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Industrial and Occupational Change in Peninsular Malaysia, 1947–70*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Charles Hirschman
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Extract

Only a couple of decades ago, the prospects for socio-economic development in the Third World seemed much brighter than at present. The economic theories of the 1950s and early 1960s, at least those of the North American variety, prescribed more capital investment (from domestic and foreign sources) which then would lead to a “take-off” into sustained economic growth. Political theorists advocated Western political development as an irreversible step which would lead to modern democratic societies. Other social scientists suggested that the spread of modern values — “modernity” — to the developing world would solve the basic problems of underdevelopment. Those days of simpleminded theories were buoyed by the short-term euphoria of the decolonization process. If the political leaders of the newly-independent states were determined to achieve development, as indeed they were, it seemed possible that these strategies would lead to progressive social and economic changes.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , March 1982 , pp. 9 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1982

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31 For earlier studies of some of these data, see Ma and You, op. cit.; Hassan, op. cit.; and Hirschman, Ethnic and Social Stratification in Peninsular Malaysia, op. cit.

32 Urban unemployment, especially among youth, is a problem of significant magnitude. See Charles Hirschman, “Unemployment Among Urban Youth in Peninsular Malaysia, 1970”, Economic Development and Cultural Change. Forthcoming.