Showing papers on "Westernization published in 1981"

Novelist Sarat Chandra's perception of his Bengali home region: a literary geographic study

Abstract: Sarat Chandra, a Bengali novelist of the first half of the 20th century, has described the landscape of his southern Bengal Region and has interacted through his characters a deep psychological response appropriate to the region and time. His work forms an excellent resource base to reconstruct the region of his time and establish phenomenological relationship through the feelings expressed by the characters of his novels. Sarat Chandra's Home Region is a stream-filled area with people's activity directed to agriculture, though Calcutta was already established as a center of westernization and modernization. Feudal exploitation, Zamindars' tyrrany, degenerative caste-division, child marriage, prohibition of widow's right to remarry, decaying extended family and losing person-to-person relationship of the traditional Bengal were some of the characteristics of the regional cultural geography. The cities, particularly Calcutta, had started to show signs of modernization: industries, equal rights to women, widow re-marriage and elitist ideas. “Bramho Samaj” was pioneering the social modernization. In summation, the Home Region, being a transitional stage of decaying feudalism and incipient industrialization, was engaged in a struggle between the old and the new, decadent traditional and modern, rural and urban, caste rigidity and liberal social customs, religious fanaticism and rationalism. Sarat Chandra's work, particularly, provides an inroad to understand the cultural aspects of his Home Region.

Some economic and cultural aspects

Abstract: The open-door policy contains both economic and cultural threats to Egypt. The economic threats are those of dependence on foreign decisions and foreign capital. The cultural threats are the loss of traditional, national values essential to selfesteem, enthusiasm and creativity. More than 140 years have passed since the signing of the 1838 Agreement between England and the Ottoman Empire, according to which the Sultan (El Bab El-Aly) was committed to abolish, in all his territiories, monopoly systems that stood in the way of free trade. The main target of the convention was, however, to dismantle the monopoly system imposed by Mohamed Ali in Egypt, Syria and the Sudan. As a result, an "open-door policy" was imposed upon Egypt, bringing to an end an economic system in which Mohamed Ali was the "sole agriculturalist, the sole manufacturer, and the sole merchant." It deprived the new Egyptian industries, introduced by Mohamed Ali, of a highly effective system of protection; and "within a few years Egypt, to all intents and purposes, became a European colony, without a shot being fired" (Marlowe, 1974:22). As years passed, the Egyptian economy was increasingly integrated into the western economic system, and became increasingly dependent on the exportation of cotton. Foreign investment went primarily to the export sector and to services associated with it, and no other serious attempt at industrialization was to be made for the next 90 years. During those 90 years, Egypt witnessed the emergence of private ownership in agriculture, the beginning of accumulation of large landholdings, and Egyptian society was subjected to a process of westernization which was not experienced during Mohamed Ali's reign in spite of his successful attempts at introducing into Egyptian society many positive elements of western civilization. Under Mohamed Ali, European merchants and European officials of the Viceroy's service, on the whole, regarded Egypt as their adopted country and identified their interests with those of the ruler. They went to Europe comparatively seldom. They did not wish, and were indeed unable, to insulate themselves from the life of the country. There were no "European quarters" in Cairo or Alexandria. "European officials and merchants lived in Turkish-style houses, dressed in Turkishstyle clothes, ate Turkish food, and in most ways adapted themselves to the lifestyle of their wealthier neighbors" (Marlowe: 20-21). With the introduction of the open-door policy, all this changed and western consumer habits and western values came to Egypt with the new European adventurers, merchants and money lenders- with goods imported from Europe and with European investments. It is indeed difficult not to note striking similarities between what has been happening in Egypt since the introduction of the new open-door policy following Nasser's death in 1970, and what occured following the fall of Mohamed Ali's experiment. For although the last few years have witnessed only the beginning of this transformation, it is not difficult to see the dangers involved for Egypt's economic independence, the pattern of income distribution and the whole cultural climate. In this paper an attempt is made to show how Egypt's new economic open-door policy constitutes a serious threat on each of these three fronts.

Part I: Reproductive choices and behavior: A test of two theories of fertility variation with data from Monrovia, Liberia

Abstract: In attempting to account for the absence of a demographic transition in Africa, Caldwell (1977) has suggested that currently high fertility levels stem from a cultural system in which parents reap a net gain in wealth from their children, which tends to increase with family size. Continued exposure to Western culture, especially through educational institutions, will bring about a nucleation of obligations and expenditures, and a shift from the current emphasis on what children owe parents to a Western emphasis on what parents owe children. By bringing about a reversal in the net flow of material wealth, these cultural changes will alter the economic calculus, and fertility rates will decline. The changes Caldwell identifies as Westernization have already occurred in Liberia without bringing about either a “Westernization” of the family or declining birth rates. An explicit test of Caldwell's hypotheses suggests that there is no empirical linkage between these phenomena. An evolutionary perspecti...