Administrators, Agitators, and Brokers

Abstract

IN ALL SOCIETIES there is a conspicuous difference between the of those who wield power and devise public policy and of those who live off the land and claim no special authority over their neighbors. Whatever the culture, there is no confusing the ways of the educated urban dwellers with those of the rustic. There is always a gap between a society's intellectuals and its common people, between its highest artistic traditions and its popular culture. Why, then, the concern about the gap that exists between the attitudes of the urbanized, Westernized elites and the village-based, traditionoriented peasant masses in the newly independent and modernizing countries ? Historically, most Asian, African, and the Middle Eastern societies had extreme hierarchical distinctions, and sharp bifurcation was generally accepted as a tolerable arrangement. At present, however, nation-building throughout the non-Western world has evoked a demand for a wider range of common identity and social mobility. Thus the acceptable gap between elite and mass under the remarkably stable system of traditional social organization has become intolerable and a source of instability under the stimulus of modernization. Also, differences in outlook between leaders and masses have been further increased by the Western impact, which has induced sharp discontinuities in the non-Western societies. For some, the bonds of custom and religion have been weakened in favor of rational and secular modes of behavior, but not for all; and thus differences have become barriers and not just separate ways of expressing the themes and values of a common civilization. For all their differences, the Confucian scholar and the Chinese peasant belonged to one world. The same cannot be said of the Westernized intellectual and the contemporary Asian peasant. The impact of Western ideas and practices has produced a very uneven pattern of change in the non-Western world. Where the impact has been direct and new social roles have been introduced, change has generally been rapid. In other spheres, touched only by secondary and indirect consequences