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Alexander Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Oct., 1968), pp. 127-132 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1152597 . Accessed: 24/09/2012 03:16
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Reviews for so long. In the section on Syria, the tremendous impact of the Egyptian occupation on the regional economy is represented by a short quotation from the CommercialStatistics of John MacGregor, who got most of his material from his friendships with Richard Wood, Colonel Churchill, John Bowring, and Consul-General Farren, all of whom left accounts (unpublished too) superior to MacGregor's. In the Ottoman Empire section, the stress is almost exclusively on agricultureand the land, as seen through a variety of essays. These essays are largely by modern writers and are excellent, too, but something like David Urquhart's famous polemic, TurkishOil and Russian Tallow, would have served to remind us of the tremendous commercial importance of the Anatolian ports and coastlands from Trebizond to Iskenderun in his day. Correspondingly, in place of the bald statement of the Anglo-Turkish Commercial Convention of 1838, one would have preferred the parliamentary report issued some years later on the operation of that Convention. These are petty dissatisfactions with a very good book and not major criticisms. The editor's footnotes occasionally become confused with those of his selected authors but can generally be puzzled out (try, for example, pp. 42-43). At some points they are incomplete or otherwise unhelpful (try p. 208). A map or two would have been useful, particularly with regard to railways. The only typographical error seems to be the reference on page 47 to Vambery.
Seymour Martin Lipset and Aldo Solari, eds., Elites in Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. 531 pp. $9.50. Robert J. Alexander Rutgers University Like most collections of papers and essays, the present book is of uneven quality. Some parts of the volume are full of interesting insights and information about contemporary Latin America; others are of too schematic a nature and too little connected with facts, or are too careless with the facts they present to be of any great use. In what follows, we shall concentrate principally upon the former type of contribution. As a whole, this book is the result of a Seminar on Elites and Development in Latin America, held in Montevideo in June 1965, under the joint sponsorship of the University of Montevideo, the Institute of International Studies of the University of California at Berkeley, and the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Most of the chapters were papers delivered at that conference, although others were written especially for the volume. The chief architects of the conference and the book are the American sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset and his Uruguayan counterpart, Aldo 127
Economic Developmentand CulturalChange Solari, Director of the Institute of Social Science at the University of Montevideo. There are fifteen contributors to this volume, of whom eight are Latin Americans and the rest from North America. The Latin American contributors include four Brazilians, two Chileans, and one scholar each from Peru and Uruguay. Those from the North are Frank Bonilla of MIT, Irving Louis Horowitz of Washington University in St. Louis, Henry Landsberger of Cornell, Seymour Martin Lipset now of Harvard, Robert A. Scott of the University of Illinois, Ivan Vallier of Berkeley, and Kenneth Walker of the University of Toronto. All but Scott, a political scientist, are sociologists. Lipset presents the first essay, which seeks to place the emergence of new elites in Latin America in a broader world context. He is particularly concerned with the value orientation of the emerging middle-class elites and its impact on the process of economic development. Using Weberian and Parsonian concepts as a background for his discussion, Lipset then brings to bear the writings of a number of Latin American and outside students of the area to develop his argument. Lipset starts with the observation that "The relative failure of Latin American countries to develop on a scale comparable to those of North America or Australasia has been seen as, in some part, a consequence of variations in value systems dominating these two areas." To specify these differences he relies on Talcott Parsons' "pattern-variables," which he notes indicate "basic orientations toward human action," and Parsons' categorization of the Latin American value system as belonging to the "particularistic-ascriptivesystem," which "tends to be focused around kinship and local community, and to de-emphasize the need for powerful and legitimate larger centers of authority such as the state." On the basis of the findings of various scholars who have looked at the problem, Lipset arguesthat the middle class, including the industrialists, of the various Latin American countries is still largely loyal to a system of values which was more appropriate to a rural society dominated by a landowning elite. This is one of the reasons, he argues, why a very crucial role in development has been played by "deviant" elements, particularly immigrants. These immigrant groups, even when they come from countries which are themselves underdeveloped, have no fixed place in the traditional Latin American society and so are more prone to look for and take advantage of and even create for themselves opportunities outside of that traditional system. Lipset is also concerned with the process of changing the traditional Latin American value system. In this connection, he notes the impact of the Mexican Revolution in cracking not only the institutional framework but the value system of the prerevolutionary society. Finally, he suggests the important role in this regard which the expansion and reform of the educational system can have in bringing about similar changes without 128
Reviews undergoing the kind of cataclysmic experience which was the lot of Mexico. Fernando Cardoso, the sociologist from the University of Sao Paulo, who has made invaluable surveys of the industrialist class in his own country, contributes a chapter on the characteristics of the industrial elite in several of the economically more advanced Latin American countries. He presents the results of surveys of the origins, characteristics, and attitudes of these groups. On balance, they bear out Lipset's contention of the still-powerful influence of traditional values even on this relatively dynamic group in Latin American society. However, they also bear out the idea that as Latin American firms have grown larger, and the industrial system better entrenched, the educational background, the methods of access to management, and even the attitudes of the manufacturersbecome more similar than before to those of the advanced industrial countries. In the light of the depth and very insightful nature of Cardoso's publications about Brazil, this chapter is somewhat thin. Robert Scott is concerned with what he conceives to be the failure of the political elite to adapt the political system to the needs of rapid economic and social change. He argues particularly that the political parties have failed generally in Latin America. Only in Mexico, Scott says, "does the party system act as an effective aggregating mechanism to force compromise and cooperation among the elites which represent divergent interests." Generally, multi-interest parties have not evolved, while parties representing specific group interests have not been able to work out compromises which allow the system to work in a more or less stable and normal way. Scott argues that the strong presidency which is characteristicof Latin America may in some instances overcome this inadequacy of the parties, while the same inadequacy tends to reinforce the strength of the presidents. But he is not overly optimistic about this possibility, either. In the face of this lack of ability of the formal structureof government to absorb adequately the shocks of change, Scott argues that there has evolved a complicated system of private governments-of interest groups which have the right to exercise a kind of control over their members and even over third parties which otherwise might be exercised by the political government. This is an interesting concept deserving of further investigation, which might well indicate that the political traditions of these countries are as much responsible for the power of these private governments as is the "crisis of elites" which is Scott's theme. In general, this reviewer is inclined to feel that Scott has overstated the case for the inadequacy of the Latin American political systems to absorb the changes which are under way in the area. The political parties are less inept than he gives them credit for; the acceptance of the need for fundamental change is more widely recognized and acquiesced in than Scott believes. 129
Economic Developmentand CulturalChange One of the most interestingand instructivechapters in this book is that of Ivan Vallier on the area's religious elites. He sums up his thesis thus: My argumentin broad terms gives Catholics a strategicplace in Latin Americansocial dynamics.In this I shall make it clear that this role is conservatism. not merelyone of reactionary However,insteadof viewing the liberal or progressivesector of Catholicismas a homogeneous, undivision are isolated and differentiated movement,lines of unmistakable described.In addition, the sources of these variouselite movementsare only meaningfuland explainablein relation to the Catholic Church's present attempts to rescue itself from a threatening crisis situation. Finally, I maintainthat the pivotalrole of Catholicismin Latin America cannot help but give the new Catholic elites a formative influenceon secularchange in the widersociety. After a short historical survey of the traditionally conservative role of the Church in Latin America and the relative autonomy which the Church in the various countries had historically had from the Vatican, Vallier suggests that three new types of leaders are emerging within Latin American Catholicism. The first of these is the "Papist" group, who, he argues, "focus on building a Church that relies on its own authority and its own resources to achieve influence and visibility," as well as "full obedience to and full supervision by Church authorities." The second new group consists of the "pastors," who Vallier says "see their main task as that of building up strong, worship-centeredcongregations." They concentrate their efforts among the faithful, seeking to draw them closer to the parish and to involve them in its affairs. They are particularly concerned with sacramental and similar changes within the Church. The third new leadership group in the Latin American Church, according to Vallier, and the one from which he expects most, are the "pluralists." He notes that they insist on the position of Catholicism as a minority faith in Latin America, and "their major objective is to develop policies and programs that will allow the Church to assist the institutionalization of social justice on every front that provides the opportunity. Thus, the center of attention is moved away from traditional concerns with political power, from hierarchyand clericalism, and from worship and the sacraments to grass-roots ethical action in the world." On the basis of this differentiation of the Catholic elites, Vallier looks at the future of the Church's role in Latin American society and political life. His essay is one of the most thoughtful and important discussions of the role of the Church in Latin America to appear for a long time. Henry Landsberger's chapter seeks to answer the question, "The Labor Elite: Is It Revolutionary?" His conclusion is that it is not. He musters a considerable amount of evidence, in terms of attitude surveys of union leaders and historical incidents, to buttress his case. Although he 130
Reviews uses several things which the present reviewer has written as a take-off point to develop what he conceives to be a rebuttal, I find that I cannot disagree basically with his conclusions. His arguments are summed up thus: Labor'sgoals are economic not ideological, but it seeks to use political means to reach these goals, because the decision-makingprocess has so. However, been designedto lurelabor into politics-often deliberately many sectorsof labor seem to have more political than economicpower, partly because of Latin America'sstagnanteconomic developmentand partlybecauseof labor's rapid political involvement,throughthe ballot box or by violence, between 1920 and 1960. Landsbergerand I agree, I believe, that organized labor stands aligned on the side of change in Latin America, but on the side of democratic and more or less orderly change, rather than guerrilla war and violence. This is due in large part to the fact that, partly as a result of the efforts of the labor movement itself, the urban workers have considerable to lose from the violent approach. Landsberger's discussion of these matters is an important contribution to understanding Latin American organized labor and its role in the economic life, society, and politics of the area. Another contribution of first-rate importance is Darcy Ribeiro's chapter on "Universities and Social Development." Ribeiro is a leading Brazilian educator, first president of the University of Brasilia, who since his exile in 1964 has been teaching at the University of Montevideo. His stress, after some historical background, is on the need for modernization of the Latin American university. Among other points which he makes in this connection are the need for changes in admission systems, ending of the catedraticosystem by which a professor holding a "chair" can and does block promotion for all of those below him, and greater emphasis on the sciences and social sciences in the curriculum. Although politically, Ribeiro was on the extreme left during his rather short political career in Brazil, some of his suggestions for reform are not particularly extremist. For instance, he advocates establishment of meaningful entrance examinations for the univerities and introduction of a tuition payment, together with an extensive scholarship program. He also favors the reorganization of Latin American universities on the lines of the departments familiar in the United States institutions of higher learning. Most of the suggestions which Darcy Ribeiro makes for modernization of the Latin American university this reviewer would agree with. However, he cannot agree with Ribeiro's endorsement of "co-government" of the universities by the students, something to which Ribeiro himself was apparentlyconverted only after going into exile in Uruguay. As Minister of Education under President Joao Goulart, he had broken a student strike called for the purpose of obtaining co-government. 131
Economic Developmentand CulturalChange Professor Luis Scherz-Garcia, of the Catholic University of Santiago, follows Darcy Ribeiro's chapter with one on the relationshipsof public and private universities in the area. He has some interestinginformation on the extent and nature of the private schools now existing, and the burden of his argument is that there should be much closer cooperation between the two types of universities. This is made particularly urgent by the very limited resources available to higher education of all kinds. He has some interesting suggestions concerning how such cooperation might be brought about. The chapter by Aldo Solari is concerned with the Latin American secondary schools, a relatively neglected aspect of the educational system. It is particularly interesting because of its discussion of the relationships between academic and vocational education on the secondary level. He has considerable information on the extent of vocational education and some useful generalizations on the relationship between the level of industrialization and the nature of the vocational training schemes adopted in a particular country. This is an important book, contributing to the understandingof some of the noneconomic aspects of the process of economic development in Latin America. One can learn a good deal of valuable information from it; there are interesting and perceptive interpretations of what is going on; and parts of this volume should become important reference sources for other scholars.
Robert W. Clower, George Dalton, Mitchell Harwitz, and A. A. Walters, Growth without Development: An Economic Survey of Liberia. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1966. Pp. xv + 385. Gwendolen M. Carter NorthwesternUniversity The title of this detailed and critical study of Liberia is provocative. More important, it provides in a nutshell the basic thesis of the book: that in the decade from 1951 to 1961, during which the Liberian economy grew at a rate almost unparalleledanywhere else in the world (outstripped, in fact, only by Japan), this growth did not lead to development, that is, to structural economic change absorbing larger numbers of Liberians in new productive activities and with more advancedtrainingand skills. On the contrary, the returns from Liberia's economic growth, insofar as they accrued to Liberians, went almost exclusively to the small ruling minority of Americo-Liberians,thus reinforcingtheir political power and the economic and social divisions between them and the country's tribal majority. Why this happened, and what are the basic political, social, and economic changes in Liberia that this team of economists recommend so 132