ABSTRACT
Modernization, incidentally, though a word frequently bandied about in literature on the Third World, is a slippery term; and serviceable definitions are elusive. The one adopted, for instance, by Kemal Sayegh - urbanization, literacy and media participation - does not carry us beyond externals. The trouble, of course, about changes in social structure and attitudes is that they are not reducible to statistics or to statements of scientific fact. Maybe this is why the social impact of development, as contrasted with its economic and other externally verifiable aspects, has received little study. Most published work on the subject tends to consist either of theoretical generalizations based on statistical criteria such as educational and other infrastructural advances or else on pragmatic but narrowly focused fieldwork on such themes as, let us say, modifications in attitudes to exogamy among the bedouin of Ras al Kheima.
