Unions in emerging societies
- New York Syracuse Univ. Press 1964
- 124 p.
The process of development in an emerging society is not meath. It is discontinus, rough, franght with social dislocation and personal gedy. Old established institutions which have historically served the mligious, atletie, or economic life of a selety are sometimes repliseed by new ones in the course of social change, or sometimes so thoroughly reconstructed as to be unrecognizable. The exaggerated but often highly sophisticated art of the unlettered African, the wooden figures and masks will likely not persiet long if industrialization, urbanization, and general development remake what is poverty-ridden primitive Africa. The temple dancers of Southeast Asia, the extended family, and the institution of the 100 per cent interest rate for agricultural loans to small farmers, all too will probably disappear or undergo drastic change if Southeast Asia emerges into the world of a high standard of living with modern technology and social organization. But, as costly and dislocative as such changes are, the new era will contain, to offset the new problems and troubles, its own appreciable benefits, among them creature comforts, political and social choices, and a chance to seek and find individual fulfillment.
The heady wines of individualism and scientific orientation of the Western Enlightenment will probably not flow again in the emerging societies. But it is most likely that new values, new attitudes, and new social forms will be invented and developed as part of the process of development, which might become the New Enlightenment of the underdeveloped world..