When those new roles recognized in the modern economic context fail to
receive recognition in the traditional context, they come into conflict with
those who are being displaced from their positions of status and power by
the new sets of values – village elders, tribal chiefs, traditional healers,
magicians, craftsmen, priests (Pirages, 1976, ch. 3). Such groups are dis-
placed by people whose ties with their extended families, castes, classes and
kinship groups are being loosened by the processes of industrialization and
commercialism. Subsistence agriculture and cottage industries become less
significant in the wider economy, and the significance of the village as a
community is weakened. Communities that consist of atomized individuals
are brought into existence. The conflicts that are generated by such devel-
opments may be reduced by continuing bonds of ethnicity. But these them-
selves may then become competitors for the rewards available under the
new economic arrangements and a new focal point for political conflict
which the system may not be able to contain (Pye, 1966; Huntington, 1968).
In moving from an economy based on agriculture to an economy based
on manufacturing there is a shift of population from rural to urban areas. In
industrializing countries with high rates of economic growth and with
industrial capital derived from surpluses generated one way or another from
the commercialization of agriculture, one is likely to find rapid urbaniza-
tion. What is happening in the countryside will dislocate life there, remov-
ing livelihoods from people and displacing rural populations that have to
seek work in urban centres.
The new urban areas of the Third World harbour extremism and activism.
High levels of unemployment are found. Urban people are attracted to volatile
forms of political expression. Urban political organizations provide opportu-
nities for power, status and social mobility to otherwise underprivileged
groups, so political activism becomes even more attractive. When cities are
full of ‘marginalized’ people, the opportunity costs of political activism may
be very low. With poverty, unemployment, inequalities of income, insecurity,
bad working conditions and poor health, accompanied by a lack of govern-
mental provision for the poor and by disparities in political power that exac-
erbate disparities in wealth, it is not surprising that the process of urbanization
is thought to be a major cause of political instability in the Third World.
Rapid economic development also means that mass movements seeking
fundamental political change will be made up from people whose bonds to
the established order are changing. Rapid economic growth increases the
number of such déclassés: by changing the methods of production and the
distribution of income, and by weakening the bonds of family, class, caste,
tribe and guild. The nouveaux richesuse their economic power to challenge
Instability and Revolution 227