New Guinea: Studies relating the medical and behavioral sciences: Part I. Urbanization, culture and disease

Abstract

Man’s initial revolutionary innovation was technological, the making of fire, which made possible numerous other technological advances. Fundamental innovations have occurred in other realms as well. In human ecology, perhaps, the most significant process has been urbanization, the withdrawal of men from small scattered hamlets to settle in crowded towns and cities. Just as technological revolution inevitably affects “the shape of man and culture”, scientific and economic advances in developing nations pose a real threat to continued existence of traditional culture, threatening to turn individuals from spontaneous, instinctive participants in social life into alienated automatons. In the village there is a stable structure of political and kin relationships, whereas the city is based on small class or family groups which remain essentially independent and uncoordinated. New Guinea, as a member of the modern “third world” is faced with the task of building a single nation out of a multiplicity of different cultural groups, many of the members of which are being crippled by the impact of rapidly progressing technology and social upheaval. Evidence is accumulating that in several animal species aggressiveness increases with increasing density of population. Likewise, urbanization seems to bring with it “crowd disease”, persistent feelings of desperation, aggressiveness, anxiety, and loss of identity in individuals who must deal every day with the pressures inherent in overcrowding 121. It may be thought that this is a normal problem which should be left to moral and political leaders to solve. but such issues have medical components [3]. Insofar as the medical profession is concerned with the positive goal of achievement of health, it must learn to anticipate and respond creatively to the challenge of the urbanization process to the mental health of a whole population.