PEOPLES IN TRANSITION

1. Ways of Looking at the World

Anthropologists have long concentrated on the study of simple or small
scale societies that are sell contained wholes. Although information about such
societies is necessary to building a body of knowledge about human behavior, the
societies themselves are relatively unimportant as far as world affairs are
concerned. Moreover, most of these societies are in process of change, and almost
all of them are now parts of larger wholes. To understand the modern world these
larger units must be taken into account.
Robert Redfield has suggested a way of roughly grouping societies in term
of their culture histories. There are the old civilizations, the people with a great
tradition, some of which are still functioning as large scale societies even though
their present world positions do not measure up to the proud roles they played in
the past. The peoples in most of these still functioning primary civilizations, Such
as China, Korea, and India, are struggling to orient themselves to the modern
technological world; some of them, notably in Japan, have achieved technological
competence. In many places of the world, however, the present day inhabitants are
the physical and spatial descendants of greatness without being its cultural heirs.
These are the peoples who live on in the great river valleys or in the midst of
ancient ruins from which the glory has long since departed, sometimes even from
the memory of the peoples whose ancestors created it.
In other areas there are what have been called secondary civilizations,
local cultures that have been more or less submerged under expanding and
colonizing powers from elsewhere. In some areas the local cultures were largely
destroyed, supplanted, or isolated as in America north of Mexico, in New
Zealand, and Australia. In other areas, local cultures were overlaid and dominated
by the invaders without being wholly destroyed in the process. Much of Latin
America and many of the areas into which Hinduism and Islam spread fall into
this category.

Wherever there is a great tradition there are also to be found, little

traditions; nowhere outside the simple small scale society, and sometime not even
there, is there a single way of life. The literate, the wealthy, the sophisticated, the
scholar, the priest, and the philosopher have a way of though and a way of life that
differs from that of the illiterate and unsophisticated masses. Moreover, the whole
word is now, and for some decades has been, in a kind of revolutionary fermeal
that breaks down the barriers separating one kind of society and one kind of
people from another. Ideas are being scattered to remote places as if they were
seeds borne on the wind.
Another way of looking at the world is in terms of realized potential, and
this view has led to the classification of countries into developed and
underdeveloped groups. In The Nature of the Non-Western World Vera Micheles
Dean makes the division between western and nonwestern countries.

This

dichotomy does not mean that the western and non-western world is all of a piece
or that being non-western makes other peoples all alike. And, of course, western
in this sense is a state of mind, or a state of technological development, rather than
a geographical, position.
In sthe sense of hight technological development, the western world is
primarily the world of Northern and Western Europe and the countries settled by
peoples from this area. It is, as we have seen, a world developed during the past
five hundred years. Southern and Eastern Europe went somewhat separate ways
that left them apart from the main line of development, of what we now think of
as modern western civilization and many of these countries would all into a semiWestern civilization, and many of these countries would all into a semi-western or
intermediate category.
The intermediate and highly developed countries are now in control of
world affairs, but the fact that two thirds of the worlds peoples are in
underdeveloped countries gives to them a potential influence of enormous
magnitude. Furthermore, as we look at the characteristicts of this great segment of
mankind, we begin to understand the gap that separates them from the peoples
who have greater economic advantages. For the most part, the underdeveloped

world is desperately poor by western standards; much of it is chronically hungry;

it is weighted down with the burdens of poor health, poor sanitation, and
inadequate medical care. It has a high rate of illiteracy, a generally low
educational level, and it is technologically poor. In many of the underdeveloped
countries there is a small, wealthy, upper class, but the privileges of this group are
not generally shared by the masses. A middle class is often small or nonexistent.
Although there are wide differences between the old civilizations of Asia
and the non literate cultures of Oceania and Africa these various non Western
people have many things in common besides those factors that place them in the
underdeveloped category. Perhaps the two things that do more to give them a
sense of unity can be summed up as colonialism and color.
We now know that an individual pigmentation is not an important factor in
his behavior. But since the majority of non-western peoples are dark, and they live
in the less favored areas of the world, is it not surprising that many western
consider color a symbol of backwardness and inferiority. And because, at one
time or another, most of the non-western people have been the victims of western
discrimination based on color, it is not surprising that many of them consider
white skin a symbol of arrogance and an object of hatred.
Colonialism too is heavily weighted with racial connotations. During the
period of exploration and conquest most of the non-western world came under the
control of European governments; even the countries that remained politically
independent were subject to varying degrees of economic control. Many of the
subject peoples reeled under the blow of too sudden, too violent, or too prolonged
impact and were either annihilated or absorbed. What is now the United States,
Canada, Australia and New Zealand were taken from the hands of aboriginal
populations? The majority of the Latin American countries have been, in varying
degrees, colonized and Europeanized. In some those, such as Argentina and Cuba,
there are no aboriginals left. In others, the Indians still form a high proportion of
the population; and in still others, the population represents varying degrees of
mixture of Europeans, aboriginal Indians, and Negro peoples imported from
Africa during the period of the slave trade.

In some areas, such as Southeast Asia, there have been successive waves
of people and of cultural influences Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim peoples swept
over large areas of the world long before modern Christian missionaries began
their work or European governments started their colonial expansion. Ultimately,
however, European governments gained political control of almost the whole of
Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands, and maintained spheres of
influence in East Asia and elsewhere.
No one needs to be told that the underdeveloped or non-Western world is
now on the move. The day of Kiplings silent, sullen peoples has long since
passed. Today, they are vocal and rebellious. One by one they are throwing of the
control of the western powers and the voice of their discontent can be heard
around the world. The reasons for this revolution are fairly obvious though they
are complex. When the European governments gained control they instituted
programs of one kind and another that profoundly influenced existing until
relatively recent years were those set up by the missions.
World War I marked the beginning of mobility and communication on a
wide scale. During and since that time men from all over the world have fought in
British, French, German, Dutch, Italian, and America armies on various races,
languages, and religions fought side by side in the same units, shared the same
rations, and wore the same uniforms. They went back to their homes with new
ideas, new standards, new values, and new desires. In the meantime, motion
pictures, radios, television, and the printed page carried ideas and propaganda
from one side of the world to another. Hordes of tourists swarmed over the globe.
Government missions and agencies multiplied. Various commissions of the united
nations, international, state, and private agencies moved into troubled or needy
areas. Thousands of students from all over the world began to study in the
colleges and universities of the west, and foreign visitors in Europe and America
became commonplace.
Something of the strength of this impact may be measured in its political
manifestations. World War II saw the beginning of the end of European power in
Asia and Africa. Today the list of recently independent countries is an impressive

one: India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Burma, Malaya, the Republic of Indonesia, Israel,
the Philiphines, Libya, Tunisia, Moroco, the Sudan, and Ghana are among the
nations that were not on the map as independent states until after the close of
World War II. By the early 1960s another dozen or more independent states had
been carved out of former European colonies in Africa.
To the free world an ominous factor in this changing situation is the fact
that while most of the peoples formerly controlled by the all colonial powers have
gained their independence, other peoples formerly independent have either been
absorbed in to the Soviet Union or have become puppet satellites of the
Communist powers. Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania are no longer independent
entities. Tibet has lost whatever freedom it once possessed, and Korea, Vietnam,
Germany are divided. The constant stream of refugees who use any means to
escape Communist-controlled countries is as significant as are the struggles of the
newly independent nations to gain political stability and economic sufficiency.
The rejection of western political control does not mean a rejection of
Western civilization, particularly its material aspect. A part of the problem of
these peoples on the move lies in the fact that many of them are trying to achieve
within a period of a few years technological levels, social control, and forms of a
few years technological levels, social controls, and forms of government that it
has taken the West generations to master. Many of the underdeveloped countries
lack economic resources, an educated electorate, traditions of democracy, and
experience in self-government. In some cases they have been catapulted from the
Stone Age to the Nuclear Age in one generation. Failure to make this transition
successfully in no evidence of their lack of capacity for self-government; it would
be something of a miracle if people could wholly achieve such drastic changes in
so brief a time. It is to our interest as well as to their that they make the transition
as successfully and as quickly as possible, and with a minimum loss of their
distinctive characteristics and treasured values.