Backward Societies Research Articles

The dialogue role in improving the mental image of Muslims in non-Muslim societies.

The research has tried to contribute to find solutions to the problem of the distorted stereotyped thought about Islam and Muslims among non-Islamic ,especially the Western societies, by studying this phenomenon, which has come to be known as “Islamophobia” .This phenomenon has caused the formation of a negative perception of Islam in the majority of those societies as an extremist religion that urges violence and conveys terrorism to all the people around the world, and its followers are the most reactionary and backward societies. Consequently ,this concept has created barriers that prevented those societies from knowing the truth of Islam, and its divine essence and its humantarian nature that is rich in great values, which contribute to strengthening security ,peace and prosperity in the world. The research has concluded that there are two main reasons for the emergence of this phenomenon, one is internal; which is related to the behavioral deviation of some Muslims from the values and teachings of Islam ,which has gave a negative impression about Islam as a religion and Muslims as a nation. Moreover,it cases of civilizational backwardness, wars, and political, economic and social problems experienced by most Arab and Islamic societies. The other reason is external. It is related to the systematic campaigns that many western circles make them, led by the Orientalists, and the Christian Zionists lobbies, which have tried to describe Islam to their regimes and societies as a flood that wants to invade their countries. And that Islam is a bloody,exclusive religion. So, this wrong thought has created a state of phobia and fear of Islam in those societies. Shortly ,It requires various efforts to amend this wrong thought about Islam in those societies, the most important of which is dialogue at all its intellectual, cultural, political levels and fields through which it is possible to improve the image of Islam and Muslims and create the suitable atmosphere for the delivery of the pure message of Islam to all human societies. This contributes to alleviate the cases of hatred, aggression and racial discrimination against Muslims, especially the Islamic communities and Islamic minorities.

The Role of Women's Labor Force in Household Income in Villages

Since women make up half of the population, they have a significant role in providing family resources, so that women's social responsibility in some matters is more important than men's, in the family environment as a mother, wife and raising children and outside the home play an effective role in manufacturing and service activities, the use of women's labor force in the production of goods is one of the fundamental components of developed countries. But women's activities in some backward societies are unfairly ignored and cannot even be counted in the calculation of national production, this study aims to investigate the contribution and role of women's economic activity in the economy of rural families with the case example of Khost and Farang districts of Baghlan province, it is important to investigate this issue because by recognizing and stabilizing the amount of women's activity, the transformation in the old patriarchal system is important. Making changes in infrastructures, helped in the social fair business method, and economic growth of the country, the data collection method is two types (field questionnaire that 247 families in the form of samples and from other reliable domestic and foreign scientific books and articles), to analyze information and get the intensity of the relationship about women's work in agriculture, livestock and handicrafts in the family economy, by Pearson method. The output of 0.71%, with a coefficient of 0.504% and the value of his statistics 4.83%, which is greater than the critical value of 2.069%, the results of statistical analysis with a confidence level of 95% indicate the fact that there is a positive relationship between women's work and the income of rural families and the value of women's work has a positive and significant role in the economy of rural families.

Economic Strategy in Kuwait and Currency Stability Factors

Recently there has been an increase in interest in using a strategy for developing a strategy on which the economy is based in countries, and it has become one of the most important indicators of the development of society, and development in society is not achieved without its presence, as the world is going through our time with economic problems and crises that did not exist before. It was affordable in front of developing and backward societies that did not develop a deliberate economic strategy, but it was better with countries that are aware of this development and the importance of planning to achieve economic development in the country. Therefore, the study aimed to try to identify the economic strategy followed in the State of Kuwait, and what are the factors affecting the exchange rate and how The stability of the currency in the country, and the plans developed by the State of Kuwait by studying economic indicators and benefiting from previous studies of economic planning. The descriptive approach was used to determine the weariness of the strategy followed to raise the economic development in the country.

Attitude towards working women: Rural-Urban differences (A case study of Pauri town and Buransi village of Uttarakhand)

The role of males and females in different societies has been different because of a number of factors like environmental, economic, social, cultural and political. Even in the developed countries women have not come at par with their male counterparts in terms of status, recognition and active participation in economic activities. However, with the increasing qualitative education, the scenario is changing little by little. In Indian context, in view of multiple societal setup women are still struggling to register their effective presence in the male dominated society in general and poor and backward societies in particular. It is interesting to note that the socio-economic conditions of women in Garhwal region are comparatively better than other regions of the country. Education has played a vital role in bringing about a change in attitude towards women’s participation in society. In the present communication an attempt has been made to analyze various factors and indicators associated with the attitude of people towards working women in both urban and rural backgrounds.

The Shadow and the Substance of Lenin after 150 Years

Citation: Marshall A. (2020) The Shadow and the Substance of Lenin after 150 Years. Mir Rossii, vol. 29, no 4, pp. 134–149. DOI: 10.17323/1811-038X-2020-29-4-134-149
 150 years since Lenin’s birth marks an anniversary that raises questions around Lenin’s meaning today and his ultimate historical legacy. By distinguishing both Lenin the man, and the cult of commemoration that for 60 years surrounded him, from the core method behind Lenin’s own thought, this article addresses the question of if and why Lenin still matters in Europe today. It does so by arguing for an Ilyenkovian reading of Lenin’s main ideas and contributions. The current condition of European politics is, to a significant degree, still a by-product of the rejection of ‘Leninism’ after 1989, Leninism having evolved after 1924 into a sociological construct designed predominantly to facilitate the accelerated industrialization of backward societies. The rejection of Leninism as an alternate form of modernity led, via a consciously post-modern moment in central and eastern Europe, to the substitution of ‘memory politics’, fostering a more openly competitive political culture focused around race, identity, religious faith, and often radical ethnic nationalism. The dangers of such an outcome were foreshadowed in the concerns of the Soviet philosopher Evald Ilyenkov, who sought in the 1960s and 1970s to counterbalance the rise of neopositivist thinking in his era by revisiting the dialectics of the ideal first explored by Marx and Lenin. Whilst Ilyenkov saw mechanistic materialism as the greater latent danger in his own day, he also opposed the subjective idealism of ‘socialism with a human face’, and the idealist currents that arose in response to neopositivist rhetoric in Soviet social life. He found in Lenin an intellectual ally of his own belief that the true definition of the ideal emerges via the collaborative collective activity of society as a whole in a particular historical moment, rather than via embracing one or other of these two extremes. Through Ilyenkov, Lenin continues to speak to our own times.

Representation of Muslim characters living in the West in Ontario’s language textbooks

This study examined how Muslims living in the West were represented in English language textbooks in Ontario, Canada. The review showed that Muslims were consistently placed in inferior and dependent positions in relation to ‘white folks’ by focusing on their origins in violent and backward societies, their cultural deficits, social ineptitudes, conflicted identities, and low-status jobs. It is suggested that textbooks should encourage critical literacy by including a wider, more accurate range of depictions of Muslims in western societies to combat stereotyping.

Clusters and Upgrading: a Purposeful Approach

We develop a theoretical model to investigate how backward societies can improve their upgrading capabilities by transforming existing industrial agglomerations into dynamic clusters. Our main assumptions are two: first, emerging market economies are not uniform but characterized by variety of subnational regional and sectoral organizational and institutional configurations; second, the basic building block and unit of explanation in social sciences is personal action guided by some intention, which is heterogeneous across different actors. Based on these assumptions and the literature on human motives and social networks, we develop a purposeful approach to clusters and upgrading. We argue that governments can develop institutions with private actors that facilitate new types of relationships and improve the access local firms have to a variety of knowledge resources, a key ingre­dient to upgrading. We illustrate this argument revisiting the literature on clusters and upgrading in Latin America and using two case studies in Argentina, a country better known for its volatility and lack of optimal social capital and institutions. We conclude with avenues for further research.

The Search for Good Government: Understanding the Paradox of Italian Democracy. By Filippo Sabetti. Montreal: McGill–Queens University Press, 2000. 288p. $34.95.

Filippo Sabetti has written an important book, not just for specialists in Italian politics, but also for those more generally interested in comparative politics. Poor government performance has often been associated with the Italian state, so much so that foreign scholars often used Italy as an ideal locale to probe the seminal causes of political pathology. Edward Banfield's (1958) The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, for example, attributed poor political performance to the particular beliefs and attitudes of Italians, to an inadequate moral basis he identified as “amoral familism.” The village Banfield studied, Chiaromonte (which he called Montegrano), soon became a model for “backward societies” in the comparative literature and later was woven into game theoretic concerns, such as the tragedy of the commons and the prisoner's dilemma. Banfield's “culturalist” approach was later refined in Robert Putnam's (1993) Making Democracy Work. Rather than condemning all Italy to pathological status, as Banfield's Montegrano writ large, Putnam compared the “unsuccessful” South with the civic-minded North, where a density of associations and an abundance of “social capital” not only made “democracy work,” but also contributed to economic prosperity. Putnam later extended this analysis of associability and social capital to the United States, most famously in his work on “bowling alone.”

Widows as Obstacles to Business: British Objections to Brazilian Marriage and Inheritance Laws

Implicit in the hegemonic “civilizing” discourse of nineteenth-century British imperialism was the assumption that Great Britain was a model to be followed by backward societies. Included in the British characterisics to be emulated was the status of their women. In this article I turn this assumption on its head by arguing that the capital accumulation permitting the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain was furthered not only by primogeniture, as many scholars have correctly argued, but also by a marriage regime in which wives and widows had few rights to property, for husbands were usually sole owners of all marital property and had full testamentary freedom. This arrangement permitted property to concentrate in male hands. In contrast, the marriage system based on Portuguese and Brazilian law was one of full community property, which gave wives veto power in the sale or mortgaging of all real estate and assured widows rights of succession to one-half of the marital property. This system was combined with limited testamentary freedom and equally partible inheritance for both sons and daughters. I argue that, though it was more equitable than the British system, it worked against the accumulation of capital.

Development Communication and Popular Resistance in Africa: An Examination of the Struggle over Tradition and Modernity through Media

From the onset of the post-World War II international campaign for the development of the Third World, much attention has been paid to the role of various media forms in the process of making Africa modern. In the discourses of many state officials, development agencies, Western economists, sociologists, and political scientists, development was defined in terms of a country's ability to urbanize, industrialize, and democratize. What was needed for development to occur in Africa, and in the rest of the Third World for that matter, was a transformation of societies from traditional to modern. As channels for the dissemination of modern ideas and practices, mass media were seen as integral to the very process of social transformation. In the view of those working within this dominant modernization paradigm, a modern mass media system—radio, newspapers, television, and cinema—once established, would serve to prepare developing countries for modernity by transforming the values, attitudes, and behaviors of traditional society (Golding 1974; Fair 1989, 131). The mass media's role in the national development process, then, was to act as innovators and mobilizers of transformation, changing old habits and fostering a new ethic. Essential to the modernization perspective was the assumption that backward societies remained mired in their traditional ways as a result of ignorance of the outside world and of the inarguable benefits of modernity. Sociologist Daniel Lerner, referring to the Middle East expressed the underlying sentiment of the role of the media in the national development process as well as anyone when he wrote, “what is required there to ‘motivate’ the isolated and illiterate peasants and tribesmen who compose the bulk of the area's population is to provide them with clues as to what the better things in life might be” (1958 411).

Bernard Huss and the Experiment in African Cooperatives in South Africa, 1926-1948

The inter-war years were significant for discussions on agrarian relations and the conditions of the black peasantry in South Africa. They were marked by a philanthropic interest in economic conditions in the African reserves and a variety of proposals were made by missionaries and friends of the for their social and economic upliftment. There was little attempt at a systematic economic analysis of African rural conditions that took into account the increasing impact of labor migration on African society. A few missionaries, such as James Henderson at Lovedale, began to recognize that economic forces were turning the reserves into rural slums and that more drastic state action was needed to halt this process.1 But most white native experts at this time in South Africa preferred to see African rural communities as innately backward societies that would only accept gradual economic and social change resulting from their progressive adaptation towards the values of a Western market-oriented society.

Remembering the minorities

The limits of Islamic toleration need no emphasis today. The vicissitudes of Bahais in Persia, of Christians and pagans in the Sudan, and of Ahmadis in Pakistan, the strict enforcement of the ban on the celebration of Christmas outside the privacy of Christian families in Saudi Arabia, have revived old notions of Islam as a creed intolerant of religious minorities. The revulsion felt in the civilized world at the administration of Coranic punishments stoning, amputation, flogging and at the official repression of women in lands subject to the Islamic shar'ia law have added to the impression of Islamic intolerance. Nor is a distinction often made between these properly Islamic, traditional forms of oppression and cruelty, and traditional, yet non-Islamic forms encountered in other backward societies, on the one hand, and modern forms of oppression on the other. Arbitrary and tyrannical government has not been in the past, and is not today, an exclusive characteristic of Muslim countries. Many Muslim countries have been fairly administered in the past; some are tolerably so today. Notions of justice in the treatment of people in general, and of distinct groups or minorities in particular are, of course, subject to change. One does not have to be a progressive to attest to progress where it demonstrably occurs; nor does one have to be a Marxist to speak of objective progress. True, the knowledge that cruelty and oppression have been practised on a vast scale in and by advanced countries has forced us to abandon the notion that progress is automatically good, that advances in knowledge entail moral advancement also. Comparative studies of societies, whether in history or in the various stages of development in which they exist today, have found reason and coherence in all forms of social organization, and, as a result, have further weakened the idea that mankind is progressing from a less to a more desirable way of life. But even if the classical preference of civilization over barbarism, or the preference by the Enlightened of progress to backwardness, has become intellectually suspect, it is none the less widely felt, not least by many denizens of barbarous or otherwise backward societies. The attraction of the West lies not only in its relative wealth, but also in the relative justice of its government. Wise as we are to the limits and dangers of the notions of civilization and barbarism, of progress and backwardness, of knowledge and ignorance, we would be wiser still not to fly in the face of common sense by abandoning them altogether. It is thus impossible to arrive at a proper evaluation of Islamic societies without the notion of progress. Repellent as it is to our notions of justice and to our sensibility today, the shar'ia was in many, if not most, respects superior to the official and customary legal practices not only in the countries where it was applied but in many other lands too, not only at the time when it was formulated but for a long time thereafter. A thief in a Muslim country may

Pensadores, conquistadores and Latin American mythmaking

w hY does Latin American society give up its spiritual autonomy and join itself like a parasite to another society that begins to mold it and endow it by increasingly handing down its accomplishments? One reasonable answer is this: the essential feature of North American society is the search for change, the construction of an ever different destiny. In this quest, North Americans consider only their own society as a point of reference. To be a permanent center of new initiatives governed by its own internal dialectic, the United States does not follow the lead of Europeans. Europe and the rest of the planet are yoked to the American engine, which sometimes advances in the direction of astral space, and other times gets immersed in the microuniverse of biogenetics. The United States drags with it the other countries of the world in the direction of innovation and toward the acceleration of growing technological complexity. We Latin Americans, with more inhabitants than the United States, possess as much or more potential wealth. Spawned by Europe--just as the United States--we have universities that are more than four hundred years old. We have urban centers that were already established when Chicago was a prairie overrun by buffalo. Unconsciously, we have renounced our contribution to shaping our own destiny. Today we treat and tomorrow we will cure those illnesses that some foreign laboratory could already fight effectively. We will live longer because of advances in geriatrics in California or Texas. We will have fewer children because of birth control methods perfected in New York or Tokyo. We will learn better if our teaching methods come to terms with computer technology, devised by multinational corporations. We will be taller or shorter or we will have fewer abnormal children, if genetic transmission chains are correctly deciphered at Harvard or Stanford. We will have more fun if the video recorder is perfected and made cheaper in the Silicon Valley. All of these things are given or sold to us ready-made. Everything that we are and will be is given to us because we do not control our own lives. We move along indifferently without even a plan against the essential immorality that tolerates this paralysis of creativity. In the bloody history of our social struggle, no group has had as its main goal the assumption of an active role in the shaping of our national destiny. We become hoarse crying out for our rights, but we have forgotten our responsibilities to ourselves and to concerns that link us to our destiny. We are accustomed to passing the guilt and responsibility on to others. We do not realize that in almost five centuries at a university such as San Marcos, hardly a discovery of scientific importance was made, and not one original idea was advanced in the humanities. Nothing and nobody except ourselves would prevent an Edison, Bell, Freud, Kant, Einstein, or Heidegger from flourishing in Lima, Havana, Caracas, or Mexico City. Latin American societies do not encourage new ideas. We are unconcerned with the task of changing the world in which we live. We do not allow for our own creativity. It would be wrong to suggest that we live in backward societies that despise changes, since we are so pleased to notice them when they occur. We are simply reluctant to initiate those changes on our own. We have not understood that it is audacity and innovation that determine the course of history, not the other way around. We have not understood that it has been five centuries since the object of our civilization has been change. That is why we have become marginal nations.

Technological dependence and the failure of educational institutions to support development

Academics, foundations and international agencies concerned with development have repeatedly pointed out the failure of educational institutions to support economic development in underdeveloped countries, particularly in providing the occupational skills and research knowledge in science and technology required by the productive sectors of the economy. The causal factors of this failure have been attributed to institutional deficiencies and traditionalism of backward societies where ‘desk’ jobs and independent professions enjoy higher esteem than technology-related occupations. This paper argues that such educational patterns are rooted in the structures of dependency of the underdeveloped countries. First, employment is concentrated in the non-productive services sector of the economy where desk jobs abound. Second, dependent industrialization entails the predominance of external linkages of industry to developed countries, and technological dependency both in its organic and intellectual components. Industry in underdeveloped countries does not carry out the more complex technological operations of the production cycle or research and development activities for new technology, both of which are done in developed countries. In the absence of this activity, educational institutions cannot ‘learn’ and keep abreast of the modern technological knowledge and processes required for jobs in industry.

Peasant leadership and the Pugachev revolt

This paper examines the leadership of the Pugachev revolt, the vast peasant uprising which took place in Russia between 1773 and 1775. It is also concerned with certain general issues, particularly those concerning the raising and subsequent sustaining of large‐scale peasant movements in ‘pre‐industrial’ societies where peasant organisations beyond village level are lacking. The Pugachev revolt had peculiarities which are of intrinsic interest, but it also provides significant parallels and contrasts to other peasant uprisings (not only in seventeenth‐ and eighteenth‐century Russia) and generally serves to highlight the problems of the articulation of rural protest in backward societies.

Introduction: The “Southern Question” in Italian Sociology

Although Italian social thought has been surprisingly inter nationalist in perspective and scope, it is natural that its main focus be of immediate local relevance. Of all many social problems confronting Italian society from days of national unification in latter part of nineteenth century to present, what has been called the Question ? i.e., coexistence of an industrialized North side by side with an underdeveloped South ? has been by far most crucial, diffi cult, and all-encompassing. All other social problems, such as emigration, urbanization, industrialization, etc., have, in some way or other, been directly related to and affected by what has happened to Southern Question. The following five essays present a series of empirical, theoretical, and po litical analyses which collectively provide a fairly adequate ac count of major determining features of Italian Southern Question. To extent that underdevelopment and backwardness are global and not local or national problems, all of these analyses unavoidably move within an international context. Thus Marti nelli's critique of notion of dualism is developed primar ily in relation to interpretations of phenomenon of under development by Eckaus, Furtado, Boeke, etc. TfDual ism, in fact, has been elaborated as a theoretical tool meant both to explain as well as to indicate ways to overcome back wardness in a situation which contraposes backward soci eties to advanced ones. All these interpretations, however, are ideologically vitiated at least to extent that they deal with these phenomena as examples of imperfection of free com petition, inadequacy of resources, and similar factors, thus

Points de vue géographiques sur le sous-développement en Amérique Latine

Geographical points of view on under-development in latin America Geographical points of view on under-development in latin America. (Abstract.) — The failure to use the natural environment to the full extent and the wastage both of men and of capital are the outstanding geographical characteristics of under-development. The author examines this in its principal forms in Latin America; he underlines that situations vary from country to country and from region to region. The attention of geographers should be drawn to the regions and pockets of population on the margins of the important economic areas. The dualistic appearances can only obscure the dependence of the more backward societies on those which are more developed. The analysis of the landscapes allows us to measure the degree of control human society has over its environment, and consequently to recognise regional inequalities more easily. Using this direct knowledge we can easily see the possibilities of improvement better than if we relied on statistics.