Economic Development and Mental Illness

Anticipating and Mitigating Disruptive Change

Alf H. Walle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367278441
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000712049
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Psychology

Social, economic, and technological changes disrupt many Indigenous, ethnic, and rural communities even when offering progress. Under these conditions, social and psychological dysfunctions are likely to emerge. This book provides insights regarding how to anticipate, prevent, and, when necessary, provide mitigation strategies to communities and individuals who suffer as a result.

This book, the first of its kind, provides an overview of strategic and policy issues involving the relationship between change and dysfunction, enabling the reader to more effectively deal with potentially hurtful influences in proactive, equitable, and culturally sensitive ways. After providing a theoretical overview, methods for anticipating the hurtful impacts of change are discussed, along with techniques for mitigating its negative effects upon communities and individuals.

Learning objectives and discussion questions are included with each chapter, and the book can serve as a text for courses on indigenous economic development, Native studies, culturally appropriate business, and culturally competent therapy. It can also be used as a professional handbook for practitioners working with communities affected by these issues.

SECTION 1
A social background

PROLOGUE TO SECTION 1

Economic development and other social interventions profoundly impact people and their way of life. Those who envision and orchestrate such transformations often laud the resulting benefits derived from these changes. A dark side, unfortunately, often accompanies these efforts because the same changes that bring a “better life” can also create pain and sorrow because of the unintended and unanticipated impacts upon the people’s, heritage, traditions, and relationships. Although the quest for appropriate and beneficial “progress” is legitimate, hurtful side effects need to be acknowledged and addressed in both preemptive and remedial ways. This book suggests some representative strategies and tactics for doing so.

The concept of anomie deals with the fact that significant change can lead to cultural disruption, individual alienation, and a breaking down of the rules and relationships that people live by. When these destabilizing situations occur, the potential for psychological dysfunction grows even if positive advances simultaneously occur.

After adapting the concept of anomie to deal with ethnic and rural minorities, examples are provided. On many occasions, of course, these developments and their hurtful consequences can be directly connected with the legacy of colonialism and neo-colonialism. This cause and effect relationship is discussed, along with a recognition that the issue of pain caused by change and anomie is broader and deeper than that. Social and psychological problems are likely to arise wherever social and economic transformations are rapid, not adequately anticipated, unmitigated, and so forth. Because discussions of colonialism and neo-colonialism tend to emphasize the evils of foreign domination and exploitation, this focus can easily draw the reader’s attention away from a wide variety of other contexts where anomie exerts pressures that cause suffering and dysfunction. The full range of hurtful influences, of course, needs to be considered.

Section 1 concludes with the discussion of an array of social groups including indigenous, Native, and traditional peoples. This analysis occurs in tandem with an analysis of both Third and Fourth World environments and the roles they often play in fostering psychological dysfunction. Section 1 provides the foundation for a better understanding of how change can lead to dysfunction as well as how these hurtful results can (and should) be addressed in a systematic, appropriate, and culturally sensitive manner.

1
WHAT IS ANOMIE?

Learning objectives

Anomie is a response to rapid change triggered by business activities, governmental policies, cultural change, community pressures, and so forth. After arising, anomie often contributes to social and/or psychological dysfunction. Specifically, this chapter provides insights regarding:

• (1) The historic background leading to the concept of anomie.
• (2) The influence of the Romantic Era and the Arts and Crafts movement.
• (3) Understanding parallels in the work of Tönnies and Durkheim.
• (4) Appreciating the work of urban planners, such as Patrick Geddes and Louis Mumford.
• (5) Envisioning anomie as a means of understanding cultural stress and pain caused by change.

Introduction

In the 18th and 19th centuries, a transformation began that is typically referred to as the Industrial Revolution (Ashton 1948). An important “first wave” took place in Britain and Continental Europe. During this period, innovations involving mechanization and more rational methods of production transformed society, the workplace, and how people related to each other.

During previous centuries, most people lived within a rural setting and experienced close and responsive contact with nature and each other. Typically, families cultivated small patches of land, growing a significant portion of the food they ate. Intimate social networks existed, allowing people to experience warm, nurturing, and trusting relationships with their neighbors and extended families.

Over time, settlement patterns began to change and economic activities became less based upon face-to-face relationships; increasingly, life became intertwined with (1) powerful outside forces coupled with (2) a dependence upon expensive equipment that local people could not afford. In an earlier era typified by “cottage industries”, the work came to where people lived. Now the tables were turned. During the Industrial Revolution, people began relocating to where employment could be found.

A pessimistic picture

Many hurtful events accompanied this change. In 18th-century Britain, for example, small farms were consolidated to provide large stretches of grazing land for sheep. Known as the Highland Clearance (Richards 1982), former tenants who were evicted inevitably migrated to destinations such as Canada or to urban areas within Britain where they survived as best they could. It was a time of sorrow, tension, and uncertainty for rural people who found themselves thrown off the land. A noted novel depicting these events is Consider the Lilies by Lain Crichton Smith (1968).

During this period, the protection and comfort previously provided by the local heritage, age-old tradition, and familiar social relationships were stripped away. Under these circumstances, people became increasingly vulnerable to the demands of outsiders and dependent upon performing wage labor. Forced into urban life, hordes of landless refugees no longer had the security of being able to grow their own food. Instead of living in rustic cabins for free, they had to deal with landlords. Without gardens, urban people had to buy food or starve. Life became harsh.

This general scenario had its variants. Nonetheless, throughout 19th-century Europe, distinct but parallel patterns of demographic change swept across the continent, bringing economic vulnerability and social tension. Fear, suffering, and sorrow arose.

Charles Dickens’ novels depict the horrific environment caused by that transformation. Writing from personal experience (his father was sent to debtors’ prison leading to a precarious existence for young Charles), Dickens arose as a tireless advocate of reform; his writing provides an unflinching portrait of social change, poverty, and the desperation they spawn.

A good example of Dickens’ vision is Oliver Twist, his second novel, initially published in serial form from 1837 to 1839. Twist, an orphan, begins his struggles in an exploitative workhouse before being apprenticed to an undertaker. Escaping, he ends up in London, meeting a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by Fagin, a well-seasoned professional thief. Twist’s adventures extend from there.

In his exposé of urban squalor and exploitation, Dickens provides a graphic portrayal of the life lived by those who were forced to gravitate towards urban centers in the early 19th century. His writing vividly reveals the social problems of his era including child labor, an epidemic of poverty, unsupervised children roaming city streets, and the path to crime awaiting those who were abandoned, hungry, and in need.

An alternative perception

While Dickens was portraying the darker side of urbanization, mechanization, and economic change, the Romantic movement complained about the intellectual framework of and justification for the Industrial Revolution that took many ideas derived from the Enlightenment, a philosophical movement which asserted that science and rational calculation should dominate decisions regarding economics, culture, and society.

The Romantics, in contrast, insisted that the overly rational vision of the Enlightenment was simplistic because it ignored the essence of humanity and the nature of social life. An important component of the Romantic rebuttal is its insistence that emotions, feelings, and relationships (not merely enlightened rational thought) are vital to human nature, social life, and mental health. Although people certainly possess an ability to think and reason, the Romantics affirmed that other equally important aspects of humanity also exist. The passions, arising from temperament, heritage, and circumstance, for example, mold people in distinctive ways. This reality should never be forgotten.

Such Romantic ideas provided the foundation for the Pre-Raphaelites (Bate 1972), an artistic movement that sought to recapture the intimacy of rustic, vernacular life and the creativity arising from it that had existed before the Renaissance. A basic tenet of the Pre-Raphaelites is the belief that the intimate and pastoral lifestyle of earlier times provides the model for a more humane way of life that should replace more modern trends that (in the late 19th century) were transforming domestic life and the workplace.

Using the theories of the Pre-Raphaelites as a foundation, British tastemaker William Morris (Coote 2018) designed and marketed home furnishings that were inspired by the medieval era. This trend in style and fashion has come to be called the Arts and Crafts movement (Naylor 1971). In addition to being a tastemaker, Morris also championed methods of production that provide workers with the social and psychic benefits of handcraftsmanship coupled with intimate, humane relationships with other people. He, in an evangelical manner, advanced the notion that empowering workers and providing a nurturing work environment offered a positive alternative to the slums that surround factories and methods of mass production that chain workers to mind-numbing sweatshops as they make uninspired products of low quality.

A social reformer, Morris wrote a highly regarded utopian novel, News from Nowhere (Morris 2003), that depicts a world where assembly lines and cities have been replaced by rustic, rural life, intimate relationships between people, and artistic craftsmanship. According to Morris, such technologies, methods of production, and social relationships would usher in a better life for all.

In America, meanwhile, Elbert Hubbard (Champney 1983) fell under the sway of William Morris’ vision of a rustic utopia where people embraced their work with joy instead of slaving in drudgery. In upstate New York, he founded the Roycrofters, a company based upon Arts and Crafts principles that produced products of high quality and did so by hand.

TABLE 1-1 The Arts and Crafts Movement

Topic	Analysis
Basic Description	The Arts and Crafts movement advocated rustic, rural life while emphasizing personal freedom, dignity, and handcraftsmanship. It fueled a major social movement and popularized an important style of architecture, home furnishings, and personal products.
Operational Tactics	Decentralize the organization. Give workers freedom. Create an environment that is close to the earth and caters to personal needs. Encourage the participation of the entire work force in decisions involving individuals and communities.
Motivational Tactics	Allow people to do what they enjoy. Help workers to be creative. Provide an environment where people merge their lives with their work in positive, emotionally enriching, and empowering ways.

DISCUSSION

The Arts and Crafts movement popularized handmade furniture and furnishings while spearheading a social movement that celebrated rustic life. A powerful force in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the movement exerted a strong and ubiquitous influence on management styles and strategies of motivation.

During its high point, the Arts and Crafts movement exerted a profound influence upon social theory that extended far beyond popular fashion and taste. Rustic life, handcraftsmanship, and their impact upon psychic wellbeing were celebrated. An overview of the Arts and Crafts movement is presented in Table 1–1.

Thus, the Arts and Crafts movement celebrated rural life and portrayed rustic people in heroic ways. William Morris in Britain, and Elbert Hubbard in the United States, emerged as major tastemakers and social reformers who advocated a return to a more simple and rural mode of existence.

As with many other social movements, the vogue of the Arts and Crafts movement has passed, but it continues to cast a long shadow; its significance and influence has never died. Today, many indigenous, ethnic, and traditional people face circumstances that are similar to those 19th century.

Parallel social theories

Advocates of the Arts and Crafts movement often merged their philosophical beliefs with partisan goals. Morris and Hubbard, for example, combined business with activism by advocating socialist ideas even while promoting their economic and social experiments within a capitalistic environment. The overall effectiveness of Morris and Hubbard appears to have been subdued because both had one foot in the practical business world while the other stood in opposition to it.

Towards the end of the 19th century, however, many of the issues addressed by the Romantics and the Arts and Crafts movement were paralleled by the emerging social theories of the era, including the wo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• SECTION 1 A social background
• SECTION 2 Psychological perspectives
• SECTION 3 Strategies of mitigation
• Final words
• Index