wins. And often their sons assume power after them. While for the West this
is considered anti-democratic despotism, nepotism and rampant corruption,
indeed it is a long-standing cultural pattern of rulership in many such soci-
eties. In this way, there has been little change from the Caliphs of yesterday
to modern presidents who are elected for life, who use their political power
to amass fortunes for themselves and their friends. Loyalty is sustained
through gifts and personal obligations. While these patterns are often typi-
cal in traditional societies, in modern societies this is considered graft and
corruption.
Thus, as can be seen, there are a number of aspects of Islam that have
worked individually and in concert as barriers to the infusion of purposive
rationality and structural reform. The barriers to rational commerce, demo-
cratic governance and the limited size and power of modernizing classes, as
bearers of a rational social ethic, has meant the failures of efforts to mod-
ernize the economy or find space for reformist politics to foster democrati-
zation. In the end the only channel available for social mobilizations articulating
local discontents and general grievances toward the West has been funda-
mentalism. In sum, the relative stagnation of Islamic societies has been a
product of religiously based, cultural/historical legacies, dictatorial govern-
ments, or foreign policies (read: imperialist interventions) from without, that
sustained repressive governments that, however corrupt, however inefficient,
have been “friendly” to Western governments. In turn, there has been little
economic benefit for the masses, nor secular channels to redress grievances.
Part IV Fundamentalism
Globalization and Social Change
As both Marx and Schumpeter noted, capitalism, spearheaded “creative destruc-
tion”; it fostered massive transformations and upheavals as the feudal class
structure was torn asunder. Lords and serfs exited from the stage of world
history as the bourgeoisie and proletarians entered. The demise of feudalism
fostered various stresses and strains of economic displacement, unemploy-
ment, migration of populations, etc. In its current instantiation, global capi-
talism, like its earlier forms, has led to rapid economic changes, major social
changes and massive dislocations (rural-urban migrations, Diasporas, job loss,
class mobility, most often downward). Globalization has led to a constriction
316 • Lauren Langman