Tourism: A Vehicle for Development? - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 20

Traditional Modern

￿ Traditionalism:
- orientation to the past/tradition
- inability to adapt to new
circumstances
￿ Kinship system:
- economic, social, legal structures
determined by kin relations
- ascription as opposed to achievement
￿ Infl uence of emotion, superstition,
fatalism

￿ Traditional values less dominant:
- ability to change/adapt
- challenge to obstacles of tradition
￿ Open social system:
- geographical/social mobility
- economic, social, political freedom
- achievement as opposed to
ascription
￿ Forward looking society:
- innovation, entrepreneurial spirit
- objective, rational approach

Figure 1.1 Characteristics of 'traditional' and 'modern' societies
Source: Adapted from Webster (1990).

Figure 1.1) to encourage or accommodate such growth, then development
is considered to be occurring.
By the late 1960s it had become clear that, in many countries, economic
growth was not only failing to solve social and political problems but was
also causing or exacerbating them (Seers, 1969). Some countries had realised
their economic growth targets, but 'the levels of living of the masses of
people remained for the most part unchanged' (Todaro, 2000: 14).
Moreover, although the aims of development had become more broadly
defined with investment in education, housing and health facilities (with
corresponding 'social indicator' measurements) becoming part of the devel-
opment process, economic growth and 'modernisation' remained the funda-
mental perspective.
Thus, during the 1970s the pendulum began to swing away from devel-
opment as an economic phenomenon towards the broader concept of develop-
ment as the reduction of widespread poverty and unemployment. Increasing
numbers of economists called for the 'dethronement of GNP' (Todaro, 2000:
14), although, as has been argued, this was not to suggest that economic
growth was unnecessary or destructive. Growth 'may matter a great deal,
but, if it does, this is because of some associated benefits that are realised in
the process of economic growth' (Sen, 1994: 220). Indeed, even the concept
of global sustainable development is, according to the widely cited Brundtland
Report, dependent upon growth in the world economy by a factor of five to
10 (WCED, 1987: 50).
Nevertheless, the traditional economic growth position was challenged
by many, in particular Dudley Seers (1969), who asserted:

The questions to ask about a country's development are therefore: what
has been happening to poverty ? What has been happening to