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

作者：Elie Salem · 发表于：Political Science Quarterly · 年份：1959 · DOI：10.2307/2145947 · 被引用次数：1189 · 研究领域：Islamic Finance and Banking Studies、Socioeconomic Development in MENA、Economic Growth and Development

PrefaceA DECADE of effort went into the studies from which this booknwas made. Another half-decade has passed since the book appeared. Thesenfifteen years have witnessed the passing of traditional society from everyncontinent. No area of the world has resisted the attractions, despite thenincreasingly evident risks, of modernization. The emerging nations havenhastened to become new states and emulate the ways of modern societies.Haste has made waste; risks have turned into losses. The qwant: getnratioq has been upset -- since people have learned to want for more thannthey can get. As a result, the qrevolution of rising expectationsq we celebratednso confidently fifteen years ago has, in many places, become a qrevolution of rising frustrations.q Modernization, it now appears, is hardernthan one supposed. Why is this so? Two difficulties are paramount.One is a qtechnicalq difficulty -- or can be made to seem so. This is thenproblem of raising income fast and high enough so that poor people, whilenraising their own consumption to acceptable levels, will still have somethingnleft over to save. These savings -- so runs the technical argument -- will thenngo into investment that raises production levels, which in turn will againnraise both consumption and saving levels. In this way there will be generatedna self-sustaining cycle of growth to replace the vicious circle ofnpoverty in which most traditional societies still live.The trouble with this cogent technical solution is people...