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| (v). Occupations To produce such economic growth, and to run the resulting economy, millions of people had to learn hundreds of new skills and professions. Turkey now has huge armies of teachers, lawyers, doctors, scientists, technicians, managers, accountants, medical auxiliaries, transport workers, shopkeepers, factory workers, industrialists small and large, and of course, memur - civil servants of all kinds . Detailed and reliable occupational statistics are not easy to find. One simple example: in 1942, Turkey had just over 30,000 teachers of all kinds, in 1985, 330,000 [ Statistical Annual 1989]. (vi). Urban growth The main manpower source was the villages. To supply all these positions, people had to leave their villages and move to town, and accordingly the towns have grown at a great speed for seven decades. In 1950, roughly 5 million people out of 21 million did not live in villages. By 1986, 26 of 50 million did not live in villages. Urban-rural migration is not a puzzle; it is universally part and parcel of economic and demographic growth. (vii). Knowledge and Social Cognition Two kinds of obvious knowledge are necessary for economic growth. First, everyone needs some level of more or less uniform basic education and training [ Gellner 1983]. Second, everyone needs specific and detailed knowledge about the job they are doing, from office cleaners to directors of space programmes. How villagers get to learn these things is itself complex enough. But there is something more subtle, more fundamental, which seems seldom discussed, let alone effectively researched. Humans seldom stop talking. |
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| Villagers watch television, listen to politicians, receive visits from their kin and friends who now do things other than agriculture, hear from their children about schools and universities and so on and so on. They talk about these things. I call this `social cognition'. [Giddens 1976, Mardin 1989, Fischer 1991]. It seems very difficult to research, still more difficult to measure. But the difference between Turkey 1950 and Turkey 1986 in social cognition, that is, in what people know, take for granted, are able to discuss and tell each other, is colossal; not just in villages, but at all levels of society. Labour migration is one of the effects and one of the causes of this huge difference. People only go to town if they have what they see as evidence that there is something to go for. Social networks carry information through this constant conversation. Moreover, as the total sum of potential information grows, people consciously build networks of other people who know how to find out the things which they themselves do not expect to know. This kind of knowledge is obviously the basis of `chain' migration. Much more important, it is also the source of innovation and enterprise, the way people with resources to invest, learn about new opportunities for production or commerce. Village failures provide experience for future village successes. Indeed, profitable information based on experience becomes a major asset, even a commodity to be exchanged with those who can offer some kind of return. (viii). Organisation and Social Control Here I make two related points. First, organisation, that is, the co-ordinated arrangements which people make to get things done, is central to all daily activities and to all achievements in all human societies; and to human social evolution. An organised group of any size in any society - the State itself is the largest and most complex, with multinational companies and international |
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| organisations close behind - is bound to run into all kinds of problems. These problems mainly centre round the clash between the personal aims and rivalries of individual members and subordinates, and the aims of the organisation, and of its bosses. To run a village, complex and subtle controls and organisations are necessary. But to run a modern state and a modern economy with its dozens of different kinds of organisation and its multiple opportunities for private power and gain, both legitimate and illegitimate, is infinitely more complex. It seems to me that what makes the rich and successful nations rich and successful is above everything else, their capacity for effective organisation; not because as individuals their citizens are more competent, but simply because as societies they have a store of social cognition about organisation, and a culture in which effective organisation has become embedded and legitimised. In the city, villagers from rural Turkey find themselves controlled by, and having to learn about and come to terms with, all kinds of organisations that are new to them. Many, by setting up businesses, find themselves compelled to organise others in ways which they had never thought about. [Ayata 1982] They organise themselves not only for work and production but for urban living; for finding themselves homes, for getting municipal services, for exploiting bureaucracies, for all kinds of purposes. Some of these are illegal, some even criminal; some may involve violence. So labour migration imposes problems not only of organisation, but also of public order. Order is essential for any social life. Social control involves not only the formal and imposed controls of State bureaucracies, the police, and the disciplines imposed by working for employers, but also, and more important, the informal controls of family, gossip and neighbourhood. The way social control works in villages seems to me different from the way it works |
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| in towns. So massive rural urban labour migration causes major changes in mechanisms of control, not only within organisations, but also in ordinary day to day living. [Stirling 1957, 1984] (ix). Islam Precisely what is currently happening, and even more, what ought to happen, about Islam in Turkey is hotly and passionately debated. [Mardin 1989, Tapper 1991, Toprak 1981] I make only four brief points. First, virtually everyone in Turkey now sees Islam, not just as the religion of pious Turks, but as a fundamental contrast both to western secularism, and to Christian society. Second, universal primary education, now including religion, gives a huge new literate market for religious texts and periodicals of all kinds. Third, the earnings of migrants have financed not only mosques, but systematic religious training for children on a wide scale; people, especially the young, are very much better informed than they were in 1950. Fourth, moving about brings migrants into contact with a wide range of all kinds of people, including ardent Islamic proselytises of various kinds, and especially with a supply of religious texts, sound tapes, and videos. (x). Gender Gender is perhaps the most objectively difficult and the mostly emotionally fraught topic of current social and cultural study. I make only two points. Ataturk reformed the law and education, and succeeded in modifying the conduct of educated Turkish women. Many entered the professions, and the civil service. [ Abadan-Unat 1981, Kandiyoti 1991] The changes in the villages since 1950 are also marked, variable and complicated, but very different from the changes among the urban educated. Most important, perhaps; women and girls now travel, and almost all girls go to school. Their stock of knowledge, their social cognition, is different and vastly greater. They are less segregated and less firmly subordinated than in |