CITIES AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

Mukesh Devrari

What do cities represent and signify? This question needs to be answered to evaluate the role of cities in social transformation. The common denominator among people living in cities is principally a way of life, a frame of mind, and perhaps a manner of thinking, speaking, and behaving. It is a spirit that makes a city. Again what is that spirit? The spirit of the city arises from its social heterogeneity. The city is culturally and even racially is a heterogeneous place. It’s a place where different languages are spoken, different customs practised and different gods worshipped. (Friedman, 1961, p.88).

The central idea of this article is that the cities play a key role in transforming human relations, which in turn influences society at large. The impact of creation and expansion of cities resulted in the individualism in our society. Here the term of the individual means the changes in the aims, objectives, fantasies and dreams of people.

Generally, the word transformation implies an underlying notion of the way society and culture change in response to such factors as economic growth, war, or political upheavals (Castles, 2001, p.15). Society is changing every day. It is a continuous process. Change is perpetual. However human being as individuals is still the same as they were thousands of years ago. Their desires have been transformed but their inherent need to gratify their fantasies are still the same, that is being manifested in different forms now.  

Since ages cities were inhabited by traders, intellectuals and administrators. Traders stayed in cities permanently and worked as a middleman. Others visited cities to buy and sell products and make money. Subsequently, many of them permanently settled there. Migration of different kinds of people from interiors into the cities led to the creation of unique culture.

People were vying with each other for creating material wealth. And perhaps they were looking for splurging their wealth on material pleasures. That is why perhaps prostitution is considered one of the oldest trade in Indian cities. The centrality of religion as moral and ethical guide in the lives of people were diminished in cities.

Role of cities in shaping society also has unique limitations. Cities around the world are at different stages of development. Social theorists believe that the social changes in the Asian and African cities will be happening on the European pattern. This approach has its limitation. It also has many opponents. The alternative view says social transformation studies need to be conceptualized in contrast to the notions of development. The notion of development often implies a teleological belief in a progression towards a predetermined goal: usually, the type of economy and society to be found in the "highly-developed" western countries (Castles, 2001, p.15).

In oriental societies people living outside the cities associate loss of values and morality with cities. At the same time, the cities always caught the fascination of villagers. The cities represent a unique contradiction. It represents immorality but also modernity. It is always looked as a place responsible for the degeneration of values and culture. At the same time, it’s a place which represents information and progress.

Still, the question is intact. What is the relationship between cities and social transformation? How this process is different in India from western countries? How the society in cities is different from society in villages in India. What were the significant changes cities brought into human life? However, it is clear that the process of western style economic development led to the ruthless destruction of old social forms. It has not spared any aspect of social and personal life. Its influences are spreading outward from cities that accomplish both the disruption of the traditional social patterns and the reintegration of society around new fundamental values (Friedmann,1961).  

Most of the centres of learning were initially established in cities. The rural population remained illiterate and lived in the darkness. Women’s education was non-existent. Cities brought liberty and emancipation for women. Industrialists aided by intellectuals had no reason to discriminate among the labour on the basis of gender.

Initially, the objective of female education was, therefore, to educate them for better home-making, better child-bearing and-rearing, in short, for making them better (but junior) partners at home rather than active and equal participators in the entire social, economic, political or cultural life of the community. (Kamat, 1976, p.12). Emancipation of woman contributed to changing the nature of society and shaping the nation-state as a whole.

Cities promoted individualism and the use of science and reason to make life comfortable. Even ordinary people started thinking about possessing material pleasures beyond the necessities of life in cities. In the traditional setting outside the cities, the man was never alone, he was surrounded by many of his kith and kin. Their opinion had the stake in the personal choices and preferences of individuals. Each one has a stake in the betterment of others.

Perhaps the individual was always an individualist. He was equally frustrated and felt crushed under by the system. But without realizing he internalized what he was taught throughout his life. As he could not imagine life beyond his family and relatives. Outside the cities, living and pattern of earning is grossly linked to the cultural group one belongs. The man was totally chained. Chains were more psychological and could be catapulted into real if anyone deviated from the path prescribed by the dominant idea.   

Changes in cities particularly modern education also brought with it the advanced thinking of the west and the concepts of freedom and dignity of the individual. Along with the ideas of social reform and social revival also sprouted the ideas of social liberation. (Kamat, 1976, p.12).

In the cities, individuals were the masters of his or her own destiny. Luck was required more than it was needed in the past for survival. Condition of work was inhuman initially. Human beings were no longer dependent on a simple life. Now their requirements were increased way beyond the necessities. Most of the comforts human beings developed overtime are not required at all. Majority of wants of a modern man are artificial. They have been generated through constant cultivation.

Cities are the result of innovation and progress in science and technology. Cities in the true sense developed only because of the gradual progress of science and technology. It is difficult to determine to what extent science shaped society and to what extent society is shaped the direction of progress in science and technology.

Cities needed to communicate to bring social transformation. Communication technologies provided it. Media is a key tool in the hands of the cities to put the seeds of change in the form of ideas into society. Community-based media and communication in challenging the structural causes of poverty and exclusion - by giving greater voice to those affected by inequalities (Pettit, 2009).

References –

1.      Friedmann, J. (1961). Cities in Social Transformation, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 4(1), 86-103

2.      Kamat, A. R. (1976). Women's education and social change in India. Social Scientist, 5(1), 3-27

3.      Pettit, J., Salazar, J. F., Dagron, A. G. (2009). Citizens' Media and Communication. Development in Practice, 19 (4/5), 443-452.

4.      Castles, S. (2001). Studying Social Transformation. International Political Science Review, 22(1), 13-32

 (Author is an independent thinker.)