America, 42, 54, 55, 90 North Korea, 61, 73, 116 North-South, 13 O Ormerod, Paul, 112, 229, 236 P Pacoma, 41 Palestine, 49, 167, 197, 201 petroleum society, 4 Persians, 60 Pharoanic era, 42 Philippines, 88, 121, 131 Prebisch, Raul, 104, 106 Protestant Reformation, 59, 162 R Reagan, Ronald, 4 Renaissance, 43
Ricardo, David, 95 Rio Conference, 19 Roman civilization, 41 Rostow, W. W., 99, 100, 236 Russians, 100 Rwanda, 48 S Saudi Arabia, 121, 137, 148, 180, 191, 195 Sayigh, Yosif, 102, 228, 237 School Management College (SMC), 204, 205 Schumpeter, Joseph, 73, 74 Sears, Dudley, 112 Second World, 13, 14, 83, 84, 92 Shanghai, 25 Singapore, 14, 69, 73, 86, 105, 182 Smith, Adam, 74, 83, 95, 237 social capital, 9, 13, 108, 115, 116, 117, 124, 125, 136, 211 social democracy, 72 social trust, 9, 10, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125 Somalia, 48 Soros, George, 82, 228, 237 South America, 5, 41 Southeast Asian, 90 South Korea, 14, 69, 84, 110, 116, 133, 164, 182, 218 Soviet Union, 13, 72, 134, 153, Sowell, Thomas, 10, 40, 225, 227, 228, 230, 231, 237 Spain, 60, 193, 195 Spaniards, 124 Stanford University, 4 Stiglitz, Joseph, 8, 83, 225 Sub-Saharan Africa, 41 sustainable development, 7, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 61, 215 Syria, 49, 167, 180, 190, 197 Syrian Center for Smoking Research, 190 Sweden, 99
Index T Taiwan, 14, 69, 110, 116, 133, 137, Thailand, 42 Third World, 3, 11, 13, 14, 18, 19, 29, 42, 43, 54, 69, 83, 84, 86, 92, 96, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 112, 113, 119, 122, 127, 129, 131, 133, 125, 136, 138, 139, 140, 148, 152, 155, 156, 164, 165, 179, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 194, 196, 198, 222, 225, 229 Tokyo, 43 traditional trust, 72, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 132, transitional period, 1, 3, 4, 5, 27, 35, 50, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 114, 119, 162, 207, 208, 217 Turks, 60 U UN declaration of the 2005 World Summit, 17 UNESCO, 22, 201, 226, 227, 230, 233 United Arab Emirates, 172 United Nations (UN), 3, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 43, 106 United Nations Committee on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), 106 United States. See also America. 4, 27, 42, 45, 47, 61, 82, 101, 123, 124, 192, 207, 213, 218 Great Recession, 120–122, 137 Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, 22 University of London, 87 US Federal Reserve, 90, 91, 92, 101, 116, 219 US National Academy of Sciences, 19 V Van Doren, Charles, 47, 227 Van Gogh Museum, 41 Vietnam War, 4, 125 Volcker, Paul, 101, 228
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243
W Wallerstein, Emmanuel, 107, 237 Washington, DC, 4 Weatherford, Jack, 41, 54, 227, 237 Weber, Max, 59, 117, 122, 234 Weinberg, Steven, 71, 227 West industrial nations of, 7, 42, 54, 91, 165 culture, 43 cultural determinism and, 70 free markets in, 71, 137 influence, 128 education in, 152 Western achievements, 42 governments, 76 inflation, 90 industrialized states, 91, 106, 138 economic change, 96, 164 economic theories, 112 drivers, 119 ideas, 127, 134 countries, refuge in, 135 values, 162, 172 smoking, 189 transition, 217 “Western civilization,” 42, 59 Western Europe, 42, 90 Wikipedia, 225, 6, 31, 36 Winn, Monika I., 18, 225 World Bank, 24, 82, 96, 103, 105, 112, 164, 165, 192, 221, 230, 234, 238 World Health Organization, 29, 188, 230 World Trade Organization, 82, 91 world systems theory, 107 World War II, 61, 138 Y Yemen, 105, 180, 201 Young, Michael, 211 Z Zaire, 139, 140 Zurayk, Constantine, 40, 183, 227, 230
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