News and Notes

Herzberg, standing by with pad and pen- his death. As Yeats said of another, he cil. "Don," he would say, "record that was "blessed and had the power to citizen's opinion." Soon thereafter a rally bless." We who shared that blessing live would learn that an informal, scientific a larger life because of it, and for this we pool of the citizens of River City had es- pray for him and remember him. tablished "Eighty-five percent support for Benton!" Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Senate One day the routine went slightly off. Benton approached a citizen, introduced himself, and was met with apoplectic rage. "You're Benton," came the unex- pected reply. "Why if satan himself was Daniel Lerner running I wouldn't vote for you." And as Of Dan Lerner's many contributions to the citizen stormed off Benton turned and the social sciences in the study of com- said, "Don, put him down as doubtful." munications, attitudinal research, and Never to call retreat: never to abandon methodology, it was his work in the field hope: such was Dean Hsrzberg's life and of development that was to receive the his lesson. The depth of his charity so dis- widest acclaim. His major contribution posed him: but hope went beyond dis- was The Passing of the Traditional So- position. It was an act of faith also, a pos- ciety: Modernizing the Middle East, first itive rejection of despair as the deadliest published by the Free Press in 1958 with of sins, political no less than spiritual. paperback editions beginning in 1964. "None of the above" was never his His ideas on development were subse- choice. We cannot conceive him going quently amplified in several papers, in- about the campus opining that he would cluding a long article he wrote for the In- not be voting for any of the candidates ternational Encyclopedia of the Social for president this year. Given only that Sciences called "Modernization: The So- there was more than a single choice, one cial Aspects," a chapter entitled "To- would be better than another, and he ward a Communication Theory of Mod- would choose the better. (Of this year— ernization," published in the book edited for he was careful about language—the by Lucian Pye, Communication and Politi- best!) cal Development, and an essay he wrote in a book he edited with his friend Wilbur And he would do it with a smile, for he Schramm in 1966 entitled Communica- had the playfulness of genius, and to a tion and Change in Developing Countries. point the gift of prophecy, which we in the normative range of academic pursuits The Passing of Traditional Society was persist in hoping might one day prove to among the more influential books on de- have been science! velopment published in the late fifties. It His last published writing appeared on was well received, widely read, frequent- the op-ed page of The New York Times ly cited and had considerable influence on on April 10 of this year. (He wrote books; subsequent studies of development. It but posters were his preferred medium!) was, and continues to remain, a basic There was, he suggested, a new national book for all graduate students in the de- party in the offing. Perhaps in the shell of velopment field. It represented a par- the Republican Party: certainly with Re- ticular approach, used a particular meth- publican leadership. Call it, he suggested, odology, and had a particular point of "The Party of 'Concern for America.' " view and while some have criticized Fourteen days later John Anderson an- these views and methodology in recent nounced his independent candidacy in al- years, they continue to remain an impor- most precisely the terms the Dean's arti- tant contribution of American social sci- cle had forecast. One isn't born with ence research to the sociology of devel- such skills; they are acquired only with opment. discipline and with time. Lerner's book begins with a parable con- Time, of course, ran out. This we will re- cerning a grocer and a chief in the village member and regret so long as our own of Balgat, eight kilometers outside of An- time holds. But our gratitude that he kara. The village was first studied by a lived is so much greater than the grief of Turkish scholar in 1950 who described it

132 PS Winter 1981 as a "barren" lifeless village, two hours ing to the question as to what he would by car on a dirt road. The village was run do if he were president, declared, "My by a Muhtar—a chief who believed in the God! How can you ask such a thing? traditional values of obedience, courage How can I ... I cannot . . . President of and loyalty who wanted his sons to grow Turkey . . . master of the whole world?" up to fight bravely "as we fought." The local grocer on the other hand was a very For Lerner the development of empathy different kind of person, though he was was the indispensable skill for people also born and bred in Balgat. While the moving out of traditional settings. "High chief was content, the grocer was rest- empathic capacity," he wrote, "is the less. He wanted a bigger grocery shop, a predominant personal style in modern so- nicer house, and better clothes. ciety which is distinctively industrial, ur- ban, literate and participant." It is em- Lerner first visited Balgat in 1954. By pathic behavior that makes it possible for then the village was connected to the ci- individuals to adapt to new roles, learn ty by a paved road and it had a bus which new relationships, form new opinions." did the journey in only half an hour. There More broadly, he continued, "mobility is were now several grocers, but much to the primary process whereby moderniza- Lerner's lament, the old grocer was dead. tion is activated." He saw mobility as Elections were to be held and the chief having three dimensions: was the last Muhtar of Balgat. His sons had not gone to war—but had become The first was physical or spatial mobility, shopkeepers. The old grocer was gone, the movement from the countryside to but it was now the eldest son of the Muh- the city. The second was social mobility, tar who had become a grocer. One of the the movement upwards of sons and villagers said of the old grocer: "Ah, he daughters. And the third was psycho- was the cleverest of us all. We did not logical mobility or empathy. These demo- know it then, but he saw better than all graphic, sociological and psychological of us what lay in the path ahead. We processes resulted, according to Lerner, have none like this among us now. He in political participation. For Lerner, then, was a prophet." there was a linkage among urbanization, literacy, media participation and electoral Lerner returned to the village a number of participation. times to record its transformation. "The One of Lerner's singular contributions ancient village I had known," he wrote, was his attempt to show how dispropor- "for what now seemed only four short tionate developments contributed to in- years was passing, had passed. The Gro- stability. He showed that though Egypt cer was dead. The Chief—the last Muh- was more urbanized than Turkey it did tar of Balgat—had reincarnated the Gro- not have an adequate base for moderni- cer in the flesh of his sons." zation because of its low literacy. While Lerner used the parable to illuminate his Egypt's cities were full of homeless il- views of the modernization process in the literates who provided a ready audience Middle East. The study had been begun in for political mobilization in support of ex- 1950 by the Bureau of Applied Social Re- tremist ideologies, in Turkey, by con- search at Columbia. Lerner subsequently trast, the various indices of moderniza- analyzed the data from this survey con- tion in 1958 had kept pace with one ducted in six Middle East countries—Tur- another—rising literacy, urbanization and key, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and voting participation. On Lerner's scale Iran. The central concern of the survey Egypt ought to be twice as literate as was to examine how modern people Turkey since it was twice as urbanized emerged and to understand what made and since it was not, the imbalances ac- them modern. celerated social, political and economic disorganization. For Lerner the central dimension of a modern personality was "empathy" or Lerner was also among the earliest writ- "the capacity to see oneself in the other ers to emphasize the sequence of devel- fellow's situation." Traditional men, he opment and the ways in which one said, lacked this empathic quality. He il- change made possible another. Urbaniza- lustrated the viewpoint of the tradition tion, he argued, came first and this facili- minded by quoting the characteristic an- tated both the growth of literacy and the swer of a Turkish peasant who, respond- media. And the growth of the media in

133 News and Notes turn stimulated the growth of literacy. in Lerner's path quite explicitly, a contin- "Out of this interaction," concluded Ler- uity recognized in the dedication of his ner, "develops those institutions of par- book, explored the psychological dimen- ticipation (e.g., voting) which we find in sions of modernization. Inkeles subse- advanced modern societies." quently confirmed but also modified many of Lerner's findings. He reported Thus, the central thesis of Lerner's work that the city does not have a modernizing was the functional interdependence of effect since one can retain traditional elements in the modernization process— ways of living in urban ghettos. But he and while the argument for interdepen- found factories and educated parents to dence was not proven, he opened up ave- be important, and he confirmed Lerner's nues for empirical testing. The attempt to finding on the influence of the mass test the theory, and in particular to see its media in inculcating new attitudes, relationship to the question of the social values and behavior. prerequisites of democracy, filled the American Political Science Review and A second feature of the social science other professional journals with articles literature of the time was the importance for years—by Seymour Martin Lipset, given to political democracy as the pre- Phillips Cutright, Donald McCrone, ferred outcome. Like his close friend and Charles Cnudde, Deane Neubauer, and associate, Harold Lasswell, Lerner was others. interested in a policy science of demo- How decisive were the media? Lerner be- cratic development. He equated moderni- lieved that the process of becoming mod- zation with mobility and to political par- ern was accelerated by the mass media. ticipation which he saw leading to politi- He called the media "mobility multipli- cal democracy, as the highest, truest ex- ers," for they provided pictures of the fu- pression of modern men. But he argued ture—though now the pictures came not that this process had to accompany the only from America and Europe, but from production of modern goods and ser- Russia, China and Cuba as well. Lerner vices, and that a society that mobilized argued that what made people modern its population prematurely would be a so- was modern institutions—but he gave ciety not simply of rising expectations, the media a particularly prominent role. but in a phrase be made popular, a soci- ety of "rising frustrations," an unbal- To understand Lerner's contribution and anced, as he put it, "want:get ratio" the place of his book in the social science with demand growing more rapidly than literature of development one must see it the system's capacity to meet it. With in the context of four intellectual trends this simple turn of phrase, Lerner antici- • of the 1950s and 1960s. pated much of the later argument about The first was the importance given to the institutionalization of political partici- writers on development to attitudinal pation and the importance of system per- change. Attitudes were understood as formance. both consequences and determinants of modernization, as both dependent and in- A third feature of social science research dependent variables. Modern institutions at the time was the spread of a particu- and settings—the factory, the media, the larly American social science methodol- universities, the city—were seen as ogy—survey research. Rooted in the forces for creating modern individuals, American tradition that peoples' views and modern individuals were also forces counted, and that hence it was worth for social change. This concern for the counting peoples' views, American social human dimensions of development was a scientists began conducting surveys central thrust of social science research. abroad and became increasingly con- Dave McClelland studied achievement cerned with the conceptual and method- motivation. Gabriel Almond and Sidney ological problems of cross cultural sur- Verba explored the attitudinal basis for veys. The Bureau of Applied Social Re- democracy. Everett Hagen looked at mar- search at Columbia was among the first ginality in the social structure as a deter- centers for such research, and Lerner minant of entrepreneurial behavior. was among its earliest pioneers; in that Wayne Cornelius studied attitudinal path were to trod Hadley Cantril, Gabriel change among the migrant poor in an ur- Almond, Sidney Verba, Herbert Hyman, ban setting. And Alex Inkeles, following Alex Inkeles, and at M.I.T. Fred Frey,

134 PS Winter 1981 Frank Bonilla, and among Lerner's stu- good an empiricist to force his findings to dents, Karl Jackson and Marvin Zonis, fit his theories. But he was more con- A fourth feature of the literature of the cerned with the forces of modernization time was a search for common proces- —urbanization, literacy and especially ses, for uniform evolutionary sequences the media—on social change, and not on of change, and even for unilinearity. the indigenous propensities to change. Hence Lerner's notion of uniform deter- Lemer was thus looking for common minants of change—urbanization, liter- forces of transformation; other social sci- acy, the media. Lerner was particularly entists have been looking for different found of quoting a section of Das Capital rules of transformation. where Marx wrote that "the more de- It is not, as some would see it, that some veloped society presents to the less de- scholars look at what is general and veloped society a picture of its own fu- others at the particular, that some look at ture." And with the hubris that Lerner us- the forest and others at the trees. The ed to provoke people, he wrote in the in- tension is between two kinds of theories troduction to The Passing of Traditional of change. One turns to studying the Society that "The data in this book show varying forms of internal social struc- that the same basic model reappears in tures, cultural beliefs, economic relation- virtually all modernizing societies on all ships, and the forms and institutions of continents of the world, regardless of political authority to discover how inter- variations in race, color or creed." The nal forces for transformation interact with West, wrote Lerner, provided the stimuli new stimuli, while Lerner, like many in his to undermine traditional society in the time and since, focused on theories Middle East. "What America is," he which gave primacy to exogenous stim- wrote, "the modernizing Middle East uli. For Lerner it was the impact of the seeks to become." "Underlying the vary- mass media and its picture of the world ing ideological forms," he went on to outside and hence of the world ahead say, "which modernization took in Eur- that constituted a larger overriding force ope, America, Russia and Japan there for change. And behind this theory of have been certain behavioral and institu- what caused change was his own strong tional compulsions common to all." normative belief that a participant demo- cratic society was the preferred out- To some extent Lerner's focus on com- come. mon processes was dictated by his meth- odology. Those who used cross national Among contemporary students of devel- surveys sought common attitudinal opment there continues to remain a divi- states of mind and personality types that sion between those who start with a con- could be determinants of change across cern with the internal rules of transfor- cultures. The American social scientist, mation and those who start with a con- committed to change—looked for what cern with external stimuli, and while each Dave McClelland almost whimsically concedes the importance of the other, called, a "virus" for change; the search the models of change with which they produced such concepts as achievement work are often quite different. Lerner's motivation, the marginal man—and Ler- contribution was that while he focused ner's empathic personality. Survey meth- on these common forces for change, he odology was used to search for this elixir, never overlooked the importance of con- this virus for modernity and democracy text, of history, and of what was local. that cut across cultures. Lerner helped to create what was to sub- Among social scientists there has always sequently become a mainstream in the been a tension between those who study of development. When the book sought general propositions and uniform appeared it was heralded as an important patterns of development and those who new way of looking at development. theory of social change emphasized the Moreover, Lerner wrote in a prose style critical role of internal, autochthonous that was the envy of his professional col patterns and propensities for change leagues. He moved back and forth from within the modernizing societies. his parables to his paradigms, from his Lerner's own account of Turkey, Leba- deft phrases to his technical tables. But non, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iran belie he also expressed his ideas in a form that the notion of unilinearity; Lerner was too could be tested, corrected, even refuted

135 News and Notes

Lerner had no illusion about the perma- how exotic the topic—and to see and nence of his ideas for he recognized the play upon the implausible, the improbable short half life of social science concepts, and the absurd whenever they occurred. but he was confident that a social sci- From his students, he demanded perfor- ence approach—one that emphasized mances that met his own high scholarly theory formation, empirical data col- standards, and he rewarded them with lection, the rigorous analysis of data, in scintillating lectures and with warmth, short the testing of theory against reality concern and affection. — would last. In the last two sentences in the 1964 preface to his book, Lerner In Mike Pinney we have lost a valued col- wrote an epitaph for his own work: league, a stimulating companion, and a dear friend. "The Best service a model can render, William Buchanan however, is to hasten its own obsoles- Milton Colvin cence by leading to a better one. I look Delos D. Hughes forward to this outcome in due Lewis G. John course." John R. Handelman Myron Weiner Washington and Lee University Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Robert S. Runo Robert S. Runo, associate professor of Edward Lee Pinney political science, Roosevelt University, Edward Lee Pinney, professor of politics, died June 12, 1980, of a heart attack at died suddenly on May 14, 1980. He was age 72. After retirement in 1972, he 49 years old and had served on the was living at his home in Mt. Prospect, Il- Washington and Lee University faculty linois, a suburb of Chicago. He is survived for 17 years. by his wife, Margaret, two children, r* Karen Crotty and Robert H., and five A native of Jacksonville, Florida, raised in grandchildren. Alabama, "Mike" received the B.A. de- gree in history from Auburn University in Robert Runo, bom at Calumet, Michigan, 1952 and then went on active duty with graduated from Williams College, and did the U.S. Army, serving as a lieutenant in graduate work at the University of Mich- Korea. On his return he studied political igan, receiving the degree of M.A. in science at the University of North Caro- 1934, and at the University of Chicago, lina at Chapel Hill, where he received the 1938-40. Teaching first at De Paul Uni- Master's degree in 1956 and the Ph.D. versity and then Indiana State Teachers degree in 1960. From 1959 to 1963 he College, he was briefly with the Office of was a member of the political science Price Administration. From 1943-46, he faculty at Louisiana State University. In was in the U.S.N.R. and the U.S.N., with 1963 he joined the faculty at Washing- the rank of lieutenant. In 1946, he joined ton and Lee. He was the author of journal the Roosevelt University faculty where articles on German, Mexican and Ameri- he served for the rest of his teaching ca- can government, and he edited Compara- reer. For several years, he taught one • five Politics and Political Theory, pub- course at Northwestern University. His lished in 1966. courses were in Political parties, Public Opinion, and Constitutional Law. Mike was a man of varied interests and many talents. He was active in the At Roosevelt University, Robert Runo American and Southern Political Science came to typify the close relationship be- Associations and served as Recording tween teaching and faculty self-govern- V Secretary of the SPSA. He was a strong ment by being not only acting depart- competitor on the tennis court and an ment chairman on two occasions, and for avid gardener with a prodigiously green one three-year term, department chair- thumb. One of Mike's distinctive traits man, but also for nine years a faculty- was an unparalleled wit, which was elected member of the Board of Trustees. based on a vast vocabulary and a jet- For most of the years while teaching, he speed ability to pick out flaws of logic or was on the faculty senate, and was a val- philosophy in any discussion, no matter ued contributor to many faculty commit-

136 PS Winter 1981