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III.
Evaluation of social change implies some baseline upon which the change itself can be predicated. In theoretical studies of culture contact it seems reasonable to use the culture as it was at the time of initial contact with the invading culture, and as it can be reconstructed from eye-witness accounts, historical records and aged informants as the zero-line from which change is to be studied. The social scientist, to-day studying a rapidly changing social scene or working with a team of technical experts, can rarely enjoy the luxury of historical reconstruction with all the checks and clues that it may offer. The social scientist must think of change projected into the future—if he is not so lucky, he must also consider administrators waiting for his next report. Hence he must establish contemporary base lines from which future bench marks can be sited and gradients of social change laid out. Some of the theoretical and practical problems involved in these baselines and gradients are to be discussed in another paper to be given at this Congress. All that requires consideration at this point because of its wider implications for psychology. education and perhaps social philosophy, is the hypothesis that extent and speed of social change among non-literates can be measured by reference to statistics on crime and mental disorder. Studies in the United States make it pretty evident that assimilation of immigrant Europeans into the dominant culture of contemporary American life results in peoples of migrant stock gradually achieving indices for mental disease, delinquency and crime which differ little, if at all, from those characterising peoples of the dominant culture. Similar indices thus become the badge of being insiders and not outsiders. Mental disease, for example, becomes a sign of the difficulty that members of a society have in adjusting to social norms. It is also a sign of the difficulty members of an outside group have in adjusting to a changing culture which is in the process of being incorporated into a larger cultural whole.
One end result of social change may be assimilation. Another end result however may be represented by a process of integration. Instead of absorption and incorporation, there is developed a new culture in which there are largely autonomous sub-cultures, each participating fully in the economic and political life of the new culture, but each preserving a certain measure of cultural independence in other aspects of life. It seems important to evaluate the result
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of a process of cultural change for the reason that indices of personal and social disorganisation may be symptomatic of assimilation, but not of social integration—or at least the symptoms may be less pronounced where the process seems to be directed more towards integration and less towards assimilation.
An interesting case in point is that of Lewis's study of the adjustment of individuals and families from the village of Tepoztlan who have gone to live in Mexico City. Studies of rural-urban migration in the United States almost uniformly present findings in which migrants to large cities are found to suffer from personal maladjustment, breakdown of family life, decline of religion and increase of delinquency: the inevitable consequence of a change from primary group environment with all its personal, moral and intimate warmth to a secondary group environment which by comparison is cold, unfriendly, impersonal. Lewis has been able to study intimately the lives of about 90 per cent. of these Tepoztecans who have migrated to Mexico City. He finds that Mexican peasants adapt to city life with far greater ease than do American farm families. “There is little evidence of disorganisation and breakdown, of culture conflict, or of irreconcilable differences between generations. … Family life remains strong in Mexico City. Family cohesiveness and extended family ties increase in the city, fewer cases of separation and divorce occur, no cases of abandoned mothers and children.” Lewis adds that standards of living rise in the city, religious life becomes more Catholic and disciplined, there is a greater reliance upon doctors and patent medicines to cure sickness and, finally, village ties remain strong.
It is unnecessary to discuss all the possible explanations that might account for these Mexico City findings. What they do suggest most clearly is that we need to re-think our hypotheses about the influence of increasing social change, notably the process of urbanisation upon the personal and social life of those settling in large cities. Perhaps our findings to date are themselves “culture-bound” by the experiences of North American cities. In any case, study of the Tepoztecans in Mexico City is likely to lead us back again to the role of value-systems in mediating, either positively or negatively, social change-It will also lead us to a more detailed study of the process of becoming urbanised and to the hypothesis that where this process is one of integration and not assimilation the hazards to personal and social life are correspondingly less.
It is to be hoped that in due course we shall be able to study more intensively the process of urban adjustment among the Maori; particularly by analysing at the social and psychological level a rural Maori community and then following up this study by a corresponding study of Maoris from this community who have gone to live in one of our larger cities.
One possible clue to Maori adjustment may come from a more exact and intensive study of Maori crime and Maori mental disease. The incidence of crime and mental disease is partly determined by the age-composition of a population. Mr. John McCreary, of the School of Social Science, Victoria University College, has made a special study of some aspects of Maori personal disorganisation from this point of view. His conclusions may be summarised very briefly as follows: In regard to mental hospital inmates it is evident that the Maoris are “entitled” to a figure of 31·27 per 10,000 of the Maori mean
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population, whereas their actual figure (their real rate) is 20·61 per 10,000. For comparison, the Pakeha real rate is 47·74 as against their entitlement figure of 47.31. The conclusion therefore is that Maori mental disease is significantly less than that of the Pakehas, but not so dramatically less as the 1953 Year Book would imply when it contrasts the Maori figures of 20:61 per 10,000 with that of 47·73 for the Pakeha population.
As for crime rates, Maoris are entitled to 5.8 per cent, of total imprisonments on the basis of age-composition of population. The actual number of Maori inmates in prison in 1951 was 17·9 per cent. of total committals (in 1952, Maoris represented 18·12 per cent. of the total prison population). Similarly, in regard to Supreme Court convictions, Maoris are entitled to 6.05 per cent., whereas they make up 19.81 per cent. of actual convictions.
The pattern of crime therefore seems reasonably clear: (a) Maoris represent about 4.8 per cent. of the population over fifteen years of age; (b) they are entitled to between 5.5 per cent. and 6 per cent. of offenders; (c) the actual rate of Maori serious crime is between 18 per cent. and 20 per cent. of all offenders.1
Without further investigation it is difficult to offer more than possible explanations of these Maori figures and the state of affairs they reveal. Urban and rural differences may be important; the patterns and kinds of crime may differ between Europeans and Maoris; our courts may have an unconscious bias against Maori offenders; the type of mental disorder from which the Maori suffers may be less likely to require hospitalisation; excessive consumption of alcohol may predispose the Maori towards crime as a release from intrapsychic tension—without alcohol, unreleased tensions might result in mental breakdown requiring hospitalisation.
The hypotheses are many. The facts themselves point towards some strain and stress in the process of social change. But the possibility should not be excluded, in comparing Mexican experience with New Zealand, that it is not so much the stresses of social change per se that are important variables as it is the differences between the personality structures of Maoris and, for instance, Tepoztecans. The basic personality structure of the Maori may in fact be too loosely organised (too unstable, in a non-evaluation sense) successfully to withstand social change stresses. Some measure of personal and social disorganisation is therefore inevitable. For other peoples such disorganisation, because of a more stable personality, may not be inevitable.
[Footnote] 1 This summary, together with the figures in the preceding two paragraphs, I have taken, with permission, from Mr. McCreary's unpublished study.