Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T03:31:44.247Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Re-Visioning the Future of the Third World: An Ecological Perspective on Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Edward J. Woodhouse
Edward J. Woodhouse
Affiliation:
Yale University
Get access

Extract

Until recently, the commonly accepted notion of human social development held that static “traditional” societies passed through a dynamic transitional period and came to rest again as “modern” industrial societies. Such simplistic stage and linear development theories have now been formally superseded by Huntington's formulation of development and decay as concurrent processes with no necessary endstate. There remains, however, an implicit assumption that highly populated, urbanindustrial societies with continuously growing economies are the proper goal of development, and that the current internal political and economic processes of third-world nations are the proper subject of study.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , October 1972 , pp. 1 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1972

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

* An earlier version of this essay was accepted by the Yale Political Science Department as a Ph.D. qualifying exam. I am grateful to Peggy Goodman, Conrad Morrow, and Alfred Stepén for encouragement when I needed it most.

1 Such a view was held by most of the great evolutionary dieorists, and the assumptions of American scholars did not diverge much from this paradigm in the 1950's, as almost any article in Almond, Gabriel and Coleman, James, eds., The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton 1960)Google Scholar will demonstrate. The work of the SSRC led to greater recognition of obstacles to development and to attempts at identifying explicitly political development. A review of mese conceptual struggles is in Pye, Lucian, “The Concept of Political Development,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, CCCLVIII (March 1965), 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In order to shorten a long article, references to the standard literature of development will be infrequent.

2 Huntington, Samuel P., “Political Development and Political Decay,” World Politics, XVII (April 1965), 386–430.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 An analytic review of the post-Huntington paradigm of development is in Keir Nash, A. E., “Pollution, Population, and the Cowboy Economy: Anomalies in the Developmentalist Paradigm and Samuel Huntington,” Journal of Comparative Administration, 11 (May 1970), 109–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Lipset, Seymour Martin, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Garden City, N.Y. 1960), 50Google Scholar; emphasis added.

In Richard Merelman's six-stage learning paradigm of legitimacy formation, material inducements from government to population are the primary stimulus in the reinforcement process: “Learning and Legitimacy,” American Political Science Review, LX (June 1966), 548–61.

5 Apter, David, in The Politics of Modernization (Chicago 1965)Google Scholar, makes an important conceptual distinction between modernization, which he believes to be almost inevitable, and industrialization, which he believes to be a long way off in many poor nations. Joseph LaPalombara recognizes the dim likelihood of successful industrialization in many nations: “Distribution: A Crisis in Resource Management,” in Binder, Leonard and others, Crises and Sequences in Political Development (Princeton 1971), 233–82.Google Scholar

6 Rosenau, James, ed., Linkage Politics (New York 1969), 2.Google Scholar In this volume, see especially Douglas Chalmers, “Developing on the Periphery: External Factors in Latin American Politics,” 67–93.

7 Historical, physical, and international are the qualities that I understand by the broader term, “ecological.” Ecology is the study of the relation of an organism (or a group of organisms) to the system of which it is a part. The recent use of the term for problems that were once called “environmental” should not narrow the meaning in this essay. Recent work by political scientists which is in essential agreement with the thrust of this essay includes Sprout, Harold and Sprout, Margaret, Toward a Politics of the Planet Earth (New York 1971)Google Scholar; Falk, Richard A., This Endangered Planet: Prospects and Proposals for Human Survival (New York 1971)Google Scholar; Meadows, Donella H. and others, The Limits of Growth (New York 1972).Google Scholar

8 Report of the MIT Study of Critical Environmental Problems, Man's Impact on the Global Environment: Assessment and Recommendations for Action (Cambridge, Mass. 1970)Google Scholar [hereafter cited as SCEP].

9 White, Lynn Jr, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologie Crisis,” Science, CLV (March 10, 1967), 1203–07.Google Scholar

10 Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven 1968), 99; emphasis added.

11 The summary of some major environmental effects of technology which follows is too short to do justice to the topic. My intention is primarily to point out that a great many competent scientists believe that man has the ability rapidly to terminate the earth's life-support system, and that this factor is of central importance to development theory.

12 Ehrlich, Paul R. and Ehrlich, Anne H., Population, Resources, Environment (San Francisco 1970), 188Google Scholar; see also 127, 128, and 185–89 for a discussion of water pollution. Much of the Ehrlichs' work provides an excellent text for this discussion, although their interpretations may at times be more alarmist than the facts warrant. My analysis is based largely on Commoner, Barry, Science and Survival (New York 1967).Google Scholar

13 “Blueprint for Survival,” The Ecologist, 1 (January 1972), reprinted in the Congressional Record (January 24, 1972), H210–H232; it is a competent although extreme assessment of the response Britain should make to environmental destruction. Written by the editors, the forty thousand-word statement was signed by thirty-three leading scientists.

14 See SCEP (fn. 8), on “Pesticide Addiction,” 136, 158–59.

15 The special properties of chlorinated hydrocarbons are explained in Ehrlich and Ehrlich (fn. 12), 168–70. For an overall view, see Rudd, Robert L., Pesticides and the Living Landscape (Madison 1964)Google Scholar, or Woodwell, G. M., “Toxic Substances and Ecological Cycles,” Scientific American, CCXVI (March 1967), 24–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 The lag time in detection of effects (so that by the time negative consequences are proven, it may be too late for a reversal to be possible) can be seen from the recency of this evidence: one of the first convincing studies was Ratclirfe, D. A., “Decrease in Eggshell Weight in Certain Birds of Prey,” Nature, CCXV (July 8, 1967), 208–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Wurster, Charles F., “DDT Reduces Photosynthesis by Marine Phytoplankton,” Science, CLIX (March 29, 1968), 1474–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar SCEP (fn. 8), 126–36, doubts that DDT will reach concentrations dangerous to plankton in the open oceans, but may in surface oil film and coastal environments important as breeding grounds for fish. Yields of marine food fish are already declining, and oceanologist Jacques Cousteau foresees potentially irreversible damage to the oceans from the pollutants of technological civilization.

18 Cancer in children, for instance, may well be a consequence of industrial civilization. A summary of the literature on chemical mutagens is in Sanders, Howard J., “Chemical Mutagens,” Chemical and Engineering News, XXXXVII (May 19, 1969), 50–65ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ibid. (June 2, 1969), 54–68.

19 See SCEP (fn. 8), 137–38, 260–63.

20 Hodgson, Thomas A., “Short-Term Effects of Air Pollution on Mortality in New York City,” Environmental Science and Technology, IV (July 1970), 589–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Quoted in Ehrlich and Ehrlich (fn. 12), 119.

22 This point is made in Daly, Herman E., “Toward A Stationary Economy,” in Harte, John and Socolow, Robert H., eds., The Patient Earth (New York 1971), 226–44.Google Scholar On a different method of calculating GNP so that costs of pollution would be subtracted rather than added, see Boulding, Kenneth, “Fun and Games with the Gross National Product: The Role of Misleading Indicators in Social Policy,” in Helfrich, Harold, ed., The Environmental Crisis: Man's Struggle to Live with Himself (New Haven 1970), 157–70.Google Scholar

23 Ehrlich and Ehrlich (fn. 12), 118.

24 Cole, Lamont C., “Thermal Pollution,” Bioscience, XIX (November 1969), 989–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and corrected calculations in ibid., XX (January 15, 1970), 72. A similar estimate is made in Summers, Claude M., “The Conversion of Energy,” Scientific American, CCXXV (September 1971), 148–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Unwanted sounds are doubling, at least, every decade, and everyone in an urban environment suffers some hearing loss; see Navarra, John, Our Noisy World (Garden City, N.Y. 1969).Google Scholar Urban sewage systems are generally overloaded and the water is impure; treatment plants are designed to produce an effluent rich in inorganic nitrates and phosphates which creates problems similar to those caused by inorganic fertilizers; see Ehrlich and Ehrlich (fn. 12), 187–89. On food additives, see Benarde, Melvin A., The Chemicals We Eat (New York 1971).Google Scholar On the deterioration of soil in Britain, see Pilpel, Neiton, “Structure of the Soil Under Stress,” The Ecologist, 1 (December 1971), 20–23.Google Scholar

26 Based on a 5% annual rate of growth in ecological demand: “Blueprint for Survival” (fn. 13), H214.

27 Ibid., H210.

28 Some of die environmental consequences of the misuse of technology in the poorer nations are reviewed in American Museum of Natural History, “The Unforeseen International Ecologie Boomerang,” Natural History, LXXVIII (February 1969)Google Scholar, Supplement.

29 King Hubbert, M., “Energy Resources,” in Committee on Resources and Man, of the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, Resources and Man (San Francisco 1969), 157–239Google Scholar; quote from 205. [Hereafter cited as Resources and Man.]

30 Energy Resources, A Report to the Committee on Natural Resources, National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council (Washington, D.C. 1962), 132.

31 Hubbert (fn. 29), 226.

32 If controlled nuclear fusion ever becomes practical—it is now possible for fractions of a second in laboratories—fuel problems will be radically altered, since fusion can produce energy from ordinary water. The possibilities and limits of the process are discussed in Peter III, Walter G., “Controlled Fusion: A Multifaceted Approach to Solving Environmental Degradation,” Bioscience, XX (fune 15, 1970), 717–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and in Gough, William C. and Eastlund, Bernard J., “The Prospects of Fusion Power,” Scientific American, CCXXIV (February 1971), 50–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Novick, Sheldon, “Radiation Damage,” in Blau, Sheridan and Rodenbeck, John von, eds., The House We Uve in: An Environmental Reader (New York 1971), 137–50Google Scholar; quote from 150. See also his longer work, The Careless Atom (Boston 1969), and Curtis, Richard and Hogan, Elizabeth, Perils of the Peaceful Atom: The Myth of Safe Nuclear Plants (Garden City, N.Y. 1969).Google Scholar

34 Barnett, Harold J. and Morse, C., Scarcity and Growth (Baltimore 1963), 7.Google Scholar For a short summary of the optimists] position, see Barnett, Harold J., “The Myth of Our Vanishing Resources,” Transaction, IV (June 1967), 7–10.Google Scholar

35 Weinberg, Alvin M., an engineer, asks “Can Technology Replace Social Engineering?” and answers in the affirmative, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, XXII (December 1966), 4–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Garrett Hardin, a biologist, argues that the public-goods problems of population and environment can only be solved by collective political agreement not to allow certain behavior: “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science, CLXII (December 13, 1968), 1243–48. B. L. Crowe, a political scientist, asserts that neither social nor technological solutions are likely to come about: “The Tragedy of the Commons Revisited,” Science, CLXVI (November 28, 1969), 1103–07.

36 Barnett and Morse (fn. 34), 7.

37 Cloud, Preston E. Jr, “Realities of Mineral Distribution,” Texas Quarterly, XI (Summer 1968), 103–26Google Scholar; quote from 107. See also Chapman, John D., “Interactions Between Man and His Resources,” in Resources and Man (fn. 29), 31–42.Google Scholar For a more optimistic view, but generally based on projections only for the U.S. and only to the year 2000, see Landsberg, Hans H., Fischman, Leonard L., and Fisher, Joseph L., Resources in America's Future; Patterns of Requirements and Availabilities, 1060–2000 (Baltimore 1963).Google Scholar

38 From Cloud (fn. 37), 123, based on data in Flawn, P. T., Mineral Resources (Chicago 1966).Google Scholar

39 Lovering, T. S., “Minerai Resources from the Land,” in Resources and Man (fn. 29), 109–34Google Scholar, contains both empirical data and a theoretical discussion of estimation procedures which tend to support Cloud (fn. 37) and a pessimistic position on mineral scarcity.

40 See Horowitz, Irving L., “Engineering and Sociological Perspectives on Development: Inter-Disciplinary Constraints in Social Forecasting,” International Social Science Journal, XXI, No. 4 (1969), 545–56.Google Scholar

41 Boulding (fn. 22), 166.

42 Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society (New York 1964), VII.Google Scholar It is instructive to compare the preface of the 1964 edition, stressing the obstacles to development, with the generally optimistic tone of the original (1958) edition.

43 Ibid., 47.

44 Easton, David, The Political System (New York 1953)Google Scholar introduced this widely cited definition. Authoritative (in the sense of unquestioned or conclusive) decisions having great impact on people's lives are often made in largely non-governmental ways, and have been ignored by political scientists. Multinational corporations are an obvious example, as is the basic structure of modern technocratic society.

45 Ehrlich and Ehrlich (fn. 12), 6.

46 Goran Ohlin reviews many population estimates in Population Control and Economic Development (Paris 1967). Underestimation of South Asian population is discussed in Myrdal, Gunnar, Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations (New York 1968), Vol. II, 1390–91Google Scholar, 1448–59.

47 Data are drawn from the Statistical Office of the U.N., World Population Prospects, Population Studies No. 41 (New York 1966).Google Scholar

48 Kirk, Dudley, “A New Demographic Transition?” in National Academy of Sciences, Rapid Population Growth: Consequences and Policy Implications (Baltimore 1971), 123–47Google Scholar; and Frederiksen, Harald, “Feedbacks in Economic and Demographic Transition,” Science, CLXVI (November 14, 1969), 837–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 The Population Council, Annual Report of 1970, quoted in “Blueprint for Survival” (fn. 13), H216.

50 The nutrition estimate is that of the President's Science Advisory Committee, Panel on the World Food Supply, The World Food Problem (Washington, D.C. 1967).Google Scholar Other estimates such as Dumont, Rene and Rosier, Bernard, The Hungry Future (New York 1969)Google Scholar and previous U.N. figures discussed in Ohlin (fn. 46) are in basic agreement. The figure of 20 million is from Ehrlich, Paul R., “Famine 1975: Fact or Fallacy?” in Helfrich (fn. 22), 47–64.Google Scholar

51 Another possible panacea, in the opinion of some, is growing food in the oceans. For a critique of the “unlimited riches of the sea” theory, see Ricker, William E., “Food from the Sea,” in Resources and Man (fn. 29), 87–108.Google Scholar

52 See Paddock, William, “How Green Is the Green Revolution?” Bioscience, XX (August 15, 1970), 897–902CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wharton, Clifton R. Jr, “The Green Revolution: Cornucopia or Pandora's Box?” Foreign Affairs, XXXXVII (April 1969), 464–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 National Academy of Sciences (fn. 48), 74.

54 “Blueprint fors Survival” (fn. 13), H213.

55 Growing populations may, however, turn third-world governments away from the delusive concentration on industrializadon which has symbolized “modernity” at the expense of a stable foundation. On the need for attention to the agricultural sector, see Schultz, Theodore W., Economic Growth and Agriculture (New York 1968).Google Scholar

56 Hicks, J. R., quoted in Ohlin (fn. 46), 54.Google Scholar

57 See Boserup, Ester, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change Under Population Pressure (London 1965).Google Scholar Although Albert Hirschman calls it a cruel solution, he believes that “the qualities of imagination and organization developed in … maintaining standards of living in the face of population pressures are very similar to those that are needed to increase per capita income.” The Strategy of Economic Development (New Haven 1958), 177.

58 A fascination widi universal models and theories in modern social science has often led to a failure to recognize that relationships that were valid at one time may not hold at another. Historical experiences and cross-sectional comparisons obviously yield some insights, but “lessons” often become mind-sets. A critique of this tendency is Thorson, Thomas L., Biopolitics (New York 1970).Google Scholar In my view, there is no such thing as a general theory of economic or political development, because different collectivities will need different developmental paths in accord with their cultures, human and physical resources, and the changing international environment.

59 See Coale, Ansley J., “Population and Economic Development,” in Hauser, Philip, ed., The Population Dilemma (Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 1963), 46–69.Google Scholar The theoretical data are presented more fully in Coale, and Hoover, Edgar, Population Growth and Economic Development in Low-Income Countries (Princeton 1958).Google Scholar

60 Erike, Stephen, “The Economic Aspects of Slowing Population Growth,” Economic Journal, LXXVI (March 1966), 46Google Scholar; Ohlin (fn. 46), 117. For other calculations, see Enke, , “The Gains to India from Population Control: Some Money Measures and Incentive Schemes,” Review of Economics and Statistics, XXXXII (May 1960), 175–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Demeny, Paul, “Investment Allocation and Population Control,” Demography, 11 (1965), 203–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 Myrdal (fn. 46), Vol. III, “A Note on Inadequate Approaches to the Economic Effects of Population Changes,” 2063–76; also Ohlin, (fn. 46), 113–16.Google Scholar

62 Such work is now beginning. John D. Montgomery has developed five typologies which form an index for pegging probable political and administrative consequences of demographic increase in “Effects of Rapid Population Growth on Government Administration,” paper presented to the U.S. Department of State Conference on Effects of Rapid Population Growth on Political Change in LDC's, February 17, 1972. Also, Myron Weiner, “Political Demography: An Inquiry into the Political Consequences of Population Change,” in National Academy of Sciences (fn. 48), 567–617.

An inter-nation focus is found in Robert C. North and Nazli Choucri's Nations in Conflict: Prelude to World War I (forthcoming), which finds statistical relationships between population growth and belligerent behavior leading to war; see also their “Population, Technology, and Resources in the Future International System,” Journal of International Affairs, XXV (Autumn 1971).

63 Illich, Ivan D., “Sexual Power and Political Potency,” in Celebration of Awareness: A Call for Institutional Revolution (Garden City, N.Y. 1970), 137–55Google Scholar; quote from 143.

64 Ibid., 142, 144.

65 For a discussion of attitudes toward birth-control programs in Latin America, see Mayone Stycos, J., “Politics and Population Control in Latin America,” World Politics, XX (October 1967), 66–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also his Human Fertility in Latin America (Ithaca 1968).

66 Non-Americans and Marxists have been more aware of the effects of dominance. A classic starting point is Baran, Paul, The Political Economy of Growth (New York 1957).Google Scholar Myrdal (fn. 46), Furtado, Celso, Obstacles to Development in Latin America (Garden City, N.Y. 1970)Google Scholar, and Cardoso, Fernando Henrique and Faletto, Enzo, Dependencia y Desarrollo en America Latina (Lima 1967)Google Scholar, oder good contemporary interpretations.

67 See Russett, Bruce M., “Rich and Poor in 2000 A.D.: The Great Gulf,” Virginia Quarterly Review, XXXXIV (Spring 1968), 182–98.Google Scholar Also Boulding, (fn. 22), 167–68.Google Scholar Thomas E. Weisskopf calculates per capita growth somewhat lower, 2.2% for nonsocialist poor countries, and 3.0% for non-socialist rich ones from 1950–1967, based on growth indices in the Statistical Yearbook of the United Nations, 1968. Weisskopf, , “Capitalism, Underdevelopment, and the Future of the Poor Countries,” The Review of Radical Political Economics, IV (Spring 1972), 1–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68 For instance, how much better off, in terms of transportation, are the people of Los Angeles with all their automobiles than those of Mexico City with its new subway? See also fn. 22.

69 For example, Ayal, Eliezer B., “Value Systems and Economic Development in Japan and Thailand,” Journal of Social Issues, XIX (January 1963), 35–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hauser, Philip M., “Cultural and Personal Obstacles to Economic Development in the Less Developed Areas,” Human Organization, XVIII (Summer 1959), 78–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 Ibid.

71 For Brazil, see Leff, Nathaniel H., Economic Policy-Making and Development in Brazil 1947–1964 (New York 1968)Google Scholar; for Argentina, Merkx, Gilbert, Politics and Social Change in Argentina, unpubl. Ph.D. diss. (Yale 1967).Google Scholar For the role of foreign capital, including early boost effects and subsequent growing dependence, see Hirschman, Albert, “How to Divest in Latin America, and Why,” Princeton Essays in International Finance, No. 76 (November 1969).Google Scholar

72 From 1946 to 1967, for instance, profit remittances to the U.S. were $9.4 billion more than new investment; Santos, Theotonio Dos, “The Structure of Dependence,” American Economic Review, LX (May 1970), 231–36.Google ScholarMagdoff, Harry A., The Age of Imperialism: The Economics of US. Foreign Policy (New York 1969)Google Scholar develops this thesis in great detail. See also Weisskopf (fn. 67).

73 Wolff, Richard D., “Modern Imperialism: The View from the Metropolis,” American Economic Review, LX (May 1970), 225–30Google Scholar; quote from 229. For an excellent unintended application, see Szereszewski, R., Structural Changes in the Economy of Ghana 1891–1911 (London 1965).Google Scholar

74 Dos Santos (fn. 72).

75 Arthur Lewis, W., The Theory of Economic Growth (Homewood, Ill. 1955), 379–80Google Scholar is one of many who have warned that income redistribution might have negative effects on capital formation. Ironically, Richard Bird has found that the private sector in Colombia saves poorly because of the high marginal propensity of the upper classes to consume: “Income Redistribution and Tax Policy in Colombia,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, XVIII (July 1970), 519–35.

78 Nulty, Timothy and Nulty, Leslie, “Pakistan: The Busy Bee Route to Development,” Transaction, VII (February 1971), 18–26Google Scholar; quote from 24. See also MacEwan, Arthur, “Contradictions in Capitalist Development: The Case of Pakistan,” The Review of Radical Political Economics, III (Spring 1971), 40–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

77 It is discouraging to see how little has been learned from experience. The Pearson Commission report asks for more of the same type of aid: Partners in Development: Report of the Commission on International Development (New York 1969). Assessments and critiques of the liberal assumptions are in the Journal of International Affairs, XXIV (Autumn 1970). A conservative criticism is in Huntington, Samuel, “Foreign Aid for What and for Whom,” Foreign Policy (Winter 1970–1971), 161–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

78 Daly, Herman E., “A Marxian-Malthusian View of Poverty and Development,” Population Studies, XXV (March 1971), 25–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

79 Daly, Herman E., “The Population Question in Northeast Brazil: Its Economic and Ideological Dimensions,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, XVIII (July 1970), 536–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

80 Daly, Herman E., “A Marxian-Malthusian View of Poverty and Development,” Yale Economic Growth Center Discussion Paper No. 80 (February 1970), 40–41.Google Scholar

81 Illich (fn. 63), “Planned Poverty: The End Result of Technical Assistance,” 149–66; quote from 165–66.

82 Ibid., 160.

83 Ibid., 159. For the view of an African scholar who is more optimistic about avoiding permanent damage from aid, see Amin, Samir, “Development and Structural Change: The African Experience, 1950–1970,” Journal of International Affairs, XXIV (Autumn 1970), 203–23.Google Scholar

84 Russett (fn. 67).

85 Kenneth Boulding has long argued that GNP should be minimized; it doesn't represent the level of welfare, but the cost of maintaining a given level of welfare. Subject to environmental and social restraints, what should be maximized is individual utility. This can be done with a large stock of very durable goods and a small annual flow. Flow represents turning resources into garbage and should be minimized. See “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth,” in Jarrett, Henry, ed., Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy (Baltimore 1966), 3–14.Google Scholar Daly (fn. 78), argues that concentration on flow is ideologically convenient for economists, because income is more susceptible to improvement than is wealth. Wealth is more important in determining living standards, but it is a “political” question which doesn't conveniently fit economic models or liberal views of society.

86 Such changes might well constitute the most desirable path of human social development even if no physical requirements existed. An increasing number of affluent Americans might judge life in an African village or a Tibetan monastery to be preferable to life in New York City. See Bookchin, Murray, Post-Scarcity Anarchism (Berkeley 1971)Google Scholar, for a thoughtful presentation of the possibilities of a decentralized life style.

87 The probability of many rich or poor nations following the paths prescribed without massive upheaval may be close to zero, but mat has no bearing on whemer the paths are valid descriptions of what would constitute development. In social science there is a tendency to compare nations and people with each other rather than against standards drawn from an analysis of “the good” or “the possible.” This has the virtue of “objectivity,” but also often the fault of irrelevance to important human problems.

88 Roszak, Theodore, The Making of a Counter-Culture: Notes on the Technocratic Society and its Youthful Opposition (Garden City, N.Y. 1969), 8–9.Google Scholar

89 Schaar, John, “Legitimacy in the Modern State,” in Green, Philip and Levinson, Sanford, Power and Community: Dissenting Essays in Political Science (New York 1969), 276–327.Google Scholar His thesis is that legitimate authority is declining in modern states because of some of the basic, defining orientations of modernity itself: rationality, the cult of efficiency and power, ethical relativism, and equalitarianism.

90 Slater, Philip, The Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the Breaking Point (Boston 1970), 44.Google Scholar

91 On the place of the frontier and decision-making in America, see Hirschman, Albert, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (Cambridge, Mass. 1970), 106–09.Google Scholar William A. Williams argues that when the frontier was gone, Americans substituted overseas markets, and that the same process continues today: The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York 1962).

92 Busch, Peter A., Political Unity and Ethnic Diversity: A Case Study of Singapore, unpubl. Ph.D. diss. (Yale 1972).Google Scholar

93 Huntington, (fn. 10), 278–83Google Scholar; Tanter, Raymond and Midlarsky, Manus, “A Theory of Revolution,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, XI (September 1967), 264–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

94 Heilbroner, Robert, The Future as History (New York 1960), 204, 178.Google Scholar

95 Koestler, Arthur, The Ghost in the Machine (New York 1967)Google Scholar suggests that the rapid growth of the human brain resulted in a faulty connection between ancient and recent brain structures, creating a padwlogical split between emotion and reason, instinct and intellect. He proposes research toward a psychopharmacological adaptive mechanism to bridge the rift, along the lines of current research into the chemical treatment of schizophrenia. More pessimistic interpretations find support in Emeredge, Lloyd, “Hypnosis and Order: The Psychology of Habitual Compliance,” mimeo, Yale University (October 1971)Google Scholar, and Ouspensky, P. D., The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution (New York 1954).Google Scholar

96 Sprout and Sprout (fn. 7), 15.

97 Woodhouse, Edward, “Beyond Elections and Revolutions: Individual and Collective Change in the Post-Industrial U.S.,” mimeo, Yale University (May 1972)Google Scholar, and Human Consciousness and Social Change, dissertation in progress, Yale University. Both papers examine the potential for such a revolutionary shift in human nature.