Developmental Stalemate In The Eastern Mediterranean: Some Conceptual Tools For The Understanding Of Contemporary Problems

Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), Summer, 1999 by Ivan Ivekovic

Conventional social sciences of both Weberian and Marxian inspiration assumed that the processes of modernization, urbanization, mass education and intensified social communication would gradually homogenize the world population, leading to the lessening of the tensions associated with social and cultural differences. Contrary to such expectations, it seems that on the eve of the twenty-first century ethnic and religious conflicts have multiplied. Recent wars in the space of former Yugoslavia, in the Caucasus, communal violence in the Indian sub-continent, internal troubles in Turkey, Algeria, etc., seem to confirm this. Could it be that there are some common causes that actually generate such conflict?

In trying to answer this question, this essay assumes that development is a disruptive process and that it affects in various ways even the most isolated and remote communities. Old social institutions, habits and ways of life related to traditional agrarian communities are being undermined or changed beyond recognition; at the same time, new institutions and norms of conduct are being shaped under the impact of hectic and uneven modernization, but are still not consolidated and generally accepted. Disruption, whether it comes from outside or from within the community, exerts pressure and provokes resistance. Pressure and resistance lead to tension which may escalate into political violence.

Without pretending to give a comprehensive answer, this essay offers some conceptual tools which offer an explanation of contemporary problems. The essay is divided into three sections: a brief discussion of the long-term historical trajectory of human society; an introduction to the geopolitical concept of 'regional laboratory', which describes the role of regional 'client-states' and 'pivots'; and an explanation of the process of transition to mass industrial society as a three-stage process.

THE LONG-TERM HISTORICAL TRAJECTORY

Braudel's (1980) trajectory of tres longue duree of humankind may be reduced to a process of growth, geographic expansion and of maturing of stationary agrarian or pastoral communities, and of their subsequent transition to mass and mobile industrial society. This overlaps with the process of transition from use-value to commodity production. Transition to mass industrial society was the most recent stage in this sequence of this long-term historical trajectory.

The process itself was initiated with the agricultural revolution some 10,000 years ago when foraging (food-gathering, hunting and fishing) began to be replaced with systematic plant cultivation and animal breeding. Archeological evidence confirms that this revolution originated in the Middle East and then spread to the Mediterranean basin, to the regions north of the Black Sea and finally rolled over Europe. Systematic planting allowed an increase in population density and it was hypothesized that demographic growth stimulated in its turn the 'wave-of-advance' or the geographic expansion and consolidation of peasant communities which at that time used a primitive slash-and-bum technique. Humans discovered that with their labor they could improve their condition. Prior to this discovery, the human creature, like the rest of the animal world, found in nature goods of a use-value for his survival. Labor itself arises from the scarcity of the means necessary for human survival. Yet the value of goods produced did not arise out of this scarcity but out of labor. Labor molded man's consciousness and transformed him into a cognizant being. Labor also created all the values needed by humankind for its existence. As explained by one researcher:

With his labor, man started taking from nature even those goods which previously had been inaccessible to him. Thus he began taking control of the laws of his own reproduction, making his survival dependent on the quantity of foodstuffs that he could produce with his own labor. Man had no need to create those goods which were available in nature; he worked only to acquire those which he lacked, which he needed for his survival and which were scarce. In this respect nothing has changed to the present day.

Millennia had to go before production began, before the existing world system of commodity production came into being. Yet all the goods in nature have retained unchanged their form of use-value. They remain so until such time as man with his labor transforms them into a commodity value, i.e. until he takes them to the market for the purpose of trading, when they become commodities (Dakovic, 1994: 5).

The man in question was, of course, a peasant and he lived in scattered and mutually isolated agrarian communities. The subsequent development, expansion and maturing of these communities, their political organization, their continuous transformation and interaction represents the long-term historical trajectory of humankind. This strikingly simple statement requires a re-reading of history. This essay is however focused on the last sequence of this trajectory when industrialization linked to the capitalist mode of appropriation/production was initiated, leading to the emergence and consolidation of the modern nation-state.