designates my notes. / designates important.
Look at how cultures react and find holes to which western values can be leaked in. Eventually the idea is to atomize and break up the family. The family support structure is then replaced by the state/administration.
How to get the people of Burma to stop lounging and socializing and get to work! Similarly how to introduce the western ideal to Greece, Palau, and more. Most of the societies described seem very slow paced, stress-free, and family oriented. I would MUCH rather have those ideals than the keep up with the Jones’ attitude so prevalent now.
All about altering and exploiting patterns. It reminds me a lot of permaculture. Toby Hemenway’s site used to be called, (I think) PatternLiteracy.com. Some permaculture concepts, like contour plowing and permanent crops, appear in this book decades before permaculture. Bill Mollison chastised the FAO, but was he a trojan horse? While this image is not very strong evidence, it at least shows Mead influenced some permaculture groups.
Looking closer you find that Waste Warriors World is steep in “change” terminology so present in social engineering operations. Mead is quoted on the front page as well as a former London mayor. They even have a section promoting an agency that you can report litterbugs to. Littering is bad, but is an authority dishing out fines the way to stop it, and don’t we have bigger fish to fry?
Bennett is also mention as a soil conservationist, but in reading Yeoman’s (a close friend of Mollison) work you can see Bennett was of the opinion that soil was lost forever when it was removed - that is would take thousands of years to produce one inch of topsoil. Again, this is no evidence of collusion, but, as with many other areas of social manipulation, there seems to be a short path back to the Huxley’s. Bennett->Mead->Bateson->Aldous (CIA) or Bennett->Mead->Julian (UNESCO).
A common term used is “radical”. As in radical change. This term is also associated with such things as feminism, punk rock, and most recently radical compassion. It seems that radical may be some kind of codeword used persuade youth that what they are doing is not exactly what the powers that be want them to do.
Lenin said: “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”
A Manual prepared by The World Federation for Mental Health
edited by Margaret Mead
UNESCO
Published in 1953 by the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
19 avenue Kleber, Paris-16e
2nd impression, March 1954
Printed by The IJsel Press, Lid. Deventer (Holland)
Lawrence K.Frank
Eliot D. Chapple
Claire Holt
Dorothy Demetracopoulou Lee
Margaret Mead
George Saslow
John Useem
Chairman:
Lawrence K. Frank (IPAC)1
Former Director, Caroline Zachry
Institute for Human Development
1 IPAC:American Regional Interprofessional Advisory Committee, World Federation
for Mental Health.
John Adair, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Anthropology Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Corne11 University
Ithaca, New York
Leona Baumgartner, M.D.
Assistant Commissioner in charge of Maternal and Child Welfare
New York City Department of Health
125 Worth Street
New York, New York
Carl Binger, M.D.
Director, Mary Conover Mellon Foundation for the Advancement of Education
Vassar College
Poughkeepsie,New York
125 East 73rd Street
New York, New York
Eliot Chapple, Ph.D.
President, the E.D. Chapple Company
61 West 55th Street
New York 19, New York
Bingham Dai, Ph.D.(IPAC)
Professor of Mental Hygiene and Psycho-therapy
Medical School, Duke University
Durham, North Carolina
Frank Fremont-Smith, M.D.
(IPAC)
Medical Director, Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation
565 Park Avenue
New York, New York
Elizabeth Hoyt, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics Iowa State College
Ames, Iowa (on leave of absence at present at
the Institute of Social Research, Makerere
College, Kampala, Uganda)
Otto Klineberg, M.D.,Ph.D.(IPAC)
Professor of Psychology
Columbia University
New York 27, New York
Mary Fisher Langmuir, Ph.D.
Professor of Child Study
Vassar College
Poughkeepsie,New York
also Director of Vassar Summer Institute
also President, Child Study Association of America
Margaret Mead, Ph.D. (IPAC)
Associate Curator of Ethnology
American Museum of Natural History
New York 24,New York
William Menninger, M.D.
General Secretary, Menninger Foundation
Topeka, Kansas
Michel Pijoan, M.D.
Chief of Medical Service
Navaho Medical Center
Fort Defiance, Arizona
Nina Ridenour, Ph.D. (IPAC)
Director, Division of Education
National Association of Mental Health
1790 Broadway
N e w York, New York
Nathan Sinai, M.D.
Professor of Public Health
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Edward Spier, Ph.D.
Professor of Anthropology and Sociology
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
George S.Stevenson, M.D. (IPAC)
Medical Director
National Association for Mental Health
1790 Boadway
New York, New York
John Useem, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Michigan State College
East Lansing, Michigan
Note. All biographical and bibliographical details are as of June 1951.
When men and women with technical skills set out to help in shaping new developments in a country or a culture other than their own, there are clearly many more possibilities of producing unfortunate consequences.
Sometimes great harm can be done to the people of that country, especially through the creation of social psychological stresses and the disorganization of family and community life.
J. R. REES, Director, World Federation for Mental Health
This survey is directed toward the implications for the mental health of the peoples of the world, who are involved in purposive introduction of technical change.
What is new in the twentieth century world is the conscious application of our new knowledge of human behaviour, derived from the findings of psychiatry, clinical psychology, child development, cultural anthropology and sociology, to the problems of child rearing and adult functioning in such a way as to preserve and increase the mental health of whole populations.
the findings of the clinician and the research team were translated into recommendations for infant care, education, personnel relationships in industry, governmental administrative practices, community organization, and the content of mass media, was given its first explicit international expression in the International Congress for Mental Health, convened in London in 1948. The International Preparatory Commission stated:
Here it is possible only to indicate the promise which the social sciences and psychiatry hold out of reducing the toll of human waste and suffering and promoting social well being. Fulfilment of this promise rests largely on the hope of full co-operation between the social scientist and the administrator, who should be fully aware of the new vistas of human achievement opened up by the social sciences. While far more has to be learnt than is now known it is evident that we stand on the threshold of a new epoch of the science of man… and affirmed, “this, then, as we see it, is the ultimate goal of mental health to help men to live with their fellows in one world”. “World Federation for Mental Health”. 1948, p. 11.
This survey is based on the assumption,itself drawn from field work among many kinds of societies, that a change in any one part of the culture will be accompanied by changes in other parts, and that only by relating any planned detail of change to the central values of the culture is it possible to provide for the repercussions which will occur in other aspects of life. This is what w e mean by “cultural relativity”: that practices and beliefs can and must be evaluated in context, in relation to the cultural whole.
Some cultures, like that of the Tiv (Section III), are so tightly integrated that any change threatens the whole; others, like that of the Palauans (Section III), are characterized by a traditional pattern of manipulating events, which makes it much easier to introduce particular changes without disturbing the whole way of life.
the nature of the human beings who must act as parents, as citizens, taxpayers, consumers, members of audiences, as pedestrians and users of trans- port, and who follow diversified occupations-farming, herding, teaching, administrating, etc.
A change from a monarchical to a republican form of government affects not only those who were heir to the monarchy, but also the status of all those who were defined as commoners, and monarchical attitudes may, of course, be preserved in another form.
one may learn to respond to rewards or punishments, or merely react with terror to unusual situations; to prefer death to dishonour, or dishonour to inconvenience.
under situations of stress and strain, of rapid change and consequent disorientation, there is likely to be an increase in manifest mental ill health. As all social change must take place through individuals, the task of devising ways of reducing the ill effects of such change by strengthening the individuals who must function within a changing situation, and of developing ways of rearing children to whom social change is not disorienting, is a mental health problem.
The Committee therefore holds the view that it is only by the preventive application of psychiatric knowledge that mental health problems can ultimately be solved.’ United Nations, WHO, Technical Report Series,No. 9, p.
There is one important aspect of this problem which has been purposely omitted from this survey: the question of the extent to which the special preoccupations and value systems of the members of international teams, drawn from Western cultures or educated in Western values, affect the work which such teams are able to do. It has been felt that such discussions, which must deal explicitly and self-searchingly with the defects as well as the strengths of the value systems of professional groups in British or American, Netherlands or French culture, as the case may be, should come from inside these societies. Two volumes, directed to the problems of American technicians administering programmes of change, are in preparation 1 These will contain a careful consideration of the special set of values which American experts carry with them into other societies, whether these are enclaves within the United States or peoples in other parts of the world.
1 Conrad Arensberg,n.d. John Adair and Edward H. Spicer. n.d. The first study will deal with problems related to Point Four allowing for American cultural bias. The second study will consist of case studies within the United States, together with comparative materials.
among the functions of the Economic and Employment Commission of the Economic and Social Council is the promotion of full employment and advice to the Council on “problems of economic development in less developed areas and of economic expansion in general”.
“The less developed areas”, which are now generally referred to as “economically under-developed areas”
President of the United States in his inaugural address of 20 January 1949, which launched the “Point Four” programme. President Truman stated that “greater production is the key to prosperity and peace. A n d the key to greater production is a wider and more vigorous application of modern scientific and technical knowledge”.
Any comprehensive programme of economic development will involve far-reaching changes in the social and economic structure of an under-developed country. . .
In some countries existing social institutions may hamper economic modernization. Obsolete and oppressive systems of land tenure, and inadequate credit and marketing facilities may retard agricultural development. . . Far-reaching changes may also be necessary in the attitudes and habits of the people. Workers for newly developed industries must be drawn largely from the farm population, whose families may have lived on the land for centuries; they must adjust themselves to new surroundings and learn new work habits and disciplines.
Traditional methods of soil cultivation and handicraft must often be modernized. New crops and new breeds of livestock may be introduced. These changes will often impose considerable psychological and social strains but those strains may be greatly eased and their duration shortened if an effort is made to make the economic development programme itself and the changes which are necessary for its success as widely understood as possible among those whose interests are affected.
Sub organization mission statements:
ILO (International Labour Organisation)
Social justice is a prerequisite for peace. The IL0 will promote improvement of
labour conditions, especially where injustice, hardship and privation to large
numbers of people exist, by furthering:
regulation of hours of work, including the establishment of a maximum working
day and week;
the regulation of the labour supply;
the prevention of unemployment;
the provision of an adequate living wage;
the protection of the worker against sickness, disease, and injury arising out
of employment;
provision for old age and injury;
the protection of children, young persons, and women;
protection of the interests of workers when employed in countries other than
their own;
recognition of the principle of freedom of association:
the organization of vocational and technical education and other measures.‘
Common welfare will be promoted by the FAO by means of action toward
raising levels of nutrition and standards of living of the peoples. . .;
securing improvements in the efficiency of the production and distribution of
all food and agricultural products;
bettering the condition of rural populations and thus contributing toward an
expanding world economy.2
The nations who established Unesco believe in “full and equal opportunities for
education for all,” “unrestricted pursuit of objective truth,” and ‘‘free exchange
of ideas and knowledge”. Unesco believes that the intellectual and moral solidarity
of mankind is essential for lasting peace and the “education of humanity for
justice, liberty, and peace” are the sacred duty which all nations must fulfill.
Unesco will further:
mutual knowledge and understanding of peoples;
popular education and the spread of culture;
maintenance, increase and diffusion of knowledge.
(A special clause in Article I, on Purposes and Functions of Unesco, states:
With a view to preserving the independence, integrity and fruitful diversity
of the cultures and educational systems of the States Members of this Organization,
the Organization is prohibited from intervening in matters which are essentially
within their domestic jurisdiction.)’
“Attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health” is the principal
objective of WHO, and health is defined as a state of “complete physical, mental,
and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”.
The aims of W H O are not only to further protective measures, such as the
elimination of reservoirs of communicable diseases, but also to promote measures
toward positive health by means of public health education in the widest sense.
Among the principles enunciated by Member States of WHO in its charter, the
following are directly relevant to the social aspects:
Healthy development of the child is of basic importance; the ability to live
harmoniously in a changing total environment is essential to such
development.
Governments have a responsibility for the health of their peoples which can
be fulfilled only by the provision of adequate health and social measures.$
By its own definition,Unicef is “an international co-operative on behalf ofchildren”
and is designed to make a permanent contribution to child welfare. From concen-
tration on child feeding to meet postwar emergency needs following cessation of
Unrra activities in 1946, when Unicef came into being, the organization is in-
creasingly turning toward long standing problems of maternal and child welfare
and works closely with W H O in this field.8
This organization is responsible for drawing up and maintaining the basic code
of international practice in all matters pertaining to civil aviation and among its
objectives is to ensure the safe and orderly growth of international civil aviation
throughout the world, as another important facet of international co-operation
conducive to peace3
The International Bank was established “to assist in the reconstruction and
development of territories of members by facilitating the investment of capital
for productive purposes, including the restoration of economics destroyed or
disrupted by war, the reconversion of productive facilities to peacetime needs
and the encouragement of the development of productive facilities and resources
in less developed countries.” The promotion of long-range balanced growth of
international trade and the maintenance of financial equilibrium in member
countries “thereby assisting in raising productivity, the standards of living
and conditions of labour in their territories” are among the principal purposes
of the BANK.’ ”
Established for the purpose of consultation and co-operation on international
monetary problems, FUND, like B A N K , hopes to facilitate the “expansion and
balanced growth of international trade” which, in turn, would contribute to the
“maintenance of high levels of employment and real income and to the development
of the productive resources” of member countries.2
INTERNATIONAL BODIES CONCERNED WITH TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE
On this chart the circled units are those actually or potentially concerned
with the implementation of technical assistance. Basic units are linked by
solid lines. Closed line circles indicate functioning units; open line circles
are potentialities.
ABBREVIATIONS
United Nations Specialized Agencies and International Organizations
BANK: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
FAO: Food and Agriculture Organization
FUND: International Monetary Fund
ICAO: International Civil Aviation Organization
ILO:International Labour Organisation
IMCO: lntergovemmental Maritime Consultative Organization
IRO: International Refugee Organization
ITO:InternationalTrade Organization
ITU : International Telecommunication Union
UNESCO: United Nations Educational, Scientificand Cultural Organization
UNICEF: United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund
UNRWA:United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the
Near East.
UPU: Universal Postal Union
WHO : World Health Organization
United Nations Bodies created for the Expanded Programme of Technical Asskiancc
TAA:Technical Assistance Administration (UN)
TAB: Technical Assistance Board
TAC:Technical Assistance Committee of the Economic and Social Council
Regional Commissions of the Economic and Social Council
ECAFE: Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East
ECE: Economic Commission for Europe
ECU : Economic Commission for Latin America
SOCIAL WELFARE AND DEVELOPMENT:
Population and migration questions in relation to economic and social development
Housing, community development, town and country planning
UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION:
Technical education
Elementary education
Fundamental and adult education
Materials for education and mass communications
Technical needs for Press, film and radio
Training of teachers
Scientific research and training
Survey of natural resources (in collaboration with United Nations and Specialized
Agencies concerned)
Protection of local cultures
IMF:
Exchange policies and practices, including exchange rates, restrictions, special arrangements, etc.
the introduction of government by legal precedent and direct executive decision was difficult for Burmese and Western administrators alike. The presence of the “circle of villages” under the administration of one headman looked like, and was converted into, a district form of administration
Their personal autonomy belied the pattern of interdependence of young children on parents and old parents on children.
Until 1824, the Burmese were voluntarily cut off from the world, interested in trading neither goods nor ideas with the outside world.1 They were a people without either great poverty or great accumulated wealth. Predominantly rural, they lived in villages that were practically autonomous, without policemen, without enforcement of law or external authority, and with very little crime or litigation. Their lives, like their villages, were centred about a monastery, which gave their private lives and the life of the village focus and rhythm. Most of the men were literate;the women had a great degree of responsibility in agriculture and in domestic and monetary matters. The land was rich, and wants were simple; there was much time for festivity, dancing, races, and dramatic performances. Work was performed without compulsion, and there seems little evidence of anxiety. Building a fortune was not a pattern offered to the individual. The guiding principle was to increase in merit so as to be reincarnated at a higher stage of development, and merit resulted not from accumulating but from giving, not through inheritance but through one’s own achievement, not from anxiety but from doing good deeds, and not from charting new paths into the future but from going along a known route.
The first effective contacts with Western civilization were commercial. Teak was exported, cotton goods imported. Entry into the nineteenth century money economy meant a change in the level of aspiration of the Burmese, who had to learn to want and value material things instead of concentrating on immediate states of being, to spend their money for foreign goods and their labour in making money to buy these goods rather than devoting their small traditional surpluses to religious gifts that would increase their personal merit.
With the expansion of commerce,there was a need for more labour and, as so frequently happens when the speed of economic development outruns any change in the traditional needs and incentives of a non-industrialized population, the Burmese were unwilling to provide all of this labour. In response to the need for labour, large numbers of Indian and Chinese immigrants entered the country. Such immigration was not only welcomed by the administration but was even subsidized upon occasion.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, about two-thirds of the population of the six large industrial towns consisted of immigrant foreigners.2 In 1942, Christian stated that there were 2,000,000 first generation immigrants in Burma.3
The Burmese were absolute believers in personal worth and inviolability; they did not try to impose their religion, their ways, or their knowledge on other populations. If such groups were “segregated”, it was because they also preferred their own customs. If they had their own chieftains, it was because there were such autonomous units throughout Burma;all rule was by such personal allegiance, from the unit of the village circle to the association of palm-sugar manufacturer~.~ All status, except that of the king, was achieved, and achievement was open to anyone through accumulation of merits, strengthening what they called the kan, a term by which we might understand personality or personal potency or luck; and with a strong kan, education could lead to status through attainment of office, or by way of the monastery.1
Distinctions of rank were very important and were constantly made, but did not depend on birth. Potentially, all men were born equal, whatever their race, allegiance, or religion.
Traditionally, the monastery has been the focus of village life. The duty-day services at the pagoda, which the villagers with their families attended every eight days in festive array and with festive foods, punctuated the Burmese month, providing highly social occasions.3
This system encroached upon “the autonomy of the circle by interfering with its internal administration” ; however, the headmen unofficially retained much of their original authority, since it was theirs by right and tradition. By the end of the nineteenth century, these discrepancies between assumed form and actual practice had been administratively corrected. For the sake of efficiency, the district-the old circle-was cut up into villages, and the village became the largest self-governing unit. New duties were imposed upon villagers and headmen, heavy penalties for non-compliance were introduced, but no new rights were conferred. The village itself was now converted from “a social and residential unit into an administrative unit”. The new system “cut at the roots of organic social life within the village”.1
When the organic unity of the village was shattered, when external authority with penal sanctions was substituted for the authority inherent in a traditional way of life, the traditional guiding principle of social conduct was destroyed and there was nothing to take its place. With the increase in population, and the breakdown of traditional patterns of behaviour, [ people started chasing profit, police were needed, law fell apart]
During the months when there was no work in the fields, the men loitered at home to receive visits or went visiting, or they gambled. Good conversation was prized.
They would not sell their land, however useless it might be, and under Burmese law, if they did “sell” it, it was understood that they always had the right to redeem it. They could not lose it to a money-lender.
The lay schools, whether governmental or missionary, stressed success in examinations above all. Morality and discipline deteriorated, and, in 1932, the Director of Education noted that districts with the best record for education had the worst record for crime.1
Even youngsters from the villages, brought to the city for short courses in modern farming methods, do not want to return where they can impart and apply this knowledge. They prefer to stay in town and seek a white-collar job. This is, of course, a very common characteristic of the educated groups in countries in which higher education is developed before industrialization.
There had been a tradition for Upper Burmese who were landless to go to Lower Burma for the harvest as labourers. Now more of them went down, and found that they could get wages which in about two years would enable them to own and cultivate land of their own; and there was a continuous colonization from Upper Burma. But here the villages were new, usually without a monastery, and without traditional law, and the peasants were not protected against losing their land. Unsophisticated in financial matters, unused to a money economy, the peasants soon fell into irremediable debt and lost their lands-something that had been impossible in their old villages, where, even if a man did “lose” his land, he had the right to reclaim it. The landowners now became tenants and the land was concentrated in the hands of rich men to whom it was merely another financial enterprise.
It was also profitable to them to put the land out at auction every year, leasing it to the highest bidder. This meant that even as a tenant, a man could have no continuity with the land. And it was cheaper to hire seasonal labour, so that there was no continuity of operation either; preparing the earth, ploughing, planting, reaping and threshing, were all done by different groups of labourers. This was just labour for money. Agriculture became an industry, and Burma became a “factory without chimneys”. No longer was the cultivation of land the making of a living or way of life; it was now “earning a living”.8
Lower Burma has actually changed more than Upper Burma. There it was estimated in 1930 that 50 per cent of the land was in the hands of absentee owners.
individual proprietorship of land was substituted for the Burmese custom of family possession; they made it possible for the individual to borrow on his own, to leave his family,and to embark on individual enterprise. In terms of Western values, this was economic progress, which in turn meant social progress. The Burmese were encouraged to give up their traditional ways which seemed wasteful and inefficient, and to abandon their elaborate time-consuming festivals, their handicrafts, their delicately shaped and carved cargo boats-the sailing of which was an art and a joy, but which could be replaced much more inexpensively. As usually happened under conditions of East-West contact in the nineteenth century, the people came to prefer the often shoddy but inexpensive machine-made article to their own handicraft products, and learned to substitute individual economic aspirations for the traditional aspirations of their culture.2
Presently the organic unit was atomized. Under the stress of administrative changes, which destroyed the organic basis of the village and of orderly behaviour as the way of the village, and under the stress of economic change, which atomized the family and introduced money-making as an incentive, individuals began to take up the common land which had been protected under a subsistence economy.
They take on the attitudes of the Western World, using clocked time in business and living a life relatively pressed for time, adopting to some extent the Western scientific approach and objective external limits,instead of the more animistic approach and the body- patterned limits of traditional Greek culture.
people go to tour the country or the world, instead of going to visit a relative or a family friend or a miraculous shrine.
The differences are there but the similarities are more basic. The Athenians, working by clock time, strain at their bonds, and do not allow time to dictate to them in private life; and Athenian newspapers, announcing the hour of the lecture, have to remind people that it is important to be prompt at such affairs.
their philotimo [honor] would not allow them to expose to outsiders their failure and inadequacy. However, Greeks will accept aid when it is their right within a structured relationship; they will accept it as their share from the nation for which they have fought, or from the nation which they have helped in its war against the forces of evil; and Greeks stand firm in the knowledge that they were vital in bringing about the defeat of the Nazis by delaying Hitler’s plans.
How to trick Greeks into accepting the welfare state.
The office which is in charge of the ECA activities now reminds the people of the different villages that the destruction has been nationwide, that the need applies to all the Greeks, and so makes it bearable, and saves their philotimo.
Parents are urged to be firm of will with their children from birth, and to see that the children develop steadfastness.
Fortitude and hardihood, firm will, a love of simplicity in food, entertainment, furnishings, the standard of living in general, are common traits. Greeks will smoke only a few cigarettes a day, drink within measure and eat in moderation; excess is disliked. Fortitude is an ever-present quality; the philotima brooks no calculation of danger or pending pain before a step is taken. If a thing is worth doing, the price to be paid for it is irrelevant; and you are able to do it because you are strong and firm.
Almost everyone creates songs ; love songs at the village festival, dirges, lullabies, songs of the way of life, songs of work, songs of one’s village and of nature.
A statement or a question is countered by a challenging question. Tact and gentleness have no part here, insults are hurled, attacks are made, within the appropriate limits. A discussion is a battle of personal opinion, and its end is neither to reach the truth nor to reach a conclusion; its end is sheer enjoyment of vigorous speech.
The hair is a focus of erotic attraction.
To work compulsively is to be a slave to work; and what can be worse than slavery?
Greeks who emigrated to the United States to earn money for their sisters’ dowries, or for land needed by the family, worked incredibly long hours, but neither through external nor through inner compulsion. They worked at their own shoeshine booths, or their own fruit-stands or restaurants; they took on unfamiliar occupations such as cooking, rather than submit to an employer.
He [Greek child] goes visiting and to social gatherings with the family, by day or by night, though pediatricians protest against the latter practice.
a Greek child does not celebrate his birthday. What is celebrated is the day of the saint after whom the child is named, and it is his family who celebrate. Old and young come to congratulate the family, and to wish that it shall enjoy the child for many years. The family, containing the child, is the focus, not the child himself.
The Greek family is family-oriented. It makes room for the child, and the mother expects to spend much time nursing the child, expects her cooking to be slowed down because of the constant presence and participation of the child. On the other hand, the child is not the focus, and the rhythm of activities does not change with the coming of the child. There are no special mealtimes for the child, neither are the family mealtimes shifted to accommodate its needs. If the father leaves the fields or closes his store on the child’s nameday, it is be- cause the family is celebrating. The child in the family is neither outstanding nor disruptive; but he is important, since he is accorded a definite place within the structured family.
In a Greek family the members spend much time together. The children learn to enjoy being with the adults, and to listen to their conversation, which is not trimmed down to meet the children’s interests.
They offered effective resistance to British occupation over a long period, not through organized resistance, but through their very lack of central organization.
Little technical change has been effected among the Tiv. However, a shattering social change was introduced through an edict forbidding exchange marriage. This, more than anything else, gave the younger generation the opportunity and the ability to question traditional ways, authority of the elders, the kinship interrelationships, and in general, the very foundations of the culture. So, though technical change itself was not directly introduced, the mental attitude which makes such change acceptable, which allows an individual to carve his own future with new tools instead of taking his place in the security of a pre-established pattern based on human relationships, has already been introduced.
We shall also describe the far-reaching changes effected in the culture through manipulation of one of its traits, to show the interdependence of the different aspects and attitudes among the Tiv.
Contact between the foreign and native economic systems began with the intermittent visits of private traders who were eagerly welcomed by the natives; and the German and Japanese eras brought about the dual economy. Production for profit was made a central theme; the virtues of the work ethic were indoctrinated into the younger generations through schools; incentives for output were offered in foreign goods. Numerous new crops and livestock were introduced. Scientific experiments in agriculture were undertaken and the findings taught to native farmers. Implements suitable to the local industries were sold at a modest price. Subsidies were granted to expand land under cultivation,and where these proved an insufficient incentive, persuasion and some pressure were used. Joint governmental and private capital concerns built installations, factories and transportation facilities. Joint native and foreign associations were formed to market native products, to import manufactured goods from abroad, and to foster commercial enterprise in the islands. Groups of foreign experts were sent in to explore the potentially useful resources and to work out feasible means for their development.
This was prior to WW2
Hierarchy was already there, and the coming of the foreigners meant adding a new apex to the established social pyramid.
Social change is expected to stem from the top rather than from below.
No one actually advocates complete equity in the distribution of rewards and there are no records of anyone openly urging any major reforms in the power structure- until the coming of the foreigners.
The challenge to the men in power in Palau was to invent new techniques or refashion old ones to fit the changing social scene. The foreigners recruited and trained natives to serve as administrative assistants, interpreters, clerks, constables, medical assistants, school- teachers. Because they were close to the seat of ultimate power they were in a strategic position to influence policies. Native interpreters, for example, controlled most of the channels of communication between the foreigners and the natives. They became not merely translators, but arbitrators and explainers, experts in knowing what to say. Palauans expected the interpreters not to convey precisely what was told them but to offer advice on what tactics to pursue. The leading clans of the élite class early perceived the advisability of placing some of their most able members in these positions. Still the elite were not fully protected,for some of these young men were captivated by the foreigners and began to place their allegiance to the “modernization” of Palau even above their own clan or class interests.Various corrective remedies were attempted. One individual who proved too informative to the foreigners was killed.
the élite shifted their efforts to extracting as much as possible of the foreign moneys from those who secured them. The traditional customs of Palau gift-exchange and related patterns were converted by a series of inventions and adaptations into taxation enterprises capable of producing sizable sums.
The introduction of foreign schools has provided an orientation for youth, which exalts foreign models of life over native ones. Spear- headed by the schoolteachers, many younger people have increasingly favoured changes in Palau, many of which would undermine the ruling class.
The younger generation, for example, has employed the theme of liberty to gain greater freedom from authority. The Palauan authorities have countered with the argument that the right to do as one pleased was not inherent in the concept of liberty, for surely the victorious foreigners in the recent war exercised group discipline,
People do not tend to settle far apart from their neighbour-relatives to assert their independence. The breaking up of extended family ties which occurs constantly in Anglo society as one brother gets ahead of another is not carried very far in Spanish American society. Indeed it seems almost inevitable that if one member of the family gets ahead, the whole extended kin group is involved in the process and included in the benefit.
The Church seems to have less community meaning, but as much or more meaning in the structure of authority. The priest in one larger Spanish American town is having trouble getting people to come to confession, to buy the church newspaper, or to come to bingo parties.2 But a Spanish American political leader can speak with finality “speaking as a Catholic”.
Spanish Americans have come to put great stress on the idea of education, but it is always “for the children”. It is almost never for oneself! Soon these children are old enough to go to work, then to marry and settle down. They want education-for their children.
Young people have taken over Anglo recreations, but with certain differences. At dances, there is still formality in boy-girl relationships and it is not quite right to ask directly for a date. Boys and girls may go in separate groups to a “show”, as before; but they will pair off in the dark-a situation defined by the culture as permissive. From here on the new pattern takes over; it is a date and couples come out together. “It almost seems that without the movies, the change could never have taken place.”1
When the boy and the girl marry and have children, however, they are mainly father and mother, not husband and wife. The old pattern reasserts itself.
It is cereal foods- the main body builders traditionally-that have been most acceptable: macaroni, potatoes, oatmeal, bread, doughnuts, cinnamon buns.
Anglo foods such as ice cream and bread have prestige, and white bread is considered a food that is more “delicate” than tortillas.
He will be the instrument of change;and all change, even in techniques and tools used, will affect his way of life and his relations with others.
The immediate need for agricultural changes arises from the great increase in population in recent years. This has come about as a result of public health measures which improved sanitation and controlled epidemic disease, through induced changes which destroyed the practices affecting the depletion of population and maintaining the balance through abortion, infanticide, and birth control; and in individual countries, the United States and elsewhere, through the tightening of immigration laws.
Did the population increase because of sanitation or because more food was available with the agricultural changes they are proposing to combat the population that grew out of agriculture?
If the proposed further improvements in public health and nutrition are carried out, there may be a further increase in population.
The general changes directed at the land and its produce fall in the following areas; soil conservation, including reforestation and contour ploughing; livestock improvement ; seed improvement; pest control;land improvement; introduction of cash crops ; mechanization. Non-human as these categories appear to be, they actually concern the life of people at every turn. For example, prevention of overgrazing and of the burning of brush mean that shepherds, abandoning the ways of their fathers, have to take on a strange occupation out of necessity, not from choice.
Why can’t the simply continue? Population would sort itself out if food was not made available.
Water control may mean that the course of rivers must be changed, as it does in Greece, perhaps moving people away from the land of their fathers.
Who controls it? To what ends? It has been working for a LONG time in Greece.
Where immunization of cattle is necessary, farmers will hide their cattle.4
And where land reform is introduced without accompanying measures for a reformed credit system, the land will again be concentrated in the hands of a few within a few years.5
Most of the cultures were set up where the families all had a little land, few had the landowners (oligarchs the UN represents?) and when they did, it was an intimate relationship more than dominating.
The ownership unit may be the tribe, as in the case of the grazing lands in Saudi Arabia where agriculture and individual ownership are being introduced together. 8 It may be the village, apportioning land for family use; it may be the family, including a number of adult men; or it may be the individual.
But I thought it would all fall into the hands of few without reforms? Or should it be understood as: reforms are how the oligarchy can get its hands on the land and therefor control the population.
Systems of inheritance according to which every son receives a parcel of land, or every daughter receives land as dowry, make for a continual division of fields and the scattering of the arable land of a farmer over a wide area; in Greece a farmer’s fields, containing a fraction of an acre each, may lie an hour’s walk away from one another.
From “the hands of a few” to “a far walk”…
In many sections of the world we find that the land is in the hands of a few owners, often absentee owners. This condition may have its roots in a feudal past. Quite often, however, it is a recent result of the introduction of change by a conquering people. The great Latin American haciendas, affecting the lives of millions of the conquered Indians, came into being by fiat, as state grants.
short, the introduction of change without reference to the existing patterns and without a programme, led to overwhelming indebtedness, a landless peasantry, and the concentration of land in the hands of a few moneylenders, or other- wise of people whose one aim was the exploitation of the land.
Not one cent of the half million dollars which the Near East Foundation spends annually in Greece goes to hire labour; it spends money on education until the villages co-operate freely in the improvement of their land, sanitation, or water supply.
What was a half million (in Greece by 1 org) in 1948?
In 1940 the First International Conference on Indian Life resolved to recommend support of the continued existence of the ayllu, the unit which holds land in common, found in several Latin American countries, both for the advantages it affords for mechanization and because of the social function it fills.2
Among the Tanala of Madagascar individual ownership was introduced indirectly as a by-product of the introduction of wet-rice culture, which made the continuous farming of one tract possible and so led to individual ownership. One of the clans, which valued its joint-family ownership and co-operative labour above material wealth, outlawed the disruptive change and returned to dry-rice culture.’ The chiefs of Basutoland, who also prize community solidarity, discourage measures essential to the preservation of land, such as tree-planting or the fencing of pasture lands, because these imply individual rights over the communal land and may lead to individual ownership.2
From Bechuanaland and East Africa comes the objection that improvements such as drainage, terracing, planting permanent crops ,reduction of stock as an anti-erosion measure meet with little incentive under this system because the results of the individual would be lost to him without the co-operation of his neighbours;4
The group which recommended the support of the ayllu also pointed out this anti-progressive effect of communal ownership. The difficulty is, of course, not insurmountable. It can probably be overcome through education and through a knowledge of the existing structure which can be used in rooting the new co-operatives.
In Spanish American communities in New Mexico, extra income may be changed to silver dollars and buried in some forgotten place; it does not affect living?
Experts show concern for women who have to carry water from the village fountain to the home, or wash clothes on the stones by the brook; but the women who are the subject of their concern find in these functions a pleasant social activity and an opportunity to be out-of-doors. And their men ask, “What will our women do all day long?”7
education is necessary so that the added income and the released time can have the intended effect.
Unfortunately, it [distrust] is also rooted in the mistakes made by the agents of change who sometimes managed to persuade the peasants to use new ways which proved disastrous because of local conditions. In Burma, deep ploughing introduced by European agricultural experts broke up the hard pan that held the water in the rice fields. The weeding of rubber plantations reduced the sap. The new tomato, which the Burmese were persuaded to grow because it was more productive, had a flavour they did not like.1
During World War II, a United States Government agent almost caused a mutiny among his workers in a Latin American country when he ordered that mangoès, held sacred by these people, be cut down to make ground available for a crop needed for the war.3
“His” workers.
Contour Ploughing
Reforestation
All these are things permaculture talks about today.
In Greece, farmers are required to report the presence of locusts, and then to give “compulsory free labour” in setting down poisoned bait. As this is a measure imposed by the central government, whose authority is not respected, and since the peasant does not see that it concerns his own meaningful unit, it has not met with success.
Among many groups the introduction of cash crops has resulted in lowered nutrition, since the farmers are tempted to put their best efforts into the cash crop, or to sell the best.3 The increase of a tropical disease, found to result from predisposing malnutrition, is more prevalent in cash crop areas.4
In Malaya, where small rubber holdings form the cash crop of the farmer,they are a source of tension in the country’s economy since,when supply is high and prices are low, the farmers produce even more rubber in order to make the necessary money.6
Certainly with the increase in population which accompanied contact with Western civilization itself, with industrialization and its by-products, the [food] supply has become inadequate.
Industrialization leads to increased population with increased production leads to less food?
Increase of crops has not kept up with the population growth, even though since the war plans for increasing agricultural yield have been put into operation.
There is not enough food for the current population but there was enough to stimulate the reproduction. I am going to need to look into population growth and industrialization… this makes no sense at face value. Unless there is an external source of food. Was the whole idea to get control of the populations by introducing food from abroad and to pull it away (control) when populations became too large? All this driven by cash-crops?
in many sections this has meant that the village has had to import four-fifths of its food.
A study made by the Committee on Food Habits of the National Research Council in the United States during World War II has made workers aware of the importance of the “role which learning plays in the maintenance of a viable dietary pattern. We now ask, not how we change a people’s bad habits into good habits, but what are their habits, how are they learned, by what mechanisms are the self- preservative choices of some foods and rejections of others,perpetuated”.1 Margaret Mead, 1950 a.
we are aware that if we must make a substitution,this should also substitute adequately for the lost symbol.
In Lower Burma, however, where a cash crop economy flourishes, malnutrition is reported. In general,the introduction of a money economy has been a serious factor in nutritional imbalance.
Given money as the base for creating a meal, the people have no traditional pattern on which to fall back, and, in fact, they usually have to make their choice entirely on the basis of expense and avail- ability.
Among many,there is the feeling that fruit is “cold”, a term used of something objectionable.
Reminds me of the “warm” music from records and CD over mp3s.
Figures on maternal and infant mortality in many sections of the world are shocking,and reveal how great is the need for technical assistance in this area.
How would this affect population? They are so quick to talk about good intentions leading to disastrous results, but no mention that if you keep all the babies alive, the population may explode. In nature, the babies are the food much of the time and readily replenished.
In some regions, mothers have to learn further, in order to save the lives of infants, that it is not natural and necessary for babies to die.
Seems natural to me…
In the United States, 12 years ago women having children followed approximately the Greek lochial pattern (a six-weeks lochial period); now they follow a pattern nearer to the Burmese four-day period. But these women belong to a society where physician and patient are accustomed to trying out new things, new fads, new gadgets, enjoying experimentation.
In some societies, the prenatal and lochial regulations apply to the father also. To rationally-minded people these may appear wasteful and unnecessary. However in cultures where continuity with the family unit is paramount, this is an important aspect of the father’s share in the creation of the infant, and its loss may be a factor of family disintegration.
the reasons for urging scheduled feeding appear irrelevant, and the introduction of such feeding would necessitate as well the teaching of the mother to equate breast-feeding with nutrition alone.
In many cultures throughout the world man is continuous with his environment. Therefore, he is not healthy unless his environment is “healthy”, or, conversely, the well-being of his environment depends upon his acts.
When is man not continuous with his environment?
To introduce a new concept of disease, and penicillin instead of confession, to people for whom illness has a significant place in the universal order is often impossible, or dangerous to psychosomatic health.
Like the DSM introducing a million mental health “diseases”?
the people have first to be taught to recognize ill health as abnormal and unnecessary.
The people put up with illness as a part of life. Isn’t it?
In West Africa “the whole family would rather contract disease and die from it than part with the infected member”.2
When a Burmese villager is ill, it is he who immediately sends for a physician, for drugs, for treatment. When a Greek is ill, he does not exhibit any need for care, does not go to bed unless he is incapable of standing up, thus exercising fortitude. When a Navaho is ill, it is his relatives who decide what is to be done and make the necessary arrangements. When a Jew from Eastern Europe is ill, he must be helpless, go to bed immediately, and give his relatives the opportunity to fulfil their role in the pattern of beneficence. The worker who knows this picture addresses his recommendations to the appropriate person. It is not much use to try to persuade a sick Navaho to go to the hospital, since it is his family who will actually make the decision for him. It is cruel to tell a Greek that he must stay in bed and do nothing for himself; it is much kinder to say this to his wife or other relatives, so that the sick one should not have to be put in the position of asking for this pampering.
Know who to ask, some have power over others under certain conditions. Use this to introduce change.
Civilization in the last century has meant increasing industrialization in Europe as well as in the United States, and in the countries with which they came in contact, and which, courted or coerced into commerce with them, also became progressively industrialized. In both West and East the process was, for long, unplanned.
Even now, after long experience, and with all our awareness and intensive investigation of the concomitants of industrialization, w e are astounded when we see the far-reaching results of the introduction of money into a barter economy, or of a new tool as simple as the kerosene lamp or a wooden-wheeled wagon.
Sometimes, in introducing a programme of industrialization or the building of great public works and large factories, such countries have introduced radical change in the standard of living, drastically curtailing consumers’ goods? Usually the effects have been much more far-reaching and costly in human welfare than this statement implies.
Factories curtails consumers’ goods? I guess when they are exported…
In addition, mechanization itself, whether in agriculture or in industry, separates man from the traditional processes and techniques of his social unit, from the skills which he learned as an aspect of his belongingness with his family, or of his identification with his father and his line of ancestors. Finally, even on small farms, where cash crops have been introduced, the effects of the new money economy have often been of the same kind as with the introduction of industrial wages.
The new laws have given workers protection, but the efficiency measures, and measures undertaken honestly for the protection of children, have worked toward breaking up the family unit during the day.3
Such factors must be taken into account when and if industrialization is to be introduced without undue destruction.
As opposed to the due destruction?
Again, the FAO report suggests that Greeks be persuaded to invest their money in industry, so as to make industrialization possible; but this runs counter to the Greek attitude of trusting only a sure thing, the known present. One speculates about the future, not in the future. A Greek traditionally likes his money in the form of a lump under the mattress, not as so many figures on a chart, or a number of shares of stock. And when people love their life on the land so much that the greatest gift of gratitude they can send to the United Nations is a jar of Peloponnesian earth, the displacement of the individual or the family from the village to the industrial centre could bring much distress. All these difficulties are not insurmountable, but to effect technological change with the least human destruction, these problems and others of their kind must be taken into account.
You’ll need to pay for the industrialization you don’t want. Destruction is ok, but let’s try to limit it.
The health of the Navaho children, it was found, had been maintained at a higher level under the conditions of a subsistence economy.
In Africa, the introduction of a money economy has usually meant atomization of the individuals within the family, complete destruction of the structuring of family relationships, and of the social and economic system of the group.
The money economy has meant secession and revolt, the undermining of parental authority and the authority of tradition, and this has resulted in the rise of the “younger generation” as a class apart.
The traditional lobola, the bride price, which cemented two families in interdependence and maintained strongly structured continuities within the family,is now frequently handed by the boy to the girl, closely imitating the pattern of prostitution which is prevalent in the cities.2
Where a traveller always knew he could find ready hospitality, he now often has to pay for food and shelter, even to his relatives; or he may find that his friend, seeing a traveller arriving, has conveniently disappeared, to spare himself the expense of entertaining with bought food, or food he could sell for cash.1
In China also, industrialization has meant that “family relations are more and more disregarded in property ownership”.2
Where money economy has not been accepted or understood by people living in the midst of this industrial society, there is frequently a tendency toward exploitation.3
Without the men, the home lost its place as an educational unit, and there was no way of passing on the values of the society to the growing boy.3
With the dislocation in family life, the displacement of authority, came demoralization. Young girls, unwilling to stay in villages without men, followed the men to the cities, where they often became prostitutes.
There appears to be general agreement that decentralization of industry, bringing work to the village or to its vicinity, within the framework of known associations and associational ties, will make for less disruption and, at the same time, will bring the increase in income needed for raising the standard of living.
Funny how the internet generation is also pushing for decentralization. Not that it is bad, but it should be understood by this book that changes are FAR reaching and can have disastrous results.
With the impact of civilization, and particularly because of contact with Western culture, the function of education has necessarily changed. The need now is to move away to new knowledge and skills, to a new place in a new social order; education is now not for the maintenance of the old, but for change. Whether these cultures have sought Western contact or not, whether they want to change or not, the fact is that they have felt the effects of Western contact, and must now be taught how to cope with these effects.
Roads end up destroying the market for handicrafts and bringing in disease. Cash crops end up destroying the soil and bring malnutrition. Credit and money ends up robbing people of their land.
The task of Fundamental Education is to cover the whole of living. In addition, it is to teach, not only new ways, but the need and the incentive for new ways.
For many years schooling was not only ineffective, but also disruptive, because it was applied only to the young. Roles were reversed in the home, so that the children became the teachers of the parents, creating confusion in relationships, and resentment on the part of the displaced leaders. A “younger” generation in conflict with an “older” generation was created where there had been no such categories.
In past years, as Margaret Mead says, education of dependent peoples was for the purpose of their successful exploitation by more advanced economy.7
On a wider front, it may be said that the goal of technical change is to give to people of each country a way of life within which greater mental health may be achieved for all the members of that society.
Greater mental health in juxtaposition to the hell they are really bringing in, not compared to the anxiety-less life they have been living for generations (or much more).
Even in Western countries where psychiatry is highly developed, the criteria are inadequate for distinguishing between mental illness and behaviour which is bizarre because the cultural context is not known-as when a former member of a secret society, which operates by periodic assassination of members of a rival society, informs the police in an American city that people are trying to kill him, and, until his nationality and society membership are known, is diagnosed as dangerously paranoid.
What a great example, secret societies assassinating…
The psychiatrists working in the industrialized West may come to emphasize the hazards of the weakened family structure and the broken home. But the psychiatrists working in unindustrialized sections of southern Europe or the Near East may simultaneously be emphasizing the hazards of a too closely knit family for the mental health of individuals who, later in life, must adapt to the impersonal system of human relations which will come with the introduction of modern industry.
Being “too close” to your family is mental illness… because it interferes with modern industry.
[frustration may lead to] The individual’s behaviour may become less mature, more childish; his feelings and emotions may be more poorly con- trolled or new forms of dependency may develop.
Extended adolescence.
The accumulated tensions may find expression in aggressive acts, such as feelings and actions of anger and rage, actual physical violence against objects and people, verbal attacks, slander and denunciation, or preoccupations with thoughts of violence. The objects of such aggressive acts are often not at all connected with the frustrating situation or agent; so a man frustrated by a superior may spank his child,or denounce the tax collector.
Hugh H. Bennett, founder of the Soil Conservation Service of the United States Department of Agriculture. waited many years until he could interest American farmers in soil conservation, and was only really successful after the great floods and droughts of the 1930’s swept the United States. H e believed that he could not force men to become good stewards of their land, any more than he could prevent them from becoming good stewards once they realized its importance-“felt the need”. (Wellington Brink, 1951.)
An effective way to encourage the learning of new behaviours and attitudes is by consistent prompt attachment of some form of satisfaction to them. This may take the form of consistent praise, approval, privilege, improved social status, strengthened integration with one’s group, or material reward.
Like the praise given to the LGBT humans in the 2010’s. “Oh, your so brave for coming out” etc. Similarly in the “slut walks” encouraging promiscuity in women.
The use of consistent approval or reward underlies the successful introduction of technical change in many parts of the world, as in the work of the Near East Foundation.1
Also use “punishments” to stop certain behaviour. Simple operant conditioning.
As Hegel says: “Man, in so far as he acts on nature to change it, changes his own nature.”
Good to know the authors are familiar with Hegel. No mention of his dialectic though…
Change
For example, it is possible to point out that in any programme involving popular education in public health, the problem of language is a serious one-exact meanings must be explored, questions of adapting old words to new ideas, as opposed to coining new words, must be weighed, choice must be made among rival dialects, …
All changes should be introduced with the fullest possible consent and participation of those whose daily lives will be affected by the changes.
The fullest POSSIBLE extent could be no consent.
It is realized that the technologies and inventions of modern science are themselves the outgrowth of a very particular historically limited type of culture-a culture in which the focus of interest has been upon the observable, the repeatable, the measurable, upon using the external world as a model even when processes within the body were concerned.
It is also probable that too much emphasis upon the whole complex of cultural attitudes surrounding such inventions as clocks, thermometers, shock therapy, printing, caloric food counts, assembly line production, diesel engines, or electronic self-corrective devices, may slow down the possibility of invention in the world, because the members of the new cultures who import and adopt the invention are prevented from making a contribution to its further development. If, in order to use a certain type of machine, it is necessary to adopt all the attitudes towards punctuality of Western factories and school systems, absorbing this alien type of education may act selectively within the new culture, so that only the deviant or only the obedient and frightened learn, and the gifted and creative may turn away.
An alien technology, supported by forms of education and inter-personal relations which are also alien, is likely to separate the practitioner of the new skill from his cultural roots, prevent the new practice from becoming integrated in the living habits of the mass of the people, and produce populations who are confused and disoriented because they do not participate meaningfully in the new forms of their society.
Indeed, it is possible to contrast the often childlike dependence of members of old societies towards their governments, which they feel ought to look after them, protect them and provide for them, and the responsible adulthood of the members of some new nations who regard their young governments as institutions which must be protected and cherished by the citizenry.
What? The whole book talks about independent tribes, unless by government taking care of the people they are talking about chiefs and local councils. Similarly, while maybe the 1950s were different, today the modern countries are dependant on government for so much. Welfare state can’t happen without the state part.
The most complex invention of the Western world- radar or psychoanalytic therapy-
Where a system of piped-on water is gradually spread through a country, with each village taking responsibility for its own water supply, …
A page later talking about each village being responsible for itself. Which is it? Childlike dependence on government or individual villages.
To: Social Sciences Department, Unesco.
From : World Federation for Mental Health.
Subject : Technological Change and Mental Health.
Problem: To explore the mental health implications of the changes in living habits resulting from technological development.
Background of problem. In the past the introduction of new techniques and practices into the life of so-called under-developed peoples has usually been undertaken without adequate consideration of the effects of such changes on mental health and social adjustment. The changes planned will undoubtedly affect many areas of activity- sanitation, nutrition, wages and conditions of labour, agricultural techniques, pediatrics, obstetrics, preventive medicine, etc. Such changes are bound to alter the “way of life” of the group. the relations between parents and children, the hierarchy of authority, the acquisition of status and prestige, etc. These are precisely aspects of existence which are important for personality development and which give to individuals their feelings of happiness or unhappiness, security or insecurity, respectively. No programme of technological development can hope to succeed in the long run if it leaves people unhappy and maladjusted. In the long run also, such unhappy and maladjusted people are the ones who are more likely to turn to violence and even war, because of their dissatisfaction with the conditions under which they live. This is not a necessary consequence of technological development, but it is a possible one. It can be rendered much less probable if adequate attention is paid to the effect of technological development on people. The most important single fact to be kept in mind is that new techniques must be introduced with proper regard for the existing culture and with as little violence as possible to the folkways of the groups concerned. For example, if a people have been accustomed to pre-chew food and feed it as supplementary during breast feeding, two quite different courses are open in public health education. The public health innovator who has neither interest nor respect for native custom, may insist that the “disgraceful and dangerous” habit be given up and the infants fed only from the breast,without recognizing that the maternal nutritional status may be inadequate, and severe infant malnutrition may result.Alternatively, after an investigation of the whole pattern of infant feeding,the innovator may recommend mashing up food and continued supplementary feeding, in which a minimum of change is introduced into the maternal habits. A society may depend upon a new mother being trained by her mother,after a child is born, in the care of the child; hospitalization for deliveries may separate the new mother and the grandmother, and while increasing the chances of survival of the infant at birth, so impair the mother’s care of her child, as to decrease or compromise its survival chances. It should be possible to introduce hospitalization while continuing to utilize at least some of the techniques upon which the society has depended in the past. There are many examples of both successful and unsuccessful introductions of changes in these and other respects. A collection of such examples should serve a useful purpose as a guide to those who will be responsible for future innovations in the life of so-called under- developed peoples.
The Project. It is proposed, therefore,to prepare a manual or guide, utilizing existing source material which is at present scattered and relatively inaccessible,in order to aid those who will introduce and carry out the processes of technological change. This manual would contain sample techniques to be followed,as well as indications of methods which could be used in different countries to obtain the necessary information about food habits,hygiene, agriculture, family organization, methods of sharing of household expenses, which would be needed in order to facilitate and expedite the process of change, while at the same time protecting and advancing mental health.
Technique. The World Federation for Mental Health will undertake to place this problem in the hands of a committee of experts, representing not only the field of psychiatry but related disciplines as well, who would supervise the preparation of such. a manual. The actual work of writing the manual would be done by an expert who combines a knowledge of anthropology with familiarity with the principles and problems of psychiatry and mental hygiene. The manual will give special attention to the mental health aspects of technological change, especially as these affect attitudes in the field of international relations. Care will be taken to coordinate this activity with similar activities on the part of the United Nations and the Specialized Agencies.