| of it is humane and environmentally harmless. On the contrary, wherever capitalism has prospered, it has led to major concentrations of wealth and power for some, destitution for others; and to all kinds of skulduggery, exploitation, suffering, social disruptions and political upheavals, not to mention ecological damage. All governments exercise a vast plethora of controls over market forces in the public interest, and by and large with considerable success. They must and do buck the market, and the market in turn depends on a minimal political guarantee of order Overall, Turkey has currently one of the largest statistical skews between rich and poor reported in the World Development Report (World Bank, 1986). A few people - most had advantages to begin with - have got very rich; most are decidedly better off; some have remained poor; a few have even got poorer (Paleczek, Chapter 7). Some enjoy excellent amenities, even in so called gecekondus; others live and work in terrible conditions, often away from their families for long periods. Could such a society, with different policies, have achieved this growth with less inequality, disruption, and suffering? Or could it have grown even faster? As a social scientist, I do not know; does anyone? (iv) Occupational Change The population not directly dependent on agriculture went up from around 4 million in 1950 to about 27 million in 1986, nearly seven times (Istatistik Y1111gl, 1951, 1986). Four- fifths of these extra 23 million must have been the children, children's children, or children's children's children of peasant families. A 'peasant'(6) household is assumed - far too simply - to farm land and raise animals, which roughly employs all its collective labour, and produces enough in kind and in commodities to provide for all its collective needs. In a village of peasant households, the occupation of peasant is not an identity. A man is not what he does for a living, but the owner of a specific house and specific land, belonging in a specific way to a specific village. Men, women and children work as members of household teams. In 1950, in S and E, |
| direct close links with townspeople were fairly rare (cf. Turhan, 1951, Keyder, Chapter 12). Men who go to town, go to earn, that is, to find a job. In these villages, it was often a building skill; though I do have a list of about a hundred different occupations. Whatever the job, the new job holder has to develop an occupational network to get, keep or renew it, and to make it comfortable and lucrative. In the town a man is what he does. People learn all kinds of skills and find all kinds of jobs, and by doing so, they become new 'persons' with different identities. They now belong, both immediately and potentially, to a much more complex social structure, with many new kinds of social relations; and with different futures (Schiffaucr, Chapter 5), as most contributors in this book make clear. It is a commonplace that villages forge bridgeheads for finding urban jobs and urban housing. So sometimes people from a given area are concentrated in particular occupations, and sometimes in particular districts in cities. This is not by any means universal. S men migrants, for example, are nearly all connected to the building industry, (most of them are tilers), but they are residentially scattered. The detailed distribution of people in occupations - and also by residence - is not decided primarily by market forces, but by a whole set of interacting factors, among which the market is only one.Millions of villagers are now distributed in urban Turkey in hundreds of new and different occupations, in a wide variety of residences and with a wide range of education and statuses; they all live in social networks very different from those of full-time farming villagers, and often from each other. They do not constitute collectively a proletariat, still less an 'informal sector'(7). Occupational change is central to economic growth; and that requires radical changes in identities, in social structure, in skill and knowledge, and a fortiori in 'culture'. Because virtually all villages, and most village households, have now members earning in towns, or former members resident in town, village social networks and identities have also changed dramatically (cf. Schiffauer, Chapter 5, Abadan-Unat, Chapter 14). Their networks are far more dispersed and integrated with the national and international society, and with Turks abroad; and far less homologous with those of |
| fellow villagers. Villagers' village identities reflect the occupations, incomes, social statuses, and destinations of both their pendular and their household migrants. (v) Organisational Change The co-ordinated arrangements of people in groups to get things done are central to all activities in all societies. Unfortunately, in social science literature, 'organisation' often suggests modern management; and 'social organisation', traditional kinship. Even in small groups, such arrangements virtually always involve some hierarchy. Organised groups have problems; control and delegation, legitimacy, privileges for some, internal competition, incompetence, and the use of organisational power and resources for private, even nefarious, purposes; larger groups have more problems. The most conspicuous form of large organisation is the State itself, government - which was after all only invented about 6,000 years ago. My own hunch is that the progressive invention of more and more effective forms of co-ordinating people for an increasing variety of social purposes is one main factor in human social evolution. What sets the USA, Germany and Japan at the apex of the contemporary world is superior organisation. Likewise, the recent manifest political and economic failure of most of the world's socialist governments is organisational. The state has simply failed to run a modern economy efficiently and benignly. Turkey's growth.has involved the invention, reinvention and borrowing of dozens of new kinds of organisation; and the establishment or expansion of thousands of new and old organisations. Discovering and setting up effective rules, controls and arrangements, training personnel, building up experience and informal working practices takes decades. Since (almost?) all humans are primarily concerned with their personal power and prestige, controllers and members of organisations often put their private interests ahead of those of the organisation (Stirling, 1968). In all countries, 'better' organisation is an issue. In Turkey, from the organisation of the government itself down to the village midwife sunning herself in the garden of her government house, there is a vast amount to be learned - and applied - about effectiveness, commitment and supervision.(8). |
| The villagers of course always knew effectively about their own organisations; households, farming, marriages, villages, markets, and relations with their State.(9). But they have also learned an enormous amount about outside organisations of many kinds. They learn mainly ad hoc what it is in their interest to know, what helps them to solve the next problem. They can only do this within the limits of their existing knowledge, perceptions and experience; and of their own morality. Enriching their household, or doing favours for kin friends and allies is a moral duty; far more important than observing specific laws or formal rules, or pursuing the planned purposes of other people's organisations. By contrast, villagers who become entrepreneurs find themselves needing to organise and control others in new ways, and to establish new kinds of relations with other businessmen, professionals, and officials. Many villagers from S and E now act as building contractors, many run commercial undertakings, retail and wholesale, and a few have become manufacturers. A large number are building subcontractors in a given craft. All these have to learn to manage the internal and external relations of new organisations unlike villages and farming households. A great many Turks, and not only villagers, seem to assume that if you want something from, or within, a large organisation, then to get it, what you most need is not a formally correct case, nor even manipulative knowledge of the working of the system, but a personal link to someone of power above or within the organisation who is prepared to use that power on your behalf. Thus personal networks, 'patron client relations', are thought to be the most crucial factor in the daily running of organisations (Gune,s-Ayata, 1990). This perception, which is far too simple not to be false, closely matches the villagers' experience, assumptions and commitment to households and friends. Village and migrant morality fit cosily into this national culture of networking. Which raises interesting, if sensitive, questions for another occasion (10). (vi) Cognitive Change. Nothing struck me more forcibly when I returned to the two villages in 1971 than what I then called the information |