Constructing New Political, Economic, and Social Realities

The Global South:

• Known previously as the Third World, Developing countries, or Least Developed Countries

• During the second half of 20th century, represented 75 percent of world’s population

• Almost all of the fourfold increase in human numbers in 20th century

• The Post-World War II years brought significant changes to much of Africa and Asia

• Nationalist movements coupled with a weakened Europe led to the rise of many independent nations

• But unlike Latin America after independence where large landowners benefited the most; in Africa and Asia, the educated elite benefited most

• But creating national unity was often difficult; particularly in Africa where competing political parties identified primarily with ethnic or “tribal” groups

• By the early 1980s, the military intervened in at least thirty of Africa’s forty-six independent states and actively governed more than half of them

• Achieving economic development has also proved immensely difficult

• And it is important to note that a common issue affecting the Global South involves the uneasy relationship between older traditions and the more recent outlook associated with modernity and West

• And nowhere has the consequences of cultural experiments with modernity been more consequential than in the Islamic world

Case Study: Turkey

• After World War I, the modern nation of Turkey emerged from the ashes of Ottoman empire as a republic

• The republic was led by the general, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938)

• During 1920s and 1930s, Atatürk presided over national cultural revolution

• Atatürk wanted to create a thoroughly modern and Western Turkish society and viewed many traditional Islamic institutions and beliefs as obstacles

• Within a few years, the caliphate had officially ended, Sufi orders were disbanded, religious courts abolished, and sharia replaced by Swiss legal codes

• Public education was completely secularized, and the Latin alphabet replaced Arabic script for writing the Turkish language

• Religious leaders (the ulama) were brought more firmly under state control

• The most visible symbol of the movement towards modernization and westernization occurred in the realm of dress or clothing

• Turkish men ordered to abandon traditional headdress known as the fez and encouraged to wear brimmed hats

• Polygamy was abolished as was a husband’s right to repudiate his wife or wives

• Under European-style legal codes, women achieved equal rights to divorce, child custody, inheritance, and education

• By mid-1930s, women granted right to vote in national elections

• Like Japan in the late 1800s, “revolution from above” led by military and civilian officials occurred

• And these revolutionaries were unburdened by close ties to traditional landholding groups

• Yet Turkey underwent a cultural revolution in public life not a social or economic revolution

• It was still firmly attached to Islamic tradition at the local level

• Atatürk’s answer was to fully embrace modern culture and Western ways in public life and to relegate Islam to the sphere of private life

Case Study: Iran

• The epicenter of Islamic revival in the 1970s was Iran

• As opposition mounted to the modernizing, secularizing, and American-supported government of the shah, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi (reigned 1941-1979); an Islamic fundamentalist movement gained support

• One elderly cleric in particular, the Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, organized opposition from exile in Paris and became the center of a growing movement demanding the shah’s removal

• As the nation revolted and slipped into anarchy, the shah abdicated; and in early 1979, he and his family fled the country

• Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran and appointed his own government

• Iran became a theocracy; a government officials who were regarded as divinely appointed

• Sharia became law of the land, and religious leaders themselves assumed reins of government

• Culturally, the new regime sought moral purification of country under state control

• But no class upheaval or radical redistribution of wealth followed; private property was maintained, and a new privileged elite emerged

• Nor did an Islamic revolution mean abandonment of economic modernity

Iran is actively pursuing nuclear power and perhaps nuclear weapons, much to the consternation of the West