ABSTRACT
Transitions imply movement from one state or condition to another state or condition, but also imply an intermediate waystation. In considering what has variously been called modernization, development, or in less deterministic language, social transformation, in the context of human lives, the ‘transition,’ in our view, never ends, and yet there are many possible visions of the termini. There are, of course, more universal goals for development planners, targets for those who hope to raise the level of literacy, health and production while improving general social welfare. And the political and economic environments in which these planners operate have very often imbued these goals with the urgency of their ideologies or cost/benefit analyses. What has been left out of the planning and the goal-setting is the factor which, paradoxically, must be considered before planning can be effective and yet which, if taken seriously, ultimately prevents the success of the more universalistic goals and targets, which keeps social transformation in permanent transition: that is, culture. While developers categorize nations as ‘poor’ or ‘advanced,’ while they develop paradigms and seize upon models which will improve the potential for success in less developed societies, attention is seldom given to the whole range of less easily categorized and less translatable human conditions and the local explanations and belief system organizing them into cultural experiences which might enrich and complicate policymakers’ perceptions.
