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The Intellectual and Modernization: Definitions and Reconsiderations: The Egyptian Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Charles D. Smith
Affiliation:
San Diego State University

Extract

Past studies of modernization have assumed that intellectuals adhering toWestern values would be conduits of rational, scientific norms deemednecessary to the structuring of modern, complex societies. Littleconsideration was given to the attitudes of these intellectuals towards thesocial change presumably resulting from the distribution of rationalvalues. Modernization theorists supposed a positive relationship betweenrationalism as a mode of thought and social change, a suppositionreflecting their own expectations of a progressive and relativelypredictive evolution of traditional societies toward more modern and intricate social systems.

Type
The Meetings of East and West
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1980

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References

1 For discussion and criticism of these issues, see Smith, Anthony D.. The Concept Social Change: A Critique of the Functionalist Theory of Social Change (London, 1973)Google Scholar and Eisenstadt, S. N., “Studies in Modernization and Sociological Theory, ” History and Theory, 13 (1974): 225–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 The Intellectuals and the Powers: Some Perspectives for Comparative Analysis, ”Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1 (10, 1958): 522.CrossRefGoogle Scholar and reprinted in Rieff, Philip, ed.. On Intellectuals, Theoretical Studies, Case Studies (New York, 1969), p. 27Google Scholar

3 “Influence and Withdrawal: The Intellectuals in Indian Political Development, ” in Marvick, Dwaine, ed., Political Decision Makers (Glencoe, III., 1961), p. 30.Google Scholar

4 Ibid, and “The Intellectual between Tradition and Modernity: The Indian Situation, ” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Supplement 1 (The Hague; Mouton, 1961)(hereafter referred to as Tradition). See particularly pp. 9, 12, 16–18, 24–25 for associationof the intellectuals with popular causes.Google Scholar

5 Shils' treatment of the Liberals' attitude towards Gand hi and their opinion of the peoplediffers from his monograph to his article “Influence and Withdrawal.” In the former, theLiberals are treated in light of their development of a constitutional framework from which India's parliamentary system would arise, not with reference to their opinion of Gand hi;Shils merely mentions that the Liberals “were lost in the shadow cast by Gand hi'spersonality and the politics of the Indian National Congress …“ (Tradition, p. 88).Furthermore. Shils presents most Indian intellectuals as being attracted by populismbecause they were alienated from British authority. This alienation made Gand hi attractiveto the intellectuals as a symbol of their being Indian (ibid., pp. 74–75, 101). They were alsoattracted by his personality, despite their dislike of the Congress Party, which he led.Although Shils incorporates material from his monograph (cf. Tradition, p. 101, and “Influence, ” p. 41), his discussion of the intellectuals' antipathy to the masses and massorganization in the latter conflicts with his discussion of an intellectual attraction to Gand hiand populism in the former. His association of intellectuals with bureaucracy exhibitsfurther confusion. He states in “Tradition, ” p. 12, that “the leaders of the States of Asia and Africa … and the intellectuals who play such an important part in most of them aspire totransform their societies according to an ideal of modernity… They wish to establish afar-flung system of modern bureaucratic administration… ” He then notes later, pp.97–101, that while many Indian intellectuals had played outstand ing roles in public life and the civil service, intellectuals as a whole hated the “distant bureaucratic power” of theIndian Civil Service and its role in ruling the state. For a discussion of the Liberals in Indianpolitics, see the two articles by Smith, Ray T., “The Indian Liberals and Constitutionalism in India, ” in Aiyar, S. P. and Srinivasan, R., eds., Studies in Indian Democracy (New York, 1965), pp. 2729,Google Scholar and The Role of India's ‘Liberals’ in the Nationalist Movement, 1915–1947.Asian Survey 7 (07, 1968): 607–24.Google Scholar The similarities to Husayn Haykal and theal–Jarida group, discussed below, are many, particularly in their sense of elitism and tutorialattitudes toward the masses which required the maintenance of distance from them if arational approach was to be preserved. Both shared the conviction they should lead theircountries in their preparatory stages of education prior to gaining full independence. For abroader analysis of self-conscious elite attitudes toward modernization among nationalistradicals which did not entail a desire for social reconstruction, see Broomfield, J. H., EliteConflict in a Plural Society: Twentieth Century Bengal (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968), particularly the introduction and pp. 131–62. 316–31.Google Scholar

6 See the call for the use of literature by historians by Fleming, John V., “Historians and the Evidence of Literature.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 4, 19731974, 1 (summer, 1973): 95106. I am calling attention more to the evidence of attitudes than artifacts and material evidence, which are Fleming's primary concern.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Birnbaum, Norman suggests the particular impact of change on Germany in “ConflictingInterpretations of the Rise of Capitalism: Marx and Weber.” The British Journal of Sociology, 4 (06, 1953): 126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Parsons, Talcott, “Democracy and Social Structurein Pre-Nazi Germany, ” Journal'ofLegal and Political Sociology., 1–2 (1942): 108111.Google Scholar

8 Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (New York, 1962), pp. 130, 171. referring to Muhammad c Abduh and Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid.Google Scholar

9 See Smith, Charles D., “The ‘Crisis of Orientation’: The Shift of Egyptian Intellectualsto Islamic Subjects in the 1930s, ” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 4 (10, 1973): 382410 for discussion of this controversy.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 These views were discussed frequently in his unpublished diaries of his years in Paris, 1909–1912. and in articles published in al-Jarida during the same period

11 Lutfi, founded the newspaper al-Jarida (19071914),Google Scholar which represented the UmmaParty. Hourani, , Arabic Thought, pp. 170–84Google Scholar discusses his career and ideas while evidence ofhis view of the elite-mass relationship can be found in Wendell, Charles, The Evolution of theEgyptian National Image from Its Origins to Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid (Berkeley, 1973), 275–90Google Scholar and Ahmed, Jamal M., The Intellectual Origins of Egyptian Nationalism (London, 1961), p. 91ff.Google Scholar See also Keddie, Nikki, An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamalal-Din al-Afghani (Berkeley, 1968) for a discussion of thephilosophical bases of this elite-mass distinction in medieval Islam.Google Scholar

12 This longing for the rural past and its image of peace in contrast to present disorder, tobe discussed further below, was expressed vividly in Haykal's, Al-Hayat al-Mahabba”(“The Beloved Life”). al-Hilal (04, 1934): 641–46.Google Scholar

13 (The Life of Muhammad), pp. 543–44. These ideas were likely taken from Spencer's, HerbertEthics, pt. 2, “Justice“ (London, 1893), pp. 4046, where he supports theinherent inequality of society and the right of man to hold property. “Justice” was the onlysegment of Spencer's works Haykal read.Google Scholar

14 Hourani, , Arabic Thought, pp. 164–70.Google Scholar

15 These matters and their fictional examples are examined more fully in my “Love, Passion, and Class in the Fiction of Muhammad Husayn Haykal, ” Journal of the AmericanOriental Society 99:2 (0406 1979), 249–61.Google Scholar

16 Zaynab (Cairo, 1964), pp. 180–81.Google Scholar

17 In this collection, published as Qisas Misriyya (Egyptian Stories), only one depicted ahappy marriage containing true love. Significantly, the couple met and married outside ofEgypt, in Paris, and did not return to live in its stultifying environment

18 Most explicitly stated in “al-Hayat al-Mahabba, ” but repeated in Haykal's articles onthe need to stop peasant migration to the cities and its connection to social reform ingeneral. For example, “Muhadirat Dr. Haykal Basha fi al-Islah al-Ijtimaci” (“The Lectureof Dr. Haykal Pasha on Social Reform”), al-Siyasa al-Usbuciyya, 10 February 1940.

19 Tignor, Robert, “The Egyptian Revolution of 1919: New Directions in the EgyptianEconomy, ” Middle Eastern Studies, 12, 3 (10, 1976): 50CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Marius Deeb, “BankMisrand the Emergence of the Local Bourgeoisie in Egypt, ” Ibid, p. 76.

20 Haykal, devoted a chapter of his Mudhakkirat fi al-Siyasa al-Misriyya (Memoirs ofEgyptian Politics) (Cairo, 19511953), vol. 2 pp. 92133, to his tenure as a minister of education.Google Scholar

21 “Hijrat al-Rif ilia al-Mudun” (“The Migration of the Countryside to the Cities”), al-Sivasa al-Usbuciyya. 1 March 1930, and several articles in the same paper between 1938and 1940.

22 Bramson, Leon. The Political Context of Sociology (Princeton. 1961). pp. 3O32 ff.CrossRefGoogle ScholarAlso. Mitzman, Arthur, “Anti-Progress: A Study in the Romantic Roots of GermanSociology.” Social Research. 33 (1966): 6585. As Bramson notes, these strand s did cometogether in sociological romanticism, the idealization of Gemeinschaft linked with the“emphasis on the isolated, unhappy and alienated individual, liberated from the traditionalsociety and thrust into the impersonal and abstract world of the city, ” a theme also found inHaykal's alienation from what he saw as the materialistic ideals of Egyptian politics, whichhe identified with city life.Google Scholar

23 Ideology and Utopia (New York. 1968), pp. 106–08, 127,Google Scholar and “Conservative Thought”in his Essays on Sociology and Social Psychology, ed. by Kecskemeti, Paul (New York.1953). pp. 8083.Google Scholar

24 For a discussion of the cumdah in Egypt, see Gabriel Baer, “The Village Shaykh inModern Egypt 1800–1950, ” in idem, ed., Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt (Chicago. 1961), pp. 30–61.

25 See al-Jarida, , 18 April 1908. Two references by Haykal to the “ruh al-casr” (“spirit ofthe age”) are in his diaries, 13 August 1909, and “al-Harb wa Harakat al-Tajdid fi al-Sharq”(“The War and the Movement for Regeneration in the East”), al-Siyasa al-Usbuciyya. 25 02 1928, and reprinted in al-Sharq al-Jadid(The New East) (Cairo, 1962), p. 120.Google Scholar

26 The Quest for Community (New York, 1970), p. 79.Google Scholar

27 See, for example, Mitzman, , “Anti-Progress.”Google Scholar and Cahnman, Werner J., “Toenniesand Social Change, ” Social Forces, 4 (1968): 136–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 A good summary of these issues with bibliography is Mommsen, Wolfgang J., The Ageof Bureaucracy: Perspectives on the Political Sociology of Max Weber (New York, 1974), particularly pp. 4771, 95–115;Google Scholar see also Mitzman, , “Anti-Progress.”Google Scholar

29 Mannheim's, hope of establishing the intellectuals as a “classless stratum” guidingsociety is presented in Ideology and Utopia, pp. 137–16. His despairing of this approach eversucceeding and his feeling of the need for institutional restraints through bureaucraticsafeguards, still retaining the intellectuals as advisors if possible, emerges in his Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction, first English edition, 1940, where the specter of massirrationality arising out of the disintegration of liberal society is a central issue.Google Scholar

30 Bramson, . Political Context, pp. 2931.Google Scholar On the other hand. Weber was deeplyconcerned with maintaining elite leadership in a hierarchical structure of authority throughthe exercise of “responsible demagoguery” by the charismatic leader. This would result in“complete subservience and ‘blind obedience’ on the part of the followers, ” thus recreatingthe ideal of order and mass submissiveness, being “led unawares” in Lutfi al-Sayid's term, innew circumstances with results analogous to those sought by Haykal. Cf. Struve, PeterElites against Democracy: Leadership Ideals in Bourgeois Political Thought in Germany, 1890–1933 (Princeton, 1973), p. 143.Google ScholarCf. Ahmed, , Intellectual Origins, p. 91.Google Scholar

31 Apter, David E.. The Politics of Modernization (Chicago, 1969), pp. 1, 9–11.Google Scholar

32 Modernization Theory and the Formation of Modern Social Theories in England and America, ” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 20 (04, 1978), p. 261.Google Scholar

33 Precisely because American sociologists did not see themselves as threatened by massbehavior in a class construct and were more concerned with specific social problems thanwith society as a whole: Bramson, , Political Context, pp. 4755ff. Thus, the idea of man onhis own, alienation to Europeans viewing it within the framework of community and socialorder, is celebrated as true individualism and liberation in the United States (pp. 67–70).Google Scholar

34 “Ideology and Discontent, ” in idem, ed.. Ideology and Discontent (Chicago, 1964), pp. 37–38. It is ironic that while Apter argues that “ideology reflects the suppositions of itsobservers” (p. 16), he ignores the implications of this statement for his own arguments, presumably because social scientists are beyond ideology; nevertheless, social science “has become the ultimate ideology …” as opposed to “nonrational, vulgar ideologies” (p. 41).

35 Nettl, J. P.. “Ideas, Intellectuals, and Structures of Dissent, ” in Rieff, , ed., On Intellectuals, p. 81,Google ScholarNettl's, argument here is based on that of Edgar Morin, “Intellectuels:critique du mythe et mythe du critique, ” Arguments, 4, 20 (10, 1960).Google Scholar

36 Nettl, . pp. 8283.Google Scholar

37 See the overview by Eisenstadt, S. N.. “Post-Traditional Societies and the Continuityand Reconstruction of Tradition, ” Daedalus (Winter, 1973), pp. 128,Google Scholar and his Tradition, Change, and Modernity (New York, 1973)Google Scholar. We have not been concerned with the retentionof traditional social structures or the growth of more modern “institutional ororganizational frameworks” (Ibid, p. 102) as such. Rather we wish to note an intellectual'simpression of these structures and frameworks and his changing relationship to them.

38 Cf jne Concept of Social Change, p. 94.

39 A British assessment is found in F.O. 371/21948/1197. dated 7 November 1938. whichviews the Liberals particularly and non–Wafdists in general as the best administrative talentsin Egypt. An Egyptian view is that of Abd al-Qadir, Muhammad Zakic. al-Tariq, Aqdamcala (Steps Along the Way) (Cairo. 1967), pp. 355–57. Al-Qadir admired the Liberals for theirindividual talents, intellectual and administrative, and was appalled at their cynicalmanipulation of political life in violation of their stated principles.Google Scholar