Structurs Of Resistance

11 Pages 2702 Words

The nature of interaction between traditional agrarian society and the ‘modern world’ has remained a controversial debate amongst anthropologists, sociologists and political theorists. It remains contentious as to whether the dominance of modern values over traditional is desirable; whether the arrival of the market and modern commerce betters or worsens the conditions of rural society and its relationship with the metropol; whether such change is received with apprehension or optimism by the members of rural society. Joel Migdal, for example, puts forth certain arguments proposing the concept of ‘culture contact’—‘that exposure and contact are the causes of change.’ Migdal identifies three reasons suggesting why such change would be likely to occur: (1) The benefits of the modern far outweigh the benefits of the traditional. (2) The individual is free from severe institutional restraints which would prevent him from making an unimpeded decision. (3) Those individuals who select the new are rational and are optimisers, and those individuals who do not accept the modern fail to do so because of “wrong” or nonrational values.’ Most theorists, however, tend to agree that modern society, for good or bad, is clearly encroaching on traditional agrarian society and gradually moulding its values, economic systems and sociopolitical institutions into variants of the modern equivalent. However, this consensus fails to account for one extremely significant fact: that despite the overwhelming economic, political and cultural dominance of the modern world, traditional agrarian structures continue to persist in various forms: the feudal estates of Third World countries, plantations and latifundismos in Southern Italy and much of Latin America, and so on. The questions thus arise: why do such traditional social relations persist in spite of the modern impulse? Why do customs and rituals and social codes play such an important part ...