Transformation of the world
- London Macmillan 1983
- 105p
Volume 3 Culture and Thought
The Transformation of the World Under the General Editorship of Anouar Abdel-Malek this series is part of the United Nations University's project entitled Sociocultural Development Alternatives in a Changing World. The project falls within the Human and Social Development Program of the UNU led by Vice-Rector Prof Dr Kinhide Mushakoji. Further volumes in the series are: 1: Science and Technology 2: Economy and Society 4: Religion and Philosophy 5: The Making of the New International Order About this book: Both tradition and modernity in today's changing world are underlaid by struggles for national and popular self-determination, and claims to both must be evaluated in terms of such struggles. Does a given tradition provide an avenue for resistance to domination or does it serve as a means of reinforcing corruption, passivity and dependence? Is a given programme of modernisation the mobilisation of creative potentials or the extension of an institutionalised inferiority complex? This volume seeks an open, careful, scientific approach to questions such as these, with an approach based on sensitivity to the historical particularities of large, hitherto neglected, cuibural areas, and contributing effectively to a more equal, democratic and prosperous world. At the heart of the book is a re-evaluation of the dialectics of tradition and modernity, a critique of the stereotype which portrays these two terms as disjunctive within a unilinear scheme of progress', and an appreciation of the subtleties of sociocultural subjection and liberation in a variety of specific formations.