At the present day the African hailing from a primitive society, who comes to live in the towns side by side with Africans of other tribal origins and with Europeans, is a familiar figure. This has resulted in the influencing by alien cultures of the African's traditional way of life and the formation of a new type of society governed by a complex set of rules to which the old traditional order affords little or no guide. It is only to be expected in the circumstances that difficulty will be experienced in reconciling African customary rules of behavior with the western-type law, and that also, where the two systems are being administered side by side, the Western system of law will tend to predominate due to its greater affinity to modern development. As will be shown, this tendency to replace native custom by Western law, as exemplified by the position in the past and present territories of British Africa, even where motivated by the best intentions, is at times dominated by an adherence to Western law patterns and by Western economic and social theories, which may be neither acceptable nor expedient in the present state of African development.

The British nation is proud of having administered justice to oriental peoples with impartiality and integrity, conscious of the Roman example. These qualities were thought to have been lacking before the British period, and to the extent to which British standards are respected since British rule ceased that heritage is usually considered a ground for pride. Anthropologists have raised, indeed, some doubts. These would have astonished those who introduced British techniques during the critical periods. To them it was self-evident that the strides made in English constitutional history, for example that towards the “Rule of Law”, should redound to the advantage of dependent peoples; it was unthinkable that Britons should communicate less than they themselves had acquired. That they might be doing “harm“ thereby never occurred to them; and indeed it is far from established that they did. It is possible now, however, to take an objective view, and, without passing premature judgments, to observe closely what happened in a country where the process was uniquely difficult: and to see the immediate results of the process.

Cities have led high civilization for so long that one can scarcely imagine one without the other. Yet it is not easy to delimit their place in the creation of values and the organizing power to implement them that constitute a developing civilization. They can be described in innumerable ways, for as is true also of small towns and villages each city has a unique personality. The existing literature leans either to extreme particularity of detail or to an unconvincing generality. The two articles that follow are the first of a series in which common general questions will be brought to bear on the rise of different types of city in different societies and on the conditions under which they play particular creative and organizing roles. Since three recent books have attempted large-scale comparison along these lines our own series had best open with an attempt to review their contributions.

1. The Classic Khmer and the Classic Maya civilizations had cult centers but not true cities. They both arose in areas which were regionally undifferentiated.

2. Easy transportation and heavy trade were lacking because of the areawide uniformity of crops and the difficult terrain. Consequently, urban centers were not and could not be supported.

3. Both areas did produce a surplus and therefore could support civilized life. The social orders of each were so set up that through religious sanctions this surplus, which included labor, could be utilized for the creation and support of huge cult centers. Such a kind of organization might be considered as unilateral (mechanical) in the Durkheimian sense.

4. In contrast, true cities arose in productive agricultural areas which were regionally specialized, with symbiotic interdependence of a Maussian nature. Trade and trade routes were highly developed so that commodity prices were sufficiently low to enable large groups of persons engaged in commerce to live together and yet make a profit on their activities. Internally specialized civilizations of this sort have been termed organic.

5. It is suggested that among the organic civilizations, the state may have had its origin in the regulation of trade; among the unilateral civilizations, in the compulsion of tribute and corvee labor.

This essay has sought to bring out salient points that can throw light both upon the vexing problems of cultural transformation and on the related phenomena of economic growth. It has employed concepts that are relatively recent in the social sciences and that when synthesized provide the elements of a theory of social change. The five main concepts are: the city as a cross-cultural type; the functional urban hierarchy; the nodular regional structure; effective social, political-administrative and economic space; economic growth as being part of a more comprehensive process leading to successively higher levels of integration of the social system.

From the concept of the city as a cross-cultural type it follows that there are no fundamental distinctions between industrial and preindustrial cities, but both are sharply distinguished from communal village life. All cities have in common a way of life that is characterized by varying degrees of social heterogeneity and cultural vitality, and by inventiveness, creativity, rationality, and civic consciousness. From the fact that cities and the regions related to them may be seen as functionally differentiated and arranged in hieratic fashion it follows that the extent of urban influence will vary with (a) the stage of evolution reached by the hierarchy as a whole, and (b) the relative position of any given city within the hierarchy.

Economic growth has to be seen as part of a comprehensive process of cultural transformation. From the ruthless destruction of old social forms no aspect of society will be spared. It is the influences spreading outward from cities that accomplish both the disruption of the traditional social patterns and the reintegration of society around new fundamental values. The city acts as a coordinating, space-creating force, thus achieving the integration of the social order in its spatial dimensions. Intellectuals, administrators and entrepreneurs are the city's agents in this task. With their success in organizing the life of a society, both as a pattern of activities and as a pattern in space, the traditional notion of a city as a place having definite geographic limits will tend gradually to disappear. Just as Karl Mannheim speaks of fundamental democratization as one of the tendencies of our age, so one may speak of fundamental urbanization as the end-result of modern economic growth. With this, the former distinction between town and country will beblurred and will leave a thoroughly organized, impersonal, and functionally rational society to carry on.

One of the most important developments in the relationship between the state and the individual citizen during the present century has been the growth in the rights of the citizen to claim economic services and cash benefits from the state. Social security programs, which have appeared in nearly every country of the world, are a central feature of this development. Their main purpose has been the prevention of poverty through protection of the individual and his family against loss of income and against certain financial burdens. The growth of these rights, while greatly enriching the status of citizenship, has always been confronted with certain fundamental economic and social questions. What is likely to be the long-run effect on the work habits and productivity of the mass of the people once a nation has eliminated the fear of destitution? Will a growing sense of security increase productivity? Or is it likely that the more surely individuals can count on essential services and minimal incomes, the greater will be the danger of drifting into indifferent work habits? Such a drift would probably take the form of a subtle change in values rather than a dramatic shift in attitude. Whatever the effect may be, it must certainly depend on the nature of the rights granted, social values and attitudes, and a country's economic and socio-political order.