The Mutual Interaction of People and Their Built Environment 9783110819052, 9789027979094

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The Mutual Interaction of People and Their Built Enviroment

World Anthropology

General Editor

SOL T A X Patrons

CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS M A R G A R E T MEAD L A I L A S H U K R Y EL H A M A M S Y Μ. N. S R I N I V A S

MOUTON P U B L I S H E R S · THE H A G U E · PARIS D I S T R I B U T E D IN T H E U S A A N D C A N A D A B Y A L D I N E ,

CHICAGO

The Mutual Interaction of People and Their Built Environment A Cross-Cultural Perspective

Editor

AMOS RAPOPORT

MOUTON P U B L I S H E R S · THE H A G U E · PARIS D I S T R I B U T E D I N T H E U S A A N D C A N A D A BY A L D I N E ,

CHICAGO

Copyright © 1976 by Mouton & Co. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of Mouton Publishers, The Hague Distributed in the United States of America and Canada by Aldine Publishing Company, Chicago, Illinois ISBN 90-279-7909-X (Mouton) 0-202-90042-8 (Aldine) Jacket photo by permission of ANEFO, Amsterdam Cover and jacket design by Jurriaan Schrofer Indexes by John Jennings Printed in the Netherlands

General Editor s Preface

From the moment in human evolution that members of the species changed any part of the surrounding world for their use or pleasure, there was an "artificial" environment, which has grown now to dimensions that dwarf — and sometimes threaten — its creators. In this book, for almost the first time, anthropology reaches out to ask how peoples make and remake and react to their surroundings, and what rules govern their choices. Not surprisingly, it was an architect-turned-anthropologist, the editor of this volume, who brought together a broad selection of specialists to explore this question. And it was a Congress which invited attention to human problems from peoples of all cultures and disciplines which made possible a result so interesting. Like most contemporary sciences, anthropology is a product of the European tradition. Some argue that it is a product of colonialism, with one small and self-interested part of the species dominating the study of the whole. If we are to understand the species, our science needs substantial input from scholars who represent a variety of the world's cultures. It was a deliberate purpose of the IXth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences to provide impetus in this direction. The World Anthropology volumes, therefore, offer a first glimpse of a human science in which members from all societies have played an active role. Each of the books is designed to be self-contained; each is an attempt to update its particular sector of scientific knowledge and is written by specialists from all parts of the world. Each volume should be read and reviewed individually as a separate volume on its own given subject. The set as a whole will indicate what

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General Editor's

Preface

changes are in store for anthropology as scholars from the developing countries join in studying the species of which we are all a part. The IXth Congress was planned from the beginning not only to include as many of the scholars from every part of the world as possible, but also with a view toward the eventual publication of the papers in high-quality volumes. At previous Congresses scholars were invited to bring papers which were then read out loud. They were necessarily limited in length; many were only summarized; there was little time for discussion; and the sparse discussion could only be in one language. The IXth Congress was an experiment aimed at changing this. Papers were written with the intention of exchanging them before the Congress, particularly in extensive pre-Congress sessions; they were not intended to be read aloud at the Congress, that time being devoted to discussions — discussions which were simultaneously and professionally translated into five languages. The method for eliciting the papers was structured to make as representative a sample as was allowable when scholarly creativity — hence self-selection — was critically important. Scholars were asked both to propose papers of their own and to suggest topics for sessions of the Congress which they might edit into volumes. All were then informed of the suggestions and encouraged to re-think their own papers and the topics. The process, therefore, was a continuous one of feedback and exchange and it has continued to be so even after the Congress. The some two thousand papers comprising World Anthropology certainly than offer a substantial sample of world anthropology. It has been said that anthropology is at a turning point; if this is so, these volumes will be the historical direction-markers. As might have been foreseen in the first post-colonial generation, the large majority of the Congress papers (82 percent) are the work of scholars identified with the industrialized world which fathered our traditional discipline and the institution of the Congress itself: Eastern Europe (15 percent); Western Europe (16 percent); North America (47 percent); Japan, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand (4 percent). Only 18 percent of the papers are from developing areas: Africa (4 percent); Asia-Oceania (9 percent); Latin America (5 percent). Aside from the substantial representation from the U.S.S.R. and the nations of Eastern Europe, a significant difference between this corpus of written material and that of other Congiesses is the addition of the large proportion of contribution from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. "Only 18 percent" is two to four times as great a proportion as that of other Congresses; moreover, 18 percent of 2,000 papers is 360 papers, 10 times the number of "Third World" papers presented at previous Con-

General Editor's Preface

νπ

gresses. In fact, these 360 papers are more than the total of ALL papers published after the last International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences which was held in the United States (Philadelphia, 1956). The significance of the increase is not simply quantitative. The input of scholars from areas which have until recently been no more than subject matter for anthropology represents both feedback and also long-awaited theoretical contributions from the perspectives of very different cultural, social, and historical traditions. Many who attended the IXth Congress were convinced that anthropology would not be the same in the future. The fact that the next Congress (India, 1978) will be our first in the "Third World" may be symbolic of the change. Mean while, sober consideration of the present set of books will show how much, and just where and how, our discipline is being revolutionized. This is one of a number of books in the World Anthropology series which deal with ways in which cultures shape interactions between people and influence the way people relate to their own creations; different approaches are presented in books on art and technology dealt with cross-culturally and by volumes on social, psychological, developmental, and economic anthropology. Chicago, Illinois August 24, 1976

SOL T A X

Preface

During the last six or seven years a new field of study has developed, concerned with an interdisciplinary study of the mutual interaction of people and their built environment. Scholars and professionals from a number of disciplines — architecture, planning, psychology, sociology, social psychology, geography, ethology, psychiatry, and so on — have begun to address questions about how environments have been shaped and how they should be designed, what effects environments have on people and what are the important mechanisms linking people and environments. While this topic has been given a number of different names, the most commonly used, and the most descriptive, is the study of man-environment relations or, more briefly, MAN-ENVIRONMENT STUDIES. One thing has been striking in the development of the field and its current status — the absence of anthropology and anthropologists among the disciplines involved. As a result there has been a corresponding absence of an anthropological orientation and an absence of the use of anthropological concepts and data in such research. In fact I have been one of the very few people dealing with sociocultural variables, attempting cross-cultural comparisons, and generally trying to use certain anthropological concepts and approaches. It was this gap which led me to suggest that the topic of man-environment interaction be part of the IXth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IXth ICAES) which resulted in the organization (jointly with Professor James Silverberg of the Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin — Milwaukee) of a preCongress conference at Racine, of which this book is a result.

χ

Preface

Given the important questions raised by man-environment studies, the potential importance of anthropological approaches, data, and insights for the field and the equally great potential importance of the analysis of built environments and man-environment interaction for anthropology, a number of people were invited to address these matters. Although I restricted the topics to a small part of those generally considered in man-environment studies, largely those related to sociocultural variables, and approached from an anthropological perspective, the group was still rather diverse with a wide range of papers, cultures, and disciplines. This presented both problems and opportunities. The PROBLEMS relate to the difficulties in communicating, given the different disciplines and orientations of the pariticipants, the lack of shared agreement about the meaning of certain terms, the nonsharing of world views and epistemologies. This might make interaction difficult and sometimes painful, but at the same time it provides OPPORTUNITIES. These are the mutual learning of new points of view, new areas of concern and new sets of problems. Given that the most interesting work often occurs in interstitial areas, those between fields, and that new insights occur when previously apparently disparate areas are suddenly seen to have things in common (Koestler 1964), this potential opportunity could be most important. In this case, the opportunities seemed to be much greater than the problems. The conference was most successful, the interaction was intense and fruitful. A number of the participants have maintained contact with each other and have become interested in new types of work. The group has even discussed the possibility of future meetings. One important reason for the success was the setting, both physical and organizational, provided by the Johnson Foundation at Wingspread, and we all owe them our thanks. The University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, through its College of Letters and Science, Graduate School and School of Architecture, helped us with funds to supplement the contribution of the Johnson Foundation. Personally I owe a debt of gratitude to my coorganizer, James Silverberg, who carried much of the organizational burden and without whom I could not have coped. A most important reason for the success of the meeting was, of course, the quality and open-mindedness of the participants. Coming from ten disciplines and ten different countries, they worked amazingly well together. In addition to the intense discussions of the conference participants—during sessions, at the end of sessions, and at other times — we benefited greatly from our interactions with the participants of another pre-Congress conference held concurrently at Wingspread. The concerns of that conference,

Preface

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coorganized by Professors Marvin Loflin and James Silverberg of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (On the Psychic Unity of Mankind: Inference Making and Enculturation), in some ways overlapped our concerns and in two joint plenary sessions, and in informal discussions, many interesting ideas were exchanged. In March, 1973,1 sent out the following statement about man-environment studies and proposed the following outline for the conference: The purpose of this meeting is to begin to develop ways of generalizing about the man-environment interaction by considering this interaction cross-culturally. Since it is exploratory, it will attempt to touch on a range of possible variables and approaches. Within the framework of the study of man-environment interaction there are three major questions: —What characteristics of people as individuals and groups are important in shaping environments and in the understanding of environments? —What are the effects of the physical environment on people and how important are these effects. —What are the principal mechanisms linking people and environments? Most specific topics in the field can be seen in terms of these three questions and at this meeting the stress will be on anthropological aspects of the problem. It is proposed to arrange the material at the meeting in the following way: 1. HUMAN CHARACTERISTICS, NEEDS, ETC. Framework: constancy and variability. In this section material will be discussed on evolutionary background of people; ethology; archaeological and historical data; cultural differences in standards; cultural differences in simple activity systems; values and differences in environmental quality; proxemics; etc. 2. ENVIRONMENTS. Framework: descriptions and reconstructions. In this section will be discussed material consisting of ethnographic descriptions; archaeological reconstructions; historical descriptions; relations of dwellings and settlements; sizes of dwellings and their organization; densities; descriptions of larger (geographic scale) environments; the relation of rules of behavior and the built environment; descriptions of construction; materials, technology, and social aspects of construction, etc. 3. MECHANISMS LINKING PEOPLE AND ENVIRONMENTS. Framework: anthropological material. Cognitive domains and the built environment; taxonomies and the built environment; symbolic aspects of environment; environment as communication; culture, values, world views, lifestyles, and built environment; ethnic and subcultural groupings; relation of family and other social structures to built environment; religion and built environment; habitat constraints; maximization of use of resources; technological levels; etc. 4. EFFECT OF ENVIRONMENT ON PEOPLE. The framework here is one of specific topics and case studies. Topics: density and crowding and interaction; built form and social interaction; density and aggression; form and culture; culture change and form; form change and culture survival; specific problems of designing for other cultures. Case studies: this could be a series of case studies of design for specific groups and of the effects of design on various groups; culture change; ethnic architecture and planning; Third World design; etc.

xn Preface

The meeting would try and suggest possible methodologies of understanding and designing for CULTURE-SPECIFIC ENVIRONMENTS. This would involve an understanding of the constancy-variability dimension of various human and environmental characteristics and their interaction.

While all the usual problems attendant upon organizing a conference were encountered so that there were some categories with no papers nor did all the papers fit neatly into this framework, the fit was sufficiently close to enable the proposed conference outline, the conference itself and the contents of this book to match fairly closely and, it is to be hoped, successfully. AMOS RAPOPORT

REFERENCES KOESTLER, ARTHUR

1964

The act of creation. New York: Macmillan.

Table of Contents

General Editor's Preface Preface

v IX

SECTION ONE: GENERAL PAPERS

Introduction Sociocultural Aspects of Man-Environment Studies by Amos Rapoport The Social Function of the Built Environment by Robert Gutman Cultural Pluralism and Urban Form: The Colonial City as Laboratory for Cross-Cultural Research in Man-Environment Interaction by A. D. King How Can We Learn about Man and His Settlements? by C. A. Doxiadis

3 7 37

51 77

SECTION TWO: HUMAN CHARACTERISTICS

Introduction Design for Man-Environment Relations by Aristide H. Esser Human Territoriality as an Object of Research in Cultural Anthropology by Ina-Maria Greverus

121 127

145

xiv

Table of contents

The Social Properties of Places and Things by G. McBride and H. Clancy Some Territorial Layouts in the United States by Albert E. Scheflen

159 177

SECTION THREE: ENVIRONMENTS

Introduction A Description of the Maori Marae by M. R. Austin Peasant House Building and Its Relation to Church Building: The Rumanian Case

225 229

by Anca Stahl and Paul-Henri Stahl

SECTION FOUR: MECHANISMS Introduction Analysis of a Culture Through Its Culturemes: Theory and Method by Fernando Poyatos A Decision Model for Estimating Concurrent School Attendance among Tribal Peoples of Liberia, Together with an Application Regarding Differential Cognitions Toward Traditional Housing by James Beckman Housing Standards versus Ecological Forces: Regulating Population Density in Bombay by Harvey M. Choldin Conceptual Patterns in Yoruba Culture by Lucy Jayne Kamau Values, Science, and Settlement: A Case Study in Environmental Control by A. D. King Landscape and the Communication of Social Identity by James S. Duncan, Jr.

257 265

275

287 333

365 391

SECTION FIVE: CASE STUDIES

Introduction 405 Residential Patterns and Population Movement into the Farmlands of Yorubaland 411 by Philip O. Olusanya

Table of contents

xv

A Process of Urbanization: Economic and Social Innovations in a Suburban Village at Fukuyama, Japan 431 by Motoyoshi Omori Preindustrial Kabul: Its Structure and Function in Transformational Processes in Afghanistan 441 by M. Jamil Hanifi Problems Involved in the Human Aspects of Rural Resettlement Schemes in Egypt 453 by Helmi R. Tadros

SECTION SIX: CONCLUSION

Conclusion by Amos Rapoport

485

Biographical Notes

491

Index of Names

497

Index of Subjects

503

SECTION ONE

General Papers

Introduction

The: chapters in this section all address some general conceptual questions which provide a framework within which other papers may be seen. Most of the themes which recur in the book will be found, in one form or another, in this section. In addition there is a general theme stressing the methodological value of comparative studies for the clarification of problems of man-environment interaction. In my paper I try to set the scene briefly, to provide some notion of the kinds of problems with which one is concerned in man-environment studies, and to cite some possible relationships between man-environment studies and anthropology. In this, as in other matters, there is no attempt to be exhaustive. Rather, by concentrating on a few large, conceptual matters, I hope to shed light on a large number of issues and also, in this way, to summarize a considerable amount of work. Some of the theoretical approaches proposed relate to several themes which are picked up later and the notion of design as choice, the central role of images and schemata, and hence the cognitive anthropology paradigm, proved to be structuring principles for much of the discussion (as reflected in the conclusions). While the problem of making operational a concept such as "culture" as a link between people and their built environment is touched upon briefly in my paper, it is generally avoided in this book. Yet it underlies much of what is said. For example, Gutman sees the built environment as improving, inhibiting, or in some way regulating social communication and thus as being intimately linked with culture. He also adds support to the particular view about the effect of the environment on behavior proposed in my paper.

4

Introduction

The built environment, he agrees, can best be seen as a setting for behavior and it affects behavior without determining it. One important way in which it does so is through its effects on social communication. The setting also inhibits or facilitates behavior (or acts as a catalyst for behavior, it might be added) through its symbolic function. By means of certain symbols it suggests behavior appropriate to particular settings and through this it is related to individual and group identity (Rapoport, McBride and Clancy, Duncan, and others in the volume). It thus seems important to achieve congruence of built form and social form which requires the collaboration of designers and social scientists. This generally laudable aim is often stated but rarely made more specific. One clear area in which such collaboration would be helpful is in defining certain concepts such as "privacy." When concepts such as these are used it is often far from self-evident what they mean, what their range is, what means may be used to achieve them in a given context. Comparative and cross-cultural studies may well help clarify this concept and many others. This is, of course, a specific example of a more general approach which I have been advocating for some time. It seems clear that valid generalizations about the interaction of people and environments must be based on a broad sample, covering a wide variety of situations both in space and time and thus requiring both cross-cultural and historical studies. In 1969 I suggested that the colonial city offers one useful setting for such comparative work since climate, site, and other variables tend to be constant and the role of social, cultural, technological, and other variables can be clearly demonstrated. King provides an example of a particular cross-cultural comparison, the English colonial city in India, a type of comparison which could be done more frequently and in many more contexts. He shows the interaction of ideas and values, activities and behavior, social relations and those fundamental social institutions which, he argues, are at the core of a culture. He examines the very diverse character of these variables in the traditional Indian and the English colonial contexts and also in the resulting urban environments. Through this examination the way in which variables of this kind and the built environment are related is clearly brought out. We see certain values, ideas, and cognitive/conceptual mechanisms channelling activities through certain institutional forms and leading to culture-specific spatial forms. It is clear that the comparison of the Indian and English responses has many specific characteristics. This kind of analysis could in turn be applied to the case of the French in North Africa, the English in Africa,

Introduction

5

the Spanish in Latin America. In turn one could then compare the English, French, and Spanish responses with each other, the Arab, African, and Indian with each other, and so on. Each such comparison, all within the context of a colonial milieu, should prove extremely revealing. It could also be applied to built environments of different scale as King does elsewhere in this volume (Section 4) and is doing in a larger study. Two more general points seem to follow from this type of analysis. One is that, given the close link between institutions and built form, and the communicative function of the built environment, interesting questions can be raised about the effects of environment on enculturation. These effects are probably strongest in children, but in any situation behavior settings probably play a significant role in enculturation and the learning of certain appropriate behaviors given certain environmental cues (i.e. the environmental code is learned). The second point concerns the relevance of this type of analysis, and what it reveals about culturespecific environments, for a number of subcultures in modern cities. Given a pluralistic and multicultural society, examples of culture contact areas (whether colonial or not) may provide a relevant and useful paradigm. These points, of course, suggest the need for a further broadening of our sample and for other kinds of comparisons. Doxiadis, combining a cross-cultural and historical approach, examines a wide range of environmental questions at various scales. While he tends to ignore cultural variables, he covers an extraordinarily wide range of environments and periods attempting to link them into a larger system. Starting with the need for valid relationships between people and environments, he tries to show how designers could learn from the past about that fundamental unit called "the room," about the meaning of human scale in cities, about city-states. These three examples represent three very different scales and several civilizations. On that basis Doxiadis generalizes about certain types of man-environment interactions. He then uses these generalizations as a datum, or yardstick, and also examines certain changes in present-day environments. This comparison reveals certain "misfits" and Doxiadis then makes two suggestions for more humane settlements based on a multidisciplinary approach and a particular model of the man-environment system. This general approach and method provide a paradigm which should allow many different kinds of specific approaches, detailed questions, and different kinds of data (e.g. evolutionary, ethological, sociocultural, symbolic, etc.) to be used. Within this context, then, the papers in this section do show some agree-

6

Introduction

ment. They seem to agree that man-environment interaction can best be studied, and valid generalizations made, through cross-cultural and historical analysis; comparative studies reveal patterns, regularities, and differences which may provide baseline data and evaluative criteria; the past holds lessons for the present and the future; the built environment shares certain general characteristics but is also culture-specific, and its forms result from choice, from the interaction of many different material, social, cultural, psychological, and other factors. What some of these factors might be will be the topic of some of the later sections. But these specific concerns, and the many NOT explicitly covered in this book, should all be seen in the larger context of the papers in this section.

Sociocultural Aspects of Man-Environment Studies

AMOS RAPOPORT

This volume is concerned with a limited set of variables involved in the study of man-environment interactions. These are what can broadly be called sociocultural aspects of this interaction. The purpose of this paper is to provide a context within which the chapters that follow might best contribute to the larger study of man-environment relations. It is meant to serve as a conceptual framework, or point of view, within which the more specific papers might relate to each other and which might also help to structure the discussions and any conclusions which might be reached. Given these purposes, the remarks that follow will inevitably cover a large number of points and tend toward breadth rather than depth.

MAN-ENVIRONMENT STUDIES In the preface I have already briefly described the nature of man-environment studies and suggested that any specific question in the field can be seen as forming part of three broad, basic questions. A discussion of some sociocultural aspects of man-environment studies can, therefore, begin most usefully with a somewhat more detailed discussion of these basic questions. 1. The first question is concerned with the characteristics of people — as members of a species, as individuals, and as members of various social groups — which affect (or, from the designers' point of view, SHOULD affect) the way in which built environments are shaped. Ideally this should involve a consideration of constancy and variability,

8

AMOS RAPOPORT

1.e. the existence and nature of species-specific behavior, tendencies, and predispositions. In turn this raises questions about the potential importance of knowledge about the evolutionary background of man, both the physical and social environments within which man evolved, in providing a baseline. This would provide ranges and set certain limits on the ways in which environments can best respond to human needs, ways in which certain activities or thought processes lead to specific environmental solutions, and so on. In the case of individuals this first question is primarily concerned with people's sensory capacities: the ways in which individuals as active users and explorers of the environment perceive it through the senses, give it meaning, and hence use it. However, because the ways in which environments are used, the ways in which they are understood and interpreted, and possibly, even the ways in which they are perceived and which sensory modalities are stressed, are all affected by membership in particular groups, people must inevitably be considered as members of such groups with particular values, beliefs, and ways of understanding the world. In addition, of course, people's membership in small groups, families, large social groupings and institutions, subcultures, and cultures affects their roles, the ways in which they communicate, and so on. The relative importance of, and ways of coping with, communication, social networks, kinship systems, values, and the many other group characteristics of humans greatly affect decisions about the form of the environment — and might, in turn, be affected by the built environment. 2. This last point seems critical and forms the subject of the second major question. It is essential to know what are the effects of the built environment on human behavior, mood, or well-being. If there are no effects, or if these effects are minor, then the importance of studying man-environment interaction is correspondingly diminished. It is also an extremely difficult question to answer since the evidence is often difficult to compare, is contradictory, and is lacking a consensus or generally accepted theoretical position. What follows is a summary version of a particular theoretical formulation. The question of the effect of the physical environment on people has received attention primarily in cultural geography and in environmental design research. The experience in geography, even though it deals with a different set of variables at a different scale, is particularly relevant and offers a useful parallel to developments in the design field. Briefly, there seem to have been three attitudes in geography: a. ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINISM: the view that the physical environment determines human behavior.

Sociocultural Aspects of Matt-Environment Studies

9

b. POSSIBILISM: the view that the physical environment provides possibilities and constraints within which people make choices based on other, mainly cultural, criteria. c. PROBABILISM: the current view that the physical environment does, in fact, provide possibilities for choice and is not determining, but that some choices are more probable than others in given physical settings. In planning and design environmental determinism has been the traditional view — the belief that changes in the form of cities and buildings can lead to major changes in a person's behavior, increased happiness, increased social interaction, and so on. 1 As a reaction, much as in geography, the view was put forward that the physical environment and its organization have no major effects on people and that it is the social, economic, and other similar environments that are of major importance, 2 The current view is that the built environment can be seen as a BEHAV3 IOR SETTING — a setting for human activities. Behavior settings may be neutral, inhibiting, or facilitating; and a behavior setting may be facilitating to the extent of acting as a catalyst or releasing latent behavior, 4 but cannot, however, determine or GENERATE activities. (While in terms of observation the distinction may be difficult to determine operationally, theoretically the distinction seems very important.) Similarly, inhibiting environments will generally make certain behaviors more difficult but will not usually block them completely, although it is easier to block behavior than to generate it. Moreover, while it is generally accepted that the built environment has important although not determining effects,5 the inhibiting effects may, under conditions of reduced competence (White 1959) or environmental docility, as with the elderly, the ill,and children (Lawton 1970a;Lee 1957,1971b: 654-659; Gubrium 1970; Tars and Appleby 1973) become much more acute and may, in fact, become critical (Rapoport 1972a). 1 This is important in much architectural and planning literature and the ideology of the design professions. For examples, see any traditional books on these subjects; see also Lipman (1971). For more recent formulations stressing environmental effects, see Festinger, et al. (1950), Whyte (1956), Lee (1971a), Sommer and Dewar (1963), and Smith, et al. (1971). 2 This view came mainly from nondesigners, primarily sociologists. For some examples see Maurice Broady (1966, 1969), Gans (1961a, 1961b, 1968), Bochner, et al. (1968), and Lipman (1967). 3 This concept has been developed both by Roger G. Barker (1968) and by Erving Goffman (1959, 1963, 1972). Their formulations contain valid and important insights, and the term, as used here, contains elements from both these formulations. 4 For the catalyst view see Wells (1965); for the release of latent attitudes see Newman (1971). 5 For one major exception see Lee (1971a).

10

AMOS RAPOPORT

This reduced competence or environmental docility may be cultural as well as physical, so that groups undergoing very rapid change, groups whose culture is "marginal," and so on may, in fact, be affected critically by inappropriate forms of the built environment — those, for example, which prevent or destroy particular forms of family organization, prevent the formation of homogeneous groups or mutual help, disrupt social networks or certain institutions, prevent certain ritual or economic activities, and so on (Rapoport 1972a). All cases of reduced competence or environmental docility — physical, mental or cultural — seem to have the common factor of reduced ability to cope with high levels of stress so that the ADDITIONAL stress of overcoming inhibiting environments may become too great. Under those conditions supportive or prosthetic environments 6 may be necessary. An additional complicating factor is that the effects of adaptation in terms of stress are frequently remote in space and time from the initial occurrence and hence difficult to trace. It should be stressed that environmental effects are mediated by "filters," i.e. they are part of the perceived environment and involve expectations, motivations, judgments, symbolic meanings, etc. (Rapoport 1969a, 1971; Rapoport and Watson 1972). As merely one example this greatly affects the definition of concepts such as "slum." 7 The fact is that people do act and behave differently in different behavior settings (see Barker 1968; also Erving Goffman 1959, 1963, 1972). This suggests another important point, which is that people act appropriately in different settings because they match, or make congruent, their behavior and the norms for behavior appropriate to the setting (as defined by the culture). This implies that behavior settings and, more generally, the built environment provide CUES FOR BEHAVIOR and that the environment can, therefore, be seen as a form of NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION. Using the distinction between fixed feature space (walls, doors, etc.), semifixed feature space (furniture, furnishings, etc.), and informal (or better, nonfixed feature) elements (people and their dress, gestures, facial expression, proxemic relationships, posture, and so on 8 — the latter being the more typical subject of nonverbal communication studies), it is possible to see how they all fit into a single model. People, then, act according to their reading of the environmental cues 8

Lawton's term. Fried and Gleicher (1961) and Hartman (1963) are merely two examples among many others. A more complete review will be found in a forthcoming book on urban form and design by Amos Rapoport. 8 This classification is proposed by Hall (1966). 7

Sociocultural Aspects of Man-Environment Studies

11

and thus the "language" must be understood. If the design of the environment, howevei done, is seen as a process of encoding information, then the users can be seen as decoding it. If the code is not shared, not understood, or inappropriate, then the environment does not communicate.9 Using this approach, it is possible to distinguish between direct and indirect effects of the environment. The former are those where the environment directly affects behavior, mood, satisfaction, performance, or interaction (Maslow and Mintz 1956; Mintz 1956; Kasmar, et al. 1968; Dobins and Richards 1958; McBride and Clancy, this volume). The latter are those where the environment is used to draw conclusions about the social standing or status of its occupants and behavior modified accordingly (Rosenthal 1966: 98-101,245-249; Rapoport 1974; Duncan, this volume). One could then proceed to discuss the kinds of effects, the types of mechanisms operating, the specific types of interaction, and so on in more detail, but this would take us too far off the topic. In all this discussion, as typically in most discussion on this topic, there is an implicit assumption that somehow people are placed in environments which then act on them. Yet, in reality, in most cases people select their habitat which results in various forms of migration — international ; interregional; interurban; down to the selection of neighborhood, house, furniture, etc. In effect people vote with their feet and a major effect of environment on people is a positive or negative attraction — HABITAT SELECTION.

In some cases habitat selection is blocked by poverty, infirmity, or discrimination, and this becomes a major environmental problem. In cases of forced habitation (of which institutionalization is the most extreme example), we find that the environment becomes more critical and those are precisely the conditions of reduced competence or environmental docility already discussed. As suggested, these concepts operate at the cultural level also, and it could be suggested that in such cases the survival of cultures may be linked with the form of housing and settlements and the environmental design generally so that the built environment may become critical and almost negatively determining (Rapoport 1972a; Jaulin 1971). In relation to culture change it may then be useful to think of the concept of the "pacer" leading to graduated environments, halfway houses, and the like. 3. The third major question is, in a sense, a corollary question. If there 9

Rapoport (1970a); see also the ongoing work of Alton J. Delong, School of Architecture, University of Tennessee.

12

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is a mutual interaction between people and environments, then there must be some mechanisms which link people and environments. Several have already been mentioned in passing: the environment as a form of nonverbal communication, i.e. a code decoded by users, and the environment as a symbol system (Rapoport 1969b, 1970a, 1972b, 1973a); perception (through the various senses) and cognition (giving meaning to the environment by naming, classification, and ordering) seem to be other important mechanisms. Thus in the case of several of these the environment is closely linked to culture, social structure, and the like.

MAN-ENVIRONMENT STUDIES AND ANTHROPOLOGY Even this very brief and generalized view of man-environment studies clearly suggests a number of ways in which anthropology can contribute. (For other views see Proshansky, et al. 1970; Perin 1970; Gutman 1972.) For one thing, if ethnography provided adequate DESCRIPTIONS of environments and how they are used, this would give a broad sample base from which to generalize and do cross-cultural comparisons. Anthropology also typically provides a number of cognitive, symbolic, and other models; deals with the links between culture and artifact systems; studies social structure which could then be linked to different forms of the built environment; and, most generally, takes a holistic approach tending to consider people IN environments under natural conditions in a way that no other social science does. Anthropology also, of course, relates social and cultural systems to resources and to ecological systems; it deals with the evolution of man and his relation to other species and is increasingly interested in etiological questions which bear both on the problem of constancy and on spatial aspects of social interaction. Clearly, a discussion of the link between man-environment studies and anthropology at a general level would not be fully to the point. A brief list of some possible contributions that anthropology could make can be done easily and seems suggestive: 1. Broadening the sample, in space and time, on the basis of which generalizations about man-environment interaction are made. 2. Clarifying the relationship between constancy and cultural variability, tracing regularities and limits, and suggesting baselines. 3. Looking at culture as a way of making consistent choices about ways of linking the physical and nonphysical environments. 4. Studying reasons for specific choices and considering the effect of

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world views, values, and motivations as well as the constraints and limitations of the natural environment, resource base, and technology. 5. Clarifying some of the mechanisms linking people and environments such as family structure, sex roles, cognitive systems, images and values, and the environment as a form of communication. 6. Considering the relation of culture change and changes in the built environment and hence providing important suggestions for design decisions. 7. Helping to clarify concepts such as privacy, crowding, and the like. In addition, the possible relations between man-environment studies and anthropology may be clarified through a specific example of the type of material which I would like to have regarding housing in order to complement data based on other approaches. 10 Ethnographers have generally written relatively little about the built environment although they have probably observed much. I would, therefore, like to pose a series of questions which are related to a crosscultural and rather new approach to the study of the way in which people organize space and shape the built environment. The purpose of these questions is to enable valid generalizations to be made about the environment and the ways in which people interact with it and also to begin to define ranges and limits in the specific ways in which people cope with certain environmental imperatives which might be seen as universal. The questions relate to eight major areas of concern. In each of these areas many questions need to be explored. However, in order to get the process started, I will pose only one or two specific questions in each of these categories. This is concerned with more complete and adequate descriptive data on the total spatial organization of a given group. One would be interested in path and field patterns, the form of settlement (streets, squares, marketplaces, etc.) and houses. In addition to descriptions of space organization, construction methods, and building organization (i.e. who builds and how), it would also be useful to have inventories of possessions and equipment with their location. Generally, these descriptions should be as detailed as possible and, CATEGORY 1

10

These are questions submitted on 1 February 1973 to ethnographers through the Center for the Study of Man, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Significantly, no replies have been received, and the group at Wingspread suggested that these questions be included in this volume.

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wherever possible, illustrated with plans, diagrams, photographs, films, etc., as well as verbal descriptions. Question 1 What is the nature of the typical unit (which we call "house") in which a social unit (family) live? How is it organized and constructed, who builds it, where is it located, what possessions are kept in it and where are they kept? 2 In this section we are interested in how various forms are USED. We would want to have a description of space organization in terms of differences in uses. The general purpose of this area of concern is to relate regularities of behavior to those of space organization and specifically to discover behavior settings, where various activities occur, and the rules defining when places are used, by whom, how, and under what conditions. For example, what are the domains and places used by sex groups, age groups, and various other (which?) special groups? What is the use of different parts of the environment by different groups at different times, and what is the relation of the rules about space organization to rules about manners, behavior, avoidance, and so on? CATEGORY

Question 2 How is this unit used — who uses which parts for what, when, and under what conditions? Are there rules which restrict the use of various parts by various groups and individuals? 3 Here I am interested in the various possible ways of interpreting the way space is organized. Rather than being descriptive, this question category asks for an evaluation and judgment on the part of the ethnographer. While the specific models applied are the concern of the student of man — environment relations —it might be possible to discover whether the ethnographer thinks an ethological model (in terms of home range, core area, territory, jurisdiction, and personal space) is relevant or whether a distinction in terms of house/settlement may be more useful (i.e. which activities occur in the dwelling, courtyard, street, market, dance ground, or whatever). Basically, we are trying to discover the importance of the dwelling relative to other parts of the total built environment and which model best explains the relationship or a more appropriate distinction, the hierarchy of "places" — productive, sacred, "waste," etc. CATEGORY

Question 3 How is the dwelling defined vis-ä-vis the settlement, and how important is it relative to other parts of the settlement? Of a typical

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round of activities, which (and how many) occur in the dwelling and which in other areas (which?)? 4 In this area we are interested in how, for example, "places" are defined. More generally, the question is — how do spatial categories and domains relate to cognitive and linguistic categories (i.e. are there spatial and environmental examples of taxonomies?). Thus, how are domains of public/private defined, how do cognitive styles relate to systems of spatial orientation, how are cognitive styles reflected in concepts of the world and mental maps and expressed in the spatial organization of the physical environment? Do spatial divisions reflect (or are they reflected in) linguistic divisions: how are symbol systems expressed or reflected in the physical environment? CATEGORY

Question 4 How do the spatial divisions and domains of the dwelling relate to cognitive and linguistic categories and taxonomies? Does the dwelling reflect such categories? 5 How is spatial organization related to social variables? For example, how are different groups, such as extended families, clans, and ethnic and religious groups arranged (grouped, scattered, etc.) in the settlement, and are there visible differences in the physical environment in these various areas either in physical character or uses and activities? How are social networks reflected in space (if at all); how are family structure and role allocation reflected in, and related to, the spatial organization of the dwelling, compound, "neighborhood," settlement, or region? CATEGORY

Question 5 Who lives in the dwelling and is allowed to penetrate how far? How is the dwelling related to the larger social organization? How are larger social groups reflected in the way dwellings are related to each other, and does this result in larger "units" controlled by such a group? 6 This set of concerns relates to the important issue of privacy and social interaction. For example, can data be provided on density in the region, settlement, compound, dwelling, room, etc.? Are there any observable effects related to density and crowding — i.e., do density and crowding (and ways of avoidance) relate to aggression, family life, friendship patterns, interaction, communication and social relations, child socialization, sex roles, etc? How is privacy defined in CATEGORY

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terms of levels of wanted/unwanted interaction and, once defined, how is it achieved — through rules, physical elements, time schedules, etc? Which forms of privacy (by sense modalities) are stressed? Question 6 How many people live in a typical unit and various parts of it? Axe there observable effects related to crowding in terms of aggression, child rearing, family life, etc? How is privacy defined and handled in the dwelling — by rules, physical elements, time schedules? Which sensory modalities are stressed in this connection? 7 What are the values, ideals, etc. (world view) of the group or groups as reflected in their notions of an ideal environment? How does this relate to their definitions of what is a good environment (environmental quality), and how is it reflected in space organization, sizes of spaces, dwellings, preferred lighting and temperature levels, etc? What are the specific ways in which different members of the group eat, sit, sleep, play, etc? Who does what together or separately, and what is the variability among different individuals and subgroups? CATEGORY

Question 7 Does the dwelling reflect a more or less clear notion of an "ideal" paradigm? What specific qualities are highly valued in the dwelling? What are the specific ways of cooking, eating, sleeping, etc? 8 How are processes of culture change affecting the environment? For example, are the changes mainly in the substitution of new materials for traditional ones and the use of new equipment or are there changes reflected in new ways of organizing space? Are traditional planning and design disappearing and, if so, is this because of desires or arbitrary decisions? If the latter, are the new plans and designs having unforeseen (and undesired) effects on certain traditional social and cultural patterns? CATEGORY

Question 8 Is the form of the dwelling changing and are relationships between groups of dwellings changing or are changes mainly in the use of new materials and devices? Are the changes occurring liked or disliked, and are they having undesired effects on traditional social and cultural patterns? These areas of concern relate to topics and approaches which are relatively new. They may well require elaboration even after they have been clarified by the posing of specific questions, and I will be glad to provide

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further information if required. Also, and in the long run, it would be useful to agree on some uniform ways of recording such data and information so that comparisons could more easily be made cross-culturally. THE ENVIRONMENT The "environment" is one of those terms which, while there seems to be an implicit concensus about their meaning, are frequently used without being defined and hence without really knowing what they mean. A number of definitions have been proposed, of which two seem particularly useful. The first is that proposed by Lawton (1970b) who defines the environment as an ecological system having five components: 1. the individual; 2. the physical environment (including all natural features of geography, climate, and man-made features which limit and facilitate behavior), the spaces and distances between man and objects, and the "resources" of the environment; 3. the personal environment, including individuals who are important sources of behavior control — family, friends, authority figures, and the like; 4. the suprapersonal environment which refers to the environmental characteristics resulting from the inhabitants' modal personal characteristics (these may be old people, an ethnic group, or other specific subcultures) ; 5. the social environment consisting of social norms and institutions. The second is proposed by Ittelson (1960) and is also an ecological model with seven categories: 1. the GENERAL ECOLOGICAL INTERRELATIONSHIP of all the categories; 2. the PERCEPTUAL AREA: which is very important because of the primacy of perception in man-environment interaction; 3. the EXPRESSIVE AREA: the effect on people of shapes, light, colors, textures, smells, sounds, and symbolic meanings; 4. the domain of AESTHETIC VALUES of a culture and, one could add, the whole area of values; 5. the ADAPTIVE AREA: the extent to which the environment helps or hinders activities; 6. the INTEGRATIVE AREA: the kinds of social groupings which are facilitated or inhibited by the surroundings; 7. the INSTRUMENTAL AREA: the tools and facilities provided by the environment.

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Related to both of these definitions is the previously mentioned notion of the environment as a behavior setting which may be neutral, inhibiting, or supportive (Barker 1963:20). That part of the environment called the built environment can also be seen in a number of different ways. Most usefully, however, it can be seen in terms of SPATIAL ORGANIZATION which is its most important and significant characteristic and the most useful for comparison at the most fundamental level. Space appears to be a more fundamental property of the built environment than form, materials, and the like. Consider three examples — two specific and one conceptual (Figures 1, 2, and 3). The relationships between elements, their spatial relationships, may be more important than the elements themselves (Rapoport 1969c; Austin, this volume). Yet "space," like environment, is extremely variable and far from being a single concept, and it is relatively easy to show that it too can have many meanings (Rapoport 1970b). Figure 1. Villages near Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea (diagrammatic) a. Some of these villages were destroyed in World War II. Those which were rebuilt in this form, with houses in concrete, galvanized iron, etc., are basically unchanged. b. Those which were rebuilt on the land, along a road (i.e. where the ORGANIZATION was changed although the houses are of traditional MATERIALS), are quite different.

Group A Group Β Group C . . . etc.

Ξ lH 0 Ε! El Β Ε Η Ε 0

^ Ξ Β 0

Μ 0 Β 0 0

Ε S Ξ Β S Β 0 0 ··"··•·

Water ·

·

Water

E3 Η Ε Η 0 0 0 Ξ E3 Ξ SHHHSBBia

Figure 2. Villages in the Eastern Highlands, Papua New Guinea (diagrammatic) a. As long as this basic spatial organization is retained, then changes in the materials, shape, etc. of the dwellings are not important (although changes in the space organization of the dwellings would be). b. If, however, houses (even when they themselves remain unchanged) are organized as shown here, a fundamental change has taken place, and social consequences may follow.

Beach

© ©

:Road Highway

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Studies

Figure 3. a. The significant fact is the "lock" and the control of information flow between the two domains. Changes in shape, materials, etc. (even though important experientially) do not modify the basic relationship.

b. If, however, we remove the "lock" (i.e. change the relationship to take away control over the flow of information) a fundamental change occurs.

"Private"

The built environment does, of course, have other properties. For example, it is also a sensory field experienced through one's senses. It is also, and importantly, the ORGANIZATION OF MEANING; and in this connection materials, forms, and details are important. While space organization also expresses meaning and thus has communicative and symbolic properties, meaning tends to be expressed more through signs, materials, colors, forms, and the like — through the eikonic aspects of the built environment. It is through these that different settings become indicators of social position and a way of asserting social identity to oneself and others. Of course, the environment is also temporal, and it can be seen as the ORGANIZATION OF TIME (or, at least as reflecting and affecting the organization of time). The spatial characteristics of the built environment also greatly influence and reflect the ORGANIZATION OF COMMUNICATION. Thus, who communicates with whom, under what conditions, when, where, in which context, how, and so on are one important ways in which the built environment and social organization are linked and related.

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THE CHOICE MODEL OF DESIGN "Design" has traditionally been regarded as the activity of special individuals. If, however, we broaden the sample under consideration to include the built environment of ALL groups and times, then design becomes a much broader concept — design can be seen as ANY man-made change in the physical environment. All man-made environments are designed in the sense that they embody human decisions and choices. They embody specific ways of resolving the many conflicts implicit in all decision making. Since there are now few places left on earth which man has not altered in some way (Thomas 1956), we could say that much of the earth is really designed. This is a much broader definition of design than is customary, but an essential one. Designed environments obviously include places where man has planted forests or cleared them, diverted rivers, or fenced fields in certain patterns. The placement of roads and dams, of pubs and cities are all design. Roadside stands and secondhand car lots are as much designed environments as glamorous office blocks and cultural centers. The work of a tribesman burning off, laying out a camp or village and building his dwelling is as much an act of design as the architects' or planners' act of creating beautiful buildings or dreaming up ideal cities. In fact, many of the apparently mundane activities described are the most important in their impact on the earth and on people. The way cities, regions, and whole countries are depends, in the final analysis, on the design activity of many individuals and groups both in the past and at this very moment. The common factor of all this activity is that it represents a choice among all the possible alternatives. It differs in the choices made and the reasons for them. The specific nature of the choices made tends to be lawful, to reflect the culture of the group concerned. In fact, one way of looking at culture is in terms of the most common choices made. It is the lawfulness of choices which, among others factors, makes the U.S. countryside different from the Greek or French, the Chinese different from the Peruvian. It is also this lawfulness which enables us to tell whether a city is Italian, American, or Australian. This consistent system of choices also decides their dress and behavior, their food, and their table manners while eating. It affects the way they interact and structure space, whether they stand close or far apart, whether they touch or not, how loudly they talk, and what gestures they use. When the question is posed why environments are so different, a

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reasonable answer seems to be that since every group is faced with a wide variety of choices, they tend to eliminate different ones. In other words, design can be seen as a CHOICE PROCESS, and changes in the physical environment can be understood as a process of elimination or choice from among a set of alternatives (disregarding for the purposes of this discussion how such alternatives are generated in the first place). Both the generation and elimination of alternatives is based on the application of certain criteria which may be explicit but are commonly implicit and unstated. As a result, many alternatives are never considered at all, being, as it were, eliminated through major cultural constraints; they never form part of the initial set (Figure 4). From among these the successive application of certain criteria eliminates alternatives until one is left (Figure 5). In this context, of course, STYLE becomes HABITUAL

Figure 4. Diagrammatic representation of an initial set of alternatives (indicated by points) constrained by culture

c Β Figure 5.

A

Criteria A, B, C... used to eliminate alternatives, i.e. to make a choice

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and, as already suggested, this links design to choices made in other domains — manners, behavior, food, costume, etc. In making choices certain norms, beliefs, and assumptions underlie the criteria used. At this level the model proposed links and yet allows distinctions to be made between primitive, vernacular, high style, popular, and other forms of design. In traditional, preliterate cultures everyone is engaged in shaping the environment and is thus engaged in design. Since designers and users are one and the same and since the system has reached homeostasis it tends to work more or less automatically and choice is predetermined — everyone accepts one form. At the same time such preliterate cultures tend to have a special relationship to nature, often mediated through religion, which also relates their design to nature and natural processes. In peasant cultures specialists in building and farming begin to emerge but there still remains a tradition common to all. Lack of rapid change and the relatively few choices that need to be made still allow the more or less unselfconscious design process to work. In high-style design, particularly at the present time, many more choices are available, and there is increasing separation between designers and users. High-style and popular design can be distinguished by the criteria used. (For a more complete discussion, see Rapoport 1969b, 1973b) If the choice model of design is valid, the questions become how and for what reasons are choices made and on what are the criteria based? The choice model of design proposed here thus links all design in terms of HOW it takes place while allowing for, and stressing, the differences in the underlying choice criteria. Also diiferences are due to the fact that the choice process, the elimination of alternatives, tends towards congruence with some ideal so as to maximize a set of ranked values. This view is one which I regard as fundamental to any understanding of the environment and is closely linked with the notion of the built environment making visible certain ideal, conceptual spaces whatever name these are given.11 In this view design is the making concrete of some ideal domain (Wheatley 1972; Kamau, this volume). By this process one arrives at the closest possible match or congruence with that ideal, and the suggestion is that this matching process occurs against some image or schema which embodies the most important features of the ideal. A similar process also occurs in habitat selection (migration) which can be seen as a form of environmental response (Rapoport 1969a, 1973b; see also King in Section 4, this volume). CHOICE

11

For example, "ethnic domain" by Langer (1953), "imago mundi" by Eliade (1961). See also the work of Ernst Cassirer.

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In primitive and vernacular design the image is clear and shared, and the matching is relatively straightforward. Currently there is a multiplicity of relatively idiosyncratic images which are thus unshared, sometimes antagonistic; the matching process is much more difficult, and mismatches are rather frequent. One way of comparing simple and complex societies, in terms of their built environments (and there are many ways of doing it), is to look at the beliefs not in terms of the K I N D of beliefs but in terms of the DEGREE OF SHARING of such beliefs. The degree of sharing tends to be very high in simple societies and much lower in complex ones (although even this varies, compare Finland, for instance, with the United States.) This means that what one might call the CORE SET OF BELIEFS is much smaller in complex societies than in simple ones where they are more integrated into a system. The built environment is thus much more intimately linked to beliefs, values, social relations, and culture generally, and hence the system and the links with the built environment much easier to find. This, once again, suggests the need for a broader sample which would give more confidence; would reveal patterns, regularities, and constancies; and which could be contrasted with differences and variations. This broader sample is also needed regarding the TYPE of beliefs underlying the choice process; this is another way of finding out why certain choices are made and what these are for particular groups. In both cases, of course, we are looking for links between physical space and symbolic or conceptual space and the images used. The choice process is, then, a matching process whereby people try to make the built environment fit some ideal conceptual image or schema.

THE COGNITIVE MODEL In connection with the discussion immediately preceding, it would appear that the cognitive anthropology model may be extremely useful for studying sociocultural aspects of the built environment. If design is a process of choice tending to match some schema, then understanding this schema is an essential step in understanding the environment. If the built environment is making a conceptual system visible, it is also making the world meaningful through making distinctions, classifying, defining domains and place — "place" being the notion of being here rather than there. It is a way of giving meaning to the world, and it can be suggested that the whole notion of taxonomies may be more useful in

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clarifying the nature of the built environment as an expression of cognitive domains than it is in the perception of the world. 12 If the built environment is the expression of a conceptual environment, then this provides another way of distinguishing between the simple societies, which anthropologists have traditionally studied, and more complex ones. In the former there exists a clear and consistent fit (congruence) between physical and conceptual space which is not found in more complex situations where there are many sets of conceptual spaces and groups which do not shape their own environment. The result is a less perfect fit and congruence is more difficult to trace. Thus in traditional culture one finds an environment that, through clear and consistent choices, fits a particular image or schema and produces a better fit between physical and conceptual space and hence better congruence between the built environment, culture, behavior, and communication. This can be seen at all scales from the landscape to the room. Currently, the built environment often is not congruent with schemata and images, especially for particular groups. One can, therefore, see man-environment interaction in terms of the congruence of the physical and conceptual environments — a hypothesis which needs to be tested cross-culturally for both complex and simple societies.

THE CONCEPT OF "CULTURE" IN ALL THIS Since "culture" is central to anthropology, it may be useful to examine very briefly whether, and in what way, this concept may prove useful in studying man-environment interaction. If the shaping of the built environment is, indeed, related to images, values, and symbols and if the environment acts on people partly through communication and code legibility, then it must be intimately linked with culture. In fact, if the argument in the preceding sections is correct, a major characteristic of traditional environments is that they provide a better fit between spatial organization and culture, communication, behavior, and human activities. Since the models used in shaping such traditional environments are shared and widely accepted, they communicate; and since they com12

While there is a great deal of research on environmental cognition in man-environment studies, it has been mainly from a psychological perspective. The anthropological approach has been neglected, yet, as I have argued at a symposium at EDRA 4 in April, 1973, this latter approach is more general and potentially most useful.

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municate, they provide appropriate behavior settings for behavior and a close link with culture. It might be suggested, however, that the term "culture" is t o o broad to be useful in trying to relate built environment and the concepts subsumed by this term. Is there a way of usefully starting to relate built environment and aspects of culture? Consider the hypothetical schema in Figure 6. Subculture Life-style Culture' Values Images Culture

World View

Values

These are part There are very This is clearly part of culture, of a world view many definitions of this is related to and are easier concept in choices, and to identify, but still too comanthropology. reflects an At the very ideal. It is still plex, at this least it is in difficult to use stage, to link to and operation- the built envisome way about a group alize. (See for ronment. of people who example, Jones Values are share a world 1972;Szalay frequently view, beliefs, and Maday embodied in values, etc. 1973; Szalay images. which are and Bryson learned and 1973.) transmitted. These create a system of rules and habits which are consistent and related (at least theoretically).

ACTIVITIES

Life-style

Activities

This consists of manners, rules, choices, role allocations, allocation of resources, etc. and has been more usefully used in relation to the built environment - e.g. the concept of genre de vie in French cultural geography; see also Michaelson and Reed (1970).

These are the most specific and may offer the most useful entry point into relating built environment and culture. Starting with activities, it might be possible to identify differences in lifestyle, values, world views, images, and culture as they relate to the built environment.

Figure 6. Aspects of culture and their relation to the built environment Let us consider activities. Traditionally, in studying environments and in planning and design, activities and activity systems (in space and time) have been very important. Y e t activities, even at the level of so-called basic needs, seem extremely variable, and one can pose the question whether they can be operationalized. The first point is the importance of dealing with specifics so that, for example, while sitting is a universal activity, whether one sits o n the

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floor or on chairs has major implications for behavior, manners, costume, furniture design, room furnishing, and many aspects of house and garden design. Thus through considering the differences among apparently simple, molecular concepts such as cooking, eating, playing, drinking, sleeping, shopping — even sheltering — we might be able to get to more molar concepts such as life-styles, images, values, world views, subcultures, and cultures as they relate to built environments. The following schema can be suggested. Any activity can be analyzed into four components which are: (1) the activity proper; (2) the specific way of doing it; (3) additional, adjacent, or associated activities that become part of an activity system; and (4) symbolic aspects of the activity. Consider cooking. The activity is one of converting raw food into cooked food. The specific way may involve frying, roasting, or whatever; the use of special kinds of utensils or ovens; squatting or whatever. Associated activities may include socializing, exchanging information, listening to music, or whatever. The symbolic meaning of cooking may be ritual, a way of acquiring status, a way of asserting some special social identity or membership of a group, a way of enculturating and socializing children, or whatever (Zeisel 1969; Esber 1972a, 1972b; Ricci 1972). Similar arguments could be made about drinking alcoholic beverages, shopping, and many other activities. It is the difference between these four aspects of apparently simple activities that leads to specific forms of settings, differences in their relative importance, the amount of time spent in them, who is involved, and so on - in fact all the kinds of things which affect built form. This schema goes beyond the distinction recently proposed between manifest and latent function in the built environment (Zeisel 1969) although, in effect, (1) and (2) above are mainly manifest while (3) and (4) fit into the latent category. By being specific, however, it can be suggested that the variability of (2), (3), and (4) leads to differences in form and the differential success of various designs. In fact, acceptability and choice (including habitat selection) would appear to be most related to (3) and (4) which are also the most valuable and the most likely to be embodied in images. The typology suggested above relates in an interesting way to the hierarchy of levels of meaning ranging from the concrete object through use object and value object to symbolic object — originally proposed by Gibson (1950:198-199; 1968:91ff.) and which I have found useful elsewhere (Rapoport and Hawkes 1970; Rapoport 1970a). There also the variability increases as one moves to the symbolic end of the scale which seems most closely related to environmental choices.

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This kind of approach may prove rather useful in studying sociocultural aspects of man-environment relations and involves many of the matters which we have considered thus far.

GENERALIZATION AND SPECIFICITY In the immediately preceding discussion I have stressed the need for specificity regarding activities (see also Rapoport 1969b). This is an instance of a more general problem which inhibits the interaction of social science and design. In general, the approach of science is nomothetic, being interested in the broadest generalizations, whereas the design disciplines, partly because they are concerned with the subjective experience of the environment, have been ideographic, stressing the uniqueness of each case. The development of man-environment studies can be seen, in part, as an attempt to develop models which allow for SPECIFICS as part of generalizable propositions (Rapoport 1973a). Valid generalizations must be cross-cultural and considered over time; they must deal with the interaction of constancy and variability, constancy and change, generality and specificity — all issues which have come up several times in this discussion. As an example of such a process of generalization, consider the definition of the city and descriptions of some of its characteristics. In fact, the weakness of working from too narrow a base can become clear by briefly considering urban theory derived solely from Western examples. It is soon found that some current assumptions and definitions may be inadequate when the sample is increased. For example, a number of theoretical propositions derived from the American experience may not be applicable elsewhere so that relationships between social status and distance from the center found in the United States may be reversed in Europe (Lamy 1967) or may not be found at all (Stanislawski 1950). As another example, one finds that the social role of cities in Europe and China with respect to the process of change is diametrically different. The city has been the center of change in Western Europe and the center of stability in China (Murphy 1962). Even definitions of the city based on various criteria become inadequate as one broadens the sample and tries to include other forms of cities, yet the process of redefinition proves to be very useful since it forces changes in the conceptual models used (e.g. Wheatley 1972; Krapf-Askari 1969). Although definitions and conceptual models of cities and urbanism need to be broadened and made more general, the differences among

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cities, between different spatial organizations, organizations of meaning, and so on remain of crucial importance to man-environment studies, particularly in considering the appropriateness of particular forms for specific groups. This is, then, another example of specific differences within a generalized model about cities and even broader generalizations about man-environment interaction. Generalizations of this type must also be based on a comparison of structurally equivalent units the identification of which is not always easy given the current lack of knowledge. The definition of units of comparison is thus a most critical step in any cross-cultural analysis of man-environment problems. For example, is "street" an adequate descriptive category or should it be defined in terms of private-public continuum or domains, or in terms of activities? In other words is a morphological definition in terms of "space between buildings" a useful category, or would a definition in terms of behavior settings be more appropriate? If the latter is the case, a compound or court may become the equivalent of a street in a Western city, and what appear to be streets may, in fact, be the equivalent of some other unit. Other analogous activities may take place in other settings, and this would affect any discussion of the street as a behavior setting. Any such discussion would have to include the cultural definition of rule systems for public behavior as well as the "space splits" corresponding to cognitive domains. It is this problem of what one could term functional nonequivalence and failure to relate built form to cultural norms and cognitive categories that makes it difficult to compare environments and to trace differences and similarities. Any units selected must be general enough to allow a broad sample to be considered and generalizations made while dealing with the specifics of each situation. In addition, then, to a consideration of the interaction of constancy and variability, generality and specificity, we also have to get back to a comparison of the conceptual environments underlying the built environment (discussed above). In effect, we are comparing cognitive domains (see Rapoport 1973c; Austin, this volume, and my discussion in the introduction to Section 3).

CONCLUSION The notion of specificity leads to the idea of CULTURE-SPECIFIC DESIGN. The argument is that various groups may have specific ways of organizing space, time, meaning, and communication in the environment. There

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may be specific family structures and social networks to be supported, special symbol systems used. Underlying the built environment there may be very different conceptual systems. Consider one of them — privacy — as an example. It is generally accepted that privacy is an important element in the design of environments, whether dwellings or settlements (since one cannot separate the house from the settlement system). However the meaning of privacy and how it is obtained is variable and one could (and should) write a large treatise on it. In this context I would like to discuss it briefly in order to show the process. It is possible to operationally define privacy as the avoidance of unwanted interaction with other people (which involves information flow from person to person). This is a definition that in fact, also relates to certain ethological parallels. "Unwanted" and "interaction" are both culturally variable terms. How one avoids interaction, once defined, is also variable and one can suggest that there are at least five or six major mechanisms (there are probably others and the ones described can be subdivided in different ways). Avoidance of unwanted interaction may be achieved through RULES (manners, avoidance, hierarchies, etc), through PSYCHOLOGICAL MEANS (internal withdrawal, depersonalization, etc), through behavioral cues, through structuring activities in TIME (so that particular individuals and groups do not meet), through SPATIAL SEPARATION, through PHYSICAL DEVICES (walls, doors, locks, etc — the usual architectural mechanisms which can be summarized as the house's privacy mechanism or filter). In most cases, of course, multiple mechanisms are used but particular ones are stressed and they are combined in different ways. Each of these mechanisms and forms of interaction is related to different sense modalities which operate in two directions — one does not want to be seen or see, to smell or be smelled, etc. They are also related to context so that the same amount of aural information, for example, may be acceptable in one context in a given culture but not in another (in the same culture). All of this has clear implications for the study of man-environment interactions, analyzing environments or designing them, relating them to life-style and to specific contexts. There are also cultural differences in tolerance, and indeed preference, of high interaction levels. The result is that very different defense systems are found operating in different situations — sometimes, apparently, diametrically opposed so that penetration (or intimacy) gradients are reversed and also achieved in very different ways through very different means.

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This argument merits detailed development — and I hope to do so soon. But at the very least it can be summarized diagrammatically. First, we need to define the particular conceptual system we're dealing with: privacy — avoiding unwanted interaction (or the control of unwanted information flow). Specify the different SENSE MODALITIES involved. Specify the CONTEXT (who, when, why). Specify the definition of UNWANTED and INTERACTION. Then we can chart the elements of this system as in Figure 7. Means Behav- Rules ioral cues or environmental Avoiding\ equivinteraction \ with \ alents \

Psycho- Tempo- Spacing Physical etc. logical ral

Specific individuals Specific social groups Sex groups Age groups Nonkin etc., etc., etc. Figure 7.

Diagram of a conceptual system

Each of the categories in this diagram can be greatly elaborated to provide a more operational entry point to the problem. For any situation it may then be possible to plot where a particular group is located and then how this relates to the organization of the built environment, how it is used, relation of family and kinship structure to the built environment, and so on. This would then be one of the variables (the others being similiarly analyzed) that leads to specific forms of the built environment. The result may be very different environments for different groups. At the same time the nature of these groups, particularly in complex societies, cannot be assumed a priori but needs to be discovered. For example, there is much work at present on design for the elderly. But are "the elderly" a valid group in terms of environmental requirements — and are

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their characteristics due to aging or are they also related to sociocultural variables in the larger milieu (Rapoport 1974)? Also, given the notion of culture-specific design, two sets of problems present themselves. One concerns the fact that cultures change and that to freeze them in space and time (even if that were possible) may be as wrong as to destroy them. Yet culture-specific design seems to offer a valid starting point from which to consider environmental change (within the types of constancy constraints discussed before). The second set of problems concerns the homogeneity of populations using environments, the ability of culture-specific design to serve more than one population and the conflicts which might arise. Yet the alternative of nonculturespecific or nonculture-responsive design seems worse. Traditional cities may, in fact, offer models of environments composed of culture-specific settings and the use of such settings today may have major implications for proper levels of environmental complexity. Finally, the question must be posed what the effects might be of ignoring the need for culture-specific design. Can the wrong form of design lead to the weakening or destruction of languages, family structures, life-styles — ultimately of cultures themselves? This brings us back to the question of the effect of the wrong environment, i.e. the wrong choice, as well as the ways in which choices are made and the limits on the kinds of choices made. Ultimately, we are brought back to the question of the effect of the built environment on people — one of the basic questions with which man-environment studies is concerned — and thus back to our starting point.

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Social factors in the hospital treatment of leprosy. Medical Journal of Australia (24 August).

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Social theory in architectural design. Arena (January): 149-154. London. The sociology of the urban environment. Architectural Association Quarterly 1 (3): 65-71. London.

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ELIADE, MIRCEA

1961 The sacred and the profane. New York: Harper and Row. ESBER, GEORGE, JR.

1972a Indians, architects and anthropologists: a study of proxemic behavior in a Western Apache society. Man-Environment Systems (March): 58. 1972b Indian housing for Indians. The Kiva 37 (3, Spring): 141-147. FESTINGER, L., S. SCHACTER, K . BACK

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1961a Planning and social life. Journal, American Institute of Planners 27 (2): 134-140. 1961b The balanced community. Journal, American Institute of Planners 27 (3): 176-184. 1968 People and plans. New York: Basic Books. GIBSON, J. J.

1950 The perception of the visual world. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin. 1968 The senses considered as perceptual systems. London: Allen and Unwin. GOFFMAN, ERVING

1959 Presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday. 1963 Behavior in public places: notes on the social organization of gatherings. New York: Free Press. 1972 Relations in public. New York: Harper and Row. GUBRIUM, JABER F.

1970 Environmental effects on morale in old age and the resources of health and solvency. Gerontologist 10(4,1): 294-297. GUTMAN, ROBERT, editor 1972 People and buldings. New York: Basic Books. HALL, EDWARD T.

1966 The hidden dimension. Garden City, Ν. Y.: Doubleday. HARTMAN, CHESTER W .

1963 Social values and housing orientations. Journal of Social Issues 19 (2). ITTELSON, WILLIAM H .

1960 "Some factors influencing the design and function of psychiatric facilities." Department of Psychology, Brooklyn College, New York. JAUL1N, ROBERT

1971 Ethnocide (the theory and practice of cultural murder). The Ecologist 1(18): 12-15. TONES, W . T.

1972 World views: their nature and their function. Current Anthropology 13(1): 79-109. KASMAR, JOYCE v . , et

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1968 Effect of environmental surroundings on outpatients' mood and perception of psychiatrists. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 32(2): 223-226. KRAPF-ASKARI, EVA

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LAMY, BERNARD

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"The use of the inner city of Paris and social stratification," in Urban core and inner city, 356-376. Leiden: Brill.

LANGER, SUZANNE

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LAWTON, M. POWELL

1970a "Ecology and aging," in Spatial behavior of older people. Edited by L. A. Pastalan and D. H. Carson, 40-67. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1970b Planning environments for older people. Journal, American Institute ofPlanners 36:124-129. LEE, TERENCE

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On the relation between school journey and emotional adjustment in rural infant school children. British Journal of Educational Psychology 27:101-114. 1971a Psychology and architectural determinism (part 1). Architect's Journal 4 (August): 253-262 1971b Psychology and architectural determinism (part 3). Architect's Journal (22 September): 651-659.

LIPMAN, ALAN

1967 1971

Old people's homes: siting and neighbourhood integration. Sociological Review 15 (3): 323-338. Professional ideology: "community" and "total" architecture. Architectural Research and Teaching 1 (3): 39-49.

MASLOW, Α. Η., N. L. MINTZ

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Effects of esthetic surroundings, I: Initial effects of three esthetic surroundings upon perceiving "energy" and "wellbeing" in faces. Journal of Psychology 41:247-254.

MICHAELSON, WILLIAM, PAUL REED

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The theoretical status and operational usage of lifestyle in environmental research. University of Toronto, Center for Urban and Community Studies, Research Paper 36.

MINTZ, N . L.

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Effects of esthetic surroundings, II: Prolonged and repeated experience in a "beautiful" and an "ugly" room. Journal of Psychology 41:459-466.

MURPHY, RHOADES

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"The city as a center of change: Western Europe and China," in Readings in cultural geography. Edited by P. Wagner and M. Mikesell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

NEWMAN, OSCAR

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Architectural design for crime prevention. National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, U. S. Department of Justice, LEAA. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printer.

PERIN, CONSTANCE

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With man in mind. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. et al., editors 1970 Environmental psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

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RAPOPORT, AMOS

1969a "Facts and models," in Design methods in architecture. Edited by G. Broadbent and A. Ward. London: Lund Humphries. 1969b House form and culture. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. 1969c The notion of urban relationships. Area, Journal of the Institute of British Geographers (3): 17-26. 1970a Symbolism and environmental design. International Journal of Symbologyi 13): 1-10. 1970b The study of spatial quality. Journal of Aesthetic Education 4(4): 81-95. 1971 "Environmental quality — guidelines for decisionmakers," in Government influence and the location of economic activity. Edited by G. H. R. Linge and P. J. Rimmer. Department of Human Geography Publication HG/5. Canberra: Australian National University. 1972a Cultural variables in housing design. Architecture in Australia 61 (3): 294-301. (Reprinted 1973 as "The ecology of housing" in The Ecologist 3(1): 10-17; abstracted 1973 in Ekistics 36(213).) 1972b "Australian aborigines and the definition of place," in Environmental Design Research Association Conference (EDRA 3). Edited by William J. Mitchell. University of California at Los Angeles. 1973a "An approach to the construction of man-environment theory," in Environmental Design Research Association Conference (EDRA 4), volume two. Edited by Wolfgang F. E. Preiser, 124-135. Strondsburg, Pa.: Dowden, Hutchinson and Ross. 1973b Images, symbols and popular design. International Journal of Symbology 4(3). 1973c Some perspectives on the human use and organization of space. Architectural Association Quarterly 5(31. 1974 "Urban design for the elderly: some preliminary considerations," in Environmental research and ageing. Edited by T. O. Byerts. Washington, D.C.: Gerontological Society. RAPOPORT, AMOS, RON HAWKES

1970 The perception of urban complexity. Journal, American Institute of Planners 36(2): 106-111. RAPOPORT, AMOS, NEWTON WATSON

1972 "Cultural variability in physical standards," in People and buildings. Edited by R. Gutman. New York: Basic Books. RICCI, KENNETH

1972 "Using the building as a therapeutic tool in youth treatment," in New environments for the incarcerated, 22-32. Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, U.S. Department of Justice. ROSENTHAL, ROBERT

1966 Experimental effects in behavioral research. New York: AppletonCentury-Crofts. SMITH, S., E. A. WILKENING, J. PASTORE

1971 Interactions of sociological and ecological variables affecting women's satisfaction in Brasilia. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 12(2): 114-127.

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SOMMER, ROBERT, ROBERT DEWAR

1963 "The physical environment of the ward," in The hospital in modern society. Edited by Eliot Friedson. Glencoe: The Free Press. STANISLAWSKI, DAN

1950 The anatomy of eleven towns in Michoacan. University of Texas, Institute of Latin American Studies 10. Austin: University of Texas Press. SZALAY, LORAND B., JEAN A. BRYSON

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Measurement of psychocultural distance: a comparison of American blacks and whites. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 26 (2):166-177.

SZALAY, LORAND B., BELA C. MADAY

1973 Verbal associations in the analysis of subjective culture. Current Anthropology 14(1-2): 33-50. TARS, SANDRA E., LAWRENCE APPLEBY

1973 The same child in home and institution (an observational study). Environment and Behavior 5(1): 3-28. THOMAS, w. N., editor 1956 Man's role in changing the face of the earth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. WELLS, BRIAN

1965 The psycho-social influence of the building environment: sociometric findings in large and small office spaces. Building Science, 153-165. WHEATLEY, PAUL

1972 The pivot of the four quarters. Chicago: Aldine. WHITE, ROBERT

1959 Motivation reconsidered: the concept of competence. Psychological Review 66:313-324. WHYTE, WILLIAM H., JR.

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The organization man. New York: Simon and Schuster.

ZEISEL, JOHN

1969 "Symbolic meaning of space and the physical dimension of social relations." Paper presented to the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, September 1969. Mimeographed.

The Social Function of the Built Environment

ROBERT GUTMAN

For the sociologist, the interest in the built environment reflects his grow ing concern over the social implications of the unprecedented number of buildings this country and other nations will have to construct during the remainder of the century. In terms of housing alone, during the next thirty years we will add to the available stock of housing in this country as many new dwelling units as have been built previously. An investment of this magnitude inescapably focuses attention on the question of whether buildings can be designed to coordinate with social policy and facilitate the achievement of social values and goals. The desire of the architect to understand better the social function of the built environment springs from a related source. He expects, or hopes to be granted, primary responsibility for designing the new environment. As a professional man, the architect would like to plan buildings to meet standards of economy, technological efficiency, and beauty which at the same time satisfy the criterion his tradition calls commodiousness. The need to understand the social effects of building is intensified by the enormous confusion that continues to surround this subject. If one were to ask the typical American sociologist to rate the relative contribution of the built environment to the amelioration of social problems, one would discover very quickly that building is not regarded as a significant determinant of behavior. To the degree that sociologists are now confronted by the challenge to design a new environment, they prefer to devote their efforts to planning new types of community organizations, industrial work groups, or government structures. Social forms, rather than built forms, are looked upon as the elements of culture which have a significant role to play in the process of social change.

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The same query addressed to the American architect produces a very different response. The designer is absolutely certain that architecture and building are crucial influences on behavior and social organization. However, if the architect is asked to specify the social events that are the consequence of building, if he is asked to present evidence for this interpretation, the quality of his response is hardly compelling. Architects inevitably describe their buildings in terms of the activity patterns they are expected to generate. But there are still very few data to support the claims. I have spent a good deal of time in the last several years working with architects in schools and in practice. In view of the profession's conviction about the social significance of buildings, it strikes me as a paradox that when architects talk about their buildings they usually do not discuss how much influence their buildings have on inhabitants. They make the opposite point instead. They mention the numerous ways in which a user fails to carry out the intentions the architect thought he had incorporated into the design of the building. Architects themselves inhabit a curiously divided world. They adamantly assert that buildings are major determinants of the flow of human culture, yet they constantly complain that the inhabitants of buildings are "unsympathetic users." The strident argumentation which presently typifies the debate over the social function of the built environment constitutes a disservice to both architecture and sociology. I would like to consider here the issues involved in a general way, putting particular emphasis on some of the conceptual distinctions that must be introduced to deal with the problem. I want to discuss the assumptions of the architects that building does influence behavior. Using a view of the ways in which buildings do relate to behavior, I hope to suggest the sense in which the claims of the architects are false, and also the sense in which they are accurate. Let us deal then with the fundamental issue. Does the built environment influence behavior and social organization? Of course it does. Consider an audience assembled in a lecture hall. They feel cooler in its airconditioned atmosphere than they did standing or walking through the campus. The decor and geometry of the hall may delight them. If the seats are reasonably comfortable the students will relax their muscles and move their limbs into new postures. The spatial arrangements of seats and stage, the organization of walls and ceilings, lead them to focus their eyes and ears toward the speaker, and encourage the lecturer to look at them, and sense their response to what he is saying. The very scale and magnitude of a well-designed lecture room suggest that something fairly important is supposed to be going on there. I think there are five things which typically operate in a lecture audience

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that are the result of the lecture room, and that these five things are socially significant, and in some sense constitute general functions of contributions of the built environment. In the first place, the room makes it possible for an artificial ambience to be created which improves the audience's capacity for physiological and psychological functioning, and, by doing so, allows them to get on with the job of educating themselves more efficiently. The first dwelling places of primitive men were "ambiences": they shut out the rain or sun, made it easier to maintain a fire and get warm, and helped keep animals and other tribes at bay. As society itself becomes more contrived, establishing goals that are increasingly remote from man's natural self, the controlled conditions of the artificial ambience become steadily more critical for societal survival. Dramatic evidence of this is offered whenever there is a power failure and heating systems, elevators, air-conditioners, and other man-made artifacts upon which the complexity of urban life depends, suddenly cease to operate. As some contemporary architects like to emphasize, the Apollo and Gemini space vehicles are the best designed built environments we have. Although such claims infuriate many other architects, and indeed do introduce questionable assumptions about the nature of architecture, the association of building with the most contrived of modern environments is really very much to the point. I cannot help but also believe that Louis Kahn, of all people, is pointing to the same fact about modern building when he makes designs that indicate unambiguously their dependence on services and other components responsible for the production of an artificial environment. For that matter, it is no accident that Reyner Banham has suggested that modern architecture be defined as that approach to building that emphasizes the problem of services, and develops its form around the support of these services. And we all know of the efforts of contemporary historians to look upon Wright not as a master of form but rather as the first building scientist of the twentieth century. The growing ambition of architects to express the idea of an artificial ambience in building is reflected in the proliferating research endeavors of sociologists and psychologists concerned with man's individual and group spatial requirements. Much of the behavioral research that has recently received a good deal of acclaim from architects is concerned largely with understanding the psychological constraints that limit the form and organization of artificial ambiences. Up to now, these environments have been designed principally in terms of human physiological processes and the needs these generate, expressed in temperature ranges, humidity levels, decibel requirements, and similar performance standards listed in the ASHRAE guide. Research by behavioral scientists suggests

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that additional user requirements must be taken into account, even though they cannot yet be converted into measured parameters which can be translated immediately into space needs. For example, Hall employs the concept of personal space, or the volume surrounding the individual that is regarded as private territory. The size of this area apparently varies among the inhabitants of different cultures as well as among individuals in the same culture. Invasions of this territory are viewed as threats to the self, and the defenses used to repel contact across its boundaries are likened by Hall to the flight behavior characteristic of lower forms of animal life. Presumably an awareness of this "hidden dimension" of a person's relationship to the spatial environment has implications for the design of such diverse ambiences as dormitory rooms, subway cars, and, of course, spacecraft. Sommer's investigations of the way schizophrenic patients arrange themselves around a cafeteria table, or students in normal mental health take up seats at a library table, also can be useful for the design of many elements in modern building. To return to the example of the lecture hall: such a room provides a range of artifacts and qualities that serve as necessary AMENITIES for the conduct of the lecture, and the provision of these is a second social function of the built environment. The space of the room constitutes an amenity in itself, presumably because a large population of students requires an area the size of a "hall" rather than the ordinary classroom. But the room must also be defined to include the array of equipment and furniture to which, in another sense, the space of this room plays host. There are seats, lecterns, lights, audio systems, projection booths, projectors, and many more items of this kind. These artifacts and qualities of the room, like the artificial ambience, make it possible for the educational process to be carried on more effectively. The amenity function of the built environment is an ancient one, too, and helps us understand why the early anthropological investigations of architecture always discussed building under the heading of material culture. To primitive man, building was a tool, as important as the wheel, the axe, the plow, in giving man the capacity to develop a more civilized form of life. The amenity function is still supremely important in the design of any building complex. Many of the questions architects are forced to consider when developing designs for new program types, such as airports, mental hospitals, and large university campuses, are questions about the kinds of equipment, or the qualities of space, the particular activities require. It is the uncertainty about the amenity requirements of new programs, as well as the sense that amenity demands are constantly changing, that has occasioned in modern architecture the revival of interest in an architecture of

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generalized spaces, or what on the current English scene is called indeterminate building. Third, we must recognize that a lecture hall, like all built environments, arranges us according to a specific spatial pattern, the purpose of which is to intensify and expedite the process of communication. Therefore, we can speak of a lecture hall as a COMMUNICATION NET, which opens up certain channels for the exchange of messages and, by opening up some, thereby closes off others. For example, the four walls and ceilings of a classroom are assumed to make it easier for students and instructors to concentrate on the topic under discussion. These partitions separate the group from the activities of the corridor, and they cooperate in the separation of the building in which the room is located from neighboring buildings. The fact that students usually are seated in front of the teacher presumably makes it easier for the teacher to direct his remarks toward the students, and for the students to watch and listen to the teacher. I can think of no question involving the relations of building to behavior that is of greater concern to architects and planners at the present time than the function of building in improving and regulating social communication. The concern is expressed in three words or phrases constantly heard from every avant-garde, socially concerned designer of our day: community, privacy, and circulation. These concerns are so fundamental that it is often impossible to disentangle them from the problems raised by architectural thinking in general. How much privacy is necessary and good for people, whether they are old folks in a housing project for the elderly, or students living in a university residence? How can one provide sufficient diversity in a design scheme, so that users can choose between social interaction and privacy? What kind of barriers, other than walls, are available to the architect for creating a sense of privacy or community? What kinds of building designs will help produce a sense of community spirit among users and inhabitants? Do high-rise buildings inevitably inhibit the growth of a community? Is it better to mix housing types and dormitory plans, or is it preferable to make them homogeneous if one wants to achieve a community? Which new movement systems are best for providing both community and privacy? Are travelators now economically feasible? How far will people be willing to walk to work from their homes, or to the cafeteria from their office? Is it always good to separate pedestrian and vehicular circulation? If so, should this be done horizontally or vertically? How does one plan the transportation system of a campus today in order to accommodate the future growth of a university? These questions represent a sample of those that are addressed to a sociologist teaching in an architectural studio. They arise in discussions

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of all building types, and they are issues that underlie such important policy matters as the role of architecture in psychiatric therapy, the relocation of ethnic slum dwellers, or the appropriate scale for effective university education. They are also, it turns out, recurrent themes in the sociological literature dealing with housing and city planning. I doubt that the intense interest of contemporary architects in the capacity of their schemes to generate communities which also guarantee privacy, or to expedite circulation and movement, has its source only in the architectural tradition. It is true, of course, that the very nature of building ties it more closely to the control of communication than to many other social phenomena; building also has a closer link with communication than do other elements in the material culture such as machinery or clothing. Still, the magnitude of the attention the architect lavishes on the subject suggests that special forces are now at work in the profession and in the society that lead him to be obsessed with the implications of the built environment for social communication and group interaction. For one thing his obsession is probably rooted in the modern movement which, in addition to its role in initiating plastic and formal innovations, encouraged architects to associate their enterprise with utopianism, socialism, and other contemporary political ideologies and movements. However, like the exponents of these ideologies, architects have come to question whether their once cherished schemes really have the capacity to meet the challenges of modern urban life. We see this denouement most clearly perhaps in the evolution of Bauhaus ideas. In Germany, the visual program of the Bauhaus was linked to a social program for building mass public housing through the use of industrialized methods. The Nazi period put an end to movements in Germany connecting advanced esthetic principles and revolutionary social planning. After their exile to this country, many of the leaders of the Bauhaus at first continued to press forward the association between their visual and educational experiments and socialist architecture. Their efforts failed: architecture remained in the control of a highly individualistic profession, the building trades and contractors resisted prefabrication and further industrialization. The Bauhaus, which began as a complex social and esthetic movement, in America became reduced to a pedagogical theory and a style of building. The interest in the relation of architecture to the concept of community is in a way the residual expression of the Utopian concerns of its founders. Leaving aside this historical interpretation, it also can be argued that the decline of community, the invasion of privacy, the movement of large masses of people through campuses, hospitals, and cities are genuine organizational problems of an increasingly bureaucratized society. In

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other words, the scale on which buildings are designed today inevitably thrusts upon the architectural profession a concern for the creation of viable communities, combined with the preservation of individual and group privacy, to a much greater degree than was true during the nineteenth century or even in the 1920's. If one is asked to plan a building, say an office building in central London, in New York, or in Boston, how can one help but try to design it in a way that will suggest a pattern of future growth for the surrounding built environment? The blight of the central cities, the pace at which it spreads, the frequency with which even relatively recent construction is being razed demand that a good architect act as if he were connecting a part of the urban fabric to the whole, except that the total plan usually is not conceived yet and is not built. This is at once the tragedy and the brilliance of the Smithson's Economist block. The three buildings they designed at a corner of St. James Street in London have attracted worldwide attention because these architects had the gift, the stamina, and the good luck to build a complex whose implications for London's future growth are visible even to the untutored eye and can be immediately enjoyed by any walker through the West End, even if he has not read the Team X primer. The desire to build an individual structure now in a way that will make its implications clear for collective design in the future is an impulse that comes naturally to any architect who is aware of the constraints under which his profession and craft are forced to operate. It is perhaps most obvious in the design of at least a score of imaginative new university campuses in the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The connection between an element built now and some future complex is an inescapable issue in designing buildings that will house forty thousand users on what is today empty farmland or barren desert. To put it in another way, one can say that to the degree that architects are caught in a bind between the task assigned to them and the enlarging scale of program considerations, the questions once addressed only to the planning of towns and cities begin to be relevant to other building types; questions such as how we can develop the civic spirit, how we can develop it and still assure individuality, and how we can move populations efficiently but still comfortably. There are two other social functions of building I would like to mention briefly, although it can be argued that they equal in importance those I have discussed at greater length. One of these is the role the built environment plays in reinforcing socially important values and goals. Buildings have this capacity because, like all inanimate objects, they are SYMBOLS representing ideas and practices in the social realm. The form of a lecture

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hall, even when it is not in use, symbolizes the belief of a university faculty in the value of the lecture method. If a university believed that the lecture method was an educational anachronism, I presume it would not continue to build lecture halls or to refurbish them. Another social function of building, the fifth in our catalog, is its role in predisposing individuals and groups to act in a particular way through its capacity to create a mood in those who inhabit or observe it. Buildings have this function because of the quality that is really unique to building, namely three-dimensional ARCHITECTONIC SPACE, inside which man can place himself. It is this quality of containment or enclosure that sets building apart from sculpture, even from the large sculptures or constructions now so fashionable in the art world. I suppose some might argue that the effects of building that stem from its architectonic features are similar in their source to those I discussed earlier under the heading of ambience. However, this would be too crude an analogy. Although we use the word space interchangeably to denote both the volume of a room and its specifically architectural quality, the two phenomena referred to are indeed distinguishable. The former is relatively objective and can be measured with the instruments of physics. The latter is more highly personal and cannot be fully articulated even by the most sensitive and well-informed inhabitant and user. Two rooms may be of the same size and possess similar thermal, acoustical, and lighting conditions, and yet evidence strikingly different architectonic qualities. A lecture hall is designed with a specific architectural impact as one of its intentions. The designers aim to create in the users a particular mood or state of consciousness; its very scale is meant to suggest that students and teachers are engaged in an activity that is almost sacred and separates them from similar but more mundane and profane educational activities, which are carried on in offices and smaller classrooms and seminars. I have said that building develops an ambience, that it serves as an amenity, that it provides a communication net, that it acts as a symbol, and finally that it creates architectonic space. I have said further that these five functions of the built environment are evident in a room. A lecture hall can serve to illustrate another important point about the relations of building to behavior. The organization of space in such a room can influence our capacity to concentrate on the task of exchanging information, thoughts, and understandings, and it can lead us toward these ends, but it cannot dictate that we will reach them. Some students may be fairly tired before they enter a lecture hall, and to listen to the lecturer is therefore more of a burden than they can bear. The topic the instructor is discussing is different from the topic they expected he would talk about, and there-

The Social Function of the Built

Environment

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fore student interest in what he says diminishes. On his side, the instructor may have stayed up much too late the previous night and is somewhat fatigued and dulled. In other words, although the built environment obviously influences the way the students and teacher act, it is not the only influence operating on them while they are in the hall, and therefore the objective for which this room was intended by its designers — to achieve good quality education by the use of the lecture method — may not, in fact, be attained. At this point we come to face the fundamental complexity in the relation of architecture to life. Every building, or part of a building, is designed with a particular purpose or set of purposes in mind. Depending on the competence of the designer, that purpose will be more or less self-conscious, better or less well thought out, but it will be operative nevertheless, perhaps only as a space-type or form-type handed down to him from the architectural tradition. Even though the building or room influences the action that might take place, its capacity to achieve the purpose intended depends on the presence of the right combination of other factors not architectural in character, but rather social, cultural, and psychological. In other words, building does influence the way we act and live, and therefore the claim of the architect is quite correct; but often building does not result in the particular kind of behavior the architect had in mind when he designed the building. To this extent, the claim of the architect is false, and the assumption of the sociologists is closer to the truth. An endless number of examples from our experience confirm the truth of this statement. Buildings designed to serve a particular purpose in one historical epoch are now used for another; or buildings intended to serve a particular purpose in one way now achieve their goals by transformed means. The history of museum architecture illustrates both these statements. The Louvre, the Uffizi, and the Hermitage are three examples of buildings planned as palaces which now have been given over to the preservation and display of important collections of painting, sculpture, and prints and are no longer used as habitations. In the case of the Guggenheim museum, Wright obviously intended a certain relationship between architecture and the movable elements of the visual environment, represented by painting and sculpture, to obtain there. He also clearly anticipated that the museum would have only a small collection of its own and would devote itself primarily to the presentation of special exhibitions. The Guggenheim's directors and curators, however, have decided to conduct the museum according to different principles. Short of rebuilding the structure, they have done everything else possible to modify the consequences of the circular ramp, of the sloping walls, and of the lack of ade-

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quate storage space. It is an interesting question who will be victorious in the end. Will Wright and his building force the "museum" to move elsewhere or will the curators find a way of making it into a workable space despite Wright's intention that painting and sculpture should take second place to his architecture? On the level of urban design, the history of city planning is replete with examples of housing developments that provide well-designed, commodious playgrounds for children, including all the best in modern sculptured equipment, jungle gyms, and swing sets, never used by the children, who instead prefer to play in a nearby sand lot close to the railroad tracks. I remember a British architect telling me about a house that he had designed for a family near Cambridge, England, which incorporated concepts of open planning and even something he claimed to have borrowed from the American domestic scene, the family room. He brought a photographer there to record this environment for an architectural journal and was disturbed to find that the family room was empty, apparently because the English inhabitants did not know how to use it. The architect told the photographer to come back another day while the architect set to work instructing his friends. He had the oldest daughter move her homework into the room, he got the family to place the television set there, he got the dog's bone and bed moved in, and so on. The architect assures me that the inhabitants have begun to appreciate his intention, and the published photographs taken subsequently apparently support his claim. Confirmation of the complexity of the relationship between architecture and behavior is one of the major contributions, incidentally, of recent sociological research on community planning. A variety of investigations have been conducted and published of developments with 1,500 to 15,000 single family houses incorporating design elements specifically intended to encourage close interaction among neighbors, and to produce community spirit at the neighborhood level. These design elements include such features as curvilinear streets to cut the flow of through traffic and make the suburban vista more intimate, garages with driveways adjacent to each other, and common backyards. The plans also provide facilities intended for neighborhood use, such as public laundries and meeting rooms. However, it has been shown that these amenities and communication networks did not necessarily result in the expected pattern of interaction and association, except in those neighborhoods in which the residents already shared common values and attitudes with regard to everyday concerns such as child rearing, family expenditures, educational ambitions, and politics. I think it is important for architects to understand why building is an

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enabling environment, rather than a determining one. There are several aspects of the way in which behavior is influenced that ought to be kept in mind in considering this question, as well as certain distinct features of the built environment itself. In the first place, no one type of factor can account for a social event so complex as the achievement of a group's goals. Admittedly, explanations of social events do not really require a complete investigation of all the previous events that impinge on the present — some factors are more significant than others as determinants of behavior and social organization, but at the very least a large number of important classes of events must be given their proper weight in accounting for why we act as we do at this moment. The same point of view must be adopted in thinking about the effects so often attributed to building. As I have tried to emphasize, a room does influence the way we behave and does affect the manner in which we interpret and respond to objectives, but these influences take place in a wider context. There probably is a psychological explanation for our inclination to expect buildings to have greater impact on events than other forces. Buildings are visible, tactile phenomena which endure in the face of changes in political, economic and social conditions. As I said earlier, they enclose us, so naturally there is a tendency to succumb to the "pathetic fallacy," to endow them with superhuman energies and capacities. But for us as social scientists, critics and designers to give this tendency reign is an example of magical, rather than logical thinking. Second, all human behavior is the result of forces and pressures that are filtered through the social self. To employ the vocabulary of social science, norms, values, and attitudes make their impact on the individual through the medium of intervening variables. The human self has a remarkable capacity for absorbing and internalizing the stimuli administered to it by the environment, but it also has astounding powers of resistance. Any stimulus that is incompatible with, or that threatens, the equilibrium of the personality has a hard time getting through. For this reason, an original demand, such as that offered by a new organization of dwelling space, or a different office arrangement, may not get accepted by the personality. Consequently, the building is incapable of influencing behavior by itself in the way the designer intended. Additional conditions must and do intervene. We all have had direct and immediate experience of the conditional effects of architecture. There are now many reports on these effects in the research literature. Humphrey Osmond has described his attempts to rearrange the chairs in a psychiatric ward as a means of encouraging schizophrenic patients to participate in group interactions. The hospital

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in which he first undertook his experiments arranged chairs in rows along the corridor wall. Patients could sit in these chairs without having to look at their neighbor and without an opportunity to come into face-to-face contact. Time after time Osmond rearranged the chairs into little groups only to discover that they would be set back along the wall. Interestingly enough, the resistance to his efforts at redesigning the built environment of the hospital came not only from the patients but from the psychiatric staff as well. A whole series of behavior patterns had developed in the ward that meshed neatly with the linear arrangement and the doctors, nurses, orderlies, and janitorial staff did not want these disturbed. It was only when he began to bring these matters to the surface and to undertake a staff colloquium in which the purely environmental issues had a chance to confront established values and attitudes that Osmond found it possible to rearrange the furniture and have the new arrangement stick. Incidentally the arrangement of chairs into circles and groups has since proven beneficial as a way of dealing with the problems of schizophrenic patients. I am sure we all have noticed other evidence that people develop particular ways of handling the physical environment, ways that fit well with their established mode of behavior. Efforts to transform the environment meet resistance and begin to influence the way we act very slowly. Especially if the environment is a movable one, users can exhibit an almost overwhelming capacity to return the environment to a familiar form or to reorganize it in a manner that defeats the goals of the designer. Third, it is necessary to recognize that buildings exist in the context of an open society. A n individual who encounters a spatial environment that dictates or suggests courses of action he finds unsatisfying can escape to another world. It is for this reason that bars on the windows of one house have never prevented crime, when other houses are not barred; or that children can use a local sandlot rather than the park provided by the urban designer. Given one built environment, the individual can flee to another he finds more compatible. Finally, in the case of building, the usual struggles involved in getting a group to concentrate efforts toward achieving a particular end and the battle that develops between external forces and the self are intensified by the peculiarly inert and inanimate quality of the built environment. When a group, say, wishes to make a deviant conform, it can deprive him of rewards and administer appropriate punishment. The deviant resists and finds ways of avoiding the punishment and also of minimizing the deprivation. But then the group fights back: new, more severe punishments are developed, and rewards even more threatening to the preservation and survival of the deviant's self are withdrawn. Perhaps the deviant engages in

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an offensive battle to counter the pressure of the group. The group is able to realign its forces for defense and to take the offensive again, and so on until the norms, values, and attitudes of the group prevail. A building that meets up with a recalcitrant inhabitant has much more limited capacities to outwit him. The scientists who conduct research in the Richards Memorial Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania have often been accused of being unsympathetic users. They are not charmed and impressed by the form of Kahn's prestressed concrete ceilings. They regard the large glass windowpanes and the served spaces as opportunities for intrusion on their privacy. They find the general space of the building unsuitable for laboratory functions. So, the ceilings are now covered with acoustic tile and brown paper or tin foil is put over the windows, and architects tell funny horror stories about the building's failure. Can the building fight back? It's much stronger than any scientist I know; it is also much heavier and more powerful. Unfortunately, it has no sensorium or self, so it cannot adapt or cope with the threat that its users present to it. To caricature Mr. Kahn's point of view, perhaps the Richards Memorial Laboratory wanted to be the building it is, but did not also want to be a building that many of its users would abhor. In conclusion, let me point out that there is one kind of built environment that does seem to have the power to dictate how its users should live. This is the built environment of the total institution, of the hospital, the psychiatric ward, and the prison. To realize this is to take comfort in the knowledge that building, for all its marvelous contributions to social functioning, is still only an enabling environment. Architects often seem depressed and annoyed when the limited capacity of their buildings to influence life is pointed out to them. But if they reflect on the issue should they really feel this way? The architectural condition is noble and humane. Surely, it must strike architects as it does sociologists that the buildings that turn out to be most determinative of action should be environments for sick people and criminals managed by authoritarian means, isolated and alienated from the general run of society. I think the message is clear: the freedom to practice architecture in modern society also implies the freedom of the user to ignore the intention of the designer.

Cultural Pluralism and Urban Form: The Colonial City as Laboratory for Cross-Cultural Research in Man-Environment Interaction A. D. KING

The concept of cultural pluralism and the notion of the plural society were originally coined for the analysis of colonial societies. Both the historian Furnivall (1944) and the anthropologist M.G. Smith (1960) used them in this way and much of the subsequent work on pluralism has been undertaken in relation to such colonial or postcolonial societies. In following this usage, this paper aims to link up some of the theoretical formulations on pluralism with recent developments in the study of man-environment relationships in order to examine one of the products of modern industrial colonialism, the colonial city.1 In using the term "plural" to describe colonial societies, scholars have been particularly interested in two phenomena. The first is the existence of culturally differentiated sections living side by side, as it were, in one territorially defined society; the second is the political domination of one cultural section in that society which, in the early stages of the colonial society at least, is responsible for holding the sections together as one social unit. 2 1

For work on the colonial city, see McGee (1967) and Horvath (1969). Criticism of the theory of pluralism and the controversies surrounding its use are related, among other things, to the explanation and interpretation of these two basic issues. What might be termed the more "anthropologically" inclined exponents are said to pay excessive attention to "cultural" explanations and too little to basic sociological factors such as the social relations of production and the basic authority system existing in colonial (and excolonial) societies. Despite the acknowledged weaknesses in "pluralist" theory, some of the more recent critics still acknowledge its relevance for the analysis of colonial situations (see especially Cross 1971 and Cox 1971). In this paper, a limited and selective use is made of certain aspects of M.G. Smith's theory (1965) which throws light on the subject under investigation. Such a selective use does not necessarily imply agreement with other theoretical positions of "cultural 2

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Colonial cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Singapore, Durban, or Nairobi have frequently been the subject of historical, geographical or sociological inquiry. They have, for example, been used to test theories of spatial structure (Redick 1954; Mabogunje, et al. 1967), racial ecology (Kuper, et al. 1958), or demographic transition (McGee 1971). Though anthropological studies have also been undertaken in such cities, they have rarely focused on the material culture manifested by the different cultural sections in them. The purpose of this paper is to approach the colonial city from another viewpoint which recognizes that the distinctions between the cultural sections are not only social and spatial but are also physical, being manifested in the built environment of each cultural section. In this sense, the colonial city can be seen as a cross-cultural laboratory for investigating how two or more cultures, operating in the same geographic environment but at different levels of social, economic, political and technological development, respond under conditions of colonialism to that environment and provide for human needs each according to the values, beliefs and behavior of its own social and cultural system. The context for this particular investigation is provided by the colonial experience of India during the century prior to the attainment of political independence in 1947. Empirical data are drawn from fieldwork mainly in northern India and from documentary and cartographic sources. Particular reference is made to the experience of the Delhi urban area as manifesting, in terms of its built form and urban pattern, all the major characteristics of the process of culture contact recognizable in other Indian cities affected by colonialism. Though the following generalizations rest, therefore, mainly on Indian experience, I believe they are also largely valid in other colonial areas of Asia and Africa. At the end of the colonial era, what might be described as an ideal type of colonial city consisted of either two or three major parts. The first was the area of indigenous settlement, sometimes predating the colonial era and occasionally manifesting the sociospatial characteristics of Sjoberg's "pre-industrial city" (1960). Alternatively, it may have been a small town or village which grew as a result of its proximity to the incoming colonial power. The second element is what is variously described as the "modern," "Western," or "European" sector but which I prefer to call the "colonial

pluralism," whether propounded by Smith or other authors. For some of the essential threads in the controversy see Fumivall (1944,1948), Smith (1960,1965), Rubin (1960), Morris (1967), Kuper and Smith (1969), Rex (1970,1973), and Cross (1971).

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urban settlement." This may or may not include, as it often does in India, a CANTONMENT, or military station. Many "colonial" towns or cities might consist of this simple, twofold structure. Others, especially in East Africa or the Far East, incorporate a third sector or number of sectors, mainly occupied by migrants from other colonial territories brought in by the colonial power. In Africa, this description needs modifiying in that the area of indigenous habitation, the "native town," might have been "planted" by the colonial power. These sectors of the city can be briefly described. In the colonial urban settlement is what one might mistakenly compare to an early twentiethcentury upper- or middle-class European suburb: large residential plots containing spacious, single-story houses, broad, tree-lined roads, low residential density, and the generous provision of amenities. Characteristic institutions located in the colonial settlement are the individual detached dwelling, the church and churchyard, or burial ground, and the club, bank, racecourse, library, courthouse and administrative offices. The cantonment, or military camp where one exists, is located close by. Within the same area are to be found a hospital, accommodation for police and the district jail. The visual, spatial and physical (including "architectural") characteristics of this area are those associated with the culture of the metropolitan power as mediated by its colonial representatives. In the indigenous area, generally located at some distance from the colonial settlement, are to be found traditional, often three- or fourstoried, courtyard housing, narrow thoroughfares, high residential densities and low levels of modern, technology-based amenities (sanitation, transport, communications). Characteristic institutions include the cöurtyard-type house, the temple or mosque, the bazaar, the madrasa [school], and a "Western" municipal building. In contrast with the colonial settlement, transport is usually on foot. Since independence, all areas of the city have expanded but this original pattern frequently remains at the urban core (Plate 1). In the following pages, the aim is to utilize, in a selective manner, theory derived from the study of cultural pluralism to explain this structure and to account for the particular quality of the built environment produced by the main cultural sections in the city. As the focus of the paper is on the method of analysis rather than on the substantive findings, the latter are referred to only insofar as they substantiate the former.

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INSTITUTIONS AS THE CORE OF CULTURE For heuristic reasons, two main cultural sections are identified: that of the immigrant colonial community and that of the indigenous culture. 3 As discussed below, the European colonial culture will also be conceptualized as the COLONIAL THIRD CULTURE. Although the focus of attention is primarily on this particular cultural section, the methodology suggested is equally applicable to the analysis of built-form responses to the environment manifested by Hindu, Muslim, or other indigenous communities. The starting point for the analysis is based on some of the theoretical propositions of M. G. Smith. Smith argues that the core of a culture is what he describes as its "institutional system," an institution comprising "set forms of ACTIVITY, GROUPING, RULES, IDEAS and VALUES" (1965:80). I have emphasized the key notions in Smith's concept of institution as he makes a clear and necessary distinction between the system of IDEA AND VALUE on which ACTIVITY is based and that which justifies or supports particular forms of SOCIAL RELATIONS. Elsewhere, Smith elaborates on the use of the term INSTITUTION. It is a form or system of activities characteristic of a given population. Institutional activities involve groups, and these groups generally have clearly defined forms of relations among their members. Moreover, institutional activities and forms of groupings are also sanctioned by normative beliefs and values, and social values are expressed in institutional rules. The basic institutions of a given population are the core of a people's culture; and since society consists of a system of institutionalised relations, a people's institutions form the matrix of their social structure. Thus, the description of social structure consists in the analysis of the institutional system of the population under study.... As institutions combine both social and cultural facts equally, they have been treated as social forms by some writers and cultural forms by others. Their social ASPECTS consist of set forms of groupings and relations. Their system of norm and activity, together with their material culture, properly belong to culture (1965:80).

For example, one might see the core institution of religion which has, on one hand, its social aspects, namely the type of groupings and relationships to which it gives rise and, on the other, the value system on which religion is based, its ritual, doctrine and art, representing its cultural dimension. 3

While it is recognized that such a categorization ignores the substantial differences between Hindu and Muslim cultural traditions as well as between distinctive religious and regional traditions such as, for example, those of Sikh and Jain or Bengali and Tamil, the particular methodological approach adopted of focusing on the immigrant European culture will, I hope Justify this initial classification.

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and Urban

Form.

55

Having thus established the basic notions of INSTITUTION and INSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM, Smith then shows how these may be used to illuminate both the nature of the plural society and the quality of relationships between its component parts: When groups that practise differing institutional systems live side by side under a common government, the CULTURAL PLURALITY of this inclusive unit corresponds with its SOCIAL PLURALITY and the network of social relations between these culturally distinct groups is wider and more complex than those within them.... In a culturally homogeneous society, such institutions [as] marriage, the family, property, religion and the like are common to the total population... where cultural plurality obtains, different sections of the total population practise different forms of these common institutions.... By virtue of their cultural and social constitution, plural societies are units only in a political sense (1965:80). The culturally distinctive components of a single society are its CULTURAL SECTIONS which are distinguished by practicing different forms of institutions. In such a culturally divided society, according to Smith, each cultural section has its own relatively exclusive way of life, with its own distinctive systems of action, ideas and values and social relations. Often, these cultural sections differ also in language, material culture, and technology. The culture concept is normally wider than that of society since it includes conventions, language and technology (1965:81). While the basic institutional system of each cultural section includes kinship, education, religion, law, property and economy, and recreation, it does not include government for an obvious reason, namely, that the continuity of plural societies as single units is "incompatible with an internal diversity of governmental institutions": Given the fundamental differences of belief, value, and organisation that connote pluralism, the monopoly of power by one cultural section is the essential precondition for the maintenance of the total society in its current form.... When the dominant section is also a minority... the dependence of regulation by force is greatest (1965:86) Smith's theoretical position is useful because of its heuristic value in understanding those aspects of the social structure and plural society of colonial India with which we are here concerned. The theory can now be examined in relation to the central problem of the paper. Though it is recognized that what, in colonial times, was called British India did not, because of the existence of the so-called native states, include the entire

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population of the Indian subcontinent, the relative dependence of these states, evident in the very name, nonetheless justifies the treatment of the entire population of the subcontinent as one society, in Smith's terms. The cultural sections practicing different forms of the basic or "compulsory" institutions were those of the indigenous Indian population and that of the European colonial community, the COLONIAL THIRD CULTURE. It is this section which has, of course, the monopoly of power.

INSTITUTIONS AS INSTRUMENTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF URBAN FORM For an understanding of the physical-spatial structure of the colonial city, the most useful aspect of Smith's analysis is his focus on institutions as the core of a people's culture. For it is evident that any physical or spatial aspect of the colonial city, whether it be a demarcated area or a built structure, in any cultural section relates to a provision made for some particular institution in that section. As all structures or spatial areas are related to some human, social or cultural purpose, to understand these purposes is to understand the institutions of the culture. It follows, therefore, that to understand the institutions is to understand the particular built forms to which they gave rise. Our task is thus to identify the basic institutions and examine them with reference to the physical-spatial urban form in each of the main cultural sections of the colonial city. In doing this, each "dimension" or "level" of the institution should, ideally, be considered, that is, its related set of ideas and values, its associated forms of activity and behavior, and the set patterns of social relations. In the following analysis, the basic institutions which are considered are those of government, kinship, religion, education, certain economic institutions, recreation and, among social institutions, patterns of association. As the focus of the paper is on the methodology of analysis rather than substantive findings, all of these institutions are not treated with equal detail or with the same depth. Central to the concept of the colonial plural society is the assumption that one cultural section monopolizes the function of government; moreover, "when the dominant section is a minority...the dependence on regulation by force is greatest" (Smith 1965:86). As the structure of the colonial city reflects, on a smaller scale, the structure of the colonial society, it follows that the main institutions of government, both military and civil, which exists in the city are the monop-

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oly of the colonial cultural section. Firstly, they are also SEPARATE FROM the settlement area of the indigenous culture and secondly, they manifest the physical-spatial characteristics associated with the dominant cultural section. The most important characteristic of the colonial city, therefore, is its tripartite division into the NATIVE CITY; the CANTONMENT, the location of the military, the ultimate means of sanction in a colonial society; and the CIVIL STATION, the location of the administrative, political and judicial branches of the institution of government (see Plates 2-4). Within the civil station of the typical small town are to be found, in the form of built structures, the manifestation of other regulative institutions of government: administration, in the combined residence and workplace of the district commissioner; the police, in the residence of the district superintendent of police and the "police lines"; law, in the circuit house and district jail and occasionally the district court; and social administration, in the residence of the civil surgeon. Each of these structures manifests the basic form and visual characteristics associated with the colonial cultural section. As government is the monopoly of one cultural section, it follows that there is no comparable physical-spatial provision existing simultaneously in the indigenous settlement area of the native city.4 At this macro- or city level, the institution of government can be examined as an interdependent system of ideas and values, action and behavior, and pattern of social relations. An understanding of this system would then enable a detailed explanation of the physical-spatial forms to which it gave rise. Of the institutions which are shared by all cultural sections, that of kinship is one of the most important. The principal subsystem of kinship is the family with its extended kin, and the primary need for the family is a form of shelter. As cities are, at the lowest level of definition, aggregations of people, the provision made for shelter — the habitat — whether for individuals or the family, forms one of the most important physicalspatial units in the city. It is therefore appropriate to consider the institution of kinship and its effect on house form and physical-spatial needs. 4 An exception must be made to explain the existence of the Town Hall in most indigenous towns of a certain minimum size. At the level of MUNICIPAL government, members of the indigenous society were allowed to participate, although under the supervision of a representative of the colonial power. It is also necessary to point out that the original, walled preindustrial city had, of course, provision for both civil and military branches of government represented by the palace of the king and his court, and the fort (of which the palace was often a part), which provided accommodation for the army. Under colonial control, however, both these institutions were taken over and used by the military arm of government.

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In the indigenous Hindu culture, the joint family consists typically of three, occasionally four, generations. Household units may thus consist of upwards of twenty members. The preparation of food, its consumption, ritual observations, sanitation practices, and systems of social behavior are all governed by caste beliefs and practices. Recreation is largely kin centered, and much of it is associated with certain religious festivals in the Hindu calendar. Such structural and ideational factors are obviously important in determining the form of the traditional courtyard house with its three or four stories, each containing numerous rooms and giving onto a central yard. Segregation of household members on the basis of age and sex, the authority structure of the family, and caste rules governing association with guests, servants or neighbors are dimensions of family activity that the traditional courtyard house is designed to accommodate. The corresponding built form provided for the family unit in the colonial community is the bungalow-compound complex. This typically consists of a large, single-story dwelling located in upwards of one or two acres of enclosed ground, the "compound." Each residential unit caters to one nuclear family, although functional constraints in the colonial community frequently mean that only husband and wife occupy the dwelling, their two or three children being absent in the metropolitan society or "the hills." The values that are associated with the occupants have a bearing on this particular house form and are derived from relevant reference groups in the metropolitan society, in this case, the upper-middle class and landed gentry. High value is placed on landowning and property in the form of housing as a symbol of status, on canons of aesthetic taste ultimately derived from the past civilizations of Greece and Rome, and on a close attachment to the world of "nature" (Glacken 1967). Hence, the external appearance of the bungalow is determined not merely by climatic and economic factors but also by the superimposition of architectural features transposed from Roman and Greek built form. Ground surrounding the house is modified according to culturally determined preferences, with extensive vegetation carefully arranged and cultivated according to prevailing canons of "picturesque" taste (Prince and Lowenthal 1965). Apart from such historically derived values and ideas, other factors determine spatial use and built form. Spatial areas have extensive visual, olfactory and acoustic functions. The activity system of the occupants, as members of the colonial community, governs the size, location and layout of the bungalow-compound complex. The typical occupational and recreational pursuits of the community are those of "entertaining" the

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"reception" and the "garden party," central activities of what is actually an "occupational community" (Ness 1970).5 The institution of religion is expressed differently in each of the cultural sections in the colonial city. These differences are likewise reflected in the physical-spatial environment. In contrast to the belief system of the formally acknowledged Christianity of the colonial culture, that of Hinduism is characterized by a "worldrenouncing" or "other-wo rid" orientation. Being an ethnic rather than universalizing religion, Hinduism does not proselytize. The vast Hindu pantheon gives rise to a variety of temples, large and small, which, unlike the churches of the Christian community, are god oriented rather than community oriented (Sopher 1967). In the external environment, certain rivers, rock and plants are sanctified. The cow enjoys the symbolic status of a sacred beast, wandering freely through Hindu areas of settlement. In comparison to the world view of the colonial culture, that of Hinduism emphasizes adjustment of expectations to the environment rather than the environment to expectations, a view which materially affects the activities and behavior of its adherents. In legitimizing the caste system, traditional Hinduism structures social relationships. These beliefs are embodied in the physical-spatial form of the indigenous city. Typically, spatial areas are occupied, inhabited, and modified according to caste criteria. Apart from the major festivals in the Hindu calendar, religious observance is generally at an individual and family level rather than at the level of community. This is reflected in the existence of domestic shrines in each house and the many small temples that are distributed throughout the city. The cyclical world view of Hinduism is associated with the practice of cremation rather than burial, with its need for cremation grounds, generally located by a river. In the colonial community, religion is represented by a formal adherence to denominational Christianity. In contrast to the polytheism of Hinduism, the colonial belief system is monotheistic. An idea central to Christianity which has relevance to the man-environment relationship is that the "natural world" of animals, fish and birds is subordinate to man, whose role is legitimized by Christian theology as steward of the earthly domain. This permits not only the domestication of animals but also, unlike in Hinduism, the right to extinguish animal life in order to obtain food (Glacken 1967:157). As Christianity is a universalizing religion, not recognizing ethnic boundaries, it is also a proselytizing force, committed to the promotion of missionary activity. fi

A comprehensive account is given in "The colonial bungalow-compound complex: a study in the cultural use of space" (King 1976).

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These and other beliefs are related to the nature of activity and behavior of the adherents of Christianity and affect their social relationships. Such activity and relationships are in turn embodied in the built form and spatial relationships of the colonial city. The belief in the corporate, community worship of one rather than many gods gives rise to the construction of churches for each congregation of the Christian denominations. As with other built forms, these manifest the structural and visual characteristics of the metropolitan culture. In comparison to religious beliefs in the indigenous society, there is a greater distinction between sacred and secular activities. Formal worship and ritual in the Christian community are therefore more specialized, both spatially and temporally, with worship generally taking place only once a week and only in church. The formalized role of the priest and his duty as pastor (literally, shepherd) of his community (flock) is reflected in the existence of special residential accommodation provided for him in each parish. The universalistic, proselytizing function of Christianity has its material expression in originally non-Christian culture areas, in the churches, schools, hospitals, dispensaries or other urban institutions established as part of the conversion task of the missionary societies. Beliefs relating to the resurrection of the flesh and immortality of the soul account for the custom of burial, the place of which is visually commemorated, and is part of a larger, community burial place, whose ground is sanctified. Because of the legitimation which Christian doctrine gives to conversion as well as to material this-wordly activities, conflicts between its representatives and those of nonadherents or "heathen" could, according to the doctrinal interpretations of the nineteenth century, be formally sanctified with religious approval. Thus, both persons and places associated with upholding the faith in the face of attack from opposing ideologies are sanctified, taking oil symbolic, pseudoreligious meaning, and are commemorated in the urban landscape. Most important here are those places associated with the first major rising of the indigenous against the colonial population in 1857, where significant numbers of the latter were killed or where notable events took place. For example, the Well at Kanpur commemorating the death of some forty women, the ruins of the Residency at Lucknow, where a siege of the colonial power took place, were carefully preserved and developed as places of pilgrimage; in certain cases, they also provide the locale for symbolic ritual services for the colonial culture. Physical representations of persons in the form of statues also have sacred significance, particularly where these represent the head of the

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metropolitan and colonial government, combining, as he or she did, the dual role of head of state and defender of the faith, head of the formal religious system. All such places and objects form part of the institution of religion in the colonial culture and represent sacred space in the colonial urban settlement. The main cultural sections also differ in their economic institutions. If we use saving, marketing, property, and employment as illustrations, the various institutional forms and roles can be clearly identified for each cultural section. In the colonial community, such functions as saving or credit facilities are provided by the bank and marketing partially by the indigenous bazaar, but for more specialized goods, by the European shop or by direct order from the metropolitan society. Property is most usually in the form of houses which, for members of the colonial community, might be either in the metropolitan or in the colonial country. Property is also represented by "shares" in industry in India or "at home." In the indigenous society, saving is traditionally an individual, domestic activity, with surplus wealth being invested in jewelry or gold ornaments, or, where it is of larger amounts, in land. Credit facilities are provided by the moneylender, generally a member of a particular caste. Marketing is done in the bazaar, where traditionally prices are not fixed but are arrived at as a result of a complex and functional process of haggling. Property is most frequently held in the form of land. In the colonial community, employment and occupation are decided by criteria similar to those operating in the metropolitan society. Recruitment to occupation is based partly on ascribed and partly on achieved characteristics. Ascribed characteristics are mainly social and relate to birth. Achieved characteristics are mainly economic and consist of skills and knowledge which are either self-acquired or gained through a formal educational system. As discussed subsequently, these criteria relate particularly to the two main sectors of the British colonial community, the army and the various government services. In the indigenous Indian society, employment and occupation are traditionally decided by caste. Caste being at one and the same time a social, economic and religious institution, it is difficult to draw comparisons with parallel institutions in the colonial or metropolitan culture. Traditionally, each member of the indigenous culture is ascribed, on the basis of birth, to a specific trade or occupation or to a narrow range of occupations within a particular sphere. These few illustrations indicating the differing cultural expression of basic economic institutions all have a physical-spatial dimension which is reflected in the urban plant of each cultural section.

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Thus, in the colonial urban settlement, saving, marketing, property, and employment are embodied in banks, the offices of insurance agents, shops specializing in European goods, housing of different types and sizes allotted according to occupational rank, and status which is partly ascribed and partly achieved. Schools are provided for the children of the colonial community though, as will be discussed subsequently, these are not located in the settlement area but are either in the metropolitan society or in the hills. In the urban area of the indigenous culture, however, the same economic institutions find quite different physical-spatial expression. Credit facilities are reflected in the houses of the moneylenders, except in the shops and godowns [warehouses] of jewelers and the workshops of silver- and goldsmiths who occupy a distinct quarter in the indigenous city. Because of different styles of marketing and retailing behavior, the bazaar, with its line of open stalls or shops giving directly onto the thoroughfare and with constant movement along it, has a totally different physical-spatial structure than has, for example, the European market. As most occupational roles are ascribed, with children following their parents into these roles, education is undertaken at an individual level without formal schooling. Many functions in the colonial urban settlement, which are part of the economic system and are ultimately performed by the application of technology, are undertaken as part of the social system of the indigenous city. This is especially the case both with the supply of water and the disposal of refuse. For both these tasks particular castes exist whose social and economic justification is in the performance of roles which, in the later colonial settlement, have been made unnecessary by the introduction of technology. This brief summary of economic institutions and the differences in their cultural expression is obviously oversimplified, mainly to highlight the difference between the main cultural sections. It is acknowledged that, both over time and at different levels of society, changes occur. Over time, members of the indigenous culture not only increasingly came to use the institutional forms of the colonial culture (the banks, schools, and retailing facilities) but also created their own forms of these within their own cultural section. Functional units within each cultural section need not necessarily be provided by the same institutional subsystem. The hotel, for example, an important functional unit in the colonial urban settlement, belongs primarily to the ECONOMIC institutions of the culture. It provided, against an economic return, accommodation for culture members moving between the metropolitan and the colonial society as well as between

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different places within the latter. In the indigenous society, the dharmsala [a shelter for travelers] belongs primarily to the religious rather than the economic institutional system. In this case, the basic values of the religion require that accommodation for travelers be provided as part of the religious duty of those sufficiently wealthy and pious to endow such an institution. This fundamental difference helps to account for the nature, quality and number of facilities provided in the hotel and the dharmsala, as well as their respective locations. Reference has been made so far to such basic institutions as government, kinship, religion, and economic institutions, all of which form part of the institutional core of the society. In addition, there are significant differences in SOCIAL forms and activities between the different cultural sections in the plural society. Differing associational patterns and recreational activities, for example, are also important in giving rise to contrasting physical-spatial forms in the colonial city. In the indigenous Hindu urban community, associational patterns are based mainly on criteria of kinship, caste, sex, language and, to a lesser extent, age. Different parts of the indigenous dwelling and its immediate area are associated with different groups. For example, certain rooms are largely the preserve of female members of the household, and particular places are reserved for elders, and unclean castes are prohibited from entry to areas where food is prepared. Traditionally, different sections of the town are occupied by members of different castes, and festivals or celebrations are one of the main forms of social activity which, among kin, usually take place in the house. Eating away from one's own kitchen is unusual owing to restrictions which caste rules place on this. Criteria governing associational patterns in the colonial community are related to kinship, occupational category, socioeconomic status and ethnicity. For those members of the community living as part of a nuclear family, this acts as one basic unit for association. Many members, however, are unmarried males or males whose families live in the metropolitan society. Shared social and political values, a common culture and a prevailing belief in the undesirability of forming intimate relations with members of the indigenous society confine associational patterns of the colonial community mainly to members of their own group. Within this community, relationships cluster between two main subdivisions, those of the MILITARY and the CIVIL establishment. Within these, associational patterns are governed by socioeconomic criteria based on occupational rank. Sex is not an important determinant of association, female members of the community forming part of groups according to the occupational rank of their husband. However, other exclusively female

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groups do arise for purposes of social intercourse and socioeconomic activity such as "coffee morning" and charity work groups. These associational patterns find their physical-spatial expression in the modal type of colonial house, the bungalow. Next in importance is the club, which, especially in a small colonial community, is the main center for social intercourse for all community members. Unmarried or unaccompanied males also live here and eat from a common kitchen. Club membership is confined to the higher ranks of the occupational hierarchy. Though both civilian and military members are admitted, similar facilities are duplicated on the cantonment in the form of the officers' mess, whose membership is restricted to the commissioned ranks of the military. For most of the colonial period, the club is not open to members of the indigenous society. Those members of the colonial society whose occupational or socioeconomic rank does not entitle them to associate on equal terms with club members, such as noncommissioned officers in the army, shopkeepers, or clerks, have their own forms of association, each with their own venue. On the cantonment, the barracks, soldiers' canteen or sergeants' mess provide the locale for social activities. In larger urban centers, other places act as settings to accommodate the associational patterns of different sections of the colonial community. The Masonic Lodge, the library, rackets court, and theater, however, all share a common characteristic in not being exclusively reserved for members of the colonial community. Provided that they adhere to the norms of behavior governing their use, indigenous society members also make use of these particular colonial institutions. It is in their recreational patterns that the two cultural sections differ most, and these recreational patterns account for much of the contrast in the physical-spatial characteristics of the culture areas of the main sections. In each of these, the pattern for recreational activities is closely related to the nature and level of economic activity pursued. In the indigenous society, the predominant economic activity is agriculture, with the urban area acting as a market and center of craft production. In comparison to the metropolitan society, neither the size of the economic surplus nor the amount of nonworking free time permits regular, institutionalized leisure such as that associated with the limited working day or week of factory production with its institutionalized eight-hour day, lunch breaks, holidays and weekends. Recreational activities are therefore family and community centered, and are frequently related to religious festivals. Daily recreation is com-

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wMmsmim mmp

17 20 19 20 19 20

Indigenous city, 17th to 20th centuries. Cantonment, 19th and 20th centuries. Civil station, 19th and 20th centuries.

Plate 1. The postcolonial city, 1970. The tripartite structure of indigenous city, "cantonment," and "civil station" of the nineteenth century, repeated in the reconstruction of New Delhi in the twentieth. Postindependence expansion has taken place around these core areas

A. D.

KINO

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Plate 3. K a n p u r , 1931: the military and civil manifestations of the institution of government embodied in the " c a n t o n m e n t " and "civil s t a t i o n " and their relationship to the indigenous city

A. D . K I N G

Plate 4. Delhi, mid-nineteenth century: the "cantonment" and "civil station" and their relationship to the indigenous city

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paratively unstructured, consisting of social intercourse between kin or caste members, groups frequently being formed along criteria of age or sex. Adult recreation takes place generally with small groups who might talk, sharing a hookah or playing cards. Children play in relatively small, unstructured groups, with little formal or specialized equipment or toys. The kite is one of a small number of exceptions. Occasionally larger groups gather outside to hear a story or poetry recital, or larger groups gather for spectator activities such as music, wrestling or dancing. On certain religious festivals, the entire community gathers to watch a dramatic performance or the spectacle of a procession passing through the streets. Depending on the numbers involved, such activities take place in the house, or, like the processions, in the main streets of the city, which serve multiple purposes for recreation, social intercourse, transport and economic activity. Occasionally, a tent or shamiana [canopy] is erected in the built-up area of the indigenous town, or on one of the few open spaces or the maidan [esplanade] within the city. In the colonial community, recreational patterns are those generally associated with an urban industrial society. In such a society, time divisions are more structured and recreational activities have become more formal and specialized, demanding not only more specialized equipment but also specialized buildings and spatial areas in which the activity can take place. Thus, dramatic activity and musical performances require a theater, organized forms of sport such as football and cricket require specially maintained pitches, and tennis, badminton and squash rackets require specially built courts. Special tracks and stadia with stands for spectators and other facilities are needed for horse racing and polo. Though such developments arise from the specialization of economic and social activities which accompanies industrialization, ideological factors nonetheless are also important. Since the mid-nineteenth century, values emanating from the public schools in the metropolitan society resulted in the concept of recreation being interpreted as one which should involve PHYSICAL activity, this taking the form of organized sport. The team games associated with these developments were thought to foster particular moral attributes, referred to as the development of character and the fostering of team spirit. The consequences of these organized recreational pursuits, most of which were based on the principle of projecting balls in various directions (cricket, football, golf, hockey, tennis, polo, and rackets), on the physical-spatial needs of the colonial settlement were clearly considerable. A further recreational pursuit of the colonial community associated

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with the urban industrial values of the metropolitan society was the practice of taking holidays away from the usual place of residence. Although the origins of the Indian hill station were connected to the attempt made by members of the colonial community to find a healthier and more comfortable environment during the hot months of the year (Mitchell 1972), it also depended on the notion of recreation being pursued away from home. Beginning with the patronage of the spas by the elite of the metropolitan society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the practice had become common for the middle classes of society with the development of coastal resorts in the nineteenth century. This concept of recreation as a holiday away from home was instrumental in fostering the development of the Indian hill station. Other values also affected recreational pursuits and resulted in modifications of the physical-spatial environment. A veneration of elements in the natural world such as flowers, birds, insects, and other aspects of natural life was common to most members of the colonial elite. Such values supported their interest in investigating, reading, writing, and talking about such phenomena. This shared sense of values helped to bond social relationships and led to the formation of particular groups or societies, e.g. the natural history society, to pursue such interests at group level. These values, and the activities to which they gave rise, had their physical-spatial expression in the existence of the large compounds and cultivated gardens attached to each dwelling, the parks, the botanical and "company" gardens, and the "reserved forest" of the colonial settlement, each with its consciously modified natural environment. Criteria governing participation in recreational pursuits, like those governing associational patterns, were those of rank and socioeconomic status. Socially small-scale recreational activities such as "entertaining," "drinks," or "dining out" took place in the domestic setting of the bungalow. Recreational pursuits on a larger scale, involving more members of the community, such as amateur theatricals, social dancing, and the "children's party," took place in the club. In the previous pages, an attempt has been made to understand the built form and spatial patterns of the different cultural sections in the colonial city by examining some aspects of the INSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM of these sections. An examination of the institutions of government, kinship, religions, economic institutions, and aspects of social institutions such as association and recreation, at the levels of idea and value, activity, and social relations, has enabled some insight to be gained into the way in which the basic institutions of a culture are reflected in their built environment.

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It is suggested that such an approach to the understanding of culturespecific environments is particularly relevant in cross-cultural studies. Moreover, the possibility of gaining a deeper understanding of particular cultures by "reading" their built environment in this way is also to be considered.

THE COLONIAL THIRD CULTURE In discussing the various cultural sections of the plural society of colonial India, reference has been made to that of the European colonial community. As the focus of interest in this paper is on the urban forms of this section and the way in which they affect indigenous urban forms, it is essential to have a clearer conception of this section and to know how it is constituted. A basic assumption of this paper is that this culture is a unique and distinctive phenomenon. It therefore follows that the physicalspatial urban forms which it produces do not simply reproduce those of the metropolitan society but are unique to the colonial third culture. In considering the culture of the European colonial community we are concerned with the process of acculturation. 6 The contribution of Malinowski to the understanding of this process of acculturation — or culture contact as he preferred to call it — is relevant here. Of particular importance in his "third column approach" to the study of cultural change which aimed at bringing out three phases of culture contact and change. In the first column he listed: the impinging culture with its institutions, intentions and interests, in the second column, the reservoir of indigenous custom, belief and living traditions, and in the third column, the processes of contact and change where members of the two cultures cooperate, conflict or compromise (Malinowski 1945:50). The important factor which Malinowski brings out is that the PRODUCT of culture contact is not simply a "combination of institutional elements" from both cultures but a completely new cultural phenomenon. Thus, he writes, "Are such phenomena as native townships or mining compounds, African small holdings or agricultural cooperatives a mixture? Hardly. They are one and all entirely new products of conditions which are the outgrowth of the impact of European civilization on archaic Africa" (1945:25). 9 For Redfield (1968) acculturation comprehends "those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into firsthand contact with subsequent changes in the original cultural patterns of either or both groups."

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The new culture, though clearly owing something to the parent cultures on both sides, is not simply a mixing of traits but is a new product in its own right. As it stands, however, Malinowski's concept has two disadvantages for the present analysis. Though he acknowledges that the institutions, intentions and interests of the incoming (European) culture may well be transformed by their contact with the institutions of the native culture, his own focus of interest is on the latter rather than the former. In this paper, we are concerned more with the European colonial culture which results from the transformation of metropolitan cultural institutions as they come into contact with the culture of the indigenous society. In the second place, Malinowski fails to differentiate sufficiently the structure of the incoming culture. As Foster shows (1960:10-12) in his discussion of the impact of Spanish culture in Latin America, acculturation is a selective process. Only SOME parts of European culture are bestowed and only SOME parts are received by the host society. Is the "conquest culture," as Foster calls it, that of the "conquistadores, the missionaries, the government administrators"? The two complete cultural systems do not come into contact. Both the authority of the donor as well as that of the recipient culture act as screening processes. That the "conquest culture is not the same as the culture of the donor group" is the way in which Foster expresses that the colonial third culture is not the same as that of the metropolitan society. A final contribution to the refinement of this concept is that of the Useems and Donoghue in their conceptualization of a "binational third culture." This they define as: the complex of patterns learned and shared by communities of men stemming from both a Western and a non-Western society who regularly interact as they relate their societies, or sections thereof, in the physical setting of non-Western society (1963:170).

Their concept here refers to the zone of social and cultural interaction between representatives of two different societies in what might be described as a relatively politically neutral situation.7 The emphasis in this concept is on the mutual, bilateral nature of this THIRD CULTURE where, in theory at least, each side is capable of freely contributing to and sharing aspects of it. 7

Empirically, the concept was developed to explain the patterns of behavior of members of the American community and their non-American counterparts resident in non-American settings.

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Though conceptually similar, the situational context of the COLONIAL THIRD CULTURE makes it operationally distinct. Here, the cultural patterns and institutions which are created and learned are, in the first place, not generally SHARED by representatives of each of the two cultures in contact. Secondly, the politically neutral, "free" situation implied in the Useem's and Donaghue's definition is absent. Instead, the colonial third culture is one which depends on a politically charged situation which is most adequately expressed as a dominance-dependence relationship. 8 In this concept, the first culture is that of the metropolitan society, the second, that of the indigenous, precolonial society. Clearly, each of these cultures has its own distinctive value and belief system and its own system of institutions, social structure, and social relationships. The content of the colonial third culture, while owing much to its parent culture in the metropolitan society (particularly in its belief system and most of its value orientations), is nonetheless unique. It is a culture which emerges not simply as a result of interaction with a second culture in a "neutral" diffusion situation, but necessarily, as a result of interaction under the dominance-dependence relationship of colonialism. It is a culture with its own core of institutions governing its systems of action, idea and value, and of social structure and relationships. A further sociological refinement needs to be made, however, before the colonial third culture can be represented schematically. This is provided by answering the question: who are the carriers of the metropolitan culture and with which members of the indigenous society do they come into contact? Two variables must be considered. The first relates to the position in the social structure of each parent culture occupied by the agents who create the new third culture; the second relates to their regional origin. To be more specific, from which particular social class and from what regions in Britain did members of the British community in India come? In which caste groups and from what region did those Indians originate whose culture was important in contributing to the colonial third culture? Thirdly, there is a time dimension to consider, for clearly the culture of both societies changed over the two and a half centuries of contact between them. 8

"The type of third culture which developed in the expansion of the Western world [was] the colonial culture. This was based on superordination-subordination of two societies and was carried by a community of men who were relating the two societies to each other. It developed its unique social roles, ideology, literature, folklore on what 'natives' were like, ideal norms for administrative programming and even art and architecture" (Useem, et al. 1963:170).

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These are not simply academic questions. In considering the evidence on colonial urban forms we need, above all, to know the main reference groups, both in the metropolitan and the indigenous societies, which are important as norm models for those members of the colonial community responsible for urban development. Whatever answers to these problems are suggested, they must be relatively crude, being based on what little evidence is available. Firstly, we may deal with the temporal context of the colonial third culture. As already suggested, though reference is made to the period of settlement in India in the eighteenth century, it is the period from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth, immediately prior to the formal termination of the colonial third culture which is primarily considered in this paper. While it is recognized that changes occurred in both cultures as well as in the relationship between them over this period, evidence suggests that assumptions can still be made regarding certain underlying features of each culture which persist during this period. Moreover, at the level of analysis undertaken here, what is important are the DIFFERENCES between the two cultures in question, rather than the diachronic changes which may have taken place in each of them over the period under consideration. The second point of clarification concerns the social origins of members of the colonial third culture and the type of social structure which it gave rise to in India. Only brief reference to this will be made here. To oversimplify, the social structure of the European community in India consisted of four components, each having its own system of stratification but with all four forming an overall status hierarchy which comprehended the members of the entire European community. As all Europeans were an elite with respect to the total population of India, it is difficult to find appropriate terms to describe the various status groups within the colonial community itself. The topmost component consisted of what might be termed the governing elite. This comprised the most senior members of the government, military, and judicial services who exercised (subject, in important matters, to the approval of the metropolitan government) the main decision-making powers in India. These included such people as the Viceroy and Governor-General, the governors of the various provinces and presidencies, the commander-inchief and senior army officers, and the residents in the native states. Membership of this top section was decided formally by occupational rank and informally by social origins, the highest position often being occupied by members of the metropolitan aristocracy. The second section consisted of the large number of government officers

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including, along with the commissioned ranks of the army, the members of the Indian services, e.g. the Indian Civil Service, Indian Medical Service, Indian Police Service and others for engineering, forestry and education. The third, semiresidual category, consisted of all other Europeans who, by virtue of social, economic or educational criteria, were deemed to be sufficiently comparable to others of officer status, but whose common characteristic was that they did not occupy official roles in the army or government and were therefore not "gazetted officers." The largest number of these were from commerce, including private businessmen and agents of metropolitan concerns. In addition, there were nonofficial clergy or missionaries, schoolteachers, bank managers and members of the professions, such as dentists, doctors or accountants. The last section consisted of the nonofficer class represented by noncommissioned ranks of the army, minor shopkeepers, clerks and persons performing various technical roles in government service. 9 9

In the words of an observer writing in 1933: "The white population of India — invariably referred to as Europeans and not British, although the non-British element has a very small majority — numbers about 160,000 in British India. The non-official designation of the three castes in which the European population is divided is...the 'Heaven-born' (the ruling classes), the 'Services' (the Army and the Civil Service) and the 'Box Wallahs' (business men). The official classification, according to the Simon Report is: 'First there are the men of business... secondly, come the British members of the various branches of the Civil Service. These are found in the All India Services such as the Indian Civil Service, the Indian Police Service, or the Engineering Service; and again, there are numbers of Europeans engaged upon the railways.' "It will be seen from the above...that...the men of business in India are put on top of the basket. This does not correspond in the least bit with how matters are regarded in India, both by Indians and by Europeans. The businessmen themselves are divided into those who rank equally with the 'services' and with those who may be frankly entitled the 'White untouchables'." (Greenwall 1933). According to Law (1912:38-40) "Caste is very strong in Anglo-Indian society although its rules for eating and marrying are not (unlike those of the Hindu) made of cast iron.... The English communities in India closely resemble one another in spite of the fact that they are scattered over an area as large as Europe with Russia left out.... Imagine an English community in India a rose, and pick it to pieces. Pull out the yellow centre, which is made up of the Governor and the Englishmen who hold the highest positions. Tear off the leaves circling the middle of the flower and lay aside the generals, colonels, majors and others who hold India for England. Go on to the open leaves which represent clergymen, lawyers, bankers, doctors, editors, professors, planters and merchants: and finally, to the outside petals which are made up of shopkeepers, clerks, actors, teachers, engineers, railway officials, mounted constables, soldiers and others. "The caste system must be catching for there is in the English community in India a strong tendency to fall into groups. Thus, the Indian Medical Service is a closed body and English people who belong to it are satisfied to know the other members of the IMS and no outsiders. Lawyers associate with lawyers, missionaries with missionaries, engineers with engineers. Enter one of these little groups and you will find in it much social rivalry, egotism and debt.... Indian princes are almost the only natives who mix freely with the ruling community in British India."

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The little evidence that is available suggesting that members of the two middle groups were overwhelmingly recruited from the metropolitan middle class is of less importance than the fact that, as far as life-style and residential behavior were concerned, the metropolitan middle and upper-middle classes provided all three top sections with their main reference group. Insofar as the contact between representatives of the two main cultural sections was concerned, it followed that, at least in theory, all members of the host society came into contact with the representatives of the metropolitan society. In practice, this was not the case for a variety of reasons. Over the entire period of colonial rule, the majority of third culture members were more likely to be located in northern India than in other parts. Historically as well as economically, Bengal, "Upper India," and the "Bombay Presidency" were of more importance to the colonial community than was the south of India. Functionally, their prime areas of concern being administration, military affairs, and commerce, they were more likely to come into contact with some regional, religious, or caste groups than with others, for example, with Bengali clerks in administration, Punjabi Sikh soldiers in the army, Parsee businessmen in commerce, and with north Indian Muslims as servants. With these four roles, for example, of clerk, soldier, merchant, or servant, the members of the colonial culture actually worked; arguably, they became more familiar with the culture of the particular groups in question. At the other extreme, the professional role of the traditional Hindu priest was one with which the majority of members of the colonial culture had little formal or informal contact, except at a distance, when such roles were seen more as part of a general cultural landscape. It is, in any case, arguable whether differences between members of the indigenous culture which depended on regional, caste, or religious affiliation were of more significance than the overall similarities between members of the culture that actually existed or were perceived to exist by members of the colonial community. In a political situation where the members of the indigenous society were ultimately dependent on the dominant incomers, for many if not all purposes, regional, caste, or religious differences were disregarded or subsumed in the commonly perceived category of "Indian" or, more usually, "native." 10 The real answer to this question, however, is that the perception of the 10

Literature representative of the nonofficer class of the military members of the third culture suggests that members of the indigenous society were generally all perceived as "natives," irrespective of caste, region or religion (see, for example, Richards 1965).

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other culture depended on the person perceiving and the situation in which the perception took place. It follows from the above that what I have termed the COLONIAL THIRD CULTURE can be represented schematically in Figure 1. la

l First Culture (that of the metropolitan society), items of which are differentiated according to region and social class origins

"Selected"

First Culture

Colonial Third Culture (that of the European colonial community in India)

Second Culture (that of the indigenous society)

Τ

Area of cultural overlap

Diffusion channel by which items from the Second Culture are diffused, via the Colonial Third Culture, back to the first Culture of the metropolitan society

Figure 1.

Schematic representation of the three cultures

The first culture is that of the metropolitan society, in this case Britain. For part of our analysis, this might also be seen as belonging to the larger culture area of Europe. The selected first culture comprises those elements and institutions of the metropolitan culture transferred to the indigenous society by a socially and regionally selected set of cultural agents recruited mainly from the middle classes of the metropolitan society. The second culture is that of the indigenous society, namely India. This comprises a vast range of individual variation comprehending different religions and regions, yet, for the particular heuristic purposes of this paper, it is taken as one culture. The colonial third culture is that resulting from the contact, in the colonized country, between the selected first culture and the selected second culture. Like all cultures, the colonial third culture is centered around an institutional system which comprehends social structure, systems of social relations, behavior patterns and ideational systems. There are, for example, a form of government, an educational system, a type of family organization, economic institutions, forms of knowledge and a whole range of social beliefs, behavior, language groupings and material

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culture — including built form and urban patterns — which are unique to the colonial third culture. It is evident that some aspects of this culture were, from the outset, shared with members of the indigenous society, e.g. certain items of dress, diet or language; these are indicated in the "area of cultural overlap." Other items, such as aspects of government, administration, education, ideolog es, knowledge systems and material culture, gradually became shared over the period of colonialism. However, other aspects of this colonial third culture, such as particular social groupings, social and political ideologies, literature, perceptions about "the natives," and aspects of life-style remained unique to third-culture members throughout its existence. With the demise of the third culture brought about by the end of colonialism, such items either disappeared, were transferred to the metropolitan society by third-culture members, or persisted as part of a Westernized indigenous culture sustained by the elite in the excolonial society.11 Also indicated on the model is the channel by which those aspects of the colonial third culture, such as ideologies, images of the colonized society and culture items, whether of language or material culture (curry, bungalow, dungaree, pajama) were diffused back into the culture of the metropolitan society. It is this colonial third culture, the culture of the British in India, with which we are mainly concerned and particularly those aspects of it which relate to urban development. These are the institutions of government, religion, law, kinship, economic and social institutions, systems of knowledge and value orientations. Some of these institutions have been examined superficially in the earlier part of this paper. And as suggested in that section, these theoretical formulations are put forward as having possible relevance for the investigation of built environment in other culture contact situations.

REFERENCES cox, o. c. 1971 Introduction (to issue on race and pluralism). Race 12:4. 11

The extent of colonial third culture still surviving in the metropolitan society is considerable. It includes a whole range of knowledge about the colonized society and ideologies brought back by members of the colonial third culture, as well as a vast amount of literature on the same theme. It also includes certain styles of behavior and sets of social relationships.

Cultural Pluralism and Urban Form.

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CROSS, MALCOLM

1971 On conflict, race relations, and the theory of the plural society. Race 12:477-494. FOSTER, G . M.

1960 Culture and conquest. America's Spanish tradition. New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. FURNIVALL, J . S.

1944 Netherlands India: a study of plural economy. London: Cambridge University Press. 1948 Colonial policy and practice. London: Cambridge University Press. GLACKEN, CLARENCE J.

1967 Traces on the Rhodian shore. Nature and culture in Western thought from ancient times to the end of the eighteenth century. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. GREENWALL, H. J.

1933 Storm over India. London: Hurst and Blackett. HORVATH, R. J.

1969 In search of a theory of urbanization: notes on the colonial city. East Lakes Geographer 5:69-82. KING, A. D .

1976 "The colonial bungalow compound complex: a study in the cultural use of space," in Colonial urban development: culture, social power and environment by A.D. King. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. KUPER, L., et

al.

1958 Durban: a study in racial ecology. London: Cape. KUPER, L., M. G. SMITH, editors 1969 Pluralism in Africa. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. LAW, J.

1912 Indian snapshots. Calcutta: Thacker and Spink. MABOGUNJE, A. L., P. C. LLOYD, B. AWE

1967 The city of Ibadan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in association with the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan. MALINOWSKI, B.

1945 The dynamics of culture change. An inquiry into race relations in Africa. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. M C GEE, τ . c .

1967 The South East Asian city. London: Bell. 1971 The urbanization process in the Third World. Explorations in search of a theory. London: Bell. MITCHELL, N.

1972 The Indian hill station: Kodaikanal. Department of Geography Research Paper, 141. University of Chicago. MORRIS, H. s .

1967 Some aspects of the concept "plural society." Man, n.s. 2:169-184. NESS, G . D .

1970 The Malayan bureaucracy and its occupational communities. Comparative Studies in Society and History 12:179-187. PRINCE, H., D. LOWENTHAL

1965 English landscape tastes. Geographical Review 55:186-222.

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REDFIELD, ROBERT

1968 "Acculturation," in International encyclopedia of social science. New York: Macmillan. REDICK, R . W .

1954 "A demographic and ecological study of Rangoon, Burma," in Contributions to urban sociology. Edited by E. W. Burgess and D.J. Bogue, 31-41. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. REX, J.

1970 Race relations and sociological theory. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson. 1973 Race, colonialism and the city. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. RICHARDS, F.

1965 Old soldier Sahib. London: Faber and Faber. RUBIN, v .

1960 Comment on "Social and cultural pluralism" by M. G. Smith. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 83:785-788. SJOBERG, G.

1960 Thepre-industrial city. New York: Free Press. SMITH, M. G .

1960 Social and cultural pluralism. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 83:763-783. 1965 The plural society in the British West Indies. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. SOPHER, D . E.

1967 The geography of religions. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall. USEEM, J., R. USEEM, J. DONOGHUE

1963 Men in the middle of the third culture: the roles of American and non-Western people in cross-cultural administration. Human Organisation 22:169-179.

How Can We Learn about Man and His Settlements?

C. A. DOXIADIS

WHERE ARE WE? Although I studied architecture, engineering, and. physical planning, I do not believe that I learned enough about the real subject of my professions: the relationship between Man (who is both the client — which we remember — and the decision maker—which we forget—for all the actions and constructions that serve him) and his Human Settlements. In my own fields I learned gradually about our deficiencies and weaknesses, and I tried to learn more from other disciplines also, from biology to anthropology, economics to politics, and I began to synthesize them in Ekistics (Doxiadis 1968a). This is a new undertaking; I do not believe we can learn everything overnight, and so for forty years I have continued an effort to learn more about all aspects of our difficult and complex problems and move toward the necessary interconnections. I am pleased to report on my experiences with the direct relationship between Man and his Settlements. I hope this will open a dialogue which can be very helpful for all those struggling to understand this relationship, an understanding we must have if we are to improve existence, relieve suffering, and create better Human Settlements. I will give you three examples of how we can learn from the past. The first example is the creation of the room, which I believe was given its final form only after a very long effort all over the world. The room is the smallest structure created by Man as a nonmovable unit, and we call it ekistic unit number 2 (Doxiadis 1968a :27-41). The second example is the creation of human scale in open urban areas, corresponding to ekistic

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units 4 and 5. The best examples I could find are from the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods of ancient Greece, not only because we admire these periods but also because through the continuous efforts of archaeologists who investigate many cases very thoroughly, we begin to know many settlements from these periods very well; I am convinced that we do not know as much about any other ancient culture as we do about ancient Greece. My third example is the creation of citystates (ekistic units 6 and 8), mainly in ancient Greece but also in other cultures and civilizations. From these three examples we can get an image of relationships in three scales and several civilizations and reach conclusions about Man's action. I use the capital Μ to make clear that I do not investigate individual cases or minor mutations but the general characteristics of each phenomenon. From these three examples we can understand the changing relationship between Man and his Settlements in every different scale. Then I proceed with two proposals. The first proposal is that, having learned from the past what, how, and why Man was acting, we must define our methods and goals for our present and future Human Settlements. The overall goal must be human development. The second proposal is that in order to achieve such broad goals with a more scientific approach we must act systematically and mobilize Man's total knowledge about the subject. This requires a way of making the proper connections among all disciplines dealing with such a complex subject, which can be done only on a model of the total system which I call the Anthropocosmos (world of Man) model. FIRST CASE: C R E A T I O N OF T H E R O O M I have chosen the room for two main reasons. First, the room is the smallest unit created by Man, beyond our clothes and our furniture; it is the smallest structure built by Man to serve all his basic needs. Second, the room is a small unit that can be discussed on a biological basis because it exhibits a wide range of variations. This large number of variants makes it possible for us to investigate them systematically to see if we can draw any general conclusions. Today we take the form of the room as given. We forget how long it took to create it, and at times we try to change it without realizing the forces that shaped it, and without considering whether these forces still operate today. I have been trying to analyze and describe all the forces I have been able to discover that have influenced the formation of the human room.

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Before proceeding, I must clarify that I am only speaking of what people usually call a "room," that is the built-up space (not necessarily covered space) created by Man for his normal daily life: his home, workshop, or office. In my context, the dictionary definition of a room is inappropriate: " a portion of space within a building or other structure, separated by walls or partitions from other parts." This could include a huge factory space containing thousands of workers without walls between them. What I mean by " r o o m " is what the average man of today understands by the word. In this sense, every type of personal workshop is not necessarily a "room." It may only be used, like a photographer's darkroom, for special purposes. It is also necessary to clarify that I am speaking only of the room of an average human being, with normally developed body, senses, mind, and soul. I am not speaking of rooms made by animals or insects — such as the cells made by the bees — nor of rooms specially designed for blind people. Also, I am not speaking of any special rooms designed by particular individuals to suit their personal requirements at a certain time. I might like to live in a round tower or in a windmill, but this is not the wish of the average Man. There is a wide spectrum of personal preference, but I am concentrating on the average room created by Man with a capital M. The human room, then, is a space that satisfies most of us most of the time. (A sleeping car that can meet my needs only for a single night is not a " r o o m " in this sense.) This definition may cover only 80-90 percent of the spectrum of alternatives, but probably includes more than 99 percent of all actual cases. In order to learn about the room we have to look at the past. We learned from Aristotle that we cannot understand any problem completely unless we can understand its origins and its causes. In his Physics he said: "Here and elsewhere we shall not obtain the best insight into things unless we actually see them growing from the beginning" (I,p.i). Physics, biology, anthropology, and other sciences have gained their best insights when they have carefully traced their growth from the beginning. This is basic for all knowledge. Unfortunately, we do not know how the room began to be formed. Some people have thought it originated from round houses, others from orthogonal ones. We are constantly finding early societies we did not know of before, and the picture of what preceded keeps changing. During my own lifetime, the estimated lime during which Man has evolved has been increased from 100,000 to over 2,000,000 years, and the time when Man began to build rooms has been increased from a few thousand to over one

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million years ago. In such a situation, we can make some reasonable assumptions only after carefully checking that these are based on all the information collected up to now. Gorillas make their nests in tall grass, in the undergrowth, in clumps of saplings, in the roots of trees, under overhanging rocks, among the branches of fallen trees, and in the forks of trees up to sixty feet above the ground (Clark and Piggott 1965). Because gorillas still live in more than thirty different kinds of "dwellings," it is unreasonable to believe that primitive man lived in only one form of dwelling. Gorillas have some interesting characteristics. Some build a new shelter every night, always for a single individual, never for two. Others live in gangs and all sleep together. Not only the form and location, but also the size and use of the basic unit at its very beginning varies greatly. Many people believe that many of the earliest men lived in caves, and I have found over a thousand different caves depicted in various publications. Again, it appears that there were numerous different sorts, ranging from deep caverns to overhanging rocks, and that they were used in many different ways. Sometimes it seems that structures were erected within caverns, such as in a Paleolithic cave at Arcy-sur-Cure in France, where Stuart Piggott (1967) is certain that post-holes exist, showing that some kind of structure must have been added by man. Round houses and round rooms have been found all around the world, dating from very early times. The Paleolithic round rooms found at Molodova, South Russia, are dated by Stuart Piggott at around 40,000 B.C. These were, at least in part, built of the bones of mammoths. Round houses found at Jericho are dated at around 8000 B.C., and others in Sardinia at around 1500 B.C. In Britain several different types of round houses have been dated between the twelfth and first centuries B.C. (Clark and Piggott 1965; Piggott 1967). These houses show great variation in their degrees of roundness, and sometimes (as in a Paleolithic settlement in Czechoslovakia) round houses are juxtaposed with others of varying shapes. This may indicate Man's difficulties in connecting rounded shapes. We can trace how houses in Greece and the Greek islands changed gradually from round houses to houses with some straight lines and, finally, to rectilinear houses (Figure 1). This sequence can be found over a wide range of time and space. Some rectilinear houses in Bulgaria date before the third millennium B.C., and other early examples have been found in Germany, Switzerland, England, and France. But I am not entitled to state definitely that houses and rooms with straight walls came later than circular houses and rooms, because some years from now we may find — let us say in Indonesia — another much older culture with straight walls.

How Can We Learn about Man and His Settlements

first

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Figure 1. How the Greek house-type developed First phase: Early Minoan (Kumasa, Crete) Second phase: Middle Minoan (Chamoezzi, Crete) Third phase: Middle Helladic (Korakou, Corinthia) Fourth phase: Late Minoan (Tylissos, Crete)

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The only conclusion we can draw at this stage is that we can find all forms of the room in many different places. We cannot say which form came first, but in some places we can trace a clear evolution from the circular to the rectilinear and never the opposite. In addition, we find all sizes — from rooms a few meters to rooms 100 meters long — and all materials. Numerous combinations of materials, sizes, and forms again remind us that we do not yet know the origins of the room. We are still constantly finding earlier and different types. Can we really believe that there was just one beginning? We have the case of the gorillas. How do we know that Man did not start as they did? We might assume that, with Man's better-developed brain, he could have made many other beginnings. We must try to understand the causes of the process. Some explanations are based solely on structure: the round house arose from structural requirements. Others are based on biology. The round house was rooted in Man's biological needs. Others are based wholly on psychology; others on a combination of biology and psychology. In discussion during the Athens Ekistics Month, 1971, Erik Erikson said: "Roundness surrounds you more nicely than squareness." But, in the end, Man with a capital Μ did not agree with Dr. Erikson when developing his room. He always finally changed from roundness to squareness. On the other hand, Erik Erikson is a great authority on psychology, and there is probably a basic truth in his statement. During the same discussion, a member of the audience reminded us that sheep always form a circle, never a line, when sleeping together. This apparently indicates that the animals feel better when clustered in round groups. Darwin also, on his first visit to South America, found some natives who always slept in circles, without any covering "shell." They slept in a compact group, sometimes not only at one level but one on top of the other, forming a level and a half. The explanation was that this enabled them to exchange warmth and to protect one another. It seems that, if indeed the round house was first, this was probably caused by a combination of psychological and biological necessities and structural possibilities. One of the reasons we are uncertain about the origins of the room is that people almost always speak of the formation of the house, not of the room. But the beginning of the house is the room, the undivided unit. About this there is no doubt at all. No one has ever found two-room houses preceding the one-room unit. Another reason is that all the experts concentrate on the position as seen from their own disciplines: some base everything on the needs of Man himself; some on Society as a system, leading to certain cultures and organizations; some concentrate on Net-

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83

works, basing their theories on communications. When I started examining the many different theories I became confused. Most discussed the form and location of the house; very few spoke of the dimensions of the room. Almost all were based on a single disciplinary viewpoint. We all now realize that only the combination of many factors can explain the process. Nature, Man, Society, and Networks all played their part. Both ecological and cultural forces were at work, for the creators of the first room were simply trying to live as well as they were able. I will use two examples to show how single factors cannot have been the cause of the form of the room. Figure 2 is taken from Professor Amos Rapoport's book House form and culture (1969) and it shows how false it is to believe that the use of a certain material automatically leads to the development of certain forms. His examples make it clear that use of the same material can lead to completely different forms in different cultures, whatever the material used (in this instance reeds, mud, cloth, and thatch). We can also cite numerous other examples that show beyond doubt that the structural material did not determine the form of the room. My second example is related to location. Some people believe that the same climate and topography will lead to similar dwelling types, but this is not the case, as is shown by Heyerdahl and Ferdon (1962) in two volumes entitled The archaeology of Easter Island. Easter Island is the most isolated island in the world. It must have received the minimum influence from outside; indeed it took centuries for visitors to come to it. Figure 3 shows a number of the examples of house rooms in Easter Island redrawn from the Norwegian study to the same scale, so they can be compared readily, one with another. There was extraordinary variation in this island with a limited area of 117 square kilometers or 53 square miles (approximately 6 by 6 miles, or the size of the ideal eighteenth-century township of the United States). Since the investigation of Easter Island was carried out thoroughly and by several independent anthropologists who sometimes represented slightly conflicting views, it provides us with a good case study. It shows that in a period covering a little over a millennium — 400 A.D. to 1800 A.D. — there was an enormous variation in the form of the room. Some are only 2 meters in diameter, others are 100 meters long. Some have thick stone walls compared to the interior spaces, others have thin walls. Some used caves, building extensions onto them, and one had steps leading to an underground structure next to the house. There were several long and narrow rooms — approximately 10 meters long — that were probably inhabited by many people. They were still lived in in 1776. Where in these examples is the unit of expression in size, form, or concept related to the natural environment?

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This last example may provide sufficient proof that Man did not start out in a single way, but that he tried many different ways. Even when immigrating to a new land, bringing with him a certain culture, he created numerous variations on his former house types. The examples shown in Figures 2 and 3 represent only a few of the typical variations found in each of the two surveys. It seems clear that we cannot accept any simplified theory. A great many factors, combined in many different ways, lead to completely different solutions for the room in terms of form, structure, dimensions, esthetics, etc. What is the cause of these different combinations? Here we need to differentiate between Man's human needs for a better room and his ability to create it. Both these aspects depend upon Nature (materials, climate, etc.), Man himself (body, senses, mind, and soul), Society (culture, etc.), and Networks (means of transport). Man's human needs can be divided into his biological necessities and his physiological needs. Man needs to breathe fresh air, and if a room has no openings at all, he will not be able to breathe after a time and will die. This is a biological necessity. An example of this physiological need is a desire not to be placed too closeto the wall for too long a period. Louis XIII, however, put some prisoners into very small caves where they lived for several years, showing that this is not a biological necessity but a physiological need. Biological necessities can perhaps be called biological laws, though we are still far from being able to record all the relevant factors so they can be inserted into a computer and give us an exact law. Even when we have fully recorded Man's necessities, however, he still may not have the ability to satisfy them. Even when Man has great ability, he may come up against great obstacles: the topography may be fine but the climate terrible. The result can never be a simple combination of the different factors. It is alway achieved by the imposition of certain conditions upon the others and the possibility of a proper synthesis. We have stated that we cannot be certain of the origin of the process of forming the human room, but that the causes leading to this formation — though many and complex — resulted from the interaction of Man's biological needs and his abilities. We can now ask whether it is possible to trace the evolution of the room by concentrating upon man's needs. It has already become clear that we cannot have a theory of the exact historical evolution of the room since this is constantly being upset by new discoveries. I shall therefore concentrate upon certain general characteristics which seem to have gradually led to the form of the universally acceptable human room. Although I will use a few historical examples to

How Can We learn about Man and His Settlements

85

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metres

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Figure 3. Easter Island: different types of rooms and houses

demonstrate certain points, they present neither the entire evolution of the room nor the whole range of types created by Man. In places where a historical sequence has been established upon one site, it seems highly probable that, even if the earliest rooms were round, there has been a gradual evolution to the orthogonal room. In many countries and civilizations where there were circular rooms initially, elliptical rooms followed, then came some rooms with some straight walls (while still retaining some curved ones), and then came rooms with a rectangular form, after which they did not change.

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We can compare this to the evolution of cells in Nature (Plate 1). First, there are isolated cells, which then come closer together and start to form systems. Rooms also start by being isolated and then becoming interconnected. This means they start to form straight line connections and come gradually to an orthogonal type of synthesis. In this the structural room is unlike the social community which, as Christaller showed in 1933, begins in isolation, gradually comes closer together, and eventually forms hexagonal systems. The reason the room comes to an orthogonal system and the community to a hexagonal one when created by the same people is that separate laws govern each ekistic unit of space. Up to a certain point we can say that the harder the unit the more it leads to orthogonal forms, and the softer the unit the more it leads to hexagonal connections. No matter how Man started to create his room, or what kinds he erected, he improved them as soon as he had the economic or technical ability to do so, and he incorporated aspects from any better rooms that were invented in his area or introduced there. Here we can recognize a process that corresponds to the biological law of evolution. As long as Man's needs were not fully satisfied by the rooms he created, he continued to alter them in different ways, until eventually he learned to build the structures that suited him best. Once Man was fully satisfied with what he had created, he simply repeated the same basic solution with only small variations. In Easter Island, Man tried hundreds of different forms over fourteen centuries. Then came the rectangular room, and all other forms were abandoned within a generation. The same is true of other places except for a few pockets of resistance. We can trace how Man always changed his room (whenever he happened to learn of a better type from others, or created a better type himself by chance or by reasoning) until he achieved a single final type: the rectangular room with a horizontal floor and ceiling, vertical walls, and set dimensions (a few meters [3 to 8] in length and breadth, and less [2.5 to 4] in height). That Man has always tended toward the same final solution for the form of his room implies that this is the form meeting his needs. If the ceiling was too low, he raised it. If the floor was uneven, he leveled it. Man always followed the same path, toward the same type of room. Movements in other directions did not prevail. In summary, we can say: 1. The first creation of the room was probably the result of both chance and human needs. 2. Its evolution was more the result of human needs than chance. We can

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repeat, therefore, what Democritus said, and what modern biology accepts as an axiom: Man creates by chance and by necessity (Monod 1970). We can now try to define necessity and its role in the formation of the room. We must explain why the room has a flat floor, a flat roof, and vertical orthogonal walls. Man begins by serving his biological needs. When he uses fire he has to release smoke (Figure 4), and perhaps this is why he has not used caves on many occasions. He needs a flat, horizontal floor to lie down on and rest, and to walk on without effort, pain, or danger of falling (Figure 5). Breathing air is a biological need, and having a flat floor a physiological one.

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Figure 4. Formation of the room: the biological needs of Man

Figure 5. Formation of the room: Man's movement

A horizontal floor leads first toward a minimum horizontal roof. This relationship is very direct. It is obvious that Man needs a space at least equal to his height in order to stand upright. This, however, is not enough. He may want to raise his arms, and this demands space above the level of his head. He may want to walk, and this increases his height by 5-10 centimeters (Figure 6). Thus the answer is not so simple.

Figure 6. Formation of the room: the moving man changes his height and defines the minimum height of the roof

How Can We Learn about Man and His Settlements

89

If we look at Man's relation to a wall we remark that he does not like to stand close to a wall looking at it. We make children do this only as a punishment. Man's eyes cannot stand short distances for more than a brief period. Very few people, for example, like to have their desks face the wall; most prefer to look out into the room. In the Middle Ages, the low-paid employees worked facing the walls; higher-paid employees faced outward. Man is connected with space in different ways. We can hear from all directions, but we see in a straight line. We have to consider these things, or else the room becomes a prison. If we now study the relation of Man with the walls of a room in terms of his body we can observe that his body does not fit into a circular, domed room whether he is standing or lying down on the floor (Figure 7). If he uses furniture it becomes even more difficult (Figure 8). He requires vertical walls.

Figure 7. Formation of the room: physiological needs of Man

Figure 8. Formation of the room: physiological needs of Man

We reach the same conclusion if we consider what Man prefers to see. He cannot enjoy a curved wall before him (Figure 9). Many years ago I made this hypothesis concerning the relation between what Man wanted to see and the room, then I proceeded to try to check whether it was true or false. I could find no scientific proofs but I checked it with optometrists, opthalmologists, and other experts of the physics of the eye, asking whether my hypothesis was right. All said that they also had no proof but that they thought I was right. Nothing in my hypothesis contradicted what they knew about Man's eye and its relation to space. In this way I concluded that Man's physiological needs reject any other solution and demand vertical walls (Figure 10). The room, then, is the result of forces of Nature, such as gravity leading

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C. A . DOXIADIS

t> 1

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Figure 9. Formation of the room: physiological needs of Man

Figure 10. Formation of the room: physiological needs of Man

to the horizontal floor, and biological and physiological needs. But we should not think that these are the only forces leading to its formation because the room is a structure and Man has learned to create the best. He does not need only one isolated room but he needs houses and buildings with many rooms, and this means a synthesis between them. They maybe isolated at the beginning (Figure 11) but economy in energy brings them closer to each other (Figure 12) and finally economy in space and structure unifies them into one system (Figure 13).

Figure 11. Formation of the room: formation of the walls

Figure 12. Formation of Figure 13. Formation of the room: formation of the the room: formation of the walls walls

It is clear that the room is directly related to the biology and physiology of Man and other laws of Nature, economy, etc., as interpreted by Man to better serve his interests. We cannot change the room, as some people are trying, without changing Man. Morphogenesis in Human Settlements varies with the type of unit with which we are dealing. From the many types of units we have selected the room, the number 2 unit, and followed its formation. We do not know how and when the formation of a room started. It probably started in many

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parts of the world, and probably the rooms had many forms and sizes. We have reason to believe that most of the first rooms were of moderate size (according to today's standards), but they may have been very small oneman, one-night huts similar, in a way, to those built and used by the apes (Clark and Piggott 1965:75) or very big ones for a whole clan as we see in Upper Paleolithic times. In any case the moment came when some primitive people had round huts and others had orthogonal ones, and when there were different types of roofs or, in some cases, no roofs at all. In at least one modern instance — that of the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in southwest Africa — there is no door to the hut; the Bushmen jump into it over the wall (Van der Post 1962:25). Of great interest for us is the fact that, no matter how the room started or how it was developed, it always ends up, given enough time for the development of a composite settlement, with a flat floor, a flat roof, and vertical orthogonal walls. We can see the reasons for this. Man probably first builds the horizontal floor, so that he can lie down and rest, and walk without great effort or pain. He then tends to build vertical, orthogonal walls. The reasons for making the walls vertical and orthogonal are many: when he is in the room he feels at ease with, and likes to see, surfaces that are vertical relative to his line of sight; he makes the walls vertical in conformity with the law of gravity; and by making them vertical and orthogonal he accommodates his furniture best and saves space when he builds two rooms side by side. For similar reasons he needs a flat roof: a horizontal surface above his head makes him feel at ease when he is inside the room, and this construction enables him to use larger pieces of natural building materials and to fit one room on top of another without any waste of space, materials, and energy. In this way the form of the room is an extension of Man in space (in terms of his physical dimensions and senses) and follows biological and structural laws.

SECOND CASE: CREATION OF THE H U M A N SCALE From the room, which is a very small ekistic unit (number 2) directly related to its inhabitants, I move to larger ekistic units (numbers 4 and 5). I move to one culture, that of the ancient Greeks. Because the room grows into the house (ekistic unit number 3) and the dwelling group (number 4) and the small neighborhood (number 5) in a way directly related to it, I now choose not only the ekistic units serving the small band, tribe, or community but the units with greater value serving more people no matter how far they may live from the units. Such are the ancient sites containing

92 C. A. DOX1ADIS

temples, shrines, altars, and statues like the Acropolis of Athens, Delphi, and Olympia and near them the agoras or markets where people communicated and created democracy. From the time of my student days I wondered why the synthesis in all such areas looked very strange (Plate 2), with not a single building parallel or vertical to another, with no axis or symmetry although most of the buildings were symmetrical. The explanations given were that the synthesis was coincidental and romantic, but I could not believe that architects who were able to refine buildings like the Parthenon were not concerned about their exact location in space. Systematic research convinced me that the synthesis was not on paper as we see it but on the actual site. What mattered was that, entering the Acropolis, Man had to see (Plate 3) a synthesis of buildings, the Lycabettus hill, the Erechtheion, the statue of Athena, the altars, then an open sector to the east, the Parthenon, without any building shielding another (Plate 4), and with the main buildings the same distance from Man. The synthesis was based on the same physiological forces of Man connecting himself with the landscape and his own architectural space. Because we are strongly influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the rectangular system of coordinates (in which every point is established by its position on a phase in relation to two lines intersecting at right angles), we had failed to recognize that the urban layouts of the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods were organized on a precisely calculated system. The rectangular system was completely unknown to the ancient Greeks. Their layouts were not designed on a drawing board; each was developed on a site in an existing landscape, free from the laws of axial coordinates. When a man stands in a landscape and looks about him, he sees its various features as part of a system of which he is the center and in which all the points on the plane are determined by their distance from him. If he wishes to establish the position of a tree, for instance, he notes that it is to his left at a distance of about seven paces and that a second tree is somewhat further to his left at a distance of about fourteen paces, or twice the distance of the first tree. He does not automatically establish the position of the two trees in relation to abstract axial coordinates; he uses a natural system of coordinates. It was this system, known as the system of polar coordinates, that formed the basis of site planning in ancient Greece. The determining factor in the design was the human viewpoint. This point was established as the first and most important position from which the whole site could be observed: usually, it was the main entrance, often emphasized by a propylon. The following principles were used: 1. Radii from the vantage point determined the position of three corners

How Can We Learn about Man and His Settlements

93

of each important building, so that a three-dimensional view of each was visible. 2. Generally, all important buildings could be seen in their entirety from the viewpoint, but if this was not possible, one building could be completely hidden by another; it was never partially concealed. 3. The radii that determined the corners of the important buildings formed certain specific angles from the viewpoint, equal in size on each site. These fell into two categories: angles of 30°, 60°, 90°, 120°, and 150°, corresponding to a division of the total field of 360° into twelve parts; and angles of 36°, 72°, 108°, and 144°, which resulted from division of the total field of vision into ten parts. 4. The position of the buildings was determined not only by the angle of vision but also by their distance from the viewpoint. 5. These distances were based on simple geometric ratios deriving from the angles of vision. Normally, the foot served as the basic unit of measurement, and the distances used were 100,150, or 200 feet or those based on simple geometric proportions that could be determined on the site. 6. One angle, frequently in the center of the field of vision, was left free of buildings and opened directly to the surrounding countryside. This represented the direction to be followed by the person approaching the site: it was the "sacred way." 7. This open angle was usually oriented toward east or west or in a specific direction associated with the local cult or tradition. 8. The buildings were often disposed so as to incorporate or accentuate features of the existing landscape and thus create a unified composition. The viewpoint from which these measurements were taken was crucial and was obviously situated not just anywhere within the main entrance, or propylon, but at a specific place within it. The examples studied show that this point lay where the geometrical axis of the propylon intersects the line of its innermost step (i.e. the final step before one entered the sanctuary) at a height of approximately 1.60 to 1.70 (5'3") to the eye level of a man of average height. This study (Doxiadis 1937), which was checked and republished in 1972 (1972d), convinces us that Man had a great ability to create a real human scale by connecting himself with Nature, as examples such as Olympia (Plate 5) demonstrate, and by creating a synthesis between his architecture and himself, as in the example of the Agora of Magnesia (Plate 6). His architectural space had a dual goal: to connect him with the natural and man-made environment by respecting his physiological needs as expressed by his movement and sight.

94

C. A. DOXIADIS

THIRD CASE: CREATION OF CITY-STATES From the room (ekistic unit 2) and the architectural space in a human scale (ekistic units 4 and 5), I move to larger ekistic units which in our days range from city (ekistic unit 8) to megalopolis (ekistic unit 12), but I do not cite them as examples because we are in a moment of explosion and are confused about them. To be certain of what I state, I go back again to Man's creation of a certain type of Human Settlement with which we are well acquainted. Such are the city-states which were created first with what we now call a town or township (ekistic unit 7) as their centers grew into cities (ekistic unit 8) and sometimes (not very often at all) into large cities (ekistic unit 9). To study such ancient cases belonging to several civilizations, I started with ancient Greece (Doxiadis 1972b), about which we know more, and then I made comparisons with other cultures and civilizations until I reached the conclusion that the city-states were created as the rooms were, in several parts of the world in many ways and forms, but at the end they all were similar because they were governed by Man's needs. They were not directly related to Man's body and sight or to his structures (as in the room) or to Man's connection with space by his sight (as in architectural space), but mainly to Man's movement, the energy and the time he could spend for his indispensable connections with Nature. I undertook lengthy research which led to a hypothesis about the basic ancient Greek village and to the first conclusions about dimensions of city-states (Doxiadis 1971:4-19; 1972e:76-89; 1973:7-16). We are now discovering the dimensions of the basic ancient Greek cities and the city-states created over the centuries which were the real cities. We can call them the natural cities, based on Aristotle (Politics I, i, 8-9).) From his statement, it seems that the Greeks of his day were attacking the city just as some of us today attack the megalopolis: "The partnership finally composed of several villages is the city-state. It has at last attained the limit of virtually complete self-sufficiency, and thus, while it comes into existence for the sake of life, it exists for the good life. Hence every city-state exists by nature inasmuch as the first partnerships so exist." A few lines after that he adds: "From these things, therefore, it is clear that the city-state is a natural growth, and that man is by nature a political animal." He is "political" in the sense that he is going to the city, to the "polis." In this "city," practically half of the inhabitants live within the walls (ten minutes maximum distance from the center) and the rest live in villages within an hour from the center, with perhaps a few cultivators up to two hours away. The hypothesis was made that the small town consisted of an area containing six villages with a walking radius to the

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most distant fields of up to 8 kilometers (5 miles). That is two hours for a farmer. Theoretically, such a small town should have an area of 170 square kilometers. But could I check this hypothesis? We began to test it, and it is interesting that the areas we studied in Epirus, Macedonia, Thrace, the Peloponnesos, and the island of Thera showed an average city-state of 164 square kilometers (Table 1). Other authors, independently of our studies, have given sizes of citystates which lead to an average of 154 square kilometers (Table 2). If we combine these results, we reach an average of 162 square kilometers versus the theoretical 170 (Table 3). This average is based on research covering 34.9 percent of the area of modern Greece, which is less than the ancient Greek territories. Size of area

Average area

No. towns

Epirus Macedonia-Thrace Peloponnesos Thera

2938 2804 3044 76

9 18 26 1

327 156 132 76

Total

8862

54

164

Plus sea

'

1? 180

Table 1. The small towns in the area we studied: 6.7% of Greece Size of area

No. towns

Average area

Parts of Mainland Greece Parts of the Peloponnesos Some of the islands

7188 14170 15844

70 110 119

103 129 133

Total

37202

299

140 14 154

Plus sea

Table 2. The small towns in other Greek areas not studied by us but by others: 28.4% of Greece

Average Average area area without sea with sea

Size of area

No. towns

Our studies Other areas

8862 37202

54 299

164 140

180 154

Total

46064

353

147

162

Table 3.

Studies covering 34.9% of Greece

C. A. D O X I A D I S

96

In the areas of ancient Greek settlements in Catalonia, we found that the average distance between four ancient Greek settlements was 16.2 kilometers versus a theoretical average of 16.4 kilometers, and in southern France the average distance between twenty-nine ancient Greek settlements was about 17.5 kilometers. More interesting and more convincing were our findings when we began to look into other cultures on the basis of data which I collected from many studies (Table 4). Although the areas of the cities are not al1. 2. 3. 4. S. 6. 7. 8. 9.

China Palestine Etrurla Persian Empire Angkor Empire Maya culture Japan Indian penlnaula Bavaria (Christaller)

road distance a little more than 15 km. direct distance a little less than 22 km. " " " " " 22 km. 22.7 km. road distance Μ It 15km. a little leas then 18 km. » η »i ii ι» Μ 20 km. η ι» ·· it ι· η 19 km. 2 0 · ton. direct distance M

Table 4. Distance between small towns

ways known, we can calculate the average distances between two basic towns. In China it is 15 kilometers or a bit more; in Palestine it is less than 22 kilometers; in Etruria it is less that 22 kilometers; the Persian Empire created systems with towns separated by an average distance of just under 23 kilometers; in Angkor the Empire had a system with 15 kilometers as the distance; the Maya culture used less than 18 kilometers; in Japan up to the last century we find 20 kilometers; the Indian peninsula has 16 kilometers; and in Bavaria, the man who opened our eyes to the hexagonal system of Human Settlements — Christaller — found an average of 20.8 kilometers. We can conclude that mankind has been creating a system of basic towns with an average distance of 18 kilometers apart. In this way we begin to understand that the average distance of 16.2 kilometers that we found in Greece makes sense. In fact, we begin to understand how Man has organized his relation to space. These basic towns and ther territories are the most elementary city-states, corresponding to ekistic unit 7, and seven of them led to larger and less common city-states (ekistic unit 8). In the same way we can follow up the creation of larger units and find the forces shaping them. It is now clear that Man, on the basis of his energy and time, has always created territorial systems for hunter's clans, farmers' villages and then the first urban systems and settlements. Biology and physiology play a great role together with Nature and Man's organizational capacities. If his organizational capacity is limited then he is limited to the village

C . A. D O X I A D I S

in

nature

territories of primitive settlements

in human settlements

jfirst

phase

third

fourth grid 10x10m

Plate 1.

phase grid 1 0 x 1 0 k m

The evolution of cells, rooms and territories of Human Settlements

First phase: volvox colony; Kumasa, Crete Second phase: cells of brewer's yeast; Orchomenos, Boeotia Third phase: cells of sunflower seed; Malthi Messinia Fourth phase: honeycomb; Knossos, Crete

How Can We Learn about Man and His Settlements

mtttrs 0

so Plate 2.

1

Athens, Acropolis, 450-330 B.C.

PROPYLAEA

7

PARTHENON

2 TEMPLE OF NIKE

8

CHALKOTHEKE

3 PINAKOTHEKE

9 S A N C T U A R Y OF B R A U R O N I A ARTEMIS

4

B U I L D I N G OF U N K N O W N F U N C T I O N

10

ASKLEPIEION

5 HOUSE OF THE ARREPHOROI

1 1 THEATRE OF DIONYSOS

6

12 ODEION OF PERIKLES

ERECHTHEION

C. A. DOXIADIS

Plate 4.

Athens, Acropolis, after 450 B.C., plan

How Can We Learn about Man and His Settlements

Plate 5.

Olympia, Altis

Plate 6.

Magnesia, Agora

How Can We Learn about Man and His Settlements

O

φ

S

Μ

TW*

«s n o t

It

tho

is

Loft

IS

tho

it

Figure 14.

j f r UfMAN

^

β

Λ

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49

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prison.

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OWtLLies mVWO

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WITHIN THE

r*»xt»l

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ntHiii

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Μ

city

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olon·

»

»m

enr

«AOS »VT COMIN·

m i

DAILY TO 1HC CITY

mQucwLY

The real city

*S

Μ

98

C. A. DOXIADIS

(ekistic unit 6), if it is somewhat developed he has his elementary city-state with a township at the center which should be seen not just as a built-up area (Figure 14) but as a real and much more complex system (Figure 15). In this way we can estimate the average dimensions of a town (ekistic unit 7) (Figure 16) or the connections of some city-states into confederations, or larger city-states (ekistic unit 8) (Figure 17), or even larger ones (ekistic unit 9) (Figure 18).

km

0

AREA_„

170.»

MAXIMUM

DISTANCE

OISTANCE

BETWEEN

Figure 16.

FROM

CENTER

CENTERS

C-C

Ο ANO

D-C

kmJ

1.10

km

5.32

km ,

Small city D : community class IV, ekistic unit 7

How Can We Learn about Man and His Settlements

99

A CHANGING RELATIONSHIP A systematic study of Human Settlements leads us to understand that Man was always guided by five basic principles (Doxiadis 1970). I do not insist that there are only these five, but since I first published them I have found no reason to doubt their validity or add to their number. The first principle is Man's desire to maximize his potential contacts.He therefore looks for a location that maximizes not his actual contacts (he may not want to visit anyone at all) but his potential contacts (Figure 19).

AREA

1,195.1 km 2

MAXIMUM

0 I STANCE

FROM

DISTANCE

BETWEEN

CENTERS

MAXIMUM

DISTANCE

BETWEEN

Figure 17.

CENTER 0-0

Ε ANO

CENTERS

_22.t E-0

kin

.U.I

km

E-C._....,_.I9.1

km

City E: community class V, ekistic unit 8

100

C. A. DOXIADIS

The second principle is that Man always tries to act with a minimum of effort. When he encounters a physical obstacle, such as a mountain, he does not cross it by the most difficult route (Figure 20). The third principle is the optimization of Man's protective space. Man does not like to be in danger or to be squeezed, either as an individual or a group — unless for very short periods and for special purposes. Only in moments of great love or great danger do we willingly squeeze up close to one another (Figure 21).

Km

0

U u .

A REA

8,369.0 k m 2

-

MAXIMUM

DISTANCE

FROM

OISTANCE

BETWEEN

CENTERS

MAXIMUM

DISTANCE

OF

CENTERS

F

ANO

0

50.7 km

MAXIMUM

DISTANCE

OF

CENTERS

F

ANO

C

55.8 k m

Figure 18.

CENTER F

58.7 k m AND

Ε

„.37.2 k m

Large city F: community class VI, ekistic unit 9

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101

The fourth principle is the optimization of Man's relation to the ekistic elements: Nature, Man, Shells, Society, Networks (Figure 22). The fifth principle is the synthesis of all previous ones, which we will be able to see operating in the case of the room (Figure 23). In addition to these five principles, we can draw certain laws such as optimum amount of space, optimum distance from walls, etc. These are not principles. A principle says: "I do not want to be squeezed, except at certain special moments of love or fear." The law states how much my body can stand to be squeezed, and for how long. These are two different things. Specific aspects of certain principles gradually come to be expressed as laws which are much more numerous and detailed. After studying the room, human scale, and city-state with an understanding of the five basic principles, we can now be certain about several points: 1. The Human Settlements are the product of many forces of Nature and Man, beginning with a basic natural force such as gravity and continuing to include Man, from his biological to his organizational capacities. 2. These forces vary from case to case, but they vary mainly in terms of territorial units because they are different in a room, a house, a small and a large town. 3. In a general sense, the smaller the unit the greater the direct influence of Man — a room depends mainly on him but a large city depends more on Nature. A lifelong study of these changing forces has led me gradually to a first model of their relationship (Doxiadis 1968b) which has been tried again and again first in hundreds and finally in thousands of cases of which about one thousand are cities. I am now in a position to present a scale model of the probable validity of these forces (Figure 24). We can take the following two examples: 1. In the case of a small town, the forces of Nature are very important (gravity, land, water, air, climate), but other factors also play roles: the biological and physiological needs of Man (how to walk, what Man likes to look at, etc.), social organization (formation of community, township, etc.), the need of proper structure (combination of rectangular buildings with rectangular plots and blocks, etc.), the forces of growth (economic, etc.), the systems of movement of people (kinetic fields, etc.), and organization (whether there is a large city hall, cathedral, or a regional administrative center, etc.). 2. As the small town grows into a large town, large city, metropolis, etc., the values of the forces change, and Nature (mountains, rivers, etc.) plays a much greater role, as do the forces of growth, movement, and organization.

102

Ο Μ

Ο Ο

C. A. DOXIADIS

Β

Man other elements

χ

η

— direct human contacts other contacts

Figure 19. First Principle: maximization of potential contacts. Given certain conditions in a certain area, man will select the location which permits a maximum of potential contacts

Figure 20. Second Principle: at a minimum of effort in terms of energy, time and cost. Man selects the most convenient routes

Figure 22. Fourth Principle: optimization of the quality of man's relations with his environment

Φ

tion of man's protective space

Sheds

Ο

Natu»

Figure 23. Fifth Principle: optimization of the synthesis of the four previous principles

How Can We Learn about Man and His Settlements

103

The conclusions are clear: Human Settlements and cities are high order, complex organisms which, as growing ekistic systems, develop a different and continuously changing relationship with Nature because their dimensions change and depend to an ever greater extent on certain types of human action such as Networks and Organization. As a result, the overall synthesis of the system and its structure changes and finally we get confused unless we analyze the evolution in a systematic way. We certainly can now understand the relationship of Man and his Settlements, but we need a much more systematic and much more scientific approach in order to achieve it as quickly as possible.

1 gravity 2 geographical - land , w a t e r 3 g e o g r a p h i c a l - air . c l i m a t e U biological 5 physiological

Figure 24.

6 7 8 9 10 11

social inner s t r u c t u r e external structure growth movement organization

Probable validity of the forces of ekistic synthesis (assumption sue)

104

C. A. DOXIADIS

FIRST PROPOSAL: A CITY FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT Following the effort to understand Human Settlements and the principles and forces that lead towards their formation we must set a goal for the future. This goal can only be the formation of a city for human development. My first proposal is to work for it and I have already written a full proposal (Doxiadis 1972a) of which I present here a very short outline. Aristotle correctly defined the aim of the city: to provide both security and happiness for its inhabitants. This must always be so, and most civilizations of the past have tried to succeed in this effort. Today, however, these goals are no longer sufficient. Because of the colossal explosion of forces in science, technology, energy, population, etc., Man is facing new situations. Man is no longer in the same balance with his whole environment as he used to be. It is therefore of the greatest importance that Man develop himself so that he can be happy and safe within the new world he is building. Just as Man was obliged to adapt himself to the new conditions when he created the first cities, so he must adapt himself now to the dynamic city or Dynapolis which is evolving into megalopolis and laying the foundation for the global city or Ecumenopolis. So that we can know how Man as a scientist faces this problem and how he can help to achieve a human city, I offer a proposal. I do so as a craftsman who builds houses and cities, and one who feels the need to have our thoughts develop in a responsible manner. I do this in order to facilitate the action that we need. My proposal is based on a system of eighteen hypotheses. 1. We are dealing with a very complex, dynamic system of life on the surface of the earth, where each part influences all other parts. These influences follow principles and laws, some of which we know and some of which we do not know because of their complexity. The whole is a dynamically changing system with positive or negative effects on its parts depending on the criteria we use. 2. Throughout human history Man has been guided by the same five principles in every attempt he makes to live normally and survive by creating a settlement which is the physical expression of his system of life. The five elements are: maximization of contacts, minimization of effort, optimization of protective space, optimization of relations, optimization in the synthesis. 3. The most important and most difficult to apply of the five principles serving human needs is the fifth one, guiding Man to achieve the proper balance between the other four principles. Man's attention to the whole system of life is indirect; his direct interest is his own safety, happi-

How Can We Learn about Man and His Settlements

105

ness, and at times development. Balance, on the basis of human satisfaction, is Man's ultimate goal when dealing with his system of life. Our goal should be to reach a new balance between Man and Nature corresponding to the many changes which have occurred as a result of Man's needs and development; a balance no longer expressed at the village scale (this was the goal nine to ten thousand years ago) or the city scale, but at all scales from Man to the whole earth. This means that the system of Man, Nature, and the other elements will have to change direction with all of them moving toward the same goal. 4. Human Settlements have been more successful, have made their inhabitants happier and longer-lived when the fifth principle of a balance among the other four principles has been well applied. 5. Human Settlements will be created in the future by Man according to his own five principles, which cannot be changed. 6. The huge city is inevitable. It is already growing and it is going to grow even more, for it is now a multispeed city. Our task is to discover and understand why and how the city is changing now and in the future and where this continuous change will lead. 7. The future city is going to be much more complex in every respect for many reasons, from new technology and new dimensions (as we have already seen) to the three forces which condition its shape. All these factors taken together lead to a very high degree of complexity. 8. The future city is going to grow much more than the city of the present because of the growth of population, which will take time to decelerate, because of the growth of income and energy, which is needed and demanded by all, and because of the growth of Man's mobility. The leveling off of the population on the earth is going to be achieved in a few generations. 9. Our city is in a crisis which is caused by the imbalance among its five elements. There are many reasons for this imbalance but the basic reasons are the increase in all the city's dimensions (people, area, energy, economy) and the change in its physical structure. All these are going to lead to a much greater increase in problems. We have learned from psychiatry that anatomy is Man's destiny, and I think that the same may be said for the city. 10. The inevitable evolution in the structure and the dimensions of the city leads to a universal city, Ecumenopolis, which eventually will be a static city like the ancient ones and therefore will reach a balance of its five elements. 11. Human development must first seek to help the average person devel-

106

C. A. DOXIADIS

op to his maximam potential (as we now prolong life for longevity) and, second, to increase gradually the level of this potential to its maximum in order to help humanity develop further. 12. The greatest diiference in the relationship between Man and his Settlements is the difference between people in varying phases of their life. Any adult can walk in the street with cars; even if he has not seen one before he can adjust to them, but a one-year-old child cannot. A man living in a primitive cultural phase would find the task difficult, but he still could save himself from such a great danger much better than the child could. 13. Man should be given the opportunity to move out, as far and to as many places as he needs, in every phase of his development. This, for the average person, means to start from the minimum distance — the body of his mother — and to expand until he reaches the whole earth or even go beyond it and then, gradually, reduce his movement to the smaller areas corresponding to his actual needs, interests, and abilities (Figure 25). This is an ultimate goal facilitated by modern science and technology. 14. Man should be given the opportunity to move by himself without outside assistance as far out as he wishes and in the best possible way for him in every phase of his development. 15. A city must guarantee for everybody the best possible development under conditions of freedom and safety. The city must be tailored to Man as clothes are tailored to our bodies. We must not attempt to tailor Man to fit the city. We always have to think how the city can be built to fit human needs. This means that the Man-built environment (Shells and Networks) should protect Man physically from adverse exposures to his physical environment. This also should apply to Nature, with its various aspects that all serve Man as structures and as functions. 16. A city planned for human development must create a system that challenges every citizen to enjoy it and develop to his maximum; this can only be a system of quality that transmits the notion of order. This can be done if the system has the proper quality at an optimum level, not too low and not too high, with the larger part of the system representing an order and parts of it a disorder. We cannot expect civilization to be created in the jungle, although a garden can be like a jungle in its parts within a system that is orderly as a whole. This quality should be related to the natural, physical (created by Man), and social environment. 17. Without exception, Man needs to maximize potential contacts with people while minimizing the energy required to do so, and this has to be accomplished without endangering the quality and quantity of his contacts. This requires a gradual exposure to the city and its people, with an optimum situation for every development phase allowing for the possibil-

How Can We Learn about Man and His Settlements

Ekistic

unit

Community class Kinetic field

12 11 10

U1

9

01 ö -C w

c σ

8

CL

7

c

ε « 3 Ε

JZ

6

α. ο

5

>

4

41

Ό

3 2 1

name of unit population

Figure 25.

Mobility in space: conquering the world

ity throughout Man's lifetime of exposure to any area with a different type and intensity of contacts. 18. The task of the city is basically to help the source of energy — the individual — to respond to all challenges and develop to meet as many new ones as possible. If this can be achieved from the individual's first relationship to his environment, then the source of his energy becomes stronger and can overcome even more hindrances. Such a well-developed source of energy will finally be able to conquer the whole physical, sensory, and intellectual space which surrounds it, although this does not necessarily mean that it can conquer all obstacles within this space.

SECOND PROPOSAL: THE ANTHROPOCOSMOS MODEL We cannot achieve our ultimate goal of a city for human development un·

108

C. A. DOXIADIS

less we learn more about Man's relationship to Human Settlements. This is a very big effort and in order to make it successful we need a proper model of our system of life. My second proposal is therefore to develop and use a comprehensive model of Man's world and system of life, that is the Anthropocosmos model. One of the main reasons why Man is suffering today in his cities is that, unable to understand what is happening around him, he reacts to the most pressing symptoms but does not deal with main causes, thereby missing the total situation. The confusion in our understanding can be illustrated by taking one example and looking at how ideas of the city have changed over the last two generations. Forty years ago, when I was a student, discussions of the city referred only to monumental buildings and slums, to expansive avenues and narrow, romantic alleys. Later, when I was a young professional, cities were described in terms of their traffic problems, and the solutions were technologically impressive highways. In the fifties the social aspects of city problems were considered paramount. In recent years the emphasis has shifted to problems related to the natural environment. Thus in forty years, the public image of the city in high-income countries has shifted from buildings, to transportation, to society, and now to nature. This means we have continued to be side-tracked into concentrating upon certain symptoms and we miss the total situation of the city. We tend to forget that the city of Man represents the area of the minimum influence of Nature and the maximum activity of Society, expressed through Man's Shells (constructions) and Networks (mobility). The city cannot be understood by a single element but only by all five elements considered together. We have not achieved this, and we remain confused about cities. We have not achieved this because Man is in the midst of an explosion which has upset the balances that different cultures have created in various parts of the earth as a result of long centuries of effort. We will solve none of today's problems if we concentrate on only one subject, such as Man or water, and on isolated relations, such as those between Man and Nature, Man and Buildings, Man and Networks, or Man and Society. All our mistakes can be attributed to just such isolations of relationships. To take a single example: the motorways that were supposed to solve the traffic problems of cities created many new problems for Society, for Nature, and for Man's cultural values. We live in Nature. Our real frame is not just the earth, for if the sun were to lose its energy or the planets of the solar system disappear, our life would be totally disoriented. But we are no longer at the primitive stage of utter dependence on the forces of Nature. We have learned how to

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109

come to terms with it. History shows that Man has always fought Nature in order to survive: killing animals, or burning forests to start cultivation. His goal was to create his own system of life by achieving a balance between the existing system and its laws and his own interests. Thus, even at the start we must consider not just Man and Nature, but Man and his Human Settlements which combine Nature and Society and which, in its first stages, could be called a "biosphere," later to be replaced by a system totally constructed by Man (expressed in his Shells and Networks) which could be called a "technosphere." Our task is to define the system of our life, which is finally expressed by Human Settlements so clearly that the definition can contain every part, aspect, expression, or opinion, known or unknown, foreseen or unforeseen. After we have defined it we must learn to control it wisely for the sake of all mankind. Success will depend on our ability to create new balances corresponding to new developments. This means discovering what we dislike and can change, what we love and can keep, and what we love but must change. The first is easy from the conceptual point of view, but the last is very difficult. We will be forced, however, to change situations that we love. We need houses for those who have none, and these may cover fields that are beautiful in the spring. The question is which fields to choose, how many and where, and how to create parks and gardens that will bring a better balance between Man and Nature. The whole system of our life must be both our subject and our goal. It must be our subject, because if we leave out any part of it the system becomes disrupted. It must be our goal, because if we cannot constantly maintain a balance within it we shall be destroyed. This system of life is Anthropocosmos — the World of Man. It contains everything that we can imagine and it has only one aim: to satisfy Man. Man's aim cannot be to satisfy Nature — either for the sake of the mosquito or the dinosaur. When the dinosaurs were eliminated only they protested. To achieve a balanced Anthropocosmos, we must approach all problems systematically, avoiding partial views of particular elements of special goals. We must continually create order out of the chaos through which we are passing, and this is no easy task. We have been trying for years at the Athens Center of Ekistics to handle a number of research projects in a strictly systematic way. 1 We follow a precise method of classifying the subject matter of the articles in Ekistics.2 We use the same general system in 1 2

See Ekistics, April 1972 for a summary. See the ekistic grid on the inside cover of each issue of Ekistics.

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our annual seminars and in university lectures, teaching courses, and congresses concerned with, or interested in, ekistics. Our experience shows that we are on the right track, but there is still a long way to go. The subject is so vast, it contains so many elements and so many different viewpoints that people are overwhelmed by the amount of information. We can take heart from the fact that Man has managed to extricate himself from periods of confusion in the past. Until recently, however, the dimensions of city problems were on a human scale of walking distances, seeing, etc. After thousands of years of experience with these dimensions, it was not too difficult for Man to understand the totality of his system of life. He could discover the causes of his problems and invent reasonable solutions. Huge increases in the dimensions of space and energy and decreasing time make it extremely difficult now for Man to discern his system of life — his position in his cosmos. We have to turn from sentimental to objective approaches: instead of seeking to follow psychological or political lines of thought, we must use scientific methods to seek out the truth. This requires that we create an orderly system to confront our present chaos. The only way to do this that I can see is: 1. Define our total system of life — the Anthropocosmos — in such a way that any part of it can be clearly located. 2. Define the system of all relationships (causal and noncausal) that may exist between any parts of the system so that we can understand its operation and its changes. 3. Define a method for the evaluation and measurement of all parts of the system and its interrelationships (including those that cannot be scientifically measured) so we can recognize the relative importance of each problem. The system of our life consists of five elements in the following order of creation: Nature; Man, the individual (the forgotten element); Society (more important in some political systems than the individual); Shells; Networks. Nature consists of air, land, water, climate, flora, and fauna. Each part has many different aspects. Climate is related to temperature and humidity, rains and winds, etc. In total, Nature can probably be well represented by thirty-two basic components. Man varies from individual to individual, but he can be examined systematically in terms of twelve phases of his life. Man also consists of his body, his five senses, his mind and his soul, meaning he can be seen in eight different ways. Thus Man, throughout his life, can be represented by ninety-six components. What a baby sees, what an adolescent hears, and what an old man needs in order to move around in space are very different.

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Society can be regarded in two basic ways: in terms of size and in terms of development. Society is very different if we are dealing with a small neighborhood of a few hundred people or a metropolis of several millions. To evaluate this aspect of Society we can use the classification of the fifteen ekistic units that range from a single individual to the total population of Ecumenopolis. We also have to differentiate between primitive and more advanced societies. For this, we can use six developmental phases, thus arriving at ninety components (fifteen social units in six phases). Shells represent all types of building construction and can be classified in various groups: indispensable buildings, such as houses; symbolic structures, such as temples; technological structures, such as power stations. Experience shows that these can usefully be classified in about twenty categories. Networks include all land, sea, and air routes as well as utility systems (water supplies, sewerage systems, gas and electricity conduits) and all telecommunications networks. The totality of these can be classified in about twenty categories. In sum we now have 258 basic components derived from the five elements forming our Anthropocosmos. These 258 elements, however, can only be understood in terms of the relations among them, such as how the proximity of a baby to a road changes its character or how the building of a factory can change a local microclimate (by raising the air temperature or emitting fumes, etc.). This means it is necessary to multiply the 258 components by 258, resulting in 66,564 relationships some of which may be causal, like the ones mentioned above, and some noncausal. For instance, it may be difficult to judge the effect of a certain type of plant upon a specific building, other than by its esthetic appeal. In the light of my own experience, however, I will enumerate certain ways in which we can review these components and their relationships that can, I believe, help to lead us out of the present chaos. First, we must differentiate among units of space. The impact of a factory upon a small town is very different from its impact upon a continent. Any phenomenon can be understood only if we examine it in its appropriate unit of space ,from the smallest unit of Man himself (with his body, his clothing, his furniture) to the next unit, the room, then the house and the neighborhood, up to the city, and, finally, the whole earth. Next comes the time scale, divided into at least ten units from one second to a thousand years. Any evaluation of the components and their relationships must be regarded in terms of time. Some noises may bother us only for a second; some ocean pollution may affect us forever. One's actions tomorrow may have little effect upon a metropolis, but they can

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seriously affect one's own home. This means we also have to deal with 150 units of space-time. The third criterion is an evaluation of their quality. To arrive at any understanding of the meaning of the components of the five elements and their relationships with Man and his values, we have to examine them in the light of Man's basic concerns: economic, social, political (or administrative), technological (or functional), and cultural (such as esthetic, etc.). Fourth comes what I call the reality: the criterion of desirability and feasibility. We may dream of an ideal city in a wonderful garden but we have to recognize that it is not feasible today, and may never be so. The result is that we have ten criteria of evaluation (five each seen in two ways) and this leads to 1,500 units of time-space as seen by Man. By means of them we can evaluate what is happening, or what may happen, to any element or relationship. We can perceive its structure, follow its development, and recognize whether or not it is healthy. If it is unhealthy, we can see how to move from observation and diagnosis to therapy. In this way we can begin to establish an order out of the present chaotic and confused situation. We have 258 basic components of the system of our life — our Anthropocosmos — and these have 66,564 relationships among them which can be understood and evaluated by means of a system of 1,500 units. Our conceptual model, which can illuminate all aspects of the Anthropocosmos as a developing system, has 100,000,000 parts. This is a frightening figure, and really a simplified and reduced one because every part of the elements can be immensely subdivided. It helps if we look at a simplified graphic model (Figure 26) on which we can record, in an organized way, everything that exists or is happening in the system as a whole or in any particular part of it (Figure 27). On this model we can pinpoint our subject, be it the science of anthropology or of architecture (Figure 28). At another scale, we can then see what role each of the disciplines plays in this context and what connections it has to make in greater detail (Figure 27). If we make the effort to place our specific problems in this model, we can see where we stand, where we can go, and where and how we can join forces with others to cover the complex system of the Anthropocosmos. I have used this model in many ways and have gradually reached the point of publishing it and presenting it to clients and scientific groups. 3 3

It was used in serving several projects for different clients and then published first in Urban America and the role of industry, prepared for the National Association of Manufacturers, then in Ekistics, December 1971 and July 1972, then in City for human development. It also appeared in 1973 in Nature in the round, edited by Nigel Calder (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson).

How Can We Learn about Man and His Settlements

units

I

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113

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The Anthropocosmos model

My experience has been that it has always proved helpful. I have never received any meaningful negative comment and I have found that it can be used both for very simple empirical problems and for heuristic and, in part, for deterministic models. I am, therefore, convinced that its wider use can help bring order into our thinking about the complex problems of today.

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A PLAN FOR ACTION Up to now I have spoken in terms of learning and science, which we badly need, but I must conclude with a plan of action. I am a strange animal, studying and learning at night only so I may build in the morning. We need the scientific approach but we cannot wait until it is fully developed. We build every day, committing humanity at a speed and with a volume equal to 300 to 500 times more than the average effort of Man in the last 10,000 years. In one generation's time we will create more Human Settlements than in the last 10,000 years. We must act as quickly as possible. I appeal to anthropologists to help the broader efforts such as the one organized by the International Federation of Institutes for Advanced

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How Can We Learn about Man and His Settlements

units of time

criteria valuation

mlity

examples: i l l

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Figure 28. plines

The Anthropocosmos model: definition of the role of sciences and disci-

Study (IFIAS) for a project for Housing Settlements4 or the United Nations Conference for Human Settlements planned for 1976 in Canada by taking a position through special meetings on the following points: 1. What is the goal of a city? Is it for human development or something else? Those who make decisions every day around the world in building Human Settlements do not have a clear goal in mind. Who, other than 4

International Federation of Institutes for Advanced Study (IFIAS), Stockholm, Sweden.

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anthropologists, knows more about Man's real desires and goals? We need an answer from those who know Man, and a special meeting to be held in 1974 before the 1976 United Nations Conference on Human Settlements can help us. 2. We badly need the proper Anthropocosmos model. Again, anthropologists can improve this model to reflect better all the aspects of interest to Man. If we miss any aspect of connection in this model we may miss it in practice, thereby committing a major error. My proposals are intended to mobilize the anthropologists' resources in order to help Man build a better city for his future. All of us need this help, from individuals, to corporations, to national leaders who decide every day on commitments for Human Settlements with the best of good intentions (in most cases) but without the proper knowledge. We act without proper knowledge and guidance for our cities; we fail; and then we cry and speak about good intentions and therapy. It is time to recognize that the medicine for Human Settlements tries only to be curative (unsuccessfully) and cannot yet even conceive of preventive medicine, which is the real medicine we need.

REFERENCES ARISTOTLE

n.d. a Physics. n.d. b Politics. CHRISTALLER, W .

1966

Central places in southern Germany. Translated by C. W. Baskin from the German edition of 1933. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: PrenticeHall.

CLARK, GRAHAME, STUART PIGGOTT

1965 Prehistoric societies. London: Hutchinson. DOXIADIS, C. A.

1937 Raumordnung im griechischen Städtebau. Berlin: Kurt Vowinckel. 1968a Ekistics: an introduction to the science of human settlements. London and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1968b Ekistic synthesis of structure and form. Ekistics (October):395-415. 1970 "The future of human settlements," in The place of value in a world of facts. Edited by Arne Tiselius and Sam Nilsson. New York: John Wiley and Sons. 1971 Ancient Greek settlements. Ekistics (January):4-19. 1972a City for human development. Athens Center of Ekistics Monograph Series, Research Report 12. 1972b The method for the study of the ancient Greek settlements. Athens Center of Ekistics Report RR-ACE 184A.

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1972c The two-headed eagle: from the past to the future of human settlements. Athens: Lycabettus Press. 1972d Architectural space in ancient Greece. Translated by Jaqueline Tyrwhitt from the German edition of 1937. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press. 1972e Ancient Greek settlements: second annual report. Ekistics (February): 76-89. 1973 Ancient Greek settlements: third report. Ekistics (January):7-16. HEYERDAHL, THOR, EDWIN N. FERDON, editors 1962 The archaeology of Easter Island. London: Allen and Unwin. MONOD, JACQUES

1970 Le hasard et la necessite. Paris: Editions du Seuil. PIOOOTT, STUART

1967 Ancient Europe. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. VAN DER POST, LOREN

1962 The lost world of the Kalahari. Baltimore: Penguin. RAPOPORT, AMOS

1969 House form and culture. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

SECTION TWO

Human Characteristics

Introduction

One of the purposes of considering man-environment interaction crossculturally and over time is to try to trace patterns, regularities, constancies and differences. One of the questions with which one is then faced is whether there are any meaningful general constancies, whether there are any regularities in response to particular problems — in a word whether there are any species-specific HUMAN requirements for environments and ways of structuring and construing them. Some of the questions may be answered by broadly based crosscultural and time-based studies which may reveal cultural universals (or at least commonalities) as well as culture-specific or culture-bound features. But there is also another approach to these questions. This is to ask whether any insight can be obtained about human characteristics by analyzing man's animal origins, by considering his evolutionary background, by examining the physical and social environment in which mankind evolved, and by looking at the biological and behavioral constancies in people. This kind of question about regularities underlying great apparent cultural diversity has been addressed by linguists (and was, in fact, the subject of the second conference at Racine, on the psychic unity of mankind — see Loflin and Silverberg i.p.). It is also a question increasingly raised by a number of people in several disciplines.1 Some have pointed out several striking similarities between aspects of animal behavior, spatial and aspatial, and human behavior. Others point out that man has apparently not changed anatomically, neurologically or 1

For example, Rene Dubos, Lionel Tiger, Robin Fox, S. V. Boyden, Glen McBride, and many ethologists.

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psychologically since he became man; that he evolved in environments which changed cyclically with time and where he was subjected to certain kinds of stresses and activity levels; that he evolved in small groups with intense face-to-face interaction and for most of his history he has been mobile. It may then follow that particular environments are at odds with this evolutionary setting and that, cultural adaptation notwithstanding, the biological principle of phylogenic maladjustment may then apply to people. These approaches and some of the questions which they raise can easily be misused. Yet they do raise some valid, and important, matters which must affect the way in which man-environment interaction is analyzed. For example, what (if any) are the constraints on human environmental choice? Are there certain types of responses which are typical? Are certain environmental solutions invalid because of species-specific considerations? What is the implication of concepts like "place" or "territory"? Is mobility "natural" or "unnatural"? And so on. These questions clearly could not be answered fully here. The papers in this section were meant, however, to address these kinds of questions. While they do not really answer them, or possibly even get close, they do address some issues in this general area and suggest some possible ways in which these questions could be tackled. It seems to be one of the most important areas for investigation needed in order to begin validly to generalize about man-environment interaction. I hope that before too long some data may become available. Esser approaches the question from a biological, evolutionary, and philosophical perspective and argues that evolution has left a conflict between different aspects of the human brain and that certain changes in the environment are in conflict with certain constancies. Given that situation, there are two possible "solutions" to the problem. One is to argue that these constancies are to be taken as givens and the changes are hence undesirable. The other is to accept the changes and argue that the conflict can be resolved by further, new forms of evolution. Esser takes the second position whereas I incline to the first. In either case, though, the constancies need to be discovered, the conflicts identified and change reinterpreted. In both cases, it would seem that some environmental changes must be seen as undesirable, that there are some limits and constraints (based on our very nature) on what we can do in the environmental field, as in many others. The difference in the two positions, although still a very significant one, is one of degree. Whereas I argue that man's constancies severely limit his choices, Esser and others take the view that these limitations are less critical and man can tran-

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scend his evolutionary background. Yet the very fact that these issues are raised and have to be faced shows the importance of Esser's and other comparable approaches and is, of course, a specific instance of a perennial question: the extent to which cultural adaptive processes can overcome situations of phylogenic maladjustment and also whether these adaptations may, in themselves, be harmful. It is also interesting to note that starting, as he does, from a very different position, Esser also stresses the importance of images and schemata. These are important at least partly for efficiency because they help organisms to handle the world by coding information in more efficient ways. This, then, provides another link with some of the concepts of cognitive anthropology and also leads to a discussion of Jung's archetypes. These, in terms of the general tenor of this section, can be interpreted somewhat differently — as the most likely forms of images and schemata (see McCully [1971] for a Jungian approach to clinical material), and we could then argue for constancy in the schemata and images (i.e. archetypes) used in shaping environments. Greverus takes a more ethological perspective. She examines the relevance of territoriality in people: she asks whether ethological concepts can be applied to people (whether there is such a thing as human ethology) and whether such concepts are relevant to cultural anthropology and to man-environment interaction specifically. It should be pointed out that, in fact, ethological concepts (methodological, spatial [home range, core area, territory, etc.] and behavioral [density, crowding]) have been extremely influential in man-environment studies although they have sometimes been applied simplistically. Greverus adds a new dimension, however, by posing the question of the possible relation of territory to IDENTITY as well as safety and need satisfaction. This is a most important concept which relates to notions such as the symbolism of place (Rapoport 1972) and also the relation of territory and place to identity, exclusiveness, and aggression. Her ideas are, then, clearly related to the papers by Duncan and McBride and Clancy in this volume, and also raise the question of the specific devices used by different groups to mark territory. McBride and Clancy, in fact, link the ethological and human perspectives in a design-oriented way. They suggest that the effect of the environment on behavior is partly related to evolution. Using Australian aborigines as a starting point, they argue that aboriginal man gives social properties to the natural environment and, as I have argued elsewhere, they do this through the use of a number of complex symbolic elements rather than buildings (on which we tend to rely). The suggestion is that

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Introduction

in a very basic way man-environment relations mainly occur through certain ways of reacting to environments and relating to them by giving them meaning. The environment is given meaning in this formulation by attaching social properties to places, things, and times. The construction of buildings then (as I have argued) is a way of giving concrete expression to meaning and the process of giving meaning occurs through forming schemata. Schemata begin with exploration of the environment, coding of information (which may be either species-specific or culture-specific), and the gradual filling in of details. As a result of action in the environment information is reevaluated and schemata are modified (although it should be added that schemata and images are resistant to change; see Boulding 1956). Social properties of the environment only exist through interaction with the organism, and familiarity and learning are important in giving meaning to the environment. At this point another relationship with ethological concepts can be pointed out since many animals seem to invest their environment with meaning in somewhat the same way, and familiarity and learning also play a role and are closely related to home ranges, core areas, and territories. The environment acquires social properties and meaning through the passage of organism from place to place and the resultant habituation, familiarity, and structuring. If the social properties of places, things, and times are due to the interactions of organisms and environments, then this leads to a distinction between surroundings and environments and introduces notions of the difference between the geographic environment, known environment, perceived environment, and behavioral environment (see Sonnenfeld in Saarinen 1969), and the differences among different kinds of space (Rapoport 1970). The effect of surroundings is due to context, and contexts are also units of environmental communication. They also are sensed and selected — and thus involve habitat selection. A zoo is a surrounding, not an environment (so that personalization and ownership as well as familiarity play a major role). McBride and Clancy's discussion of the relation of environment and behavior can be seen as relating closely to my paper (behavior, setting, distinction between activities, the role of schemata, etc.) and in fact their proposed therapeutic environment can be seen as a specific case of a prosthetic environment (although the link between their theory and practice is not fully clear). Scheflen, as part of a larger, ongoing study on human territoriality

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bridges the gap as it were to Section 3: "Environments." He discusses systems of territories and the basic elements of territorial configurations which, he suggests, are isomorphic at all levels. Through a cross-cultural analysis, one through time, and an analysis of measurements as reflecting interpersonal space and territories, he arrives at some general territorial patterns which operate at all scales and examines them in the AngloAmerican environment. It appears that layouts, while culturally different, show underlying regularity and continuity. The conflict between continuity and cultural differences (possibly at the level of cognitive domains) may create problems, as may the different ways in which borders between domains are indicated. We thus find a link established not only between environmental analysis and description but also between cultural differences and underlying regularities and between evolution, territoriality, and the American city. The papers in this section, starting as they do with different orientations and epistemologies, seem to reveal some measure of agreement with each other and with some of the broad concepts from Section 1. People do show at least some continuities with animals although there is no agreement as to how important these are or what the implications of these continuities might be for design. The meaning of the environment results from users interacting with it, learning it, and taking possession of it; in this process personalization, cognitive processes, and schemata are of importance. It is possible to posit large-scale models of man-environment interaction in which cultural differences might be seen in the context of underlying regularities. In other words, man-environment relations, like so many aspects of man, comprise both constant and variable factors. Variability itself may often be the specific expression of a single underlying pattern and specificity may lie in the relationships between constant and variable factors. An important matter for investigation is clearly some more exact understanding of the relative strength and importance of these two sets of factors.

REFERENCES BOULDINO, KENNETH

1956 The image. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. LOFUN, MARVIN, JAMES SILVERBERG,

i.p.

editors

Discourse and inference in cognitive anthropology:

an approach to

psychic unity and enculturation. World Anthropology. The Hague: Mouton.

126 Introduction

MC CULLY, ROBERT S.

1971 Rorschach theory and symbolism. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins. RAPOPORT, AMOS

1970 The study of spatial quality. Journal of Aesthetic Education 4(4). 1972 "Australian aborigines and the definition of place," in Environmental Design Research Association Conference (ED RA 3). Edited by William J. Mitchell. Los Angeles: University of California Press. SAARINEN, THOMAS F.

1969 Perception of environment. Commission on College Geography Resource Paper 5. Washington, D.C.: Association of American Geographers.

Design for Man-Environment Relations

ARISTIDE H. ESSER

INTRODUCTION: THE PERSPECTIVE OF MAN-ENVIRONMENT RELATIONS Man is a product of organic evolution and as such one of the animal embodiments of life. Man, THE ANIMAL, has survived through biosocial adaptation to the natural environment. This type of adaptation was perfected about 40,000 years ago, when men lived in small "primary" groups occupying restricted territories and making use of naturally occurring resources. Physically and socially Homo sapiens remains unchanged since that time. Cro-Magnon man and woman could walk the streets hand in hand today and not be noticed. But man is also the CULTURE BEARER, constantly changing the natural environment to make consciously explicit that which he implicitly is. This change is the main evidence of man's continuing evolution. With the perspective of cultural evolution, MAN IS HIS MAN-MADE ENVIRONMENT. Man and his environment form a whole, because each entity is ultimately connected to the other in the brain, the seat of experiencing. Unfortunately, the outcomes of cultural evolution have become so complex that man as the product of organic evolution perceives his environment as alien, outside himself. The dichotomy between the body (organic evolution) and the mind (cultural evolution) brings about the attractive, but inherently limited, assumption that it is the environment that determines man. For the designer the question is: What will environmental change do for the evolution of man? The built environment reflects the rate and kinds of change throughout

128 ARICTIDE Η. ESSER

man's evolution. It is evident that man has moved toward a total need for innovation. It is not only a quest for improved techniques, different materials, or increased sophistication in style and taste. It is the need for new structures to help to express alternate life-styles. To be valid, such structures not only must be physically and socially viable, but must allow for continued conceptual expansion. They have to be such that mentally speaking "anything goes." For evolution no longer depends primarily on natural resources. Instead, the ways in which man becomes more and more able to conceptually master his experiencing of change will determine whether there will be continued evolution. Only if we succeed in changing all of mankind's attitudes toward such threats against survival as nuclear war, overpopulation, and environmental and social pollution, will we find ways to improve the quality of life. Environmental design will further evolution only when the totality of its influence on the mind of man is taken into account first and foremost by the designer. The organic and the cultural aspects of man are integrated, because all interactions between man and the natural and man-made environments are experienced in man's brain. The designer has to take this integration into account by fulfilling the following functions: 1. As an AGENT FOR ACCOMMODATION, the designer must know which experiences provide for man's requirements to remain adapted to the natural environment. 2. As an AGENT FOR CHANGE, the designer must know how man's unlimited capacity for experiencing may be engaged without transgressing the biological limits of survival. The existing blends of aesthetic, functional, and economic design orientations are no longer adequate for the designer's task of changing man's experience of his environment. Understanding the ways in which man experiences by becoming familiar with the principles of relations between brain functions and aspects of the environment has become necessary knowledge for the designer, and this is fortunately no longer out of reach.

THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE AND EXPERIENCE Evolution shows us that life is embodied in increasingly complex forms. Complexity takes shape through the process of experiencing. In this sense we may define life as the potential for experiencing. In the higher animals, including man, the seat of experiencing is the brain, or central nervous system (CNS). Processes in the CNS turn all

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experiences into mental images. These function as reduction mechanisms (codes) for environmental complexities. The CNS does not process each new experience into a new image. Innate and acquired mental structures enable the mind to order experiences. These structures function as schemata into which actual experiences fit.1 Using the terminology of computer programming, we may refer to schemata, programs, or algorithms which process input data. Well-known innate schemata are the archetypes postulated by Jung as expressions of themes dominant among our primordial experiences (see, for example, Jung 1953; Jacobi 1942). For instance, the archetypal image of "mother" represents a spectrum of mental images depicting the relations between child and parent. Many later experiences in life regarding nourishment, warmth, security, etc., may evoke this archetype. The fact that existing innate and acquired mental schemata process our experiences into images does not exclude the possibility of change. In our modern world we are constantly forced to assimilate new thoughts, concepts, and other forms of imagery, and a whole segment of society — which includes the media and the advertising industry — is devoted to changing our imagery. Yet no change in imagery would be possible unless we had the fixedness of certain mental structures, because experiencing a world of nothing but change would make our CNS dysfunctional and drive us mad. The important notion is that continued living is only possible if the CNS is capable of dealing adequately with all incoming stimuli. Because the brain has an inherently limited capacity for information processing, a simplification of environmental events by continually increased coding of experiences is needed. Paradoxically, as soon as coding of the environment enables us to reduce its complexity to the point where man-environment transactions are comfortable and appropriate, innovative change may be effected (De Long 1972a). The hierarchical ordering processes of the CNS take place on several levels. In this context, it is essential to realize that man's brain shares many characteristics with the brains of animals. Following MacLean (1965), who talks of "man and his animal brains," we can, simplistically, discern at least three clearly different levels of function in the human CNS: the reticular system, which has features similar to the reptilian brain; the limbic system, sharing characteristics with the brain of the lower mammals; and the neocortical system, which came to greatest development in the higher mammals. 1

Initially the study of images was the domain of Gestalt psychology; presently the field is called cognitive psychology. For a description of the role of imagery in life at large see Boulding (1961).

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Α RISTIDE Η. ESSER

The

is the oldest part of our CNS. It guarantees BIOLOGICAL LIFE in directing such vital functions as breathing and heartbeat, as well as those that relate the organism to the physical environment, such as orientation, homing, and the use of environmental space and resources. The organism-environment interactions are relatively simple on this level of evolution. They are completely determined by the nature of physicochemical stimuli. The rattlesnake moves when the sun is hot; when the temperature drops, the snake becomes immobile. The male lizard in his territory, entirely determined by the physical characteristics of the space he habitually occupies, will chase the intruder. When, in turn, he intrudes into another lizard's territory, he is chased. The greater part of these functions is contained in the reflex centers of the human brain stem, where physical stimuli to this day evoke direct responses from this level of the CNS. Man still involuntarily turns toward the unexpected source of light or sound. The LOWER MAMMALIAN BRAIN contained in the limbic system is the next oldest part of our CNS. It allows the animal, including man, to react indirectly to stimuli. They are coded into signals with positive or negative meanings, leading to pleasurable or painful experiencer. These emotions are the mechanisms that make SOCIAL LIFE possible. It is only when feelings interrupt the mechanical action of the reflexes (reptilian brain) that interpersonal life becomes possible. Instead of attacking each intruder into his habitat, the rat learns to view his conspecifics (others of his own species) either as members of his in-group or as strangers. He shares a social life with members of his group and rejects any intruder not belonging to it. Beyond this positive and negative attitude toward others, the animal also learns to recognize and assign meanings to the specific characteristics of members of his group. Older and stronger members provide the unpleasant experience of defeat when he tries to compete with them; members of the opposite sex provide the satisfaction of sexual stimulation and release; weaker siblings give him the feeling of dominance, etc. The spectrum of emotional experiences allows the animal to rank group members according to the particular past feelings he has held for them. More precisely, the particular images (of fight, sex, dominance encounter, etc.) that he has shared with each of the others determine his relative position in the group. Dominance behavior establishes and maintains that position. The resulting order of social organization is called the DOMINANCE HIERARCHY (or the PECKING ORDER in chickens, where the principle was first discovered). The dominance hierarchy codes the environment on a social level, as the structure of TERRITORY codes the environment on a physical level. REPTILIAN BRAIN

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The (neocortex, or the HIGHER MAMMALIAN BRAIN, is especially developed in man. Although some higher mammals, particularly the chimpanzee, have many of the characteristics attributed to the human cortical system, for the purpose of this presentation we will consider the complex of higher intellectual functions as typically human. The (neo)cortex, the last part of our CNS to evolve, is the seat of intellectual reasoning, specialized memory banks, and the capability for symbolic communication. The latter is the step to CULTURAL LIFE which made man more than an animal. When cortical functions began to complement the biosocial functions of the subcortical brain systems, mankind experienced numerous interrelated changes. For our purpose, two aspects need to be accented : the change in perception and manipulation of the environment and the mechanism for continued cultural change and expansion of conscious experiencing. Perception of his environment has become almost totally indirect in man. By naming emotional states and physical conditions, man can reduce the sociophysical environment to symbols. By conceptually coding aspects of the physical (reptilian), the social (lower mammalian), and the cultural environment, man has created a world in which everything is relegated to role playing and can be simulated. Man can also manipulate the sociophysical environment as a prosthesis, a functional artificial extension of his CNS, which may allow him to function completely independently of natural conditions. The basis for cultural change is man's individuation. Cortical funtioning enables man to conceive of himself or parts of his natural self as an "other." His cortex allows him to learn to play a role and to enter into voluntary contracts based on cultural bonds rather than into involuntary alliances based on biosocial bonds of blood and soil. This enables human groups to grow by accepting outsiders with unique individual talents. Cultural expansion comes fast for those providing a hospitable climate for creative individuals whose innovations were not tolerated in their primary groups.2 In due time the cultural spread of inventions must lead to all of mankind's becoming increasingly aware of its potential, the growth of conscious experiencing. The three systems in the CNS are biologically perfectly integrated. But when we view man within the sociocultural context, the brain contains built-in functional conflicts (Table 1). 2

Implicit in this evolutionary step is the consequence that individuals cannot react personally (i.e. on the biosocial level) to rational progress without perverting culture, because culture consists of the impersonal accumulation of myriad individual contributions.

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Table 1.

Three brain systems and their functions

Brain system

Input

Response - Function

(NEO)CORTICAL

symbols indirect rational

Environmental (space) perception and ordering

Rational

CA LIMBIC

§· 8 3 a *§

£L

signs

indirect emotional

e οοs 3

direct

c

cultural

conceptual - e.g. role

social

social - e.g. status (dominance hierarchy) physical - e.g. territory

Ο

RETICULAR stimuli

δ'

biological

Irrational Man

Area of conflict

Environment

For example, consider the totality of your reactions to eating in a restaurant. If you consider the environment to be comfortable and the food good, your reptilian brain will be satisfied. If your company is dear to you and the social occasion is festive, your lower mammalian brain will be content. The state of your neocortical satisfaction depends on the topic of conversation, the music, or any other cultural accouterment. Consciously and unconsciously, states of well-being on all three brain levels will make you enjoy the experience, but conversely, environmental inadequacy on any level may spoil the event. When the temperature is too low or the noise level too high, positive feelings for your company may not develop and conversation may turn into complaints. If your enemy enters and is seated at the next table, the high room temperature may become oppressive and the freedom of thought in conversation will be restricted. If a distressful telephone call interrupts the dinner, the delicious food may become unpalatable and pleasant company may crowd you. Because all elements of the physical and social environment also have a symbolic representation in the neocortex, it is easy to see how difficult it is to obtain a perfect fit between experiencing on all brain levels. As a matter of fact, many wise men through the ages have proclaimed that the condition of the world does not appear terrible when one considers how many things can go wrong. It is a miracle that anything comes out right. For our purpose here, the contrasts in CNS functioning mean a dichotomy between reason and emotion or between the scientific-technological and the social. As we discussed before, this dichotomy started when man became aware of himself and seized opportunities of using or abusing himself by role playing. This requires either disregard for his own feelings or making conscious previously unconscious aspects of

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himself. In cultural evolution the rapid cortical mechanisms of logic, rational thought, and voluntary action began to take precedence over the slow subcortical processes of both direct and emotional experiences. But the control of subcortical mechanisms by rational thought is tenuous. Worse, the success of reason and the application of logic and linear cause-and-effect thinking in science and technology have made us try to use the same mechanisms in interpersonal relationships. This is impossible because the latter are governed by the limbic system, which is not reasonable. The discovery of the unconscious by Freud, Jung, and Adler has shown that parts of our selves may continue to function independently of conscious control and may thereby disrupt our ongoing behavior in irrational ways. Psychoanalytic research proved that, in the great majority of cases, behavior problems are of an emotional and social nature, i.e. (in terms of Table 1) subcortical brain systems function in conflict with cortical decisions. The practice of psychotherapy suggests that a quick appeal to logic and rational understanding of the nature of the conflict is often insufficient for its resolution; instead, the patient must slowly learn to reexperience the interpersonal relationships in order to achieve proper biosocial functioning. Additionally, we now are finding the biological reasons for functional autonomy of parts of the human CNS. By means of electrical stimulation of the brain, psychoactive drugs, and experimental psychology, we can show how manipulation of subcortical CNS mechanisms influences our behavior without our awareness of it. Therefore, when planning and designing, we must accept as operationally valid the concept that man experiences the environment at different levels of consciousness;3 this provides an explanation of why a client or user may behave in unexpected and seemingly irrational ways.

DESIGN FOR ADAPTATION AND DESIGN FOR CREATIVE EXPANSION The process of experiencing, consciously and unconsciously, should be fostered by design. The inherent dichotomies in man's relation to his environment and to himself require a systematic discussion of opposites 3

Apart from our discussion of the evolutionary levels of CNS function, there is a growing scientific realization of man's potential for alternate states of consciousness (Tart 1969), which additionally should lead to reconsideration of the role of what we call "rational" thinking in man's relation to man.

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in existing design trends. Figure 1 proposes a fourfold classification of design activities, each of which has some shared and some unique features. Although the figure depicts man-environment relations as a whole, accents may be inferred from its composition. The left side represents efforts to maximize functioning by compensating for CNS limitations, while the right side shows designs for expanding the range of experiencing. The upper part of the figure refers to methods for enhancing man's conscious experiencing capabilities (adaptation), while the lower part accentuates construction of intelligence in the environment (creation). As stated above, from the viewpoint of evolution, any design activity can lead to increased adaptation (i.e. better fit between the biosocial requirements of man and his built environment) or to creative expansion (i.e. introduction of previously lacking or entirely novel experiences) in

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man-environment relations. It is only for the purpose of clarifying my arguments that I will call certain changes brought about by design adaptive and others expansive. On the left the figure shows two design directions — prosthetic and coding — which combat the functional limitations of the CNS. PROSTHETIC DESIGNS provide environmental improvements that support specific human malfunctions. Examples are the special facilities built for the infirm, the physically or mentally handicapped, or the very young and very old. Such designs foster environmental adaptation through provison of the "right" experiences. For example, the attendant of an incontinent, deeply retarded patient is alerted by a buzzer activated when the patient wets the circuit in his training pants. The patient is then taught what to do. Or, on a highly sophisticated level, abnormal CNS activity (electroencephalograph patterns) indicating an impending attack in an epileptic patient are relayed by radiotelemetry from brain-implanted electrodes and can be detected by a specially programmed computer, which in turn may influence the brain therapeutically. In these examples, technical processes provide tolerable substitutes for coded biosocial experiences which otherwise are difficult or even impossible to achieve for exceptionally deficient (subnormal) parts of the population. For the normal population a similar goal of providing experiences will be discussed under simulating designs. ease man's relation to the environment by reducing environmental complexity. It is an expansive rather than an adaptive way of overcoming the limitations of the CNS, because coding evokes new experiences. An example of this process occurs in advertising a product for an existing need. A slogan itself may symbolize a new experience for large parts of the population, e.g. "a chicken in every pot." On the right the figure shows two design directions — simulating and intelligence enhancing — for a wider range of experiencing. SIMULATING DESIGNS provide adaptational experiences without the need for real-life testing. This approach has a great attraction for the normal population because it makes the unattainable attainable. Vicarious experience (including religions) can be evoked in many ways, but the arts, dramatic productions, and musical performances are the best examples. Participation in these simulated environments may lift man out of the daily routine and given him a taste for the peak experience, an expansion of consciousness.4 INTELLIGENCE ENHANCING or FUTURISTIC DESIGNS provide man with the CODING DESIGNS

4 For an understanding of how peak experiences lead to an appreciation of the whole man, see Maslow (1964).

136 ARISTTDE Η. ESSER

means of living independent of natural condilions. These environments, like those for handicapped people, primarily can benefit directly only small parts of our population. The creation of experiences in novel environments (e.g. a space capsule) is at present only attempted with highly trained or exceptionally gifted people because of the vast increase in environmental complexity. Futuristic environments share with the adaptive designs that combat CNS limitations the prosthetic aspect and a functional rather than aesthetic orientation. As I remarked before, none of the contrasts described in the adaptive and expansive designs for overcoming CNS limitations and enhancing experiencing are absolute. Rather, they represent the environmental counterparts of the partly contrasting functions of the human brain from which they originated. They also incorporate accentuations of such trends in design methods as appeal to linear programming and the construction of intelligent environments. Opposite ways of thinking are represented in the figure by the diagonal axes connecting man and his environment. Prosthetic and futuristic designs use conscious means and linear thinking. They are inteded for exceptional people. Scientific approaches to compensation for lack of normal experiences or to conquest of the unknown are linear, i.e. they are consciously based on rational causeand-effect relationships. Prosthetic environments help to overcome the foibles of the human organism by strengthening change mechanisms for adaptation and innovation in the built environment. In design this axis is best represented by the functional movement. The accent is on achieving the goal by designing the environment so that it provides for behavior. In contrast, the aesthetic design approach relies more on the unconscious, intuitive, and nonlinear characteristics of human experiencing to influence as many people as possible. It is based on achieving subjective, if need be nonrational understanding of environmental conditions. Improved coding techniques and the arts compress experience and make otherwise singular experiences (e.g. intense emotion) more accessible to subjective knowledge, thereby introducing potential human change. One need not be exceptional to profit from listening to Bach, but one must be quite intelligent to appreciate being on the surface of the moon. In the aesthetic movement the accent is on providing sufficient environmental cues to change the subjective response to the coded experience. The horizontal and vertical axes connecting man and his environment represent methods to build intelligence into the environment or to increase knowledge in man. Simulating and futuristic designs require relatively little effort from man in his relation to his environment. In a

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link-trainer or a bathyscaphe, the experiences regarding the environment and the individual's responses will be relayed via instruments, prostheses of his CNS. The environment provides the information as well as the means for intelligent action. In prosthetic and coding environments, man's experiences and responses are more directly involved. The environment primarily facilitates man's own intelligent (at whatever level this may be) actions. Most of the day-to-day design considerations lie in the center of the four contrasting areas in design. By trying to deal with all considerations simultaneously, the generalist designer introduces a comprehensive attitude which may be called EMPATHIC MOVEMENT. Any rigid adherence to requirements based on either the functional or the aesthetic movement may not lead to an integrated design. The use of solely technical considerations, in both the arts and the sciences, will lead to grotesque consequences. Design empathy, the CONSCIOUS identification with the thoughts, feelings, and needs of the clients and the users, would lead to promoting their biosocial as well as cultural welfare.

TOWARD CONTINUOUS DESIGN EVALUATION What procedures are to be adopted for the integration of theoretical considerations of man-environment relations into any particular design in order to provide a holistic view? In principle, as with so many techniques in our superspecialized age, familiarity with concerns mentioned earlier should lead to incorporation of a specialist in man-environment relations in the team approach at specific steps in the design. However, not all of us are in a position to find the appropriate expert or, more often, to be able to afford his consultation. For this reason an overview of some existing evaluation strategies and specific procedure is provided. The choice of references is not exhaustive; it does not intend to cover every aspect of design, nor do the viewpoints necessarily lead to the most practical procedures. But the very process of trying to relate them to your design and your experimentation, to make them apply to your problems, will enrich your solutions. First, you should mentally check for agreement with the research principles in man-environment relations: (a) studying all interactions between man and his sociophysical milieu; (b) accounting for all levels of experiencing; and (c) using the specialized knowledge of all scientific and professional disciplines relevant to each experiential level (Esser 1972a). For instance, in designing a medical office you will have to think not only

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of the physical and technical levels of experiencing but also of the emotional levels. What emotional stress might different types of patients in our culture experience when confronted with a display of frightening instruments? (In another culture, a display of impressive and "magical" instruments can promote therapeutic success.) As a next step, what can disciplines dealing with emotional manipulation tell you about amelioration of possibly unavoidable stressful aspects of your design? What can psychology tell you about stimulus perception and habituation; psychiatry about unconscious emotional cues; theatrical staging about sequential ordering of stimuli and possibilities of one sense modality overriding the other (does music really help in a dentist's chair or should slides be shown?), etc.? For every design such multilevel and multidisciplinary considerations may be checked, although you may have to apply fewer in designs for private living where the client and the users request a fit into an explicitly limited range of experience. Next, especially in design for public use, are the considerations of design compatibility with established design criteria, with criteria of the user, and with the social and cultural context. About the first set of criteria we can be brief because they are discussed in depth elsewhere in the text. I must draw your attention to bibliographies by Grant (1972) on design methods and by Kleeman (1972) on ergonomics, which attempt to incorporate the perspective of man-environment relations. These comprehensive reference lists implicitly acknowledge the difficulties of overcoming dichotomies in our thinking and experiencing (e.g. Grant states that "design incorporates values and subjective images that science keeps out" [1972:5]). A practical procedure is Caudill's triad theory (1968), in which independent ratings of function, form, and economy of design are shown to be helpful in design evaluation. From the perspective of man-environment relations we must add to the procedure of measuring function a concern with PURPOSE AND CONSEQUENCE, which can be evaluated by means of empathy. A good overview of a systematic approach to architectural design is provided by Broadbent (1970) and curricula of different schools are discussed in Preiser and Regan (1972). How to determine design compatibility with user criteria is presently of great importance. New ways of evaluating human experience of space, sensory stimuli, social and cultural environments, built environments, and even purely conceptual environments are being devised constantly. Some of the work in this area is summarized by Hall (1959, 1966), Craik (1970), and Sommer (1972), while collections of papers on environmental psychology (Proshansky, Ittelson, and Rivlin 1970) and on the relations between behavior and environment (Esser 1971b) have also

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appeared. The specific scientific hypotheses from which evaluative procedures derive may be from perception (Coss 1968), the behavior setting, or any other component of the emerging theory of man-environment relations (Wicker 1970). The core of any method for user evaluation is to enhance the judging of values, i.e. to establish the worth of the design on as wide a basis as possible. For the purely biological and intellectual levels of man-environment relations there exist certain criteria for worth. For instance, on the biological level we may ask whether the design fulfills such criteria as shelter, access to vital resources, freedom from health-endangering pollution, etc. On the intellectual level, we request that the design be reasonably and equitably consonant with its raison d'etre and its cost. But what is the design worth on the emotional (social) level of man-environment relations? We should look here for the so-called social indicators of health, the milieu aspects that signify and respect the user's feelings, and the criteria to measure the opportunity for creative work and self-development. Here I can only give examples of possible procedures. 5 Manheim (1973) suggests a feedback procedure to elicit community participation in the planning of large-scale projects, e.g. highway construction. The description of the user-satisfaction components of his model is quite satisfactory and I look forward to a report on its practical application. A procedure for providing comprehensive user desiderata on the smaller scale of student housing has been worked out by Porter (i.p.). His descriptions of design requirements at every step of the planning for student living space, from the bedroom unit through the main library, should be usable in any institutional design. Evaluation of design compatibility with the social and cultural context is the most abstract requirement one can make of a designer and perhaps the most rewarding step a designer can make. A conscious or unconscious awareness of the local milieu, the Zeitgeist, and the developmental direction must be combined with the desire to communicate exactly the structure and meaning of the design. Two concepts make this process possible: understanding and communication. These concepts are not necessarily causally related or interdependent. This leads to two seemingly opposing position statements of extreme conditions. First, an understanding of the prevailing conditions must be communicated adequately in the design or the final product will not suc5

These may be called experiential cost accounting for the designer, in the hope that the reader, in familiarizing himself with these attempts, may want to formalize his own practice. Only when enough designers try, will a practice of noneconomic tradeoftevaluation emerge, similar to economic cost-benefit accounting.

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ceed. Second, proper communication of how the product fits into its milieu may be accomplished without an explicit understanding of the particular environment. There is room here for empathy and intuition next to science and technology. Let us exemplify each of these statements. The need for adequate communication of perceived situational essentials to achieve an optimal fit of the design is expressed in Halprin's resources-scores-valuations-performances (RSVP) cycles (1969). Halprin argues for the importance of precision in all types of scores (metalanguages) to guide the intervention in the environment. Scores (S) will determine whether the environmental change through determination of resources (R) will lead to valuation of action (V) and performance (P). Conceptual familiarity with the elements of the RSVP cycle (resources, scores, valuations, and performances) should be part of designing to make possible the practice of all evaluative steps described previously. These elements will have to be mentally checked over and over again during your planning and design phase to ensure that your final design recommendations (the score) will lead to the physically, socially, and culturally optimal environmental fit. If the above appears practically impossible, examine this statement: impressions of environmental fit may be communicated to the user without the designer's explicit understanding of the particular sociocultural structure. This is because effective communication of intent may be based on out-of-awareness signs of belonging to a given group or culture (De Long 1972a). This principle may be involved in the out-of-place appearance of a Western-designed skyscraper in a rural African town. However, a modern museum in the same town communicated a good fit, probably not because the Western architect had understood African society but because his design left enough expressive freedom to the local builder. Hall (1966) and De Long (1972b), among others, have drawn attention to the implicit communication in our sociocultural environment, much of which never comes to awareness. The investment in time and energy to familiarize oneself with such comprehensive design evaluation methods as scores and codes may appear worthwhile only for large or exceptional projects. I believe, however, that mankind's health, which derives from the wholeness of experience, requires from the designer an attempt at having all considerations, from the littlest concrete to the grandest abstract, from the idosyncratically local to the universally global, from the intimate subjective to the verifiable objective, come together in synergistic harmony. To begin this process nothing may be needed but willingness to empathize and to experiment. Finally, a word must be said on the superhuman effort the designer

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has to make in combining the arts and the sciences. The design has to reconcile the attitudes, techniques, and product evaluation methods of both the artist and the scientist. In its extreme forms the artistic striving is one of perfection of the unique; the scientist tries to derive universal laws. The artist is not interested in the procedure: he often destroys the earlier products once the masterpiece is ready. The scientist attaches as much value to the process steps as to the final theory: he keeps his notes and drafts and often rethinks the variations, as in the replaying of a chess game. In the public appreciation of the end product the initial attitude of the artist and the scientist toward their creation is reversed. The better the piece of art is, the more people will be able to recognize it and relate to it, the better the scientific theory is, the less people will be able to understand it. The designer has the enviable task of translating the best of human thought into a product to which potentially all people can relate.

REFERENCES BOULD1NG, K.

1961

The image. Ann Arbor: Ann Arbor Paperbacks.

BROADBENT, O.

1970

"Systems and environmental design," in Environmental Design Research Association Conference (EDRA 2). Edited by C. Eastman and J. Archea. Pittsburgh: Carnegie-Mellon University.

CAUDILL, w . w .

1968

The triad theory: one approach. American Institute of Architects Journal 49:62-69.

COSS, R. G.

1968

The ethological command in art. Leonardo 1:273-287.

CRAIK, Κ. H.

1970

"Environmental psychology," in New directions in psychology, volume four. Edited by Τ. M. Newcomb. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

DE LONG, A. J.

1970

"Coding behavior and levels of cultural integration," in Environmental Design Research Association Conference (EDRA 2). Edited by C. Eastman and J. Archea. Pittsburgh: Carnegie-Mellon University. 1972a Communication as a generic process. Man-Environment Systems 2:263-313. 1972b Variability, complexity, and movement in environmental communication. Architectural Design (October): 641-645. EASTMAN, C, J. ARCHEA, editors 1970 Environmental Design Research Association Conference {EDRA 2). Pittsburgh: Carnegie-Mellon University.

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ESSER, Α. Η.

1971 Social pollution. Social Education 35:10-18. 1972a "Environmental design needs empathy to combat social pollution," in M-ES-focus one: environmental design perspectives. Edited by W. F. E. Preiser and T. Regan. Orangeburg, Ν. Y.: Association for the Study of Man-Environment Relations. 1972b "Strategies for research in man-environment systems," in Behavior design and policy aspects of human habitats. Edited by W. M. Smith, 17-31. Green Bay: University of Wisconsin Press. ESSER, A. H., editor 1971 Behavior and environment: the use of space by animals and men. New York: Plenum Press. GRANT, D. P.

1972 Systematic methods in environmental design: an introductory bibliography. Exchange Bibliography 302. Monticello, 111.: Council of Planning Librarians. HALL, Ε. Τ.

1959 The silent language. Garden City, Ν. Y.: Doubleday. 1966 The hidden dimension. Garden City, Ν. Y.: Doubleday. HALPRIN, L.

1969 The RS VP cycles: creative processes in the human environment. New York: George Braziller. JACOBI, J.

1942 The psychology of C. G. Jung. London: Kegan Paul. JUNG, c . G.

1953 "Archetype and the collective unconscious," in The collected works of C. G. Jung, volume nine, part one. New York: Pantheon. KLEEMAN, W.

1972 Interior ergonomics — significant dimensions in interior design and planning a selected bibliography. Exchange Bibliography 286. Monticello, 111. Council of Planning Librarians. MAC LEAN, P.

1965 Man and his animal brains. Modern Medicine 32:95-106. MANHEIM, Μ. L.

1973 "Reaching decisions about technological projects with social consequences: a normative mode," in Transportation 2. Amsterdam: Elsevier. MASLOW, A. H.

1964 Religions, values, and peak-experiences. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press. PORTER, B. M.

i.p.

Space-activity matrix in student housing study. New York: Educational Facilities Laboratories. PREISER, W. F. Ε., T. REGAN, editors 1972 M-ES-focus one: environmental design perspectives. Orangeburg, Ν. Y.: Association for the Study of Man-Environment Relations. PROSHANSKY, H., W. H. ITTELSON, L. G. RIVLIN, editors 1970 Environmental psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

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RAPOPORT, A.

1970 Observations regarding man-environment studies. Man-Environment Systems 1(1): 1-28. SOMMER R.

1972 Design awareness. San Francisco: Rinehart Press. c., editor 1969 A Itered states of consciousness. New York: Wiley.

TART,

WICKER, A. w .

1970 "Processes which mediate behavior-environment congruence: some suggestions for research," in Environmental Design Research Association Conference (EDRA 2). Edited by C. Eastman and J. Archea. Pittsburgh: Carnegie-Mellon University.

Human Territoriality as an Object of Research in Cultural Anthropology

INA-MARIA GREVERUS

The concept of territoriality which originated with zoological behavioral research is defined as "possession and defense behavior," i.e. as the acquisition and defense of a territory or district by an animal or group of animals (Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1969: 318-326). The application of this concept to human behavior in the framework of human ethology was based largely on this definition and on the specific ethological cognitive goal of the behavior, as that phenomenon which for the ethologist is exclusively accepted, recognized, and explained by observation and experiment. Despite the positivistic ethos, such interpretation also signifies the need component — territoriality as satisfaction of the needs for security, stimulating activity, and identity in a territory—and it carries on Uexkiill's efforts to regard the "experiencing subject as the object of material research." This has earned scientific ethology the reproach of engaging in "psychologizing." From the anthropological point of view, however, it was precisely this approach which led to a productive interdisciplinaiy discussion. On the basis of observable human behavior comparable to territorial defense, conclusions were drawn concerning the needs which underlie this behavior. Thus, Leyhausen speaks of a "human claim for space," which he regards as the basis for the defense of an individual space (Leyhausen 1968: 118-130). The limiting of this area — a frequently cited example is the defense of one's seat in a train compartment — is said to evoke defensive aggression. However, to the anthropologist this raises the question of the extent to which this example from our present-day urban situation has equal validity for the claim-for-space complex as a comparable type of behavior for an animal species. Every historical or geo-

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graphical comparison tells us that the area which an individual regards as his own is limited by his specific culture, and that the reduction — in our eyes — of an individual's area of movement, to the extent that it is culturally a matter of course, does not call forth any feelings of failure and resultant aggressions. Moreover, cross-cultural studies demonstrate that personal individuality can indeed be realized exclusively in group individuality, and that even the area owned is thus understood as merely the area of the group. Finally, in order to grasp human territoriality, we must, in my opinion, also take into account the nonspatial phenomenon of spiritual/intellectual territorial defense and the defense of cultural values and norms on the part of the individual and of the group. We cannot presume a species-specific pattern of behavior in a defined area; we can only deduce, by way of the data of territorial behavior, a structure of needs which underlies that behavior. Only when seen as an historical discipline, can anthropology adequately describe man as being susceptible to the cultural influence (Lepenies 1971: 122). This means that we must reexamine the hypotheses of ethological study which are applied to the SPECIES Homo sapiens, in order to establish their correctness for the CULTURALLY SPECIFIC SPECIES of Homo sapiens. The problem of the relativity of cultures and human behavior is a prime area of ethnological research, in a sense a scientific territory with quite recognizable behavioral equivalents of territorial defense, in contrast to the socioeconomic macroview of political scientists and economists as well as the biological generalizing view of the ethologist. But the phenomenon of cultural specificity has not seduced the ethnologist and the cultural anthropologist into overlooking the foundations of such elements of specificity with respect to their overall social causation as well as to their anthropological constants. By speaking of human territoriality we are adopting a hypothesis from the natural sciences which must be reexamined on the one hand in terms of its general human validity and on the other in terms of its culture-specific formation under certain social conditions. The scope of this paper, however, is limited to pointing out the possible contributions that cultural anthropology and social sciences can make to this topic and to encouraging better interdisciplinary cooperation. If we define territory as an area in which territorial behavior guarantees the satisfaction of the needs for security, stimulating activity, and identity, then perhaps the German Heimat, which corresponds to the English home in an expression like "my home is my castle," is an equivalent concept. This refers to a defined territory which guarantees the experiencing subject security, activity, and identity, and which is regarded

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as an area of possession and defense. At this point, however, the many human possibilities of this kind of spatial adoption arise (Greverus 1969,1972) — possibilities which can extend as far as a dissolution of the material home area into an ideally occupied identity area of intellectual convention without disturbing the associated need and behavior equivalents. This development can be demonstrated quite clearly in the semantic history of the German term Heimat. But this term is not a suitable scientific term for an international discussion of the area of identity, action, and protection which is at the basis of human territoriality, not only because of the linguistic barriers but also because of its normative and emotional meaning which make it a specific term in the political vocabulary. The problem of an identity satisfied by territoriality, which was introduced into the discussion of territoriality by Ardrey (1966), has so far found little resonance in ethology, in contrast to the questions of security and action. I believe, however, that the need for identity is of decisive significance particularly for human territorial behavior (including its aggressive component); within it are found the needs for security and satisfying action. If our concern lies in reducing the negative effects of the spatial and material components of human territorial behavior to a degree tolerable for human coexistence, then we should deal more intensively, through interdisciplinary cooperation, with this need for identity as a motive for territorial behavior. I understand identity in Erikson's terms as the feeling of seeing oneself as a "defined self" in a sociocultural reality that is yielded by a positive reference group, which in turn has attained its own group identity. This group identity, of which the individual, identified as a self, must represent a successful variant, is determined by the culture of that group. The identity of the "animal symbolicum," as Cassirer (1944) designated man, is thus an identity which is specific not to a species but rather to a culture. Are the negative aspects of the identity complex — aggression against all who threaten the living space and the living plans of the group — therefore also culture-specific and thus alterable? Our task, which arises from the problem of the relation between the need for identity and aggression in a territory, lies in the study of the sociocultural reality of the latter and of its conditions and manifestations in each case, in order to find possibilities for sublimating the destrudo as destructive — ungekonnte [unproductive] — aggressiveness (Mitscherlich 1968:90) into constructive energy — gekonnte [productive] — aggressiveness or activity. The question before us is this: to what extent is man capable of over-

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coming the destructive element through the counterforces of culture, that is to say, by setting moral norms? In our society such norm-setting seems in turn to be counteracted by a high frustration quotient, which tends toward the release of agressiveness in destrudo with the help of a politically "exploited" situation of standardization and frustration. Referring to Freud's Civilization and its discontents, Adorno speaks of a "claustrophobia of mankind in the administrated world" (Adorno 1969: 87). This refers to the frustration of individuals in an "affuent society," brought about by an all-encompassing, constantly anonymous cultural superego with extraordinary norm-setting power. In the face of this cultural superego of the total society, period, ethnic, and regional styles studied by the social and cultural sciences seem to play only a minor role as a cultural determinant and as a "cultural conscience." A cross-cultural comparison in a vertical direction, as represented, for example, by Elias' Uber den Prozeß der Zivilisation (1969) or by numerous studies in cultural history, or a comparison in a horizontal direction, as done primarily by cultural anthropologists in the investigation of ethnic cultures and subcultures, would promise few insights, since the theses of the relativity of cultural systems would have to capitulate before this total superstructure. Although this superstructure can be transmitted to the most remote village, above all by mass media, it remains a question to what extent this superstructure is actually fully integrated into the formation of the value and norm structures of these systems. As long as the thesis of a unique tendency of these systems is not refuted, it appears necessary and important to concentrate not only on the development of the total society, the problem of mass media communications, and in turn the relevance of the latter to the total society, but also on partial manifestations or their possibilities. This call for special attention for the specific sociocultural potential in a territory and for its behavioral equivalents is echoed in the words of such divergently thinking scholars as Lorenz and Adorno, who both point to the village as an object of investigation. Lorenz sees in the "old village" more or less the last "natural" possibility, where intraspecific aggression in the confrontation with the "neighboring enemy village," can be expended satisfyingly and — through the effect of inhibiting mechanisms based on their close contact — without destruction by means of Ventilsitten [safety-valve customs] (Lorenz 1966: 350). Adorno regards the backwardness of the village and its limited consciousness as one of the greatest dangers to the hindering of aggression. He proposes a "debarbarization" of the outlying rural area, which, he feels, must be preceded by the study of the "consciousness and the unconsciousness" of the population, in order to counteract the col-

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lectivization of this consciousness and in order to control the "at once brutal and eerie preservation of such folk entertainment"; he refers particularly to the Haberfeldtreiben (see below for explanation) in this context (Adorno 1969:93). What appears here to be an antagonistic interpretation may be characterized — with a somewhat simplified formula — as an organism or repression theory (Bennet 1966). On the one hand, the phenomenon of a functioning integrative system is seen to be central; on the other hand the repressive means employed to attain and maintain this system are emphasized. Such microsystems with a culture-specific imprint of this kind have become a favorite object of research in cultural anthropology. Studies of cultural values have made an important contribution. "Value" is used here to designate a cultural fact which as a dictum, i.e. as a norm, has significance for members of a culture and which acts both as a stabilizing factor for the system as a whole and as a motivating force in the behavior of the individual. These two aspects — stabilization of the system through norms and the integration of the individual as zoon politikon by way of the necessary acceptance of these norms — seem to rest fatalistically on man as a social and cultural being. Refusal of such acceptance, including the acceptance of built-in, system-stabilizing aggression, relegates the individual to the situation of an outsider. The existence of an outsider under the closecontact control of the small group was and is more difficult than that in an anonymous society, where a single individual is cast out from merely one obligatory identification group. The outsider of the small group became one who was avoided or excluded. If persecution did not originate in his social group itself, but rather through the administration of justice by higher authorities, and if it was directed against an action held to be legitimate by his own group, then the condemned could go into exile "voluntarily" without losing contact with like-minded members of his community. Hobsbawm demonstrates convincingly that the career of most social bandits began in this way (Hobsbawm 1962). While outcasts of an "unfree" community, thus, for the most part retained the identity of their equally underprivileged area-group and could become folk heroes through their actions, the outcasts of a "free" community were condemned to a total loss of identity. This important aspect of the federalist principle must also be considered. This principle indeed decentralizes power, but by awarding full responsibility to free communities or burdening them with it, it also has led, and leads, to the expulsion of those who oppose the "common good" or who seem to threaten it by their poverty or simply by their being different.

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This kind of frustration of the need for territorial identity must lead to the release of destrudo, which either turns into self-destruction or, with the aid of a new identity group, envisions the destruction of the excluding group or the establishment of a social equilibrium. If such an alliance of the outsiders of a ruling society is achieved, then aggression is, in turn, declared to be a value. It can be either purely destructive aggression, constructive aggression through the destruction of an antiquated system, or finally, and this seems to be the most frequent case in alliances of such outsiders, helpless aggression, often directed against the wrong target group. Alliances of so-called social rebels in the broadest sense can be seen as ranging from the prototype of the "noble thieves" and their opposite, fundamentally antisocial organized criminals, to the current youth movement against established society, in which, once again, are evidenced the two extremes of constructive action and of exclusively destructive action — as manifested in the banding together of gangs (Schwendter 1971). However, each such grouping, seen as a counterculture, develops, in turn, its own new system of norms in which intracultural aggression against ITS outsiders has the same function of stabilizing the system. Above all, with groups of youths we can then frequently observe — both in terms of inter- and intracultural aggression — an increased destructive energy, often coupled with equally increased libidinal energy, which gives the impression of a breaking out from all too long and oppressive control of strong emotions. Increasing emotional control in the process of civilization (Elias 1969) has always been found in the power sphere of the respective ruling groups. In this case, however, not only was control extended over libidinous and destructive emotions, but "love and hate" (Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1970) were also built into and expanded within the system. This creates a functional system in which strong emotions can be channeled and where a safety valve is provided for a large part of the pent-up emotions. Not only are so-called safety-valve customs accepted institutions within a territory for the neutralization of pent-up tensions, but those who carry them out are — often unconsciously — direct executing organs of authority, in order to thus become fully adapted through "an act of repressive tolerance": "Those controlling are actually those being controlled" (Scharfe 1970: 56). With this I return to the Haberfeldtreiben which is known under this name primarily in upper Bavaria, but which is spread over a much wider area of Europe in the same form: a court of censure held by organizations

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of young men, replete with charivari [rough music], nocturnal processions, and mask wearing (Pinon 1969), which forms a part of the extensive complex of group-administered justice for violations against the norm. This norm was not that of a counter-culture, but rather that of the ruling culture — in the case of the Haberfeldtreiben primarily concerning the sanctioned order of relations between the sexes. Destrudo could direct itself against libido which had broken through the control of emotions; thus, the youths carrying out the punishment became the instrument of authority. Aggression is not characterized by the advance of a "youthful system" against an antiquated one, but rather serves to restore the existing one. Strong emotions repressed by the system are released; however such activity is not in the service of Eros, but of destruction in the name of the common good. In the village independent counter-cultural forces can seldom develop, because intellectual mobility is too weak under the enforced culture imposed by constant close control. The culture-divergent forms of these youth groupings are structured as special cultural phenomena, but never counter-cultural. Thus the village continues to give to the superficial observer the appearance of a "sound world," i.e. a well functioning "community spirit" organism — a favorite target of all publicity and propaganda, from political ideology to consumer advertising. The appeal to a "we-consciousness" is most successful in this environment, because authoritative behavior socialized in such a small area makes reflection about the situation of the total society virtually impossible. The undiminished characteristic managing of traditions and the unenlightened rejection of all that is different make it easy to call even progressive counter-cultural forces coming from the outside objects of aggression, by emphasizing their "divergent" and therefore valuediminishing behavior, especially when the relative, but existing satisfaction is presented even to the underprivileged of our affluent society as being in danger. This relative satisfaction also comprises, especially in the village territory, an administrated possibility of identity, specifically for youths. I refer in this context to the intensive and politically strongly promoted efforts of local preservation groups to maintain a contact behavior which will nurture the "we-consciousness," be it through dance clubs with local costumes, organizing traditional local celebrations, or amateur theater groups. These managed contacts indeed provide the native population with the opportunity to experience a degree of Eros, in contrast to the alienated individuals of the large cities. But this administrated Eros is largely restricted to the local residents; a stranger has no privileges in this

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inner world of familiarity. To be sure, the violent excesses of Habersfeldtreiben and the actual forms of casting someone out no longer exist; witch hunts no longer take place; and censure courts are no longer nocturnal persecutions, but rather have been toned down to a more or less humorous carnival affair. Nevertheless, there remains the more sublimated process of disgrace, which through shunning and verbal injury of the subject can have a similarly destructive effect on the object of the distancing behavior. An extensive study by Rudolf Braun described the exclusionary behavior in Swiss communities toward Italian foreign workers and showed that the fear of being endangered and the associated behavior, from rejection to aggression, are primarily related to the geistige Überfremdung [the foreign influx on our value system]. Utterances like the following by a bricklayer foreman are characteristic: "Only in a political administrative sense is Schlieren still a community; cohesion and the community spirit are gone. Certainly the presence of so many Italians is partly responsible for that" (Braun 1970: 391). The threat of a diffusion with alien elements is seen especially by the male, older, and married members of the community, and it is they who are instrumental in the exclusion. However, in this case we must again take note of the role of these community members as the "controlled controllers" of that institutional authority which utilizes the ideology of foreign influx as "national action against foreign contamination of the native population and the homeland" (Braun 1970: 378-385), and which thereby mobilizes territorial aggression. A similar distancing behavior was also displayed in Germany toward refugees; it was particularly pronounced in "pure" villages as, for example, the Catholic native-costume village of Mardorf (Lemberg and Krecker 1950: 152ff.), and it was demanded and carried out in the name of maintaining the old order. This aggressive attitude toward the refugees contributed much to their readiness to switch over to a counter-culture such as the Landsmannschaften [organizations of refugees from common home regions], which not only offered them an identity but at the same time made the transformation of aggression into a possible value, i.e. declared it a constructive energy in the defense of a territory. (For the following see also Greverus 1972:250-262.) The groups of fellow-refugees now gave their individuals the possibility of seeing themselves as a "successful variant of group identity," of moving by legitimized steps toward a "tangible collective future" (Erikson 1971: 17), and of experiencing stimulation through active defense against alien elements as well as through behavioral security in the collective

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area-centered plan for living. This living plan was practiced through the preservation of their "culture" — here to be understood as a valuable special tradition. Symbolic objects of the territory such as a community coat of arms, of which these groups had only a partial consciousness originally, now became fetishes; everyday behavioral patterns such as eating certain dishes, greeting in their dialect, wearing traditional costumes, dancing "like back home," became rituals associated with the politics of "right to the homeland"; and territorial behavior as the gratification-object of the need for identity, security, and action was channeled into these rituals. Designating organizations of refugees from a common home region as a counter-culture underscores the fact that counter-culture does not have to be basically progressive; it can also be expressed in regression. Counter-cultures are formed by dissatisfied minorities in a ruling culture. Their tendency is toward a culture of their own which will also increase their self-esteem, i.e. they strive to offer "better" values to members who are willing to accept their order and develop latent or open aggression against their respective "enemy groups." The more frustrated their members are and the lower their intellectual capacity is and is kept, the more a channeling into designated enemy figures at the hands of whoever is in a power position is likely to succeed. The counter-culture of home region organizations, which built into their appeal to members being recruited numerous features of their farming culture as secondary, i.e. revived values, was in this case not the active work of the farmer population but that of a propagandistically trained nonfarmer middle class. This so-called middle level became the executing organ for a primarily ideological territorial expansion of the upper level; in addition, it was assigned the role of source authority and educator of those refugees that were to be integrated into the group identity of the home region organization; finally, this level experienced a gain in identity for itself as "defined selves" with an especially great sphere of action within the territory "home region organization." The role expectation and self-evaluation of this middle level is frequently that of idealists, bearers of the culture, and educators of the people in a society whose expansion is based on economy and technology and which sees culture not as progressive mastery of the environment, but as representing "higher" values — a characteristic of Germany since its industrialization. Of course, their exponents must subsist to a large degree on these higher values, must regard them as their "capital," and must derive their self-esteem from them. Revoking or devaluating this role brings with it not only the loss of

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one's sphere of action, but also the loss of self-esteem. We should consider the regressive tendencies within that middle level in this perspective as well. The active agents of the home area movement in an isolated refugee territory can no longer offer the now-integrated former refugees a specific identity; they have also lost their function from the perspective of the upper level, i.e. of the state; but they have not been provided with a substitute for their internalized role as guardians of the territorial heritage and as educators in a ritualized special territoriality. The home region refugee organizations are not the only cases where ritualized special territoriality is used as a popular political tool for achieving a willingness to conform. The best case in point is the territorial celebration, the big show of group identity presumed to be a fact (Greverus 1972:316-335). It ranges from the community feasts of small towns and similar celebrations made possible by our federal system on the state level, such as the Hessentag [day of Hess], to the big national holidays in the different countries. The objects and activities of these shows are fetishes and rituals, the goals of all of which are emotional association with a territory and taking possession of it, and strengthening the readiness to defend the particular system. We could apply the words of Tinbergen (1969:168), who speaks of a hoped-for group territoriality in which the aggressive components of territoriality are structured into the institutional order and are considered to be positive values both in the framework of the particular institution and for the individual placed in its order. Hacker very convincingly described the process of a collectively institutionalized aggression which controls and holds in check individual "free" aggression, but which simultaneously releases it for its own purposes and organizes it in institutional rituals (Hacker 1971:80-90). This process, although here more closely related to the destructive side of aggression, is the same as that which Elias designates as control of the strong emotions in his Prozeß der Zivilisation. It is not that the ANIMAL RATIONALE controls its emotions; the institution channels them. Rituals are safety-valve customs for suppressing natural drives; but at the same time they are a necessity for man, who can achieve identity only through the process of relating to the culture of an area. As long as control of the emotions and their ritualized channeling remain in the power sphere of ruling groups who confront each other with territorial possession and defense behavior, the system-stabilizing effect of the safety-valve customs will be their real goal. They function as system-stabilizers by neutralizing built-up tensions as well as by setting free destrudo against all elements regarded to be threats to the system.

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So we ask, is the individual, propagated to be free or in need of being freed, indeed merely a marionette of an institution whose drives are controlled and restructured? Or does he become free by letting himself, be restructured? Or does he become free by letting himself, as Gehlen puts it, be "consumed in service and duty to the institutions" (Gehlen 1969: 160)? Or can another possibility for free personal development be found for him, without his falling back into a passion-affirmative behavior for which he obviously lacks the naturally built-in, species-preserving inhibiting mechanisms of animals? When we speak of human territoriality, then, we are positing — and this holds true for the cultural and social sciences as well—the hypothesis of an inborn but influence-susceptible behavioral pattern which conditions territorial behavior and which reacts to activating stimuli. For man as a historical being these activators are culture-specific, and therefore they are just as alterable as the activated behavior. Our hope for shaping a better human existence should build on this fact, as well as on the fact of man's educability. Man can learn to control his strong emotions, as changes of behavior in the course of history demonstrate; by the same token he should also be able to learn to refuse to submit to that control of his emotions which is associated with a restructuring of the passions into system-stabilizing safety-valve customs. However, it will always be necessary to provide the individual member of society who is to acquire the ability to control and channel his strong emotions by himself with both the freedom of mobility and the help he needs: not to be consumed by the institutions, but to attain self-realization as a social and cultural being in a territory which guarantees him identity, security, and action — in other words emotional control for the individual's self-interest, and not in the alleged service of "higher values." As members of several scientific territories, so to speak, i.e. various anthropological disciplines, we face the necessity of discussing the possibilities for better and more effective study of human behavior through common effort; and it is my hope that this common effort will not be regarded as a "border violation," but as a step toward making real cooperation possible. Otto Koenig confirmed that ethnologists and cultural anthropologists tend towards a defensive territory-holding of their own preserves (Koenig 1969:60); nevertheless, we should not consider this phenomenon onesidedly. Only cooperation in practice will point up the potential for reciprocal enrichment with the natural sciences. In the social and cultural sciences, too, "discussion cannot take the place of the experiment." However, an

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experiment in the area of an anthropological study of behavior must deal with a much broader contextual realm of societal dimension. This holds true especially for territorial behavior because man is plastic and susceptible to political manipulation through "group territorialism."

REFERENCES ADORNO, THEODOR W .

1969 "Erziehung nach Auschwitz," in his Stichworte: Kritische Modelle 2, 85-101. Frankfurt a. Μ.: Suhrkamp. ARDREY, ROBERT

1966 The territorial imperative: a personal inquiry into the animal origins of property and nations. New York: Atheneum. BENNET, JOHN W .

1966 "Die Interpretation der Pueblo-Kultur: eine Frage der Werte," in Kulturanthropologie. Edited by W. E. Mühlmann and Ernst W. Müller, 137-153. Cologne: Kiepenheuer and Witsch. BRAUN, RUDOLF

1970 Sozio-kulturelle Eingliederung italienischer Arbeitskräfte Schweiz. Erlenbach, Zurich: Rentsch.

in der

CASSIRER, ERNST

1944 An essay on man. New Haven: Yale University Press. EIBL-EIBESFELDT, IRENAUS

1969 Grundriß der vergleichenden Verhaltensforschung: Ethologie (second edition). Munich: Piper. 1970 Liebe und Hass: zur Naturgeschichte elementarer Verhaltensweisen. Munich: Piper. ELIAS, NORBERT

1969

Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation: soziogenetische und psychogenetische Unterscuhungen (second edition), two volumes. Bern, Munich: Francke.

ERIKSON, ERIK H .

1971 Identität und Lebenszyklus: drei Aufsätze. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. OEHLEN, ARNOLD

1969 Moral und Hypermoral: eine pluralistische Ethik. Frankfurt a. M.: Athenäum. GREVERUS, INA-MARIA

1969 "Grenzen und Kontakte: zur Territorialität des Menschen," in Kontakte und Grenzen: Probleme der Volks-, Kultur- und Sozialforschung. Festschrift für Gerhard Heilfurth, 11-26. Göttingen: Schwartz. 1972 Der territoriale Mensch: ein literaturanthropologischer Versuch zum Heimatphänomen. Frankfurt a. M.: Athenäum. HACKER, FRIEDRICH

1971 Aggression: Die Brutalisierung der modernen Welt. Vienna, Munich, Zurich: Molden.

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HOBSBAWM, ERIC J.

1962

"Sozialrebellen," in Soziologische Texte, volume fourteen. Neuwied: Luchterhand.

KOENIG, OTTO

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"Verhaltensforschung und Kultur," in Kreatur Mensch: moderne Wissenschaft auf der Suche nach dem Humanum. Edited by G. Altner, 57-84. Munich: Moos.

LEMBERG, EUGEN, LOTHAR KRECKER

1950

Die Enstehung eines neuen Volkes aus Binnendeutschen und Ostvertriebenen: Untersuchungen zum Strukturwandel von Land und Leuten unter dem Einfluß des Vertriebenen-Zustromes. Schriften des Instituts für Kultur- und Sozialforschung, München 1. Marburg: El wert.

LEPENIES, WOLF

1971

Soziologische Anthropologie: Materialien. Munich: Piper.

LEYHAUSEN, PAUL

1968

"Vergleichendes über dieTerri torialität bei Tieren und den Raumanspruch des Menschen," in Antriebe tierischen und menschlichen Verhaltens: Gesammelte Abhandlungen. Edited by Konrad Lorenz and Paul Leyhausen, 118-130. Munich: Piper.

LORENZ, KONRAD

1966

Das sogenannte Böse: zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression (twentieth edition). Vienna: G. Borotha-Schöler.

MITSCHERLICH, ALEXANDER

1968

"Aggression und Anpassung," in his Aggression und Anpassung in der Industriegesellschaft, 80-127. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.

PINON, ROGER

1969

"Qu'est-ce qu'un charivari?: essai en vue d'une definition opiratoire," in Kontakte und Grenzen: Probleme der Volks-, Kultur- und Sozialforschung. Festschrift für Gerhard Heilfurth, 393-405. Göttingen: Schwartz.

SCHARFE, MARTIN

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Zum Rügebrauch. Hessische Blätter für Volkskunde 61:45-68.

SCHWENDTER, ROLF

1971

Theorie der Subkultur. Cologne: Kiepenheuer and Witsch.

TINBERGEN, ΝΙΚΟ

1969

"Von Krieg und Frieden bei Tier und Mensch," in Kreatur Mensch: moderne Wissenschaft auf der Suche nach dem Humanum. Edited by G. Altner, 163-168. Munich: Moos.

UEXKÜLL, JAKOB VON

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Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen: ein Bilderbuch unsichtbarer Welten: Bedeutungslehre. Hamburg: Rowohlt.

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The Social Properties of Places and Things

G. McBRIDE and H. CLANCY

INTRODUCTION Australian aboriginal man merges with his natural environment. He carefully attends to the properties of every part, noting, for example, good shade, soft sand or turf, adequate shelter from winds, rain, and insects, the convenience of places to food and water. His alteration of the environment is minimal, but very clearly he can identify every place in relation to its suitability for any of his functional activities. Some places are "poison," others are "sacred," and these, along with camping sites, paths, and some ceremonial and hunting areas, become traditional for the social group. In other words, aboriginal man does not have much of a built environment, but rather he socially organizes a natural one, adding social properties to every part. This is also true for most species of animals. Yet wherever there is a modification of the environment, the design of the change — the form of the structure—depends fully on its function. Nests, burrows, bowers, or arenas, simple or complex in construction, envelop some important functional operation in the life of the species. But Western man is a new phenomenon — he builds EVERYTHING, superimposing places for function on the natural environment. Because the enclosed structures he erects generally give shelter from the vagaries of the weather, they often have a general rather than a specific suitability for a wide range of activities. It seems that the intimate matching of form and function is less well developed than in other species or in our forebears; the problem is accentuated by the extreme complexity of the social activities for which functional buildings are designed.

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So, for example, Western man builds institutions for large numbers of sick and/or handicapped individuals, and supposedly these institutions are organized functionally. For the "patients" or sick the function is restoration of health, and for the caretakers or staff the function is delivery of service to the patients. Yet it is clear that too often such seemingly straightforward goals are not achieved. Indeed, many patients pass on to another state of disability while under treatment in the institution (institutionalization). Why? We believe that in part it is because many fundamental questions have not been answered, and some of these concern the design of the built environment. For example, we have not sufficiently examined the question: how do social properties get into places, things, and times? Then before the design operation begins we need to know by what social and technical processes the goals of therapy are served. Finally we must ask how we design structures which facilitate functional operations of various types — the technical sequences, the social situations in which they occur, the attention structure of the participants which is appropriate to each situation, and the perceptual organization by which form and function are intimately matched. Specifically, how do we design contexts? We begin to explore these questions in this paper, embedding our theoretical discussion in a real-life context. One of us (Clancy) has recently been involved in experimental treatment programs in two institutions, one for severely disturbed young children three to twelve years old at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and another for schizophrenic and mentally retarded men who had been living in a state mental hospital in Queensland, Australia, for periods ranging from fifteen to sixty years. One aspect of both programs was concerned with reorganizing existing built environments to exert specific influences on the social interactions between patients, and between staff and patients. We will focus our attention on the Florida project with the children, for the organizing principles were equally applicable to the apparently very different population, the men.

HOW DO SOCIAL PROPERTIES GET INTO PLACES, THINGS, AND TIMES? Let us start with the proposition that nothing ever happens except in a social context, and that this is built behaviorally by individuals. For example, a lion may not hunt a deer unless there is an arrangement among lions about who may and may not hunt deer. A bird does not build a nest with-

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out first arranging with its neighbors about who may or may not have access to it — or even approach the area. A squirrel does not bury nuts without some arrangement with other squirrels about access to the burying area in the particular months ahead when the stores are retrieved. The social arrangements always seem to be made between individuals by behavior, organized into sequences that we call interactions. In an interaction, each individual generates behavior and an interaction is characterized especially by incomplete sequences, but excellent mutual adjustments. Indeed, uncompleted segments are the essence of ADEQUATE interaction — just as verbal conversation is characterized by incomplete sentences, but improved adjustment and understanding between participants. This property of continuing adjustment and reorganizing of goals of the behavioral sequence maintains interactants at a high level of arousal, which means, among other things, high attention and learning. Learning is seldom the recording of unassorted information onto a clean slate; it seems to be concerned with quite specific situations where the arousal is high, as in orienting responses, investigatory behavior, and interactions. So, most of what is learned is specific to situations. In interactions, there is recording of the adjustments made to each other, the sorting out of appropriate responses, so that mutual adjustments do not need to be made again, at least in these areas. These adjustments are carried forward from interaction to interaction over long periods, so that the past becomes the control over the behavior of the present — every interaction contains within it the history of all previous mutual adjustments. The adjustments between individuals are embedded in a structure that we call a relationship. It is within the relationship between individuals that one finds the social properties of places, and these emerge in various ways. For example, fights are interactions, which yield many sorts of relationships, having their origin in the precise details of the interaction. In one case where the animals are gregarious the fight may be followed by a long sequence of submissions, at many times and in many places in a variety of social situations. The relationship emerging is that which we call dominant/ subordinate, and applies in a range of times and places experienced, and perhaps even beyond. In another case, the fight may end in a pursuit which ceases at a certain point. Then a sequence of engagements, with different outcomes between the individuals at different places, may serve to produce a boundary, in a relationship between neighbors that we call territorial. Another fight may serve to separate contestants in space and time, so that the same general area is used at different times by each, in

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a home-ranging relationship, as between two feral cats. It is in situations like these, with the adjustments between neighbors focusing attention on different features of the situation, that basic social properties such as "ownership" get into places. There may be attachment between an individual and a place, but ownership results from a relationship with neighbors which determines the access of each to the property. Such territorial systems surely must be one of the most primitive social properties of places. Man, of course, has highly formalized systems of ownership and its transfer. In interactions, the mutual resolution of the differences between the interactants must provide them with some reinforcement. Yet this must be supplemented in many cases because the place is inherently suitable for that particular functional activity, and places often have such suitability, for example, soft sand and shady nooks are recognized by aborigines, while a hedge or thicket can affect the suitability of a place for a territorial boundary for many species of birds. Thus, the degree of suitability of a place for some activity is also a statement of its effectiviness as a reinforcer of the behavior that occurs there. Individuals may confer social properties on particular places by using them for particular functions, and being reinforced by their suitability, positively or negatively. Moreover, familiarity alone has been shown to constitute an important reinforcer, allowing the animal to function more effectively, and thus investing the place with more social properties. Because learning is involved, it is quite clear that the social properties of places, things, and times exist only within the behavioral organization of individuals, man and other species alike. The learning process is complex, and all the components are inextricably mixed and interdependent. The reinforcement may be direct, as shade, or associative, e.g. deriving from the activity carried on there, such as eating, or from familiarity. Most likely some intimate combination of all is involved. Thus eating or other social or neighborly activities may be reinforced by the place as effectively as the place derives its reinforcing properties in part from the social or actonic activities carried on there, and these depend in part on the suitability of the place. The whole situation or event begins to emerge as a single unit of function and of context.

WHAT IS A CONTEXT, AND HOW SHOULD IT BE DESIGNED? If we use the word surroundings to include everything in the vicinity of an animal or group of animals, then it is clear that much of the sur-

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roundings may be irrelevant and unnoticed by the individual or group. The word environment then may take on a specific distinction if it refers to all of the components of the surroundings which are in any way attended to, and thus incorporated in, the individual's internal maps of the world, against which all sensory input is checked. The relevance of and attention to parts of the surroundings arise from relationships which have been developed — with predators or prey, with shelter or exposure, or with any source of positive or negative reinforcement, as a result of orienting responses to changes, investigative or exploratory behavior, and from interactions in which components of the surroundings contribute to some aspect of the adjustment being made, changing them from surroundings to environment. The environment is a property of the organism. The functional segments of the environment, with specific histories, and associations with specific activities, are probably appropriately called contexts. Thus both environments and contexts are differentiated from surroundings by the organization of individuals. Both are organizers of behavior, but contexts are involved in the organization of specific types of behavior. Thus a cage supplies a lion with surroundings, but no environment. There is little that is "lion-like" about the behavior of a lion in a cage — its surroundings give it no scope for the emergence of any of the organismenvironment behaviors that it has evolved. Because contexts must be sensed, they must also be units of environmental communication. In such places, there are normally many features that facilitate animal activities. These include the presence of food or water, shade or shelter, but usually the availability of information is one consideration. A high site may have good visibility and a clear flow of auditory and olfactory information. Other properties may include the defensiveness of a narrow entrance rather than an open plain. An example here is the particular structure used by Calhoun (1962) in his well-known "behavioral sink" study, which allowed the harem groups to be maintained by the males' defense at the "door," in the end pens, long after the societal structure had collapsed in the indefensible central pens. The social effects of designed structures are obviously profound. Throughout the animal kingdom, built structures are universally concerned with the form of social situations, from the incubation of eggs and nestlings, to the aggregation of nests into colonies. Design always exerts controls over the interactive properties of social situations. Courtships and copulations may allow the focus of attention between the partners, free of interference and disturbance if the context is suitable; such free-

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dom is also a requirement for the dangerous and susceptible behavior, sleep, and contexts are most frequently designed for this activity. An environment designed for an activity may be quite inappropriate for another; e.g. bower birds build one structure for their courtship, and quite another sort for their nesting. Indeed, within any context, there may be many different features that facilitate different parts of the interactions which occur there, as in the tunnel associated with the nest of a stickleback male. Here the tunnel is particularly involved in spawning, while the nest design suits the fanning of the eggs. The reinforcement from each component adds a different quality to the organism-environment relationship which emerges. In this way, a relationship acquires a number of dimensions or qualities concerned with functions and affect, and, in man, imagery or intellectual associations may also emerge, a result of the intellectual activities associated with particular places and times. All these components of relationships, and thus of contexts, have quite different properties and implications for design. This brings us to the third question posed at the outset of this discussion.

HOW DO WE DESIGN STRUCTURES THAT FACILITATE FUNCTIONAL OPERATIONS OF VARIOUS TYPES? It is the design of the human environment that concerns most of us here. More than this, the contexts we must design are for a bewildering array of social and actonic activities. The social situations may concern strangers in our anonymous world, or any mixture of bonded partners, friends, acquaintances, and strangers together or separately, engaged in any of the incredible array of functional activities of modern man. Function may be remarkably complex, e.g. bars are as much concerned with meeting partners as with drinking. There is always a social component to the situation, be it only the maintenance of isolation. The social properties of familiar space are quite different from those of anonymous space, and familiarity is not an all-or-none quality. In the daily journey to work, the anonymity of the space increases from house to garden, quiet suburban street to neighborhood thoroughfare to freeway, and then through the university gates to the parking lot, the path to the office or laboratory building, through increasingly familiar corridors to the department and office. Familiar space seems to evoke attachment and even possessiveness — an area in which people exert some social controls over each other's behavior, eliminating most disruptive or de-

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structive activities. These social controls do not emerge in anonymous space, which envelops only anonymous people. Thus streets and passages which are used only as corridors fail to elicit protected social controls, and may first become neglected, littered, and untidy; later vandalism and destructiveness appear, and eventually violence may occur. Such places regularly acquire these social properties, at least at certain times. The busy wharf or school grounds of the day may well become a fearsome arena for muggers at night. It should also be recognized that these are social properties of the places, and are usually facilitated by the design of the environment. For in the design are the elements which facilitate or hinder the emergence of social controls, by specifying who and how many will use the place for what activities, when, and how frequently. In any well-designed area, the reliance on official and impersonal social controls such as police patrols is kept at a minimum, complementing in time the other social controls by inhabitants and users. Anonymity and familiarity give radically different behaviors in particular spaces. In any corridors, whether within buildings or between them, or even vertically in elevators, there appear to be constraining effects on such social interactions as conversations between companions when strangers are present; confinement within the enclosed space may result in a more rigid code of privacy or avoidance. Corridors also affect the social qualities of approach and vis-ä-vis situations among strangers and even acquaintances, turning people into traffic units who acknowledge each other only in avoidance. Yet any structure which regularly generates vis-ä-vis situations between pairs of regular users has some profound effects, which seem to derive from the vis-ä-vis. As familiarity grows with recognition, so does identity, and with it comes a need to acknowledge each other as individuals. An option toward a nonanonymous relationship emerges. Identity seems to be a social property of people, conferred by others, but it may also be fostered by design. One part seems to be the possession of some personal space, difficult for example in corridors. In any activity context, there should always be some "avoidance spaces" for those who are easily crowded. Probably everyone needs some private and secluded space, at least for sleeping, but most also need some semiprivate semipublic buffer space (Sommer 1969). One needs only to think of the traditional sequence of bedroom, corridor, living room, entrance porch, front garden to realize how many grades of private and semiprivate spaces most of us use, especially to buffer many of our activities. Privacy and security are presumably involved in the creation of identity,

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and in this walls and doors have a special use, limiting and controlling the flow of information available to others. In modern man, very many environments are designed as contexts for functional activities. The activities may be social intercourse only, as in a conference room, or may be specifically actonic, as in a factory floor or kitchen, or there may be some combination of the two, as in a teaching laboratory or gameroom. Yet the purely actonic situation is usually a myth for there is always some social context for the activities, and this is generally influenced by design. Sometimes the social features are ignored, with the emphasis placed on time-and-motion studies and operations analyses, so that the person-and-the-job is central. Yet normally the workers go right ahead and generate the social relationships they need, and then service them by interactions, either continuously while working, or at regular coifee breaks in which productive roles become related to social roles. In the therapeutic environment, the activities of the staff and the inmates must complement each other, so that ideally each is maximally aware of the other's behavior; the therapeutic endeavor may then become interactive. This seldom seems to be achieved. In most institutions, the attention structure among the staff reflects their own organizational hierarchy, with some formal and regular pattern of "attention to patients." In many situations, patients are effectively "nonpersons" (Rosenhan 1973). There is little doubt that the attention structure among the patients is more complex. Most attend through their own hierarchy to the staff and to nursing stations as informational sources. Some maintain minimum contact with others, and the attention structure of the institution usually allows them maximum freedom to avoid social contacts. This behavior is particularly characteristic of many called schizophrenics and of all autistic children. In an institution for autistic children, each goes his own way, independently, and, because they are poorly socialized, destructively. The staff attend to their charges according to some formal pattern, which includes regular sessions with individual children, at meal times, and in response to any disruptive behavior, where an authoritarian approach is typical, defending property and children from children. The role is husbandry, not therapy. Interaction is low, and the patients easily accommodate to the trivial demands imposed by the therapists. Yet it is possible to alter the design of the environment so that the attentions of patients and staff are differently organized toward each other and to the surroundings, in such a way that specific types of interaction are fostered between patients and between staff and patients. With the

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change in social and activity interactions, each context acquires new social properties. Most contexts are multipurpose, and too much specialization in the design reduces options. Perhaps highly specialized contexts may lead to high reinforcement, and thus the rapid acquisition of desirable social properties, but these will emerge in any case more slowly with familiarity in a more flexible context. Perhaps options are indicators of the quality of many spaces. But therapy is one whole operation, and the separate components serve a single plan, integrating context, people, and activity into a therapeutic community in which skills of all types develop within a sequence of social situations. All events become interactive, embracing all of the components, staff as well as the working environment, serving the many intermediate goals of therapy. Similarly in the design of contexts, the parts must complement each other within the whole. As soon as function and its social qualities are built into one part, this automatically changes the qualities of all of the other parts. Before moving on to concrete examples, let us look at some specific principles in the organization of contexts. First, it is necessary to make a thorough operations analysis of the complete therapeutic program, examining each of the component activities and the way they serve intermediate and later goals. The activities should then get the attention of the specialists who can design highly functional activity situations, the time-andmotion people, and the assembly-line specialist who can create excellent working formats. Yet these people often fail to design the social context, or social envelope, in which people may also attend to each other under conditions which facilitate social interaction. Perhaps all individuals should come under easy observation of others, staff and patients. Some individuals are rich sources of information and should be more easily observed than others. Because every activity is embedded in a social context, it may serve several social ends of therapy, including speech therapy, occupational therapy interwoven in a teaching situation, in which any affiliative interactive behavior may be observed and reinforced as part of the whole social event. The tools of the environment which can affect social behavior are obvious: walls, rooms, passages, open spaces, clutter and obstruction, moveable screens, doors, and furniture, and particularly their arrangement. It is easy to list these obvious tools, but harder to use them. Always the key seems to be the control of attention of people in various ways.

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Attention may be attracted to the various parts of a structure, by ornament or decoration, by texture, light, and sometimes by a responsiveness of the part. Attracting attention directly is a first step, because it fosters an active and even interactive, rather than a passive habituation, one which leads to a conscious familiarity with the features of each context. Large open spaces, whether outside or inside, create problems for many people (and animals). Many people outside do their socializing around a tree rather than in the open space, and when inside, keep to walls or furniture. Older people sometimes actually prefer clutter around them (DeLong 1970). Because architects so often produce open visual space, we seldom find the responses of people to other types of spaces. Each of the parts of a context may be used to control attention. Walls specify directions from which change or information may not come. They thus give shelter, and may direct attention away, to windows or doors, or to the space which has been bounded by the wall, whether inside or outside. Furniture may also supplement this direction of attention. Yet there is little point in controlling the direction of information flow without also arranging for appropriate sources of appropriate information, appropriately timed. Social information usually comes in an interactive form, mainly in a vis-ä-vis orientation, and is thus relatively easy to organize when people sit, or stand to work. But information also arrives from other people and places. The information from higher levels of a hierarchy seems to be attended to closely, and this may argue for locating high status people in central and obvious positions. Nursing stations are informational centers, as are corridors leading from the "outside," along which doctors and visitors drive, park, or walk toward the therapy centers. These places have important social properties, and should be made visible, except when their observation would be a handicap to certain therapeutic operations. Now we may turn our attention to the modifications made in the children's residential unit in Florida.

THE FLORIDA PROJECT The unit occupies an attractive building comprising four living apartments identical in layout, each housing six children of similar age, and two caretakers called "cottage parents." On the same floor there are administrative offices and specialist staff facilities, e.g. school rooms. A large playground opens off the unit, which is incorporated in a busy medical center. While furnishings in all apartments were attractive and

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comfortable, they had been kept to a minimum because of the high degree of prevailing destructive behavior. The experimental program, including environmental modification, was implemented at the request of regular staff of the unit. The staff was admittedly unhappy, divided among themselves, without rationale or direction in their current therapeutic efforts, and as a consequence failed to make any impact on the children's pathological behavior, in some cases even after two years of intensive effort. The net effect of the current environmental arrangements and therapeutic programs was to reinforce the children's isolated noninteractive social behavior, and to promote poor communication pathways among staff. As a consequence the children did not become socialized (the desired goal), but rather became much more isolated (ill) and staff became chronically weary, despairing, and separated from one another, rather than integrated as a team. Cottage parents had full-time responsibility for the twenty-four children in the unit — all other staff had outside commitments, which created special problems of how to divide labor so as to maximize efforts of the inadequate number of specialists available. These were: one occupational therapist, one speech therapist, two special educators, one ward psychiatrist, six social workers, and one administrative officer. These people were highly skilled and efficient in their own specialities, though currently functioning ineffectually. Modifying the built environment was regarded as an important way of extending and reinforcing the specialists' programs, thereby increasing the therapeutic impact on the children, and in some degree compensating for people shortage, without involving capital outlay. The children, aged three to twelve years, came from all parts of Florida and lived in the unit for varying periods, up to two years. As is usually the case, boys outnumbered girls, and clinical diagnoses were "autistic", "brain-injured" or "psychotic." All were regarded as severly ill and the most characteristic behavioral description was "an extremely detached or isolated child, engaging persistently in self-involved stereotyped activity, failing to interact with people." As a consequence, none of the children had acquired competence in socialization skills, including language. Although for this discussion we are focusing on the environmental modifications, these are only intelligible in their interrelationship with the other components of the whole program. Thus we must divert and orient the reader to these other components — the functions to be designed to mesh with the environmental "context." Promotion of socialization skills was to be the underlying theme for all programs with all children. Normally, the context for this is the affili-

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ative interaction within the family, particularly between child and mother. In institutions the affiliative setting is generally absent, for a variety of reasons, the most important being that the staff are seldom involved with the children for long enough periods of time under regimes designed to foster socializing affiliations. Thus, controlled attention, i.e. engagement, maintenance, and social reinforcement, which is a feature of any bond, is not easily achieved in an institution. Families were not directly or actively involved in the current program, mainly for geographic, but also for philosophical reasons. The staff preferred it that way, but were prepared, with guidance, to try involving parents in the experimental program. Attention was focused on setting up procedures which would allow for the development of affiliative processes, in some degree between staff and children only, at first. Each child was to be linked to a limited number (three to four) of adults around him so that he gained affective security, with insurance against the withdrawal of one. To achieve these attachments, attention structuring was necessary, altering the child's attention from self-involved trivial activities to both his physical and social environment while relationships were being formed. The built environment was specifically implicated to become an interactive one, also concerned with altering attention structure in both staff and children. Under the current regime the children characteristically spent the day in their living apartment, including the playground, with their cottage parents. All specialists followed a similar conventional pattern of fetching children individually for short periods, for half an hour to an hour, once or twice weekly for special therapy, e.g. speech, which took place away in another room. Poor communication between specialists resulted in fragmented and often duplicated treatment, which also totally neglected some areas. It seemed that "the child" had been neatly packaged into the areas most attractive to each person without regard to a whole plan of action. The cottage parents were understandably hostile about these arrangements because they were exposed, for approximately eight hours a day, to face-to-face contact with the children, without specific therapeutic function or direction, or activity resources other than their ingenuity. The cottage parents were also mostly ignorant of the specialists' functions. In the new experimental program, we were seeking to achieve the following objectives: 1. To foster social and socializing interactions between adults and children, and between children. 2. To integrate staff skills in order to minimize overlap and energy

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expenditure, and maximize effectiveness, and to order every part of the children's day. 3. To modify the built environment, initially within a restricted area, the children's living quarters, to complement and reinforce other special programs. We now turn our attention to the third goal.

THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT Figure 1 illustrates the apartment living room layout before modifications. Time-sample behavioral observations over a three-day period revealed the following characteristic interactions between children and cottage parents during their eight-hour contact.

Figure 1. Illustrates children's living apartment before modification to the living room area. 1. Dining table setting. 2. Serving table. Walls were adorned with art prints almost at ceiling height

In the early morning period the cottage parents (CPs) were occupied in the kitchen, with little or no child involvement. The children's predominant behavior was to roam around the apartment against a continuous background noise from the television, avoiding social contact with others, and engaging in stereotyped behavior, using the furniture in a

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way that drew unfavorable attention from the CPs. The characteristic adult-child interaction was disciplinary and punitive: "Get down off that chair," "I thought I told you NOT to ...." Very few of the children had any useful language, so that patterning had to come from the adults. CPs rarely sat down, but patrolled the apartment so that the children's perceptions of an adult were lower-half body. Figure 2 shows the modified layout in one apartment. After trial, similar changes were made in the remaining three, and more sophisticated modifications were planned over a longer period.

Figure 2. Illustrates same apartment after modification. 3. and 5. are balancing board and bar. 4. Soft tunnel. Wall fixtures naturally not shown in this plan

To turn the child's attention to his social environment furniture was positioned to foster and reinforce certain patterns of social interaction, namely child-child vis-ä-vis contact; adult contact involving touching, and upper-body contact of a mutually pleasant type. Thus, placing the couch close to the main entrance with good visual control over the entire apartment freed the CPs from the need to patrol, and it created a semienclosed area which promoted a feeling of comfort and relaxation about sitting down. It was necessary to reassure the CPs that they would not be judged as "lazy"! The single chairs, except for one, were positioned in a tight semicircle focused on the television so that the children using them were now more likely to make casual, or even intentional social

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contact with one another. The remaining chair was placed alone, but facing into the room, in the belief that even solitary children need occasionally to retreat. Under this new arrangement they could do so, while still remaining part of the social group, at least visually. Furniture placement was further used to facilitate learning of a variety of socialization skills. For example, by putting the dining area adjacent to the kitchen the children could now assist in serving food and clearing away. More than that, staff could now remain sitting at the table in faceto-face interaction with the children, altering the type of controls used over their behavior and promoting increased social engagement between adults and children, and the latter with each other. Now to turn to another aspect of the modifications, namely the deliberate fostering of perceptual skills. In general this may be done by arranging for individuals to encounter changes of various types which attract their attention. These may be in color, brightness, texture, sound, and smell and within these groups the variety is almost endless. We used versatile, self-explanatory play equipment of two kinds. The first was designed to encourage gross motor activity, e.g. a flexible cloth crawling tunnel, balancing bars, and boards. The balancing bar was positioned against a little-used wall, giving an actual physical support as well as a feeling of security, and reducing visual distraction from the ongoing activity. Other movable equipment was put, seemingly in a haphazard pile, in the open center floor space. An activity center designed by Richer and Nicoll (1971) was to be installed at a later date in each apartment in this central floor area. The second kind of equipment consisted of wall fixtures chosen to foster specific learning. These were, for example, very large texture boards; self-rewarding busy boards with push buzzer, zip fasteners, buttons, and many other devices; and active picture-teaching concepts such as "up," "down," "on," "off." All wall pictures were of sturdy construction, positioned at the children's eye level, and were changed from time to time to avoid an habituation effect. The possibilities for such equipment are limited only by ingenuity, and in this case, time. Only one month was available for the design and implementation of the complete experimental program. CONSEQUENCES OF THE MODIFICATIONS Whereas previously the apartment had simply been a caretaking area, especially during the day, it now became a context for functional activities by the specialists for some time each day (see Table 1). In this way the

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Analysis of a Culture Through Its Culturemes: Theory and Method

273

within a tertiary cultureme), each one being an individual DERIVED CULTUREME. But kinesics, for instance, would specify the behavior in the living room, at the table, etc., thus offering the possibility for finer further analysis. DERIVED CULTUREMES 1 concentrate on specific areas of each derived cultureme, as, for instance, kinesics at the table, which would refer to informal meals, or formal ones, according to the social status of both hosts and guests. So, should we require more critical distinctions, we would go into: DERIVED CULTUREMES 2, as, for instance, kinesic behavior of upper-class hosts and guests, or upper-class hosts and middle-class guests (a most interesting situation), or middle-class hosts and guests, or lower-class hosts and middle-class guests; or vice versa. Formal and informal encounters around the table would also display characteristic social techniques. In addition, within each of the situations mentioned, we may want (backed at this point by solid and systematic terms of reference), to concentrate on: DERIVED CULTUREMES 3, such as upper-class eye-contact behavior at the table. For the sake of orderliness, within the area of human behavior, all D l ' s may deal with clothing, all D2's with kinesics, all D3's with proxemics, all D4's with chronemics, and so on. . It was pointed out before that each time we deal with a different cultureme, such as eye contact, it is possible to build up a whole CLASS, including in this case: eye-contact behavior in exteriors as well as in interiors, in urban as well as in rural environments, made up of carefully and progressively analyzed segments at different levels. All systems and subcultures can be exhaustively described. In addition, the relationships between different systems, which began to appear after the analysis of tertiary culturemes, can now be studied in great detail, as, for instance: relationship between eye contact and proxemic behavior at the table according to social status, in a given culture; relationship between proxemics and architecture; relationship between kinesthetic involvement and architectural style; relationship between peripheral vision and architectural style, etc. Finally, any study of behavior and communication within the context of culture must consider at all times, but very particularly in the last stages of microanalysis, what I have outlined elsewhere as the biophysicopsychological and socioeconomic conditioning background of the speaker-actor, shown in Table 1, against which each individual or collective behavior must be weighed. Certain factors, such as age, sex, socioeconomic medium, geographical location, etc., will present elements for finer and

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exhaustive analysis, revealing, as they become discernible, individual, family, community, and national features within each communicative modality, from speech through object language to chronemics. I trust that the validity of this methodological approach, particularly from the cross-cultural point of view, has been demonstrated, that this type of analysis — susceptible of being applied with logical and systematic flexibility — will be deemed practical for fieldwork and research at different levels, and, above all, realistic, because it is based on a gradual knowledge of human behaviors and environments.

REFERENCES BIRDWHISTELL, RAY L.

1954

Introduction to kinesics: an annotation system for analysis of body mo-

tation and gesture. Louisville: University of Louisville. HALL, EDWARD T.

1959 The silent language. Garden City, New York: Doubleday. POYATOS, FERNANDO

1972 The communication system of the speaker-actor and his culture: a preliminary investigation. Linguistics 83:64-86.

A Decision Model for Estimating Concurrent School Attendance among Tribal Peoples of Liberia, Together with an Application Regarding Differential Cognitions Toward Traditional Housing JAMES BECKMAN

What follows is a report of research on a specific decision-making model. This research was a portion of a larger effort, which utilized several models and related to a number of types of behavior. For each model and behavioral domain (type of behavior), subject-by-subject predictions of behavior constituted an empirical test of the model. Sample size was 1000 tribal males, fourteen to twenty-one years of age. The population sampled (target population) was approximately 100,000 tribal males of that age range, with rough stratification by tribe and residence. The immediate task of the researcher was to predict whether a given subject was in school or not at the time of testing. Research not reported here dealt with predictions of school attendance and other behavior eighteen to twenty-four months after the sampling. Because of the sample size, it was hoped that the results could be generalized to the target population of 100,000. Due to the high correlation between concurrent behavior and predictions on that behavior, the results may be useful for experimental work to investigate more fully the decision-making process as well as to continue work on predicting naturalistic behavior on other behavioral domains in other populations and societies and time frames. More particularly, since formal schooling is a principal method of entry into the "modern," national culture of Liberia, an examination of this behavioral domain may be useful in dealing with the cognitive correlates of social change. While a delineation between school attendance and nonattendance may Most of the research is contained in a dissertation (Beckman 1973). The research was supported by NIH Predoctoral Fellowship 1-F01 MH 46087-01, and Field Grant MH 12267-01 CUAN. Fieldwork was conducted from February 1970 to February 1971.

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seem particularly divorced from social policy, by using statistics available from governmental units, knowledge of cognitions about each alternative can be useful. A plausible "why" of behavior possesses obvious utility. THE DECISION MODEL We will outline the model here. Later in the paper we will demonstrate its application. The core of the decision-making model consists of the following statements : 1. In dealing with a particular behavioral domain, the subject is confronted with two alternatives. Here he considers being in school or not being in school. 2. Each alternative is viewed as consisting of a number of attributes. These attributes are elicted with a preliminary small sample, and then offered to (standardized for) the primary sample of 1000. 3. A set of rules for evaluation of alternatives is provided. This set defines the predicted behavior, under the assumption that an individual will endeavor to pursue the alternative which the model evaluates most highly. It is also assumed that an individual can successfully pursue the choice given by the model. 4. The set of decision rules for concurrent behavior includes what we have termed rectangular ordering, a minimal set, and a statement concerning entries in the minimal set. The notion of alternatives is a commonplace of mathematical economics and psychology (Koopmans 1957; Edwards and Tversky 1967). That alternatives may be considered as representable as an aggregation of attributes is a part of twentieth-century philosophy (Barrett and Aiken 1962), cognitive anthropology (Tyler 1969), and — more recently — some economic theorizing (Lancaster 1971; Griliches 1971). Rectangular ordering bears resemblance to attribute-wise ordered differences among alternatives, as discussed by mathematical psychologists (Morrison 1962; Tversky 1969). The concept of minimal set draws from the work of George Miller on the processing limitations of the brain (1956:81-97). The rule concerning entries in the minimal set has an affinity to disjunctive models in mathematical psychology (Coombs 1964; Einhorn 1969: 221-231).

APPLICATION OF THE MODEL Once in the field, the decision model was specified by a number of pre-

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liminary steps. The first was to elicit directly from a sample of fifty the attributes relevant to being or not being in school. Recalling that the subjects were given just two alternatives, the questions asked of them were: 1. What are the reasons you would go to school? 2. What are the reasons you would not go to school? From the responses given by the fifty subjects, sixteen basic attributes were ascertained once an effort had been made to eliminate semantic overlap. These sixteen were identical for both alternatives. On the basis of frequency of response, these sixteen were reduced to eight. After endeavoring to remove semantic overlap, the distribution of the number of responses from the fifty subjects provided four as the number of entries in the minimal set. The primary sample of 1000 subjects was given the two alternatives and eight standardized attributes. Their instructions were: "I will read you some of the things which people have told me are important if they consider going to school. [Read and display list of attributes and alternatives.] Could you tell me the order of importance to you, starting with the most important? First, let's look at going to school. Then we'll examine not going to school." (See Figure 1.) Form

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a4

a5

a6

School

Not A place Become People Things Make work to rest big man not too happen- money too hard bad ing

In

6

Out Figure 1.

(V)

8 (T)

a7

a8

With my friends

Work for my people

2

1

Θ

7

Θ Θ 0 Θ

3

5

(T)

4

Data form

After the horizontal importance-ordering has taken place for each of the two alternatives, this ordering is used for the vertical preference-ordering down each column: "Now we want to learn which are the best to you as between the most important thing in not going to school and the most

278

JAMES BECKMAN

important thing in holding a job. We want to do this for the second most important, the third, and so forth." Figure 1 shows the data sheet for subject 914, with all personal data except that pertinent to the computation removed. The eight attributes listed are those which were ascertained by direct eliciting, reduction of semantic overlap, and frequency of offering. The numbers in each row indicate order of descending importance for each alternative. The circling represents dominant preference as between two attributes of equal importance. In Figure 1, subject 914 importance-ordered the categories as follows: Row 1: Row 2:

(aie, ai3, . . · (a28, a27, . . .

In vertical preference-ordering, we note that ai6 is preferred to a28, ai3 is preferred to a27, aig is preferred to a23, etc. The resultant rectangular ordering for subject 914 can therefore be represented:

i

aie ai3 ai 8 ai 5 a i 7 a25 a2i a22 I a28 a27 &23 a2e a24 a n a w ai2 |

The next step is to examine the minimal set, consisting of the four attributes adjudged by the subject to be pairwise most preferred as between the two attributes after importance-ordering. This is readily seen to be the 1 x 4 matrix in the upper left corner of the 2 x 8 matrix which results from rectangular ordering. For subject 914 the minimal set is seen to be (ai 6 , ai 3 , aie, ais), written as a set, or (aie ai3 aig ais), written as a matrix. The minimal set may contain between zero and four attributes from either of the alternatives. Obviously, the minimal set contains exactly four attributes from the two alternatives considered together. In order to predict which alternative has been selected by the subject, we require a rule which deals with the four entries in the minimal set. Our rule for predicting concurrent or short-term behavior comes from three assumptions: (1) a selection of alternative predictions for all combinations of possible entries in the minimal set; (2) each of the entries in the minimal set is "approximately equal" in valuation; (3) the decision which yields the prediction is a linear sum of the "approximately equal" valuations of the four entries in the minimal set. The rules of choice separate into three parts. The reference to disjunctive models enters because we would select one of the two alternatives as the predicted behavior if R(l) or R(2) or R(3), below, occurs. R(l): Select the alternative with four entries in the minimal set;

Estimating Concurrent School Attendance among Tribal Peoples of Liberia

279

R(2): Select the alternative with three entries in the minimal set; R(3): Select the alternative with two entries in the minimal set, one of which is in first position. A consideration of the two alternative-eight attribute-four entry minimal set structure indicates that one of the two alternatives will always be selected.

THE TARGET POPULATION AND SAMPLE Having no more reliable information, we estimated that about 100,000 tribal males between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one lived in Liberia. Tribal membership was determined by concluding whether the subject could live independently of the tribal kin grouping. This standard introduced economic, political, social, and emotional aspects. Very few potential subjects from tribal backgrounds were eliminated by such multifaceted independence. As indicated earlier, stratification was done by tribe and residence. Our sample approximated the tribal composition for Liberia given by Kory (1971:53-63). Residence consisted of four choices, the percentage of sample included in each being the consequence of our estimation: bush (50 percent), on roadway (20 percent), the capital Monrovia (20 percent), the iron and rubber concessions (10 percent). A weakness of our stratification is that the residence figures were assumed to hold for each tribal group, which to some extent is untrue. Thus the Kpelle — the largest tribe and heavily exposed to the national culture for less than three decades — was assumed to have 50 percent of their fourteen to twenty-one year-old males in the bush. The same assumption was made for the Vai, one of the smallest tribes and exposed to the national culture for almost 150 years. Exposure here means either that the bush has been infiltrated by the national culture, or that a very large proportion of the more youthful population has moved away from the traditional jungle setting. This presumed independence of tribe and residence was required by limitations of time and other resources. The interviewers were of tribal origin, with at least ten years of formal education. When sent out, they were requested to seek out a specified number of (a) males, fourteen to twenty-one years of age as could best be approximated; (b) of specified tribes and residences; (c) who had completed at least two years of formal schooling; (d) who did not indicate they had sought for less than two months to enter school. Among the reasons for requirement (c) was the desire to eliminate those with gross emotional and intellectual ineptitude. Condition (d) was

280

JAMES BECKMAN

to eliminate persons who really desired to be in school but had not been out of tribal areas long enough at that time to make suitable arrangements.

ANALYSIS OF DATA The principal researcher received the completed forms, as in Figure 1, but with information on subject completed. The rule of choice was readily computed, since the circled (1, 2, 3, 4) comprised the minimal set for the subject. The prediction on concurrent behavior for each form was then compared with the included statement as to whether the subject was or was not in school. The tally as to the fit between prediction and observed behavior was then easily placed into a 2 χ 2 format, as shown in Table 1. Table 1. Prediction versus observed behavior (cell and marginal observations/predictions rounded to nearest hundredth, chi-square = 723.160 with 1 degree of freedom) Observed attendance Predicted

In

Out

school

In

.32

.06

.38

attendance

Out

.03

.59

.62

.35

.65

1000

We were correct in our predictions on concurrent behavior for approximately 32 percent of the 1000 actually in school and 59 percent of that number actually out of school. These figures sum to 91 percent of the 1000 person sample. The chi-square of 723.16 is the result of treating the above as a contingency table, and using the obvious null hypothesis that each of the four entries is the consequence of multiplying together the relevant marginal percentages. For example, the null hypothesis would dictate that the (in, in) cell has an expected probability which results from multiplying (.38) times (.35). Our version of the maximum likelihood test yielding this value for chisquareis that drawn from the ratio of observations under the null hypothesis to the more general hypothesis that the sum of probabilities for all four cells sums to 1, a multinomial population (Mood and Graybill 1963).

Estimating Concurrent School Attendance among Tribal Peoples of Liberia

281

A USE OF A PORTION OF THE MODEL We have observed that the application of the complete decision-making model has at least in one instance provided a significant degree of predictive accuracy for a large sample. This would tend to justify using the predictions as estimators over the entire target population from which the sample was drawn. A portion of the model might also be used to investigate cognition within a semantic domain. The eliciting procedures could establish attributes in that domain. Later, behavioral alternatives could be established from distinct cognitive domains, and behavior predicted after the application of some decision-making model. Thus a partial testing of the semantic domains might be accomplished. Until such a testing, however, the previous application of the model elaborated above may serve to justify a preliminary discussion of elicited semantic constructs. Rapoport (1969) has written of the intimate connection between a culture and its housing. While he focuses upon the physical characteristics of that housing, it would seem apparent that these characteristics provide an inventory within the heads of most members of the associated culture. For cultures that do not value change, the relation between housing and head is dual: what one has observed should be registered internally, and what is registered ought to be a guide to erecting new domiciles. While testing our decision-making model — for current and future behavior, and for school attendance and job holding — we collected data which might be of interest in considering the relation between perceived attributes of housing and the culture in which it would be placed. We dealt with two samples of 100 males, fourteen to twenty-one years of age. All 200 were of the Kpelle tribe, which constitutes about 20 percent of the tribal population of Liberia. All 200 had lived a minimum of the first eight years of their lives in a tribal environment. Such a setting indicates housing which was of mud and sticks, with thatch roofs and mud floors. For each nuclear family the structures could vary in number from one, implying a single wife, to a larger house surrounded by smaller huts for each wife and possibly other relatives. The nuclear family could live independently of other nuclear families, or it could be clustered with several hundreds of others. Until recently the houses tended to be of a single room, round or rectangular in configuration, and with one or more wood-barred windows. In one group of 100 at least the preceding five years had been spent in Monrovia. The capital and only city in Liberia, Monrovia has about 100,000 residents. Most of the sample lived in houses with galvanized iron

282

JAMES BECKMAN

roofs. Many homes had mud floors and the majority were of mud and stick construction. The surfacing of the walls normally was of a cement wash. We do not provide a count of housing features across the 100 residents of Monrovia, since the city provided constant examples of housing of cement block, poured concrete, and galvanized iron over wooden framing. Thus the perceptions of the 100 were of a variety of nontraditional building materials, with amenities (interior plumbing, air conditioning, electric lighting, telephones) and height (up to twelve stories) unknown in the bush. The sample was in especially constant contact with such structures, since all were in high school. The second group of 100 youths had never left the bush for more than a month. Approximately a third had visited Monrovia, while another third had noted the cement block structures on one or more of the rubber or iron ore concessions. All had been along one of the vehicular roadways, and had over time noted numerous structures with galvanized iron roofs. Each of the 200 subjects was given the question, "What are the things you think of when considering a house in the bush?" Technically, " a house in the bush" constitutes our semantic domain. The responses of the 200, once they were standardized for semantic overlap, are given in Table 2. Table 2. e

Subject

k

Bush Monrovia

Associations with " a house in the bush" Thatch roofs

Mud and stick walls

One room

ai

az

a.3

100

100

76

22

12

3

Where I Where I A part can eat was of country raised country food life

Where I Sum of stay row when in entries the bush Marginal

Ü5

ae

a7

8

7

4

2

297

92

74

57

62

322

α

Table 2 displays a radical distinction between the responses of those who have remained in the bush for most of their life and those who have become partially urbanized. The average of 2.97 attributes given by those who have remained close to tribal ways indicates an awareness of physical characteristics of traditional housing. The average of 3.22 attributes elicited from those who are joining the national culture provides characteristics which imply a social context and eating, itself normally a social activity. From the above it appears most plausible that cultural modifications have altered the cognitions of the young men in the Monrovia sample.

Estimating Concurrent School Attendance among Tribal Peoples of Liberia

283

During the collection of data, we attempted to ascertain the valuation of the elicited attributes. When the tone of voice did not provide an obvious clue, we inquired. According to this standard the 100 subjects in the bush considered the elicited characteristics as negative or neutral. On the other hand, the Monrovia residents seemed to valuate the attributes they provided as positive. Since each subject valuated only the attributes he provided, we have a picture of the jungle dwellers' reactions to their housing as tending toward the negative, while the urban dwellers' reactions appeared to be positive. Because we had other interests we did not probe whether neutrality masked another attitude, or how individuals valuated attributes which they had not provided personally. From our contact with the culture, we would hold that young men in the bush tended to degrade their traditional culture. Those who had attempted to comprehend and succeed "outside" appeared inclined to romanticize some aspects of tribal life FROM A DISTANCE. While these generalizations are scientific conjecture, they coincide with the "grass is greener" results of Canter and Thorne (1972) in their study of the cognitive attitudes of architecture students in Australia and Great Britain.

CONCLUSION While a 91 percent accuracy in subject-by-subject prediction is interesting, we by no means consider it necessarily significant. First, the application of the model depends heavily upon extensive knowledge of and contact with the population being tested. Aside from living with the tribal peoples of Liberia for one year, we had a preliminary twelve months of library research and contact with persons who had lived in the same locale. Second, the elicitation of data depends heavily upon methods like those used by Kinsey (1953; Kinsey, etal. 1948) in his classic works upon human sexuality in the United States. Consequently, research assistants must be thoroughly trained and supervised. Third, our behavioral and semantic domains were probably easily provided with attributes. The essential thrust within tribal life is toward accommodation with the national culture, and formal education is the principal device by which most individuals as youths can cope with the "modern" sector. While we do not consider them here, there are other reasons why the attributes were probably much more available than might generally be the case. Fourth, providing for just two alternatives is unsatisfactory if one wishes

284

JAMBS BECKMAN

to specify the choices which most individuals seem to cognate. In our research, whatever its applicability to other domains, subjects seemed to act AS IF just two choices existed. While the utilization of a portion of the model for eliciting semantic domains does not necessarily depend upon the predictive accuracy of the model, we believe it necessary that some behavioral support be required before elicited semantic domains are used for additional work. Our current interest is that the limitations of the model be indicated with other populations and cultures, although not necessarily with more complex behavioral domains. We certainly do not believe that applications in the area of social policy are justified as a consequence of the research, but we do hope that those concerned with cross-cultural experimentation might be. An example of the latter is the research of Cole, Gay, et al. (1971) among the Kpelle of Liberia

REFERENCES BARRETT, WILLIAM, HENRY D. AIKEN

1962 Philosophy in the twentieth century. New York: Random House. BECKMAN, JAMES

1973

"Some models of individual decision making among the Kpelle and other peoples of Liberia, West Africa." Unpublished dissertation, University of California at Irvine.

CANTER, DAVID, ROSS THORNE

1972 Attitudes to housing: a cross-cultural comparison. Environment and Behavior 3:3-32. COLE, MICHAEL, JOHN GAY, JOSEPH GLICK, DONALD SHARP

1971

The cultural context of learning and thinking. New York: Basic Books.

COOMBS, CLYDE H .

1964 A theory of data. New York: Wiley. EDWARDS, WARD, AMOS TVERSKY

1967

Decisionmaking. Baltimore: Penguin.

EINHORN, HILLEL J.

1969

The use of nonlinear, noncompensating models in decision making. Psychological Bulletin 73:221-231.

GRILICHES, ZVI

1971

Price indexes and quality change. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

KINSEY, ALFRED C.

1953

Sexual behavior in the human female. Philadelphia: Saunders.

KINSEY, ALFRED C., WARDELL B. POMEROY, CLYDE E. MARTIN

1948

Sexual behavior in the human male. Philadelphia: Saunders.

KOOPMANS, TJALLING C.

1957

Three essays on the state of economic science. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Estimating

Concurrent

School

Attendance

among

Tribal Peoples

of

Liberia

285

KORY, WILLIAM

1971 Liberia's population figures. Liberian Studies Journal 3:53-63. LANCASTER, KELVIN

1971

Consumer demand: a new approach. New York: Columbia University Press.

MILLER, GEORGE A.

1956 The magical number seven, plus or minus two. Psychological Review 63:81-97. MOOD, ALEXANDER M., FRANKLIN A. GRAYBILL

1963 Introduction to the theory of statistics. New York: McGraw-Hill. MORRISON, H . W .

1962 "Intransitivity of paired comparison choices." Unpublished dissertation, University of Michigan. RAPOPORT, AMOS

1969 House form and culture. New York: Prentice-Hall. TVERSKY, AMOS

1969 Intransitivity of preferences. Psychological Review 71:31-48. TYLER, STEPHEN A.

1969 Cognitive anthropology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Housing Standards versus Ecological Forces: Regulating Population Density in Bombay

HARVEY M. C H O L D I N

I N T R O D U C T I O N A N D THEORY The adoption of minimum housing standards and city planning standards governing residential development indicates an intention to improve living conditions in a community, or at least to maintain conditions. Developing and enacting such standards indicate a social consensus about good living conditions or a consensus of the judgment of technical specialists responsible for housing. However, counterpoised against the standards and those groups which introduce and support them is a set of conditions in the community and the housing market which may be difficult to control. These human ecological forces may operate to produce high densities in communities, high densities within dwelling units, and low-quality housing in general. In this paper, I explore this opposition. I examine Bombay, India since the nineteenth century as a case in point. I present a listing of the attempts to apply minimum housing standards there, including space standards that would regulate in-dwelling density, amenity standards pertaining to other features of dwellings, and city planning standards that would govern densities in neighborhoods and in the city in general. I then examine the BASES or rationales which the authors of such standards, the standard-setters, have employed. These include subsocial and socioThis research was made possible by a grant from the Center for International Comparative Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana. The author thanks G. Anthony Atkinson and Patrick Waikley for making their data available. He also thanks Geoffrey Payne, Tony King, and Philip Oldenburg for advice and the benefit of their fieldwork experiences.

288

HARVEY Μ. CHOLDIN

cultural bases and also foreign influences affecting the standard-setters. Following this, I indicate the economic and ecological factors that mitigate against the application of the standards. This is set in the context of the modern history of the demography and housing of Bombay, particularly with regard to population density.

TWO MODELS Two general models pertain to this problem: one originating in sociological human ecology and one employed by people in housing administration and city planning. I shall call the first the HUMAN ECOLOGY MODEL and the second the ADMINISTRATIVE RATIONAL CONTROL MODEL. The HUMAN ECOLOGY MODEL indicates that there is a subsocial demography of urban growth and form. This social geography of the city is manifest in an urban structure. The distribution of social units over space is governed by economic market forces that are not controlled by norms or other items of culture. The elements of this model are an environment, technology, population, and a market. The environment is taken for granted. The main feature of the environment is its center, which is defined as its most accessible point within the existing transportation system. Given most transportation/communications systems, centrality becomes a main desideratum within the locational market. Most commercial, administrative, and sometimes even manufacturing units need to be near the center. Given a poor system of public transportation, or wage levels sufficiently low to make workers walk to work, workers' housing will be located as near as possible to places of employment. All of these features tend to produce a high intensity of land development and a high population density toward the center of a city. There are several advantages to centralization. It minimizes transportation and communications costs under some technologies and it allows like units to be together. Another subsocial process which affects density levels is the aging of the housing stock. As residential buildings age they deteriorate and become less attractive to more prosperous occupants. Poorer classes "inherit" them and occupy them at increasing densities. This model was developed for United States cities which grew in the age of the railroad for intercity transportation and the trolley for intracity transportation. It was expressed in the concentric-circle model of urban structure. The counterpart to the circle was a density gradient

Housing Standards versus Ecological Forces in Bombay

289

based on the distance from center to periphery which took the form of a negative exponential curve (Figure 1).

Population per square

mile

Miles from city Figure 1.

center.

The age of railroad and trolleys

More recently, particularly as peripheral areas have been developed in the age of the automobile, the density gradients of United States cities have taken another form (Figure 2).

Population per square mile

Miles Figure 2.

from city

center

The age of the automobile

Central densities are declining, and the gradient to the periphery is more gradual (Berry and Horton 1970). This change can be explained by the technological changes in transportation and communication — the adoption of the truck and auto, the construction of highways, and a complex of associated technological changes has permitted the suburbanization of industry and residence. The ecology of city structure is expressed in very regular patterns of density among Western cities (Berry and Horton 1970; Brush 1968). The regularities are sufficient to be stated in axiomatic form and also expressed as equations. Berry and Horton offer the following axioms:

290

HARVEY Μ. CHOLDIN

1. Population density declines with distance from the city center. 2. The density gradient declines with time. Clark has posited a different pattern of urban densities for nonWestern, particularly Indian, cities. This model has a distance gradient, also, but over time the central densities in these cities have risen (Berry and Horton 1970: 292; Brush 1968: 368-9). Berry and Horton's explanation of the Western-non-Western difference is cultural (discussed in "Discussion and conclusions," below). The typical history of the density of a Western city is that it increases over time, hits a turning point and decreases. Newling posits a CRITICAL DENSITY which occurs just prior to the turning point and the deconcentration which follows. He argues that at the point of critical density, the density has become harmful to the population. There have been sociological attacks upon the human ecological mode of analysis and explanation. Two attacks which aid in dealing with the problem at hand are by Form (1954), who says that ecological forces are constrained in their operation by social structural processes, and another by Firey who points to cultural factors, sentiment and symbolism as constraints. Form states that real estate and building organizations; large industries, utilities, etc.; small property owners; and city officials all operate in the system which produces land uses. To ignore them and their activities and to focus only upon subsocial economic processes make it impossible to explain land-use decisions. Firey (1945) argues that people in a community may act in a noneconomic manner with regard to location or land use. He argues that the pure human ecological model requires each social unit to act purely economically and rationally. Parts of these two critiques apply to the Bombay case. The ADMINISTRATIVE RATIONAL CONTROL MODEL is employed by those who attempt to direct or redirect the development of the city or its components, from housing projects to individual dwellings. City planners, housing administrators, legislators, civic officials, and others on official commissions who recommend the improvement of housing, almost all employ this model. The tools of planners and housing administrators imply the model. These tools include regulative schemes such as building standards, occupancy regulations, zoning regulations, density zones, open space and floor space indices, and others. The first assumptions underlying the model are that there is a housing "problem," that "the market" has failed, and that the problem can be "solved" by planning and regulation. The definition of the problem is in terms of some value such as health, safety, or family life. The problem is typically defined as congestion or

Housing Standards versus Ecological Forces in Bombay

291

overcrowding. This is also pursued in terms of a set of preferences, which, up to now, have been for low-density, single-family housing. Such a set of preferences is explicated by the advocates of Garden Cities (Unwin 1912, 1967). The articulation of preferences is often bolstered by a theory of the consequences of poor housing or high density: crime, disease, contagion, poor family life, impeded child development, etc. The model, especially in city planning, relies upon a calculus of efficiency. Planning practice includes formulas for calculating the optimum density for the distribution of water, collection of sewage, administration of police and fire services, etc. Several of the formulas, such as floor space indices, can be used to regulate intensity of development and indirectly also govern population density. The calculus also indicates a critical intensity or density point beyond which efficiency is lost. In the advocacy of housing standards, there is an implied calculus of health, efficiency, satisfaction. The justifications for controls, the BASES offered by their proponents, are of two types: subsocial and sociocultural. Subsocial bases refer to the residents as organisms with regard to their health, for example, and they refer to other nonsocial aspects of the housing, such as climate. Sociocultural bases for standards emphasize such values as family life and child development. That housing standards are sociocultural products has been argued by Rapoport and Watson (1968), Hole (1965), and Ratcliff (1952). The operating expression of the model is in working procedures. These are formalized conventions and are designed to be applied by builders, architects, building inspectors, etc. Examples are Floor Space Indices, Open Space Indices, etc. Other standards also attempt control of housing and occupancy levels. Some countries have conventional methods for measuring housing quality such as the checklists of the American Public Health Association (1948, 1950). Bombay has had two official methods of measuring overcrowding within units: more than two persons per room or less than twenty-five square feet per person. There are also building regulations and architects' and engineers' standards regarding ventilation, fenestration, acoustics, access and egress, fireproofing, etc. These various procedures yield measures to be used in the density data and housing and planning standards which follow. The main elements in the measures are area and occupants. The areal units at the ground level refer to gross amounts of land or net amounts, subtracting rights of way and major open spaces from gross areas. Population divided by land area equals GROUND DENSITY. This is expressed by persons per

292

HARVEY Μ. CHOLDIN

acre or per square mile. In the examination of density within dwelling units, or IN-DWELLING DENSITY, the most frequent measure is square feet per person within the dwelling (Choldin 1972). There is a special modification of this measure suggested for tropical areas. It is Total Living Space and includes outdoor space on a housing plot (Stevens 1960). There is also a MIXED MODEL explaining intensity of land development, and hence density. It was developed by Abrams, and emphasizes the MECHANISMS through which intensity levels are reached. He starts out with the "axiom" that land cost is the fundamental factor responsible for intensity of development. If the cost of land in an area is high, then its user must use it as intensively as possible. Then he lists nineteen "factors" other than land cost which are responsible for intense development. I list here those which apply to Bombay: 1. Economic: tax on land, efficiencies and returns on investment in multi-unit structures, efficiencies with regard to utilities, elevators, stairs, etc. 2. Terrain and transportation: limited area, limited transportation to outlying areas. 3. Community social life: fear of civil violence or banditry, voluntary or forced segregation of ethnic groups. 4. Planning and design policies: governmental programs, slum clearance, building regulations which promote high costs. 5. Preferences and traditions of users: preferences for simple housekeeping, proximity to kinfolk (Abrams 1953: 24-25). The overall point of the mixed model is that there is a complex of variables within any community, the net effect of which is the intensity of its land development and the density of its population. Some of the variables are ecological, arising from the environment and the land market. Some are social structural, arising from governmental policies with regard to taxes and land use. Other social structural variables refer to interethnic relations and household structure. And some variables are cultural, referring to preferences of individuals and groups as well as stylistic matters. I apply all three models to Bombay, after a review of the history of density and housing there. Bombay is an interesting city in which to examine these models. Its leaders have long called it the first city in India; it is a world port; its economic and demographic growth, particularly in the twentieth century, have been strong and rapid. Its land area has been restricted due to its situation, producing a setting conducive to high density, and indeed it has developed high density. There has been

Housing Standards versus Ecological Forces in Bombay

293

governmental attention there to matters of health, sanitation, housing, and city planning since the last decade of the nineteenth century.

HISTORY OF DENSITY AND HOUSING IN BOMBAY High density was noted in Bombay as early as the year 1731, and over the centuries there have been complaints about it. In 1731 the governor declared the palm-leafed shanties of poor workers to be congested and a fire hazard (Batley 1949). By 1872, the density of Bombay exceeded that of London, and the author of the 1872 census report said there was "excessive overcrowding." In 1881, some sections of Bombay exceeded the densest sections of London. A contemporary commentator said, "We may well exclaim, Alas! when we think of the chances of life of the tender young amidst this population" (Rent Enquiry Commission 1939). In 1965, J. F. Bulsara made an equally passionate remark, arguing against a planned increase in the city's population, and hence, its density. He said Bombay Island has the "world's record of population density." By 1961, the overall density of the city was 105,839 persons per square mile — which made it the densest city in India, although not in the world, because Kowloon, Hong Kong, had 195,840 per square mile. (In Greater Bombay, the metropolitan area, density reached 24,568 in 1961.) Bombay's demographic growth and density patterns have been analyzed by Lakdawala, et al. (1963), Zachariah (1968), Rajagopalan (1962), and Brush (1968). In sum, they find that over the course of the twentieth century, the population of the city has grown, with a sharp acceleration in the growth rate in the decade 1941-1951. This produced a spread of high density settlement over almost all of the island. This has been followed by population growth and rising densities in the suburbs on Salsette Island, directly north of the city. By 1971, the population of Greater Bombay reached 5,931,989. The geographical setting has been conducive to high density settlement. The area of the city has been fairly constant in modern times because it is built on a peninsula which is cut off from the mainland by a creek. The area of the city has grown slightly through filling and land reclamation. The cut-off part is known as Bombay Island. The creek has been a major transportation obstacle and the high intensity development is on the "island" itself. Bringing additional potable water onto the island is also difficult. The creek is bridged by a small number of railroad and road bridges, but the erection of an additional bridge is a major undertaking. The island had been the area of settlement and development until recently.

294

HARVEY Μ. CHOLDIN

In the post-Independence period there has been increasing suburban development north of the creek, and now there is a bridge connecting the peninsula with an area across the bay east of the city. This area is now developing, and planning is under way for a major new city there. For more than half a century comments on housing in Bombay have emphasized overcrowding and other deficiencies. The 1921 census indicated an average of four persons per room in Bombay. Sixty-six percent of the entire population of the city resided in single-room tenements in that year (Burnett-Hurst 1925). Burnett-Hurst studied workers and housing in Bombay in the early 1920's and describes housing units with up to thirty persons per room. He conducted a survey in one area of the city (Parel) and found that 97 percent of the working-class households resided in single-room units. The average occupancy was 3.5 persons per room (Burnett-Hurst 1925). Similar statistics are cited in the report of the Rent Enquiry Commission. They note that the 1931 census found 256,379 persons in the city living in single rooms occupied by six to nine persons. In an intensive survey of three wards (E, F, and G) they found that the average space per person was 27.6 square feet, that the average tenement was 111 square feet and the average room was 101 square feet (Rent Enquiry Commission 1939). They also stated that by 1931 overcrowding had become "chronic." Bulsara (1964) estimated that in the mid-1950's 75 percent of the families in Bombay were in overcrowded conditions, by legal standards. He cited a survey showing the following distribution of households: Persons per room 3-5 6-9 10 +

Families (in percent) 47.0% 24.6 4.1

The report on the development plan for Greater Bombay mentions other figures for the same period. Citing a 1956 survey of housing, they say that, of 131,662 one-room tenements in the city, 29 percent were overcrowded by the twenty-five square foot criterion and, of 24,229 two-room tenements, 6.4 percent were overcrowded (Bombay Municipal Corporation 1964). There have been two large-scale sample surveys of Bombay housing recently, one in 1954-1957, reported by Lakdawala, et al. (1963) and one in 1971, by Ramachandran (1972). They indicate that the vast majority of households is still in single-room units (Table 1).

Housing Standards versus Ecological Forces in Bombay

Table 1.

Number of rooms in dwelling units (in percent)

Rooms

1954-1957

1971

1 2 3 4+

77.6 14.1 4.4 2.1

74 17 5 3

Sources:

295

1954-1957,Lakdawala(1963:736); 1971,Ramachandran(1972: Tables3^).

The 1971 data also indicate thirty-nine square feet as the average area per person, somewhat more than was shown in the earlier survey. The two recent surveys provide comprehensive inventories of Bombay's housing and its amenities. Ramachandran (1972:32-33) divides housing units in Greater Bombay into five types: huts, chawls, flats, bungalows, and miscellaneous — including garages, outhouses, etc. He defines the types as follows: The main difference between chawls and flats is that the latter are self-contained dwellings with independent bath and lavatory facilities. Chawls, on the other hand, are a group of dwellings in one building having common lavatory facilities and sometimes bath facilities as well for all the dwellings or a group of dwellings in the same floor. Bungalows would normally constitute independent buildings occupied by single households. Usually the image that one has of a bungalow would be a pucca building. But in fact a number of them may be in dilapidated condition and probably be dignified huts. The distribution of types of units may be compared for the years 1954— 1957 and 1971 (Table 2). Table 2.

Types of dwelling units (in percent)

Types

1954-1957

1971

huts chawls flats bungalows miscellaneous

5.6 78.6 13.1 1.1 1.6

18 61 20 1 0.5

Sources:

1954-1957, Lakdawala (1963: 718); 1971, Ramachandran(1972:33).

The chawl unit remains the modal type. But between the mid-1950's and 1971 there was an immense growth in the number of huts. There was also major growth in the proportion of households residing in flats. Ramachandran (1972:42-43) reports that huts, typically, have none of the amenities, and flats and bungalows have all of them (Table 3).

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Table 3.

Types of dwellings and facilities (in percent)

Facilities

All dwellings

Separate kitchens Separate bath Separate lavatory Separate water Electricity Balcony* Verandah*

40 32 20 41 61 15 22

1971 Chawls 31 21 2 34 63 6 19

1954-1957 All dwellings 28.6 15.6 12.7 28.0 59.8 8.2-12.5 NA

* Verandahs are common outdoor access areas, also used for other activities. Balconies are private and have restricted access

Sources:

1954-1957, Lakdawala (1963); 1971, Ramachandran (1972: Tables 3-6).

Despite the growth in the number of huts, the housing stock shows major improvements in amenities. There are major gains in every category of amenity except electricity. There is a social class differentiation in the population with regard to types of housing occupied. Among the lower strata, the modal dwelling type is the chawl; among the higher strata, the modal dwelling type is the flat (Ramachandran 1972).

GOVERNMENTAL INVOLVEMENT IN HOUSING Over the course of more than a century, governmental officials in India and Bombay have taken cognizance of housing and related problems in the cities. Although, during most of this period, governmental officials considered the construction and management of housing to be a concern of the private market, they did develop a data base and an analysis of the effects of housing on health and social life. During the early decades of the period, these officials attempted to develop ways to regulate housing — through the by-laws, for example. They made small-scale attempts to provide new housing. More recently the government has directly entered the housing business. Since 1864, in India, there have been a series of commissions and other governmental inquiries into urban housing and related problems, particularly in the areas of health, sanitation, and the conditions of industrial laborers. These commissions provide a historical record of housing conditions. They also indicate the prevailing expert standards at the time — these can be inferred from the recommendations made in the reports. The reports also provide the analyses the commissioners made about the causes of the conditions and the effects they inferred.

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What follows is a brief history of governmental attention to urban housing; focusing upon Bombay, it indicates the data base from which much of this report is based. The first highly visible governmental attention to housing problems came with the appointment of the Sanitary Commission in 1864. Identical ones were appointed in that year in Bengal and Madras. The Plague Commission, appointed after the plague in Bombay City in 1897, dealt more specifically with housing, as the Commission concluded that the environmental conditions of the city at that time were conducive to contagious disease, and they recommended ameliorative efforts. At this point the government of Bombay resolved to improve the city, "more especially in respect to the better ventilation of the densely inhabited parts, the removal of insanitary dwellings and the prevention of overcrowding" (Bombay Improvement Trust 1899: 3; Bombay Municipal Commissioner 1899). The principal action was to create the Bombay Improvement Trust, which began projects of slum clearance, new housing developments and measurement of air pollution "due to putrefaction." They also worked on land reclamation and new major streets. In their first year they planned two schemes of clearance: new streets and new housing. From the start they followed the principles and procedures of what Geddes called the "sanitarians." Scheme No. 1 included "the formation of wide new streets opening up the area on principles, giving a sufiiciency of light and air to every street, every house and every room." In this project they also planned new housing on vacant land. In a second project, Agripada Estate, they planned for 13,500 inhabitants, part of it being for persons displaced in another project (1st Nagpada) (Bombay Improvement Trust 1899). This is the beginning of governmentbuilt chawls. By the time Burnett-Hurst studied Bombay housing in the early 1920's the Improvement Trust had been abolished in 1917, and apparently few mourned its loss.1 By 1920 the Trust had constructed only 21,387 housing units. Burnett-Hurst's evaluation of the quality of the government housing, including iron sheds, has already been quoted. He said that the Trust's basic procedure was to raze small slum areas, displace their residents into adjacent areas and erect new housing. He said the Trust 1

Some part of the Trust or a successor agency must have continued for a few years, because the Municipal Commissioner in his Report of 1927-1928 refers to the CITY Improvement Trust. In that year the Trust "provided" 1,563 new tenements and demolished 734. The cumulative total for that year was 46,801 new and 32,221 demolished. By the Report of 1934-1935 there was no mention of the Trust.

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HARVEY Μ. CHOLDIN

was disliked by tenants and owners of adjacent property. After its demise, the responsibilities of the Trust were transferred to the Development Directorate which was organized in 1920. Prior to this, two other major events occurred. In 1919, enforceable building by-laws were entered into the Bombay Municipal Act of 1888. These regulations were weakly enforced by inspections by the Health Department of the Municipality. In 1915 the Bombay Town Planning Act was passed and Bombay City was specifically exempted from the provisions of the act, but the municipality later chose to use its provisions and established a Town Planning and Valuations Department. From the outset, Bombay suburban areas were subject to the provisions of the act. One civic official noted in 1916 that the act gives great powers to an Authority when it is applied. Under a Town Planning Scheme an Authority can override existing rules and by-laws. A scheme may provide for construction of streets and structures, for demolition, for plotting land, etc. It also permits "the imposition of conditions and restrictions in respect to the open space to be maintained about buildings, the number, height, and character of buildings allowed in specified areas and the purposes to which buildings or specified areas may or may not be appropriated" (Miriams 1916). Thus, it goes beyond the by-laws in providing a legal basis for land-use regulation and other such regulations affecting intensity of development and, indirectly, population density. Revisions of the act in 1938 made it more useful in Bombay City. Revised, it gave authority to local bodies to make schemes for "built-over areas, and it contained provisions facilitating such schemes, in particular giving local bodies new powers to deal with property owners" (Bombay Town Planning and Valuation Department 1941). This laid the legal groundwork for urban redevelopment. In the 1930's the municipality did work on redevelopment of some areas under the authority of the act. The Development Directorate was formed after the Industrial Commission examined housing in Bombay after World War I. The housing program was known as the Industrial Housing Scheme. Over the course of its lifetime it produced 16,243 units, which came to be known as "B.D.D. chawls" (Maharashtra Housing Board 1966). Almost all of the units under this scheme were complete by 1930. By 1929-1930 the housing administrators had to report that only 7,000 of the 16,214 units built were occupied, and none were under construction. They explained that the vacancies were due to the "disturbed condition of the textile industry and serious communal riots in Bombay." They also reported between 147 and 601 "abscondencies" and defalcations per month on the rent,

Housing Standards versus Ecological Forces in Bombay

299

which was 5-8 rupees per month (Bombay Industrial Housing Scheme 1930). Claude Batley, an architect, has no kind words for the B.D.D. chawls. The Development Directorate set out to house 50,000 families in 3-storied reinforced concrete single-roomed tenements with concrete-louvred-faced verandahs from which neither heaven nor earth could be seen. By the mercy of Providence, only about 200, exactly similar, regimented blocks, containing some 16,000 rooms were ever tiuilt, simply because the people, for whom they were being provided, wisely, (even in their dire need for somewhere to live), refused to occupy them until thousands of rupees had been spent in modifying them into something remotely fit for human habitation (Batley 1949:7).

The story of the design or economic failure of the chawls of the Development Directorate and the Improvement Trust provides close parallels with the project which epitomizes the United States failure in large-scale public housing, e.g. the Pruitt-Igoe project in St. Louis. In all three cases, the new government buildings became part of the housing problem rather than part of its solution. The next major local organization was the Rent Enquiry Commission. It examined the housing situation, including cost, conditions, effects on people, laws and their enforcement, etc. The tone of their 1939 report reveals their outrage. Their main product was a system of rent controls for private housing. Within the state government, until 1946, public housing was a responsibility of the Public Works Department. There was little state activity until the formation of the Housing Department under the Public Works Department in 1946. It was responsible for the provision of housing for refugees from Pakistan. The department also built tenements for industrial workers (at Worli) and for lower-income people. In 1949, the state responsibility for housing was given to a new agency, the Maharashtra Housing Board. This board has expanded over two decades and continues as a very large enterprise. Initially it provided housing only for the low-income section of the population, but now has programs for middle-income families. The production of housing by the board has been far greater than that of the earlier agencies. In 1972 it had a budget of 300,000,000 rupees and had projects with as many as 20,000 units. By 1966 the board had constructed 68,662 tenements and had a goal of 58,000 more in the following five years. In 1966 the main programs of the board were: subsidized industrial housing schemes; low-income group housing schemes; middle-income group housing; and economically weaker sections.

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By 1972, the program had a major addition: slum improvement. This is to provide common amenities in slums, defined as areas of huts. The amenities are public latrines, standpipes, and street lighting (Patrick Waikley, personal communication). Most of the programs of the board operate within the guidelines of national programs. Part of the board's financing is central, part state. The newest additional agency in the housing field is the Bombay Building Repair and Reconstruction Board. In addition to agencies with specific mandates regarding housing and slums there has been large-scale city planning which affects housing. There were city plans in 1948 and 1964 and currently planning is under way for the "twin city." National Housing Schemes

Since at least 1939, the central government has dealt with housing. There have been special studies by regular bodies such as the Planning Commission and the Standing Labor Committee and also actions of specially constituted commissions and subcommittees. The products of these studies and reports which have most affected local areas such as Bombay have been those which started national funded programs, in particular the Subsidized Industrial Housing Scheme of 1952, and those which were effective in defining the problem and setting goals and standards, in particular the Health Survey and Development Committee of 1946 (the Bhore Committee). The principal influence of the central government over states and local communities has been through financing. The national schemes have guidelines specifying the maximum costs of land and construction, the amenities of units to be built, the income levels of renters and buyers, etc. Incidental to this history is the fact that population density itself became a topic of public controversy among intellectuals in Bombay when city plans began to be publicized in the 1960's. Bulsara (1965 :x) wrote strongly against the demographic provisions of the plan which provided for a population of 3,250,000 on the island, which would yield a gross density of 125,000 per square mile. He said, "The true remedy is to disgorge at least 12 lakh (1,200,000) of people from the island part of the City...." This resembles community issues in several United States cities currently attempting to freeze their populations' sizes. SPACE STANDARDS In my search of documents about housing, I found more than twenty

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301

different statements of square footage standards for human habitation. 2 The oldest standard was from the year 1919. The statements of standards are of six types: 1. Municipal by-laws. There is an item in the by-laws concerning occupancy and indicating a square footage per person which is considered overcrowded, i.e. substandard. 2. Minima in formal programs. Each housing program of the national and local government specifies the size of units to be built under its support. 3. Actual units built under governmental programs. The agencies of the government built housing from time to time. The units constructed did not necessarily conform to the highest standards, but they were better than common housing, and they implied a standard. 4. Recommendations of official commissions. Officially constituted bodies have investigated the housing situation over the decades and have made explicit recommendations regarding space and amenity minima. 5. Recommendations of independent experts and other observers. 6. Preferences expressed by residents. There has been a wide range of minima advocated over the years, from a low of twenty-five square feet per person, specified in the by-laws as defining overcrowding, to a high of 250 square feet per person recommended by a commission in 1964, for housing in an upper-class section of the city (Table 4). Table 4.

Occupancy standards (listed from low to high)

Minimum (in square feet per person)

Year

Recommended

25 40-50

1919 1966

44

1955

45

1964

100/aduIt 60/child 100-350

1946

Bombay Municipal by-laws N.V. Sovani, a social scientist N.S. Gupchup, a housing administrator A committee of the Bombay Municipal Corporation Health Survey Commission

1964

A committee of the Government of Maharashtra

Note the meaning of occupancy rate standards (demographically, they are ratios and not rates). These do not specify the sizes of units to be built, 2

Aggarwal, incidentally, is the only one I encountered who specified a cubic space standard, 1500 cubic feet per two inhabitants.

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HARVEY Μ. CHOLDIN

but the numbers of residents who may occupy units. To measure occupancy rates, one would have to measure both the area of units and also the number of residents. In order to enforce an occupancy rate standard, such as one in the municipal by-laws, one would have to know the areas and numbers of residents of units. He would then have to evict residents until an acceptable occupancy level was reached. Another way of expressing occupancy standards is in persons per room. Bulsara uses two persons per room as such a standard for Bombay in 1964. The current United States standard is one person per room. The data in Table 4 indicate that in the 1950's and 1960's there was a consensus that the old, widely used standard of twenty-five square feet per person was too low. The new standard advocated after Independence was about forty-five; three experts and groups in the 1950's and 1960's suggest this new minimum. A couple of other sources advocate higher minima of 100 square feet or more per person. Compare this with the recommendations of a committee of the American Public Health Association, which in 1969 recommended a minimum occupancy standard of 150 square feet for the first occupant and 100 square feet for each additional person (Subcommittee on Housing 1969). British minimum standards in 1965 called for 108 square feet per person (Hole 1965). The APHA recommended 1400 square feet in a house for a family of four in 1950. The Indian standards for construction of new units indicated in Tables 2 and 3 cluster into two groups. The low standard is between 180 and 249 square feet per family and the high standard is between 310 and 359 square feet per family. Even the simplest parts of the standards are problematical. The standards involve a ratio of spatial to social units, which seems simple enough. But spatial and social terms are used inconsistently. Here are some terms: AREA - PLINTH Some standards differentiate between plinth (or roof area) and floor area. When plinth area exceeds floor area, the difference is a verandah or porch without a finished floor. VERANDAH Some standards specify that the unit is to have a verandah, others do not. PERSON Some standards count each human as a person. Others specify that a child before its first birthday is not to be counted as a person. Others indicate a lower standard for children under age ten than for adults. FAMILY Standard-setters evidently mean a nuclear family of two parents and their nonadult children when they prescribe housing for a family. Some acknowledge the variety of Indian household types and

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303

specify an additional room for each adult sibling of a parent. The assumptions about number of children or ages and sexes of children are unspecified. Perhaps any such differentiation of family types would imply a necessary differentiation and expansion of housing units which would be economically unfeasible. The Maharashtra Housing Board officially defines a family as: the tenant, his wife, his children, his parents, and his unmarried siblings. This is for administrative purposes to prevent larger households than this within housing units. Two of the groups making recommendations differentiate between goals and new minima. Evidently the goals represent statements of what would constitute a basic decent-sized unit, but the minimum represents an improvement over the existing condition which might be attempted immediately, given the economic context. The housing group of the National Plan Commission recommended 100 square feet per person as a goal, for some undefined future, but they also specified 60 square feet as an immediate minimum (Tables 5 and 6). Five of the recommendations include differentiations based upon income or social class. Two examples of this, which are extremely specific, are for accommodations for government employees. One, from 1952, is an official scale of accommodation for government services, in which all governmental employees are divided into six classes (Kumar 1956). These would refer to the sizes of quarters which would be provided by the government or its agencies to its employees—for example in a postal workers colony in a larger city or a general civil employees colony (Table 7). Note the clear and simple inference which can be made here that space is one of the perquisites of status. Another set of recommended unit sizes for civil servants was released in 1960, prepared by a committee of Secretaries of Departments, evidently to standardize the facilities provided to employees across departments nationally. By 1960 the standards for low-level employees who formerly rated 625 square feet dropped to 400 feet. The bottom standard rose, as no employee was to get a 300 square foot unit. And the top was lopped off, as the 2750 and 3450 square foot standards were eliminated. The standards for upper-middle-range workers remained stable (Prakash 1969:80). Even the lowest standard for civil servants was much higher than that specified for workers' housing. The 300 and 365 square foot minima compare very favorably with the 232 square feet in the subsidized industrial housing schedule. The extremely high standards for top-level officers in 1952 may have

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Table 5.

Minimum space standards for one family in one unit

Minimum square feet Year

Recommended by:

180 180 180

1939

187.5 190.4

1952 1927-1928

212

1965

220

1952

232 230-240

1965 1971-1972

240 240 250+

1946 1964 1967

270

1952

293

1947

300

1967

320 325 336 337

1966

338 340 350 350

1965 1947 1946 1967

355

1952

356

1965

1964

1952

Comments

Rent Enquiry Commission Bombay Municipal By-Laws Development Plan for Greater Bombay S.N. Aggarwal Actual construction in Bombay City Improvement Trust chawls (one room) Team on Urban Housing Subsidized Industrial Housing Scheme Team on Urban Housing Actual construction in many government-supported projects Housing Sub-committee Recommended new by-laws Report on Development of Mainland Subsidized Industrial Housing Scheme Committee of Planning Commission Report on Development of Mainland Maharashtra Housing Board Mitra Committee Krishnaswami Subsidized Industrial Housing Scheme Team on Urban Housing Madras Housing Commission Health Survey Commission Report on Development of Mainland Subsidized Industrial Housing Scheme Team on Urban Housing

Excluding verandah For two persons 2-room units in this year averaged 304.0 square feet In multi-story structures In single-story units For single-story units

Plus verandah Excluding verandah For low-income group In multi-story structures

Minimum for new towns Experimental project Including verandah Multi-story two-room unit Duplex or multi-story Including verandah Including verandah For higher-income group Single-story, two-room house Single-story, two-room house

Table 6. Frequencies of the recommendations in Table 5 Minimum square feet

Number of times recommended

180-249 250-309 310-359

11 4 10

= l o w minimum =high

minimum

Housing Standards versus Ecological Forces in Bombay

Table 7.

305

Six levels of government employees

Salary level (in rupees per month)

Size of unit (in square feet)

Up to 50 (sweepers) 50-150 (messengers, clerks) 151-300 301-600 601-1150 1151-1600 ) , . . , .. . . . , 1600 plus ( (ministers, cabinet secretaries)

300 625 900 1450 2100 2750 ^

represented an attempt to provide housing equivalent to that provided for high colonial officers. This was only five years after Independence. By 1960, this standard was scaled down to a level closer to that which the economy could support. Social class differences in housing standards emerge in other items. The Team on Urban Housing in 1965 noted that houses built in the private sector, presumably for upper-middle-class families, ranged in area from 500 to 3000 square feet with an average of 1500 square feet (Winnick, et al. 1965). Two governmental bodies in the Bombay area recently recommended new standards, one within the existing metropolitan area and one for the new city across the bay. In both cases they proposed different standards for different areas, reflecting the class income levels of the present or future residents. For the new city, one committee recommended units with 250 square feet plus bath and w.c. for low-income groups. For new planning in the existing city, the other committee recommended 120 square feet per person in some new blocks, up to 250 in others. Other social dimensions are employed in differential standards. Units for individuals should have less area than units for families, and children require less space than adults. The Health Survey Commission indicated a 200 square foot minimum unit for a single man and 350 square foot minimum for a family. This would give two single men more space than a family of two adults plus three or more children. The same commission specified 100 square feet as a minimum for an adult and 60 square feet per child. A group in Madras in 1947 recommended a standard of 75 square feet per adult and 40 square feet per child under ten. These recommendations are unreasonable when one considers the activity levels, activity patterns, and daily spatial mobility of children and adults. Children under ten are likely to spend much of the day in or at the domicile and they are likely to be very active, requiring more rather than less space than an adult. With regard to disease, Atkinson (1952) states, "As chil-

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HARVEY Μ. CHOLDIN

dren are at least as susceptible to air-borne infection as adults, there is no justification for allowing two children as an adult" in floor space standards. The original recommendations reflect either a deference to the higher social status of adults or a recognition of their greater physical size, but they do not represent a proper allocation of space. The last bases of differentiation stated by the makers of standards are between city and suburb, between new construction and slum redevelopment, and between single-story and multi-story structures. Suburban standards are higher, even for residents of the same social class, evidently because the cost of suburban land is lower and more is available. Inconsistencies and ironies emerge in differential standards for singlestory and multi-story structures. In the Subsidized Industrial Housing Scheme the minimum area of a one-story house is 220 square feet and of a unit in a multi-story building 270. The Team on Urban Housing recommended minima of 232 in a one-story unit and 212 in a multi-story unit. The family in a multi-story unit must require more space than the family in a single-story unit. The single-story family's activities can spill outdoors into the yard or street, while that of the higher-story family cannot. At best they have a verandah. I presume the team had the verandah in mind in drafting their proposal, or they saw some economy in single-story construction making it possible to offer more space at an equal construction cost. Stevens (1960:17) offers a principle for space standards in multi-story structures: "As dwellings become more remote from outdoor living space, there is a greater need for more floor space, if living conditions are not to deteriorate." The standards of the residents themselves are expressed in statements in one survey. Ramachandran (1972:53) examined space preferences and reported on the number of rooms preferred: Number of rooms preferred:

Percent

1 2 3 4 or more No response

31 40 16 7 6

Most respondents in one- or two-room units wanted at least one more room. Size of household was related to number of rooms preferred. This was reflected in the small proportion of families of four or more preferring one-room units (Ramachandran 1972:54).

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307

AMENITY AND OTHER STANDARDS Most of those who have advocated space standards have done so in the context of broader prescriptions about housing. Some of the prescriptions have been quite detailed, specifying several of the dwelling's amenities. Others have been abbreviated, specifying only the number of rooms, or that the unit should have a verandah. It is understood that all the standards refer to pukka [relatively permanent] and not kutcha [housing made of mud or scrap materials]. We must guess at other points which are "understood" and not specified. For example, only one of the standards indicates that the units are to be electrified. Does that mean that the proponents of the other standards do not include electricity as a basic amenity? Some of the amenity lists are quite vague. A government of Bombay panel recommends two living rooms, a separate kitchen with "sanitary and other modern conveniences." The Rent Enquiry Commission, in 1939, prescribed the following as a minimum dwelling — a one-room tenement: Area = 180 square feet Small partition to separate kitchen One latrine per four tenements Washing place with drain No post-Independence standard indicates fewer amenities than this. The most common important change in the more recent standards is that none permits the one-room tenement. The minimum is two living rooms, with the exception of one expert who still recommends one basic room. Otherwise there is considerable variation in the rooms and amenities specified. Most advocate a verandah, and one recommends two verandahs — one at each end of the unit. This one also specified a courtyard. Most indicate that a lavatory should be shared by two households. One committee recommends a lobby (entry). In general there is a lack of terminological consistency in naming rooms. The following terms have been used: parlor, main room, dining room, bedroom, living room. The basic description of the post-Independence standard is this: two multi-purpose common rooms for sleeping, eating, and other activities, a verandah, a separate kitchen, a washing place with running water, and a toilet. Ramachandran reported the following amenity preferences: 51 percent preferred to live in a chawl, 38 percent in a flat, 3 percent in a bungalow, and 3 percent in a hut (1972:52). Overwhelming majorities want selfcontained kitchens within their units. Those who currently have separate

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or common bath and lavatory facilities want separate ones and those without prefer at least common facilities (1972:55). The conflict of tradition and imagery against scientific knowledge is illustrated in the arguments concerning ceiling heights which continued over several years. Traditional high-status pukka buildings in colonial India and earlier had high ceilings and overhangs and fenestration which promoted temperature control. The 1939 recommendations of the Rent Enquiry Commission included ten-foot ceilings. In 1946 the Industrial Housing Subcommittee recommended seven-foot ceilings and in 1952 an independent commentor (Aggarwal 1952) recommended eight. But in 1955 Krishnaswami recommended ten-foot ceilings. This controversy was taking place in tropical architecture in many places. English experts had already proven that temperature control and good ventilation were possible at the lower ceiling heights and with immense savings in construction costs (much less wall area to build and less height to support). Nonetheless the great height fit the imagery of the traditionally fine buildings.

BASES OF HOUSING STANDARDS The space and amenity standards have always indicated that the quality of accommodation for almost all the urban people has been low and that it should be improved. Those advocating new standards have based their arguments on different grounds over the years. Some of the rationales, bases, and justifications of standards refer to space, design, and amenities in dwelling units and some refer to density levels in larger units such as neighborhoods. Both touch upon common themes such as health, sanitation, and family life. The bases of housing standards fall into two broad categories: subsocial and sociocultural. The subsocial are based upon the physical and biological features of the setting and the occupants. These include climatic variables such as sunshine, temperature, rainfall, etc. The implications of these for human life and habitation are drawn out for the standard. Biological considerations center about the welfare of the human organism with regard to spread of disease, optimum temperature and oxygen level, etc. Even activities in spaces can be examined subsocially through anthropometry 3 and ethology.

3

This is not anthropometry in the physical anthropological sense involving skeletal measurements. Although this anthropometry requires measurement of human bodies, it also includes measurement of the bodies in specified activities.

Housing Standards versus Ecological Forces in Bombay

309

Some space standards in England and the United States have been established through anthropometric research (see Ministry of Housing and Local Government 1961).4 In such a study, the investigator measures the amount of space used in various activities and then establishes space minima for the activities. Cooking, laundering, studying, typing, and many other common activities have been analyzed in this way. R.D. Sristava at the Central Building Research Institute has been conducting such anthropometric studies in India. This type of research on human activities may also be called ethological as it deals with human behavior without consideration of the use of symbols. Atkinson, however, noted the limits of subsocial bases: Again, man, woman, and children, and their goods, are roughly the same size throughout the world so that many space standards — the size of living rooms, school classrooms, offices, the width of passages, the size of baths, cupboards, cycle stores and garages — are universal; though even here there are reservations. Social customs, through religious, cultural, and economic differences, vary; there may be different modes of cooking, washing and sanitation, different ways of furnishing, different clothes. There are other fields where standards, developed in Europe and North America, are, broadly speaking, applicable equally to the tropics; acoustics and sound insulation, and firegrading, to name but two (1953:42). Sociocultural bases involve the social organization and culture of the population building and occupying the housing. The most common and important social basis is the family unit and the dwelling as a setting for it. This is related to privacy for a few reasons such as respite from unwanted or excessive interaction, segregation of children by sex, separate sleeping for parents and children, etc. Rules for segregation of sexes within kinship and community groups provide cultural bases for special housing standards. Muslim purdah rules provide an example here (Atkinson 1952). Three other social bases refer to systems of social inequality and social goals within communities and to goals regarding social conditions. Two explicit ones are the goals of providing good housing for industrial workers and people in poverty (the urban underclass) and of eliminating slums. Another social basis in common use is usually left unstated. It is that space is a perquisite of rank in the stratification system and the space standards are for higher strata. Some standard-setters claim to use ancient Indian traditions as bases 4

The bathroom by Kira (1967) is one such an examination, although it has no statutory basis for standard-setting.

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for current standards. The excavations of residential quarters of Mohenjo-Daro have been analyzed in size and form and indicate a set of standards in practice at that time. Abrams notes that the ancient Sastras prescribed regulations for the height and design of houses (1953:1). Batley (1949), an English architect who spent his career in India, noted that the ancient Indian cities had a great domestic building tradition which was functionally adapted to the climate and local building materials. But Lanchester notes that the old traditions of typical plans for the layout of towns were in disuse in modern cities (Geddes 1947: introduction).

Subsocial Bases The earliest modern standards were grounded in considerations of sanitation, health, and disease, such as the Bombay plague of 1896. The traditional idea of housing and health is this: If one member of a family falls ill, not only his family, but a large number of families residing in the neighborhood are affected, because of the overcrowding and congested environment (Marg 1965).s Atkinson (1952:7-22) makes this point more precisely. He states that a floor space standard: is framed principally to guard against the spread of disease by preventing unhealthy overcrowding. The minimum floor space per person should therefore be based on the floor space required for sleeping. The Health Survey and Development Committee considered the one-room tenement for a family to be "obviously unhealthy." Similarly, Aggarwal (1952) condemned current housing because it is bad for "maintenance of health." And he argued that one of the bases for new higher standards is sanitation. In their standard textbook on tropical architecture (1964), Fry and Drew, citing Atkinson, state that "No more than four should sleep in one room, to prevent spread of disease." The emphasis of the housing programs from their inception was to clear slums and to provide new buildings. The Second Five-year Plan adds slum improvement to slum clearance (Vagale 1969). 5

Currently, there is at least one epidemiologist who is questioning such ideas of contagion and density. Cassel (1971) argues that the stress upon a set of individuals is more important than their density. On the other hand, the most powerful study of housing and health did indicate that contagious diseases decreased among families who had moved from slum to new moden housing (Wilner, et al. 1962).

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Health is also emphasized in the generally accepted position on high densities: Intense overcrowding of land and development and slum conditions appear in almost every country. High rates of illness, infant mortality, impairment of the family structure, and other evidences of social malady are present where these conditions exist (Abrams 1953:55).

Schorr, in his review of housing research, reaches the same conclusion (1963). Thus, from the start to the present, health, sanitation, and hygiene are central bases of housing and planning standards. Climate is a basis for standards which is commonly ignored. Atkinson, Stevens, and other British architects who have specialized in tropical housing, emphasize climatic factors, particularly heat, sunshine, and high humidity (and its opposite, aridity). These writers indicate two major types of climates for tropical architecture, hot and dry and hot and wet. Although both of these climatic types occur on the subcontinent, there is rarely any acknowledgement of the difference in the Indian standards. Atkinson (1952, 1953) and Stevens (1960) present the following general arguments for the importance of climate. In warm areas, shelter is easy to provide. Atkinson says a roof is needed for protection from sun, rain, and night dew. And walls are "usually needed" for privacy and protection against animal and human intruders and against driving rain and dust. In warm climates the goal of design must be coolness. Technical aspects of design are different because there is no snow or frost. The division of time between indoor and outdoor activities is much different in tropical climates than in colder ones. Because the air is warm, people can conduct more of their activities out of doors. This can yield special house plans. Houses can be simpler where there is piovision for outdoor living in garden, courtyard, balcony, or rooftop. For example, in hot dry climates, flat roofs and courtyards are used for sleeping. Courtyards, gardens, "compounds," roofs, and other outdoor areas may be suitable for recreation, food production, clothes drying, storage, etc., according to Stevens. The only Indian references to climate I found were one by the Health Survey and Development Committee and one by Aggarwal. The committee recommended verandahs only for the warmer parts of the country. Aggarwal noted that standards vary by state for various reasons including climatic and topological differences.6 β

Perhaps if I had examined state and local standards besides Bombay and Maharashtra, I would have encountered these differences. They certainly do not appear in the national documents.

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Perhaps the reason for the Indian neglect of Atkinson's and Stevens's points is that the Indian architect or housing administrator takes climate for granted in any given project. Atkinson, writing in London to an international audience, must emphasize the difference between temperate and tropical climate. Nonetheless Atkinson's main points are neglected in two major ways in urban India. The Indians commonly prescribe national standards without differentiating among the climatic regions of the nation. And the urban housing projects make no important provisions for outdoor activities, which represent the major opportunity in the tropical settings. Perhaps there is something in the urban setting which precludes taking advantage of these opportunities. But recent studies of Old Delhi by Fonseca and Oldenburg indicate these are better used in traditional than in new buildings.

Sociocultural

Bases

Atkinson, in 1953, argued that social considerations should be added to the older ones. In the postwar and post-Independence decades social concerns have become more prominent in prescriptions for Indian dwellings. Family life is the most frequently mentioned item. Various of the housing analysts have stated that the single-room tenement interferes with normal or proper family life as they conceive of it. I presume the ideal family life includes harmonious positive relationships between spouses and between parents and children. The housing must also foster healthy development of children. In suggesting a social basis, Atkinson is explicit in listing some examples of ACTIVITIES performed within the dwelling by family members. He asks: "Should adolescent children of different sexes have separate sleeping accommodations? Is cooking space convenient and well-lit? Is there privacy? Is there storage space for family treasures?" Citing Atkinson, Fry and Drew recommend the USES of spaces as determining their proper design. The Industrial Housing Sub-Committee of the Standing Labour Committee, in 1946, stated that a one-room tenement "renders privacy and the decencies of family life almost impossible." Atkinson and Fry and Drew also emphasize segregation by sex, arguing that adolescent children should be segregated in sleeping quarters. Family life becomes a more complicated consideration when variations

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of household types are added. For example, additional adults in a household, such as siblings or parents of the adult couple, would justify an additional room in a unit. The housing system in the standards and in the Bombay programs from the beginning of the CID (City Improvement Trust) has been the single family tenement chawl. This type of housing is designed for nuclear families. The fact that a substantial proportion of urban families lives in or might prefer to live in some other type of kinship household or complex of households—some kind of "joint family" — has never been accommodated in the standards or programs. I found one Indian reference to such a concern. A Bombay Housing Commissioner in 1955 recommended dwellings which provide for three married units conjointly. The special rules of purdah are also not accommodated. Writing in England, Atkinson recommends a front verandah or sitting space AND family verandah or courtyard if men visitors cannot mix with women of the household. Social class is not discussed by many of the Indians in this literature. It is noted more often by foreign analysts. Tyrwhitt (1955) makes the ironic point that poorer families require more space than richer ones, although obviously they do not get it. She notes that wealthier households have more compact labor-saving facilities for laundering, cooking, bathing, and other activities. Poorer families have to perform these activities with more primitive labor-intensive facilities, the use of which requires more area. Atkinson (1953:49) notes some lifestyle differences between families of different classes. He says "more sophisticated families require a dayroom for entertaining friends and where family treasures are displayed." "Often when visiting three- or two-room houses in the tropics [you] find one furnished as a parlour and used only for special occasions; the family sleeping crowded together in the other one or two rooms." Furniture and other possessions then form another class basis for standards, as a poorer household has few small primitive pieces whereas a middleclass one has larger pieces (which he considers "unsuitable," "bulky and space-wasting"). Two additional broad sociocultural bases are in the realm of national social policy. One is the prevention of the perpetuation of slums. This is based upon the social goal of eliminating slums. Those who argue this point contend that the acceptance of low standards permits the construction of poor buildings and dwellings. They note the life expectancy of residential buildings at forty to seventy-five years. They conclude that low standards permit the construction of slums which will exist and have harmful effects for several decades into the future. In essence,

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they argue it is better now to build fewer units of high-standard housing than to build more units of low-standard housing. The other broad social goal is efficient and productive industrial labor. This justifies the attention to housing paid by the Standing Labour Committee, for example. Aggarwal justifies housing improvement in this way when he states: "The broad conception of minimum standards should be based upon considerations of sanitation, convenience, safety, and social and national objectives such as promotion of efficiency in labour and of human values."

Foreign Influences

There has been a one-way influence of foreign standards, particularly British, upon Indian standard-setters over the decades. The influence has been manifested in several forms, direct and indirect. There have also been sporadic attempts at exposing the foreign models as inappropriate to the Indian context. In the century prior to Independence, the direct influence was transmitted through colonial rule and administration. For example, when the Sanitary Commission was appointed for Bombay, Madras, and Bengal in 1864, its members were English colonial officials as were the members of the Plague Enquiry Commission in Bombay which set the first urban housing standards in 1897. The Sanitary Commissions worked under direction from the Royal Sanitary Commission. These officials had no other regulatory models with which to work except the British. This becomes clear in the Bombay Town Planning Act of 1915, the first such Indian Act, which was modeled directly on an English Town Planning Act. So literally did the colonial administrators take this model that at least one toured English towns, and the government of India published his report on the details and progress of their planning activities. The housing and land use provisions of the Bombay and other municipal by-laws were similarly transplanted from their British origins. Daldy (1969) states that many developing nations, particularly the ex-colonies of Britain, regulate buildings in public health acts modeled upon an English precedent. Patrick Geddes was later to take issue with the literalness with which the transfers were made. Colonial town planning in and near the major Indian cities must have indirectly influenced Indian architectural tastes and building standards. Throughout the subcontinent, the government built cantonments outside the cities for the army. A cantonments code was published in 1864 and

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it became a diffusion point for metropolitan standards. These provided suburban low-density residential community design models. Police lines and other residential compounds for colonial officials provided other such models. In Bombay, there was a great deal of civic construction in the decade 1870-1880. The Secretariat, High Court, University Library, Senate House, Clock Tower, and Public Works and Post Office Buildings were constructed along the Esplanade. They were "designed in florid gothic styles, popular in the mid-Victorian era." In the same decade, the Crawford Market and a large quay and dock and a waterworks were built. The design and construction of New Delhi serve as a similar event in the history of that city. Colonial officials were quite explicit in the application of English models and ideals. A consulting surveyor, in 1916, in an address in Poona on the Bombay Town Planning Act discusses a residential example at three houses per acre. At this time Bombay had long been one of the densest cities in the world (Miriams 1916).7 The Indian adoption of the English styles is reflected in the comments of Batley on the design of middle-class houses in Bombay in the early decades of the twentieth century. He noted that the middle class copied the houses of the rich Indian industrialists first in "Gothicky" then in "Classicky" styles. Various observers note the influence of the Public Works Department (PWD) and its engineers on housing standards in public housing. Much of this housing was designed by PWD engineers and not by architects. Batley called the engineers "handbook-soaked," implying that they built the government chawls simply by following the housing regulations. Another interpretation of the effects of the civic buildings and plans from the colonial imperial period is that after Independence no Indian officials wanted to advocate LOWER standards in free India. Not all commentators are equally dispassionate in their analyses. One Indian critic has stated that all the open spaces designed into Indian cities were built for the English sahib's games, and none were scattered for the use of Indians. The Maidan in Calcutta, the open parts of New Delhi, and others were cited as examples. Patrick Geddes counterattacked the English standards in town planning as early as 1914. Vagale (1969:411) states that Geddes alerted the public and officials to the deplorable conditions in major towns and to the 7

Miriams' address also indicates one of the rationalizations for the lack of government attention to housing problems in the colonial era. He argued that housing should be provided by the market as government housing would pauperize people.

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need for planned development and redevelopment. But Geddes disapproved of the planning methods of the English "sanitarians" who were in charge of the little urban improvement in progress. He noted that their typical first moves were to cut broad straight streets in gridiron patterns through residential slums. The existing plans often had narrow crooked streets with buildings covering much of the land but with small courtyards and other small open spaces. The manifest purposes of the wide straight streets were to speed traffic flow, facilitate fire fighting and prevention, and to improve ventilation and prevent contagion. In arguments which sound contemporary now, Geddes (1947:45) stated that this was destructive and counterproductive. He said, "The policy of sweeping clearances... [is] one of the most disastrous and pernicious blunders in the chequered history of sanitation." He also argued that clearance displaced families, overcrowded other areas, and served the "rack-renting" interests! Geddes opposed large-scale clearance in general and clearance for wider streets. He said narrow streets were adequate in residential areas. He approved of building far into the fronts of lots, saying he saw no use for setbacks and broad streets. He argued this position at the time when the Garden City ideology was emerging in England, with its advocate of low density and open space. Geddes' answer to large-scale clearance was what he called "conservative surgery." This is a method of providing additional open space and ventilation in dense residential areas by selective clearance. He prepared detailed maps of slums lot-by-lot, structure-by-structure. These included ratings of the conditions of the structures. He recommended clearance of the "ruinous" buildings. He noted that this required close examination of the areas, while the clearance-thoroughfare method was simpler and easier for the engineers. Geddes' method reflected an appreciation of Indian urbanism and community life on its own terms. This appreciation has recently reemerged in the work of such other analysts of Indian cities as Fonseca, Oldenburg, and Payne. Geddes discusses the dilemma of maintaining the "gregarious nature of Indian town and village life," and abating congestion (1947:32). He also notes the household arrangement, saying that the tradititional Indian household contains many families grouped around the old grandparents and that this contributes to overcrowding (1947:60). Fonseca (1969) notes that the narrow crowded streets are functional for the control of sunlight and breeze in hot arid climates. And Oldenburg (personal communication) notes that the pattern of courtyards in multistory Old Delhi residential areas provides shaded private open areas. Despite the attacks on the imposition of foreign models, Indian housing

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officials continue to compare their standards with English ones. In 1939 the Rent Enquiry Committee cited English standards — 110 square feet minimum for two persons, separation of children over age ten by sex — and English bases for standards — health, morality, and family life. As recently as 1964, the Floor Space Indices Committee used the history of recreational open space standards in London. They noted that the English had dropped theii standard from seven acres per 1000 population to four acres per 1000. They then stated "this standard is impossible to attain in the City of Bombay." Finally they recommended one acre per 1000 as a standard for Bombay and one-half acre per 1000 as a goal to be reached within twenty years. They also proposed four acres per 1000 as a suburban standard. In recent decades foreign influence has taken new forms, and this has been entirely indirect in that none of it has had the force of direct colonial rule behind it. England has been involved in this influence in the support of the Building Research Station, which has had a unit on tropical building. This unit has conducted research on building materials and techniques, as well as design of tropical buildings. It has published its findings in such series as "Colonial Building Notes," the title of which they changed to "Tropical Building Notes," "Tropical Building Studies," and others. One of their staff members was called the "Colonial Liaison Officer." They suggested standards in such reports as Stevens' report, Densities in housing areas (1960) and Atkinson's papers on low-income housing. They also drafted model laws, such as "Model regulations for small buildings" (Daldy 1969). The Indian government followed this model by establishing the Central Building Research Institute at Roorkee and the National Building Organization to study building materials and techniques and design. English architects such as Fry and Drew have written textbooks on tropical architecture and many post-Independence Indian architects and engineers are studying in the United States and England. A more recent form of foreign influence is through the United Nations in various of its sections relating to social affairs and urban development. The United Nations has sent investigating and consulting teams to India and other member nations to deal with housing and town planning. Its agencies have published reports and recommendations on housing by some of the more eminent experts such as Abrams and Atkinson. The United Nations has also provided media for Indian housing administrations to report on their activities in United Nations report series and conferences. I presume the pressure of these forums is such that no Indian

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administrator would want to report the use of standards which were below "international standards." The United States has also influenced or attempted to influence housing policy in India through the Ford Foundation and the Agency for International Development (AID). The Foundation has supported the Calcutta Metropolitan Planning Organization (CMPO) for over ten years. Its staff members have made many proposals on urban housing policy. AID has published manuals and reports on tropical housing. Ironically, it is now the Americans who are urging Indian housing administrators to LOWER their housing standards in the interest of expanded housing production. This began with Abrams' advice not to clear slums but to help make them more livable; he also advised helping people construct their own rudimentary shelters. Fonseca is indicating the strengths of the existing housing patterns. Kingsley and Kristof (1971) recommend reducing space standards for pukka construction in Calcutta. They advocate using more economical forms of housing such as row housing. They also recommend simplified unit plans. The 1965 Team on Urban Housing, which also included at least one Ford Foundation staff member, also recommended "lower" standards, in this case by advocating higher permissible residential densities. They advise developing "every parcel to the highest density consistent with accepted environmental standards." They advise multi-story buildings and the addition of stories to existing houses (Winnick, et al. 1965:45). The goal of these new standards is the greatly expanded production of new housing. Evidently Americans are freer to advocate subimperial standards than Indians are.

ECONOMIC AND OTHER ECOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS There is a complex of powerful counterforces mitigating against the successful application of housing standards. These counterforces are economic and are expressed in the costs of new housing: land, labor, and materials. At a deeper level they are ecological in that there are limits on water supply, drainage capacities, etc., and land and material are also ecological variables. There is a conflict between the human needs which would be satisfied by improved housing and other features of the national economy. The primary economic fact is that India is a very poor nation with a very large population. The commitment of the national government has been to achieve rapid economic development, with an improved level of living. The ba sic strategy has been to invest in industry and agricul-

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ture and to spend as little as possible on consumption items. Development economists have considered housing to be nonproductive, and it has had a much lower priority than several other categories of investment. (The principal counterarguments have been that expenditure on housing is productive because it stimulates the construction and building materials industries, creates employment, and improves the health and productivity of the workers who live in it.) Nonetheless, from the point of view, say, of the economists of the Planning Commission, after precious funds were spent on factories, agriculture, and education, housing became one of the many competitors for the small amount that was left over. This poses an immense problem for the housing administrators who attempt to raise the standards of housing and to provide additional units. They have inadequate resources with which to operate. Some of the housing reformers have acknowledged this dilemma. Sovani recommends a forty square foot per person minimum and then justifies this low standard at length, concluding: "In a famine, the immediate problem is to find something to feed the population without worrying whether it is nutritionally balanced." Aggarwal lists his bases for improved standards but qualifies them, saying, "Some of these may have to be modified due to economic considerations." Later, discussing the standards proposed by a governmental committee, he says: this is not an ultimate standard, but it is the current inescapable minimum. Members of the Rent Enquiry Commission (1939:1, 42) were sufficiently outraged by the living conditions they discovered that they were willing to disregard economic constraints in favor of their human values. They said, "Financial considerations... should not override human considerations." Their antieconomic posture is also revealed by their advocacy of rent controls. At the aggregate level and the level of the individual household, the economic problem is one of need versus demand. From the point of view of the housing reformer, there are multitudes of poorly housed people. This means there is a great NEED for more good housing. On the other hand most of these people use all of their income already and cannot or will not spend more of it for better housing, which would cost more than they currently pay. Thus there is a small market DEMAND for housing. Sovani (1966:20) defines need as the inadequacy of existing conditions with reference to a socially acceptable norm, without reference to price. Demand emphasizes price. However, the effective demand for housing is low because poor people have almost no money with which to satisfy

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their "need." (In imagining the household economics of poor urban families there is no reason to consider the people irrational, only poor.) A couple of examples indicate the error of confusing need with demand. Sovani refers to one governmental scheme in which each family was allotted two rooms. He says that many families sublet one room and lived in one. The scheme did not diminish the in-unit density. Payne (personal communication) observed similar events with lots. In a Delhi scheme, lots of 164 square yards per family were distributed. Typically the original family would use about twenty-five square yards for a house and sell off the balance. The standard was brought down to about twenty-five square yards per lot. In both cases, the land economics in combination with the household economics were such that the families could not afford the higher standard the reformers thought they needed.8 Seventy-six percent of the households in greater Bombay pay rent and 15 percent are owners. Surprisingly, "the average tenant pays 6.9 percent of his household income as rent" (Ramachandran 1972:45). Bombay has rent controls on private housing, and so many renters pay a fee called pugree to get a unit initially. Nineteen percent of the renters paid pugree and 30 percent paid "deposits" (with or without other forms of inducements 1972:46-47). Despite the small proportion of income paid for housing, we should not assume that families are willing or able to spend more for better housing. There are exceptions to this relationship between need and demand. In Calcutta, Kingsley and Kristof judge that the lower-middle-class families would pay more for better housing if it were available. But there is no reason to assume that there is a demand for better housing for poorer classes. The economic constraints on the application of high standards are formidable. The costs of building materials in urban India since Independence have risen much faster than workers' wages. Land costs are high due to the demands for central urban land. Workers live near their places of employment due to the lack and cost of intraurban transportation. "Cheap" construction labor does not convert into cheap housing due to the inefficiency of the labor in addition to the costs of materials and land. The Team on Urban Housing analyzes this in greater detail (Winnick, etal. 1965:110). Earlier I dealt with India as a socialist economy with regard to housing 8

Solaun, et al. (1972) in Colombia found a similar case of people ignoring their need for more space and lower density. In a new barrio there, as people added rooms and improved their houses, they took in kinfolk and boarders who helped pay for the improvements. As they did this, the in-dwelling density rose.

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for low-income families. This is because the capitalist sector of the housing industry provides new housing only for the more prosperous classes. The costs of buiding are such that new dwellings are expensive to buy or rent. Indian families with low incomes simply cannot afford them. The only housing that is going to be built for these families will either come from the government or be built by themselves. But the problem of need versus demand was quite similar in the capitalist economies. For example, in England, reformers raised the standards for workingmen's residences from the mid-1800's, but the costs of housing were such that the workers could not afford to rent or buy standard housing. The government was forced not to enforce the standards (Hole 1965). In the English case the workers could not afford the standard housing. In the Indian case, the government cannot afford it. There are other ecological constraints on density standards in addition to the simply economic. Limited availability of water is an important constraint for Bombay City. The Floor Space Indices Committee in 1964 examined the availability and use of water in the city, and they projected these into the future. They considered water to be a limiting factor on growth, and they estimated a population limit of 3.2 million for the seven wards of the city (Floor Space Indices 1964:12-13). City planners stated that water would limit the growth of greater Bombay to 8,000,000 (Bombay Municipal Corporation 1964). Legislators and housing administrators have responded to the constraints in several ways, but usually they lower or abandon the standards. They respond to the constraints by dividing standards into long-range and short-range categories; by not enforcing regulations; by lowering standards; and by "patching up" substandard housing. The main exception is the maintenance of the standards in the design of new public housing projects. The standard-setters sometimes note with apology that they have been pragmatic for some short-run gain. For example, the Report on the Development Plan acknowledges that the recommended standards in the plan permit high densities in order to avoid displacing people. The committee says they hope to be able to lower densities later. Other factors which constrain the manner in which density is distributed are in the urban infrastructure: transportation, communication, sanitation, and their systems. The total amount of land available for residential purposes is a constraint. The technology of residential construction is another. There are also constraints arising from the preferences and values of people, such as living space standards, preferences for light, air, and quiet. A judgment on the total desirable population would be a constraint (Bombay Municipal Corporation 1964).

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On occasion the existing standard is explicitly dismissed. The Maharashtra Housing Board reported in 1966 on an experimental program to provide pukka housing for hutment dwellers. The board supplied tworoom tenements, each room having 160 square feet, with one family living in one room: I presume that the board considered this to be an improvement or that it was clearing the hutments. Over the years there has been little enforcement of the by-laws on occupancy and overcrowding. The Rent Enquiry Committee complains specifically about this. Had the municipality enforced them it would only have decreased the net amount of housing. The Health Department reported annually in the Administrative Report of the Municipal Commissioner for the City of Bombay. A couple of years' reports will indicate the extent of inspection and enforcement. In 1927-1928, 1,094 unsanitary dwellings were evacuated during the year. All of them were "insanitary kutcha huts." In 1934-1935, the target for routine inspection of dwellings presenting or likely to present a health hazard was 17,500 inspections and follow-ups per year. But 528 unsanitary dwellings were actually evacuated. The state shelved standards in a most dramatic way in 1969 after the report of the Bedekar Commission, which was established to investigate the COLLAPSE of buildings in Greater Bombay. By the 1960's, multistory residential buildings were collapsing in Bombay, killing or injuring the occupants. There is a stock of four- and five-story buildings built at the turn of the century of timber frames and brick infill. They are typically twenty-five feet wide and a hundred feet deep with rooms off a doubleloaded corridor. They are densely packed, each room housing a family or small industry. The timber structure is now rotting, particularly in the sanitary area at the rear, where water stands, and on the southern and western facades which face into the monsoon winds (Waikley, personal communication). The problem continues to be serious: 169 buildings collapsed in one year (1970-1971) and twenty-five persons were killed (Bombay Building and Reconstruction Board 1971). The Municipal Corporation surveyed the old buildings in 1956 and the state established the Bombay Building Repairs and Reconstruction Board in 1969. The board's mandate is to repair the salvageable buildings and to raze those that are hopelessly deteriorated. "Rebuilding is not governed by prevalent density by-laws, but by the original provision of accomodation, providing it is not more than double the statutory floor space index" (Waikley, personal communication). The board has rules governing the financing of the repairs and the criteria for demolition (if repairs would cost more than one-third as much as a new structure, it goes). The board

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has also surveyed the relevant buildings and assigned "lifetimes" to them. After touring the Board's work, Waikley commented: The actions of BRRB are prepetuating unlit, unventilated single-room multioccupant tenements, but they are in the center of the city. They are serviced, and they provide housing at Rs. 15-20 per month [emphasis added].

He noted they are providing 20,000 central area dwelling units which would collapse. There are over 62,000 persons who sleep on the streets in Bombay (Ramachandran 1970) and this represents pragmatic action in a famine.

GROUND DENSITY STANDARDS Just as the building and occupancy by-laws represent attempts to regulate in-dwelling densities, city planning and other building regulations represent governmental attempts to regulate ground density. These regulations or policies may affect density directly; for example, a decision by a housing board to build a project at a particular number of units per acre, controlling the number of occupants per unit, will yield a specified density. Regulations may be more indirect, as in the case of Floor Space Indices, which govern the amount of floor space which can be built per acre in a specified area. The regulations can be even more indirect, as in the regulation of setback and nonresidential open space. Once these are specified in an area, they limit the amount of interior residential space which can be erected. Table 8 indicates several examples of density standards which have been proposed and implemented since 1899. Some have been implemented in housing projects, others appear in city plans and others are recommendations of persons working in housing. The recommendations, expressed as net residential densities,9 range from 200 persons per acre to 880. The oldest example, from one of the first housing projects of the Improvement Trust, had a density of 541. Expert opinion, as expressed by two officials of the Maharashtra Housing Board in modern times, states that 200 or 300 persons per acre are as high as density should go, and a project of the Housing Board in the late 1940's was built in that range. 9

Net density=Number of persons on a building plot; Area of plot (in acres). Gross density = Number of persons in a block in a residential zone; Area of block in acres, exclusive of any large recreational spaces.

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Nonetheless, city planners are forced to deal with the existing residential densities in the city which far exceed these limits in most areas. The plans indicate lower densities in suburban areas. In specifying the high densities for the built-up areas, the planners justify the high densities because they attempt to avoid displacing residents. The planners continue that they hope to lower the density levels at some future time (Bombay Municipal Corporation 1964). Table 8.

Density standards: maximum densities permitted

Standard, in persons per acre (net density)

Year

Agency

541

1899

288

Late 1940'searly 1950's 1955 1964

Bombay Improvement Trust (at Agripada Estate) Bombay Housing Board (at Worli) Desai, official of Maharashtra Housing Board Development Plan for City

1966

Maharashtra Housing Board

1967

Development Control Rules for Greater Bombay Official of Maharashtra Housing Board

300, maximum 360, 480, 880, 450, 600, 300, 875, 200,

suburbs northern part of city specified parts of city suburbs* city for slum rehousing* suburbs* densest parts of city* rehousing schemes for slum clearance

1972

* These standards were specified in dwelling units per acre and they have been converted here to five persons per unit.

The bases for density standards are similar to those stated for unit standards. These also fall into the subsocial and sociocultural categories. Among those who use subsocial bases for their standards are the Planning Commission, citing "environmental hygiene" as a goal (Vagale 1969) and the Rent Enquiry Commission, aiming for conformity with "modern concepts of well-ventilated and well-lighted buildings." Both of these commissions also relied upon sociocultural bases; the Planning Commission referred to improved "civic amenities" as a goal (Vagale 1969). The Floor Space Indices Committee is explicit in the use of the following criteria: water supply and drainage, roads, and open spaces. They also consider living space. Another sociocultural basis was to avoid the creation of slums. An official of the Bombay Housing Board stated that any density in excess of 300 persons per acre would produce a slum (Desai 1955). Other sociocultural concerns refer to open space which would allow for parks, playgrounds, and schools in the residential areas.

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In the density standards as in the dwelling standards, social class is used as an implicit sociocultural basis. The Floor Space Indices Committee and the city plan of 1964 divide the metropolitan area into subareas of differing densities, which correlate inversely with the income and status of the residents. The economic/ecological constraints are the same as those discussed earlier regarding dwelling standards, with one elaboration. It is that land values in combination with the cost restrictions of the central government's programs constrain the housing administrator to design projects of increasing densities (Desai 1955). The Team on Urban Housing and Kingsley and Kristof recommend increasing density in residential development within the context of land costs, transportation, and other factors.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS The pure human ecological model, emphasizing land economics and demography, goes a long way toward explaining the history of density and housing quality in Bombay. In sum, the city has had sustained economic growth over several decades accompanied by heavy in-migration and rapid population growth. Meier (1972:51) says: "...Bombay is going through a period that is to be found in the history of every great metropolis in the world today — a time when the city's attractions exceed its capacity to provide shelter and basic utilities." Bombay's economy attracts population and the population must occupy every bit of housing to its capacity. Some local observers noted that the spurt in population growth from 1931-1951 was so great that the small growth in the housing supply left the housing stock far behind. This observation, which was used as a rationale for expanded governmental production of housing, is incorrect in that population has far exceeded the supply of good housing throughout the twentieth century. These same analysts have noted that the private housing industry was able to supply housing to all classes, whereas later it served only the wealthy. Evidently, either the supply and price of materials and land changed radically, or standards rose. The only new private housing for the nonwealthy after Independence was shacks (hutments). Bombay has had rising densities throughout its expanding area decade after decade, promoted by economic and demographic growth and given limited areas of transportation.

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The mixed model is also useful in explaining how Bombay became so densely populated and how its housing reached such high levels of indwelling density. In the mixed model, Abrams enumerates factors other than land cost which favor intense land development and high density. The items in his list which apply most directly to Bombay are: unavailability of housing at reasonable cost; voluntary or involuntray segregation of ethnic groups; insufficient residential land; and economies with regard to construction and community facilities. The segregation of castes in Indian cities has long promoted rising densities and intensity of land development. Lanchester stated that congestion was produced by segregation of caste groups and the tendency of families to remain together over generations. If a caste were hemmed in by others abutting its area, its member families would "overbuild" — add rooms, front and back, and fill each lot (Geddes 1947). Chatterji (as quoted by Berry and Horton) makes the same point. The tendency for nuclear households not to break off and move to the urban periphery helps explain the maintenance of central density in the non-Western density pattern. In this way, caste solidarity represents a nonrational, noneconomic mode of spatial behavior of the type that supports Firey's critique of the pure human ecological model. The administrative-rational control model fails, at least until the mid-1950's. There was no control over the emerging density pattern and housing situation. The municipality did not and could not enforce the occupancy standards or other standards. There were few inspections or other forms of enforcement. Municipal government was weak in general. But even if it had been strong, the need for shelter was too great to make condemnation a reasonable practice. At the local level of household economics, demand never approached the need defined by reformers. Nor could density be controlled by standards. The island was built over by the time city-wide standards were developed. And the civic housing agencies built at extremely high densities from the outset, due to the cost of land. Form's scheme directs attention to other social structural features to understand urban land use. One group he suggests is civic officials, and this group was important. The local housing reformers in the Bombay commissions, in the housing agencies, and in the civic administration in general, advocated better housing and lower density. But the city was part of a larger economy and a larger demographic region. The inmigration was regional or national. The local officials were constrained at first by the colonial government. The miniscule output of the housing agencies before Independence must be a function of underfunding in

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large measure. After Independence, the local officials relied heavily upon funding from the national central government, and more specifically they were dependent upon decisions within the Planning Commission. Form's scheme should be modified to note that civic officials are tied into and limited by national networks. If there are instances of controlled density patterns within cities, they are unlikely to be in rapidly growing cities founded centuries ago, like Bombay. They are probably not in many of the planned new towns, either, unless there are some examples of towns which actually grew according to the plans.

REFERENCES ABRAMS, CHARLES

1953

U r b a n land and problems. Town and Country Planning Bulletin 7:

3-58. United Nations. AGGARWAL, S. C.

1952 Industrial housing in India. New Delhi: Roxy Press. 1958 Recent developments in housing. New Delhi: Jain Book Agency. AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION

1948 1950

Planning the neighborhood. Chicago. Planning the home for occupancy. Chicago.

ATKINSON, G . ANTHONY

1952 Design and construction in the tropics. Housing and Town and Country Planning Bulletin 6. United Nations.

1953 "Tropical architecture and building standards," in Proceedings of the conference on tropical architecture. London: George Allen and Unwin. BATLEY, CLAUDE

1949 Bombay's houses and homes. Bombay Citizenship Series. Bombay: National Information and Publications. BERRY, BRIAN J. L., FRANK E. HORTON

1970

Geographic perspectives

on urban systems.

Englewood Cliffs. N . J . :

Prentice-Hall. BOMBAY BUILDING AND RECONSTRUCTION BOARD

1971

"Annual Report, 1970-1971." Bombay. Unpublished typescript.

BOMBAY IMPROVEMENT TRUST

1899

Administrative

report for the year ending 31 March, 1899. Bombay.

BOMBAY INDUSTRIAL HOUSING SCHEME, ADMINISTRATOR

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Annual report, 1929-1930. Bombay.

BOMBAY MUNICIPAL COMMISSIONER

1899 1928

Report of the Municipal Commissioner on the plague in Bombay for the year ending 31 May, 1899. Administrative report on the Municipal Commissioner for the city

of Bombay, 1927-1928. Bombay. Section on Health.

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1935 Administrative report of the Municipal Commissioner for the City of Bombay, 1935-1934. Sections on Buildings Branch and Health. BOMBAY MUNICIPAL CORPORATION

1964 Report on the development plan for greater Bombay. Bombay. BOMBAY TOWN PLANNING AND VALUATION DEPARTMENT

1941 Report, 1938-1940. Bombay. BRUSH, JOHN

1968 Spatial patterns of population in Indian cities. Geographical Review 58 (July):362-391. BULSARA, JAL F.

1964 Problems of rapid urbanization in India. Bombay: Popular Prakashan. 1965 The future of our city. Marg 18 (3 June): v-x. BURNETT-HURST, A.R.

1925 Labour and housing in Bombay. Studies in Economics and Political Science 75. London School of Economics and Political Science. London: P.S. King and Son. CASSEL, JOHN

1971 "Health consequences of population density and crowding," in Rapid population growth: consequences and policy implications. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. CHOLDIN, HARVEY M.

1972 "Population density and social relations." Unpublished paper presented at meeting of Population Association of America, Toronto, April 14. CLARK, COLIN

1951 Urban population densities. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 114(4)495. DALDY, A. F.

1969 Scope of building legislation. Building Research Station, Current Paper 20/69. Garston, Watford, Herts. DESAI, c . R.

1955 The work of the Bombay Housing Board. Housing, Building and Planning 9. United Nations, Housing and Planning Branch of Department of Economic and Social Affairs. FIREY, WALTER

1945 Sentiment and symbolism as ecological variables. American Sociological Review 10:140-148. FLOOR SPACE INDICES COMMITTEE

1964 Report. Bombay: Government of Maharashtra, Urban Development and Public Health Department. FONSECA, RORY

1969 "The walled city of Old Delhi," in Shelter and society. Edited by Paul Oliver, 103-115. New York: Praeger. FORM, WILLIAM

1954 The place of social structure in the determination of land use. Social Forces. 32:317-323. FRY, MAXWELL, JANE DREW

1964 Tropical architecture in the dry and humid zones. London: Batsford.

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GEDDES, PATRICK

1947 Patrick Geddes in India. Edited by Jacqueline Tyrwhitt, introduction by H.V. Lanchester. London: Lund Humphries. HOLE, W . VERE

1965 Housing standards and social trends. Urban Studies 2(2): 137-146. KINGSLEY, G . THOMAS, FRANK S. KRISTOF

1971 "A housing policy for metropolitan Calcutta." Mimeographed manuscript. Calcutta: Calcutta Metropolitan Planning Organization. KIRA, ALEXANDER

1967

The bathroom, criteria for design. New York: Bantam Books.

KRISHNASWAMI, N.

1955 Housing in India. Housing, Building and Planning 9:72-73. United Nations, Housing and Planning Branch of Department of Economic and Social Affairs. KUMAR, J.

1956 Government of India, scales of accommodation for government services. Journal of the Institute of Engineers of India 37(4,1). LAKDAWALA, D. T., et

1963

al.

Work, wages and well-being in an Indian metropolis: economic survey of Bombay city. University of Bombay Series in Economics 11. Bombay: University of Bombay.

MAHARASHTRA HOUSING BOARD

1966 Griha nirmal (report.) Bombay. Marg 1965 Editors' comments in special issue on Bombay plan. Marg 18 (3 June). MEIER, RICHARD L.

1972 Resource conserving urbanism in South Asia, IV: the development of greater Bonibay. University of California, Institute of Urban and Regional Development, Working Paper 154. Berkeley: University of California Press. MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT

1961 Homes for today and tomorrow. The Parker Morris Committee. London: HMSO. MIRIAMS, A. E.

1916 Address to members of municipality and citizens of Poona on the Bombay Town Planning Act of 1915. Poona. NEWLING, BRUCE E.

1966 Urban growth and spatial structure: mathematical models and empirical evidence. Geographical Review 56:213-225. PANELS APPOINTED BY THE STUDY GROUP FOR GREATER BOMBAY

1959 Report. Bombay: Government Central Press. PRAKASH, VED

1969 New towns in India. Program in Comparative Studies in Southern Asia, Monograph 8. Durham, N. C.: Duke University. RAJAGOPALAN, C.

1962 The greater Bombay: a study in suburban ecology. Bombay: Popular Book Depot.

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RAMACHANDRAN, P.

1970 Pavement dwellers in Bombay city. Bombay: Tata Institute of Social Sciences. 1972 "Housing situation in greater Bombay." Mimeographed manuscript. Bombay: Tata Institute of Social Sciences. RAMACHANDRAN, P., PADMANABHA, A.

1967 Social and economic rents and subsidies for low-income groups in greater Bombay. Tata Institute of Social Sciences Series 18. Bombay: Lalvani Publishing House. RAPOPORT, AMOS, NEWTON WATSON

1968 Cultural variability in physical standards. Transactions of the Bartlett Society 6:63-83. RATCLIFF, RICHARD U.

1952 Housing standards and housing research. Land Economics 28:328-332. RENT ENQUIRY COMMISSION

1939 Report, three volumes. Bombay. SCHORR, ALVIN L.

1963 Slums and social insecurity. U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Social Security Administration, Division of Research and Statistics, Research Report 1. Washington, D.C. SOLAUN, MAURICIO, et

al.

1972 "Diagnosis and solutions for squatter settlements: the case of Las Colinas." Mimeographed manuscript. Urbana: University of Illinois, Department of Sociology. SOVANI, N.V.

1966

Urbanization and urban India. Bombay: Asia Publishing House.

STANDING LABOUR COMMITTEE

1946 Report of the Industrial Housing Sub-Committee. STEVENS, P.H.M.

1960 Densities in housing areas. Great Britain, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Building Research Station, Tropical Building Studies 1. London. SUBCOMMITTEE ON HOUSING REGULATIONS AND STANDARDS, PROGRAM

AREA,

COMMITTEE ON HOUSING AND HEALTH, AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION

1969 APHA-PHS Recommended housing maintenance and occupancy ordinance (Public Health Service Publication number 1935), U.S. Dept. of HEW, PHS, Consumer Protection and Environmental Health Service, Environmental Control Administration, Bureau of Community Environmental Management. TYRWHITT, JACQUELINE

1955 Comments on standards of housing accommodation. Housing, Building and Planning 9 United Nations. UNWIN, RAYMOND

1912 Nothing gained from overcrowding. London: Garden Cities and Town Planning Association. 1967 The legacy of Raymond Unwin: a human pattern for city planning. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT. Press.

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VAGALE, L. R .

1969 "Housing and town and country planning," in Encyclopedia of social work in India, volume one, 408-424. Delhi: Planning Commission. WILNER, DANIEL M., R.P. WALKLEY, T.C. PINKERTON, M. TAYBACK

1962 The housing environment and family life. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. WINNICK, LOUIS, et al.

1965 "Report on India's urban housing," two volumes. Mimeographed manuscript by the Team on Urban Housing. Delhi: Government of India, Ministry of Works and Housing. ZACHARIAH, K.C.

1968 Migration in greater Bombay. Bombay: Demographic Training and Research Centre.

Conceptual Patterns in Yoruba Culture

LUCY JAYNE KAMAU

The Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria are among the most extensively studied groups of people in Africa. There is available a large volume of literature written by European scholars, by missionaries, and by Yoruba writers themselves. The Yoruba have attracted such scholarly interest because they have had an old and indigenous tradition of urban life, an intricate political system, and a complex culture. While much of the literature concerning the Yoruba deals with aspects of pre-European urbanism, a considerable amount of information relating to other aspects of their culture has also been recorded. The Yoruba today have a population of about five million persons. Historically, they were united by a common language, a common culture, and a belief in a common origin, but, as far as is known, they were never politically united. Rather, they were divided into many small kingdoms or city-states which rose and fell over a period of approximately five hundred years (Bascom 1955). The center of each Yoruba state was the capital town, ruled by an oba, or divine king. In the past, many of these towns were quite large, some of them having as many as 50,000 inhabitants. Despite this urban orientation, the basis of the Yoruba economy was agriculture, although trade was also important. Few Yoruba, however, were full-time merchants. Most persons were farmers, those who were city dwellers commuting back and forth between homes in the towns and farms in the countryside. This paper will attempt to describe the interrelationship between the traditional Yoruba world view, their arrangement of social space, their concepts of time, and certain related aspects of their political, mythological, and divinatory systems. It will attempt to trace out a pattern which

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ties together many aspects of Yoruba life into a coherent totality. It will not be concerned with changes which may have taken place in recent years, but will try to deal with traditional Yoruba life as much as possible. For the sake of simplicity, this paper is written in the ethnographic present. While other writers have noted aspects of the relationship to be described in this paper (e.g. Frobenius 1913; Krapf-Askari 1969; MortonWilliams 1960a), they have not investigated it in detail, nor have they dealt with more than one or two parts of the totality. However, it seems that there are patterns in Yoruba culture which are of a much broader and more complex nature than have heretofore been described. The material for this paper is derived exclusively from secondary sources. The writer has not personally been able to conduct a field study of Yoruba culture. There are certain problems inherent in this approach. First, one is sometimes limited in the availability of complete data, and it may be necessary to make inferences on the basis of only partial information. Second, some writers may be repeating assertions made by earlier writers, but have failed to cite sources of information. Third, there may be difficulty in assessing the reliability of resources, most particularly those which are not methodologically rigorous. However, if original research is to have any enduring value beyond the mere recording of curiosa, it must be usable and used by other scholars. Inasmuch as there is a great deal of material on the Yoruba written by a great many writers, it has been possible in this case to cross-check data for consistency. Those statements which have seemed dubious or inconsistent have been discarded. The concept of PATTERN as propounded by Ruth Benedict (1934) has been of great use in developing the ideas contained in this paper. While Benedict's writings have fallen into neglect in recent years, largely due to her unfortunate classification of cultures into imprecise psychological categories, there is still a good deal to be gained from her work. The basic idea of pattern is important and useful and should not be discarded merely because other aspects of her work have been shown to be invalid. In analyzing Yoruba culture, the concept of pattern has proven extremely valuable, and indeed, is necessary to such analysis. Yoruba do have at least one pattern which permeates their culture on many different levels. It is this basic idea of pattern which underlies the presentation given below. L6vi-Strauss (1962:93) has indirectly indicated the importance of patterns in a discussion of myth, when he states that:

Conceptual Patterns in Yoruba Culture

335

The mythical system and the modes of representation it employs serve to establish homologues between natural and social conditions or, more accurately, it makes it possible to equate significant contrasts found on different planes: the geographical, meteorological, zoological, botanical, technical, economic, social, ritual, religious, and philosophical.

This description fits at least certain aspects of Yoruba culture. There is a logical relationship between different areas of thought, which, taken together, combine into one system or pattern. A few basic concepts go through a number of transformations as they are applied to differing intellectual contexts, but the parts remain in the same relationship to each other, so that a transformation of one element leads to a corresponding change in another element. The natural world, the social world, and the cosmological world are seen by the Yoruba as being equivalent: conditions which obtain in one domain likewise obtain in the others, and differing levels of experience are congruent. The basic ordering device of the system or pattern to be discussed here is the numeral two, most particularly when it is duplicated into the number four. Two and four can be considered "master symbols" (Wolf 1965:227) or "synthesizing symbols" (Geertz 1970:326), which link together many aspects of Yoruba life. The giving of symbolic meanings to the arrangement of space, time, and society in accordance with cosmological concepts has occurred elsewhere in the world in many places and at many times. For example, the Oglala Sioux (Radin 1927:276-281) used the circle as a basic ordering device which gave cosmic meaning to village layout, moral code, and house form: Again and again the idea of a sacred circle, a natural form with a moral impact, yields, when applied to the world within which the Oglala lived, new meanings: continually it connects together elements within their experience which would otherwise seem wholly disparate and incomprehensible (Geertz 1970:327).

The Pawnee (Lienhardt 1968:445^46), the Osage (Levi-Strauss 1962: 143-146), the Dogun (Griaule 1965), and the Aztecs (Wolf 1959), as well as medieval Europeans (Mumford 1961), to name but a very few, have all structured portions of their social and physical environments so as to be in accordance with beliefs concerning the cosmos. In this respect, the Yoruba are not unique. Their uniqueness lies partly in the coherence, complexity, and pervasiveness of their metaphysical system and partly in the fact that they have been so ably and richly recorded by so many different observers, thus enabling one to piece together the parts which form the whole.

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Two is the basic ordering device of the Yoruba system. Yoruba culture is replete with dualisms. Gods are paired, either as united or opposed entities. Time is divided into opposed units. Center and periphery are important conceptual oppositions. The system of divination known as Ifa is based upon pairs and upon pairs of pairs. Odd and even, right and left, black and white, are frequently occurring paired oppositions. The Yoruba divide themselves into two types of people, the ara ilu or city dwellers, and the ara oko, or rural people. Youth and age are commonly opposed. Duality is a constantly recurring theme in Yoruba culture. Yet it is the duplication of pairs which is perhaps most important, for four is the symbol which stands for order and stability in the universe. It is "the sign of completion and perfection" (Morton-Williams 1960a: 372) in Yoruba culture. Two underlies four, but it is four upon which the world is built. 1

THE COSMOS The association of the number four with stability and order is clearly shown in the Yoruba concept of the cosmos. The natural world fc'/e aiye) and the supernatural world (He orun) are believed to be isomorphic, and the former is the reflection of the latter. Ideally, both are four-square. The supernatural world is believed to be located in the sky (translated as "the heavens" by most writers). It is divided in half by one main road running in an east-west direction. This direction is obtained by referring to the direction in which the sun travels across the sky and is called the "Chief Way" (Frobenius 1913:259; Ojo 1966:199), for the path of the sun is believed to be the most important direction in the universe. East, the direction of sunrise, has higher rank than west. The Chief Way is bifurcated by the "Second Way," a road laid out on a north-south axis, 90° to the right and left of center. Right, or north, has higher prestige than left, or south. The entire supernatural world is surrounded by a wall with four gates, one for each road. The point at which the roads intersect is believed to be the crossroads 1

There is some evidence that the number three also has symbolic value for the Yoruba (Krapf-Askari 1966; Morton-Williams 1960a), most particularly with respect to the Ogboni society, many of whose practices are reversals of what the Yoruba consider to be proper behavior. It also seems to have other symbolic associations as well, but the information concerning it is too fragmentary to be considered here. It should be noted, however, that even numbers are generally considered to be good and are associated with the right hand, while odd numbers, particularly three, are considered to be bad and are associated with the left hand (Frobenius 1913:189; Bascom 1969b:47).

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and center of the universe (Frobenius 1913:256; Ojo 1966:200). Thus the heavens are divided into four equal parts by a pair of roads and also have four walls, each wall divided by a gate through which one of these roads runs. The crossroads of the heavens are governed by four different gods, one for each point of the compass. Since the directions are hierarchically ranked, it is therefore possible that the gods associated with the various directions are also hierarchically ranked, but no writer on this subject has stated this explicitly, so that it must remain a conjecture. The names of these four gods and their directional associations vary somewhat, apparently by locality, but there is nevertheless considerable overlap and agreement concerning which particular gods are crossroads gods. Table 1 lists the names given by Frobenius (1913:256), Dennett (1910:71), Ojo (1966:200), and Odugbesan (1969:200). Table 1. Crossroads gods according to four authors

East West * North South

Frobenius

Dennett

Ojo

Odugbesan

Ifa/Eshu Shango Ogun Obatala

Shango Ifa/Eshu Obatala Oduduwa

Shango Ifa/Eshu Obatala Oduduwa

Ifa/Eshu Shango Ogun Obatala

Unfortunately, none of these writers has specified the region from which these names were collected. However, only six names occur, out of the possible several hundreds of Yoruba gods' names. These are Ifa/Eshu, Shango, Obatala, Oduduwa, and Ogun. Ifa/Eshu and Shango are consisstently named as gods of either the east or the west, while Ogun, Obatala, and Oduduwa are given as names of the gods of the north or south. These six gods are among the most important deities in the Yoruba pantheon. Ifa is the god of divination, while Eshu, his paired alter ego, controls chance. Ifa and Eshu are frequently conceived of by Yoruba as being two manifestations of one deity, particularly with respect to crossroads domain, and they have frequently been treated as one entity by other writers. They have been so treated in this context by this writer. Obatala and Oduduwa are a set of paired gods associated with the creation of the natural world and of mankind. They were never thought of as dual aspects of one deity, and accordingly have been kept separate here. While Oduduwa and Obatala govern separate domains on two of the above lists, Ifa and Eshu are never found ruling different directions. Ogun and Shango are not paired, although they are similar in that both

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are characterized as fierce gods. Ogun is the god of war and of iron, while Shango is a deified king of Oyo who is also the god of thunder and lightning, which are fearsome natural phenomena in Yoruba country. All writers on this subject agree that the four gods of the crossroads are also the four gods of the four gates of heaven and of the four winds which pass through these gates. They are also the names of the four days of the week. When the name of a god changes in one respect, it changes in all others, so that, regardless of the specific deity, a given crossroads god is always a god of a specific day, a specific wind, and a specific gate. The four quadrants of the heavens are subdivided into four or more parts by two secondary roads in each quadrant, making sixteen sections plus a center. Whether these secondary divisions are also governed by deities is unknown. Yoruba deities are sometimes divided into gods of the right and of the left (Bascom 1969b: 103), each group presumably on either side of the Chief Way. The number of gods is conventionally given as 200 to each side (Ojo 1966:184) or 400 gods in the Yoruba pantheon. Sometimes the number given is 401 (Biobaku 1965:25; Lloyd 1965:573; Johnson 1921: 38), the odd one being the supreme god Olorun, who is associated with the center, again presumably on the Chief Way. Gods of the right are said to have higher prestige than gods of the left (Ojo 1966:184) and are beneficent, while gods of the left are malevolent. However, no specific gods' names are associated with this division into right and left and good and bad, while gods of the crossroads associated with north/right and south/ left, do not seem to be classified or classifiable into good and bad. Even such deities as Ogun and Shango have their followers and can be beneficial to those who worship them. The natural world, ile aiye, the world in which men live, is believed to be organized so as to be homologous with the heavens, ile orun. The earth and the sky are of the same size (Ojo 1966:196). The sky is curved downward, while the earth is curved upward, their edges meeting at the horizon. They are joined at the center by a chain running from the central crossroads of heaven to the holy city of Ile Ife, believed to be located at the central crossroads of earth. Thus the natural world and the supernatural world are physically linked. Looked at in cross-section, a four-sectioned figure is obtained (see Figure 1). Like the sky, the earth is said to be surrounded by four walls, with one gate in each wall through which spirits and deities pass on their way into and out of the natural world. The natural world is also said to be divided in half by one great road, the Chief Way, and divided into quadrants by

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Crossroad

Horizon

Sky

Earth De Ife Figure 1. Oblique view of the Yoruba cosmos

a second road, the Second Way. The city of He Ife lies at the junction of these two roads. The sky and the earth are mirror images of each other. The relationship between them is sometimes symbolized by the relationship between the gods Obatala and Oduduwa. These deities oppose each other and yet are indissolubly linked. In some areas, but not in lie Ife itself, they are represented as consorts, Obatala being the male and Oduduwa the female (Morton-Williams 1964:250). In Ife, both these gods are thought of as males. As consorts, Obatala and Oduduwa are represented as two halves of a calabash which cannot be broken, the calabash being the symbol of creation (Ojo 1966:196). Obatala and Oduduwa are also seen as inhabiting the calabash of creation as two persons: Obatala the sky god inhabiting the upper portion, and Oduduwa the earth goddess inhabiting the lower portion. Obatala is also associated with the sun, with light, and with whiteness (Bascom 1969b: 103). White is the color of beneficent gods and of the sacred kingship. In one account of his activities, Obatala is said to have created human beings (Bascom 1969a: 103), while in another (Dennett 1910:84), he is said to have created the "white" parts of the body: the brain, nerves, and skull. Obatala is always depicted as male. Oduduwa, on the other hand, may be either male or female, depending upon the context. When Oduduwa is seen as a woman, she is known as "the mother of the gods" (Frobenius 1913:232; Dennett 1910:74), and she is symbolized by sixteen snail shells representing the sixteen gods of the sixteen parts of the heavens who assisted Oduduwa at creation. On the other

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Hand, Oduduwa is seen as being male when he is thought of as the ancestor of all Yoruba and as their first oba, or king. Although Oduduwa is not a malevolent god and is not associated with the gods of the left, he/she is associated with darkness and with the color black. It is said that Obatala blinded Oduduwa when they were in the calabash, and for this, she cursed him (Dennett 1910:74), so that in future disputes with Obatala, Oduduwa is inevitably the winner. Oduduwa is said to have created the inhabited world, ile aiye, and also the black parts of the body: the flesh and the blood. Insofar as they symbolize the relationship between the earth and the sky, however, these two gods are at once locked together for all time and also are separated, just as heaven and earth are at once joined and separated. Both gods play important roles in Yoruba creation myths, to be described below. On earth, Ile Ife was the center of creation and of the world. This city is an important unifying symbol for the Yoruba, for it is believed that all Yoruba are descended from the founder of Ife, that is, from Oduduwa. One writer states, with reference to Ile Ife: "All roads in their [Yoruba] religion, history, government, and art seem to lead there" (Smith 1969:15). This remark is apt in more than one way, for the Yoruba believe that all roads literally lead to Ife, the crossroads of the earth. Ife's layout, its governing system, and stories of its origin are shot through with repetitions of the number four and its multiples, and it is in Ife that Yoruba have most consciously striven to make the human world a replica or model of the supernatural world. To understand the importance of Ile Ife in Yoruba culture, it is necessary to know something of the myths surrounding its origin. These myths vary somewhat, but on the whole they show consistency. The most common creation myth is the following (Lloyd 1960:223): The original impetus for the creation of Ife and of the world was the supreme god Olorun (also called Olodumare). Olorun is a remote creator god who commands other deities but who himself seldom interferes directly in human affairs. In the primordial existence, there were only the skies above and the oceans below. Olorun decided to create land and to do so he let down a golden chain from the center of heaven to the center of the ocean. He commanded Oduduwa, who in this version is usually male, to descend this chain and to create the earth. Oduduwa descended the chain, threw a handful of sand on the waters, and placed on it a chicken and a palm nut. The chicken scratched the sand, creating hills and valleys, while the palm nut grew into a tree with sixteen branches. The sixteen branches represent the sixteen parts of the world, and the sixteen nuts represent

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the origin of the divination system called Ifa, which uses sixteen palm nuts as counters. The place where Oduduwa landed is lie Ife. In one variant of this particular myth (Smith 1969:17; Ojo 1966:194), Oduduwa is said to have taken with him sixteen companions. After creating the world, he settled at lie Ife and became its first oba, dividing the rest of the world into sixteen parts and giving one portion to each of his assistants. Other versions of the creation myth stress the opposition between Obatala and Oduduwa (Adedeji 1966:89-91; Bascom 1969b: 10; Frobenius 1913:283). In one version, Olorun had two sons, the elder being Obatala and the younger being Oduduwa. Olorun sent Obatala to create land, but instead Obatala drank palm wine and fell asleep. Oduduwa was then sent in his place. Oduduwa landed at lie Ife, created the earth, and ruled it as first oba. When he learned of this, Obatala became angry with Oduduwa, and they fought. Obatala first defeated Oduduwa and drove him from Ife, but was himself subsequently defeated by Oduduwa and expelled. Olorun then gave Oduduwa and his offspring the right to rule the earth and Obatala the right to create human beings in their mothers' wombs, thus dividing dominion over human life between these two gods. In only one version does Oduduwa not figure. This one, recorded by Frobenius (1913 :284), gives Olorun the credit for the creation of the earth. An island already existed in the waters and was inhabited by men. These men wandered about in confusion. Then Olorun, together with sixteen deities, came down from heaven and sat in the center of the island on the future site of Ife. He told Ifa/Eshu to sit behind him, Shango in front, Ogun on the right, and Obatala on the left. (These four gods are the gods Frobenius lists as crossroads gods.) The remainder of the gods sat in a circle around him. Olorun decreed that the sixteen gods would rule the sixteen parts of the earth, but that Ife would be the center. A palm tree was planted so that Ife would be the best place for divination. The future Onis (obas) of Ife would tell other obas the will of the gods. This myth seems to imply that the Onis of Ife are descended from Olorun, which does not seem to fit the commonly held belief that Oduduwa is the ancestor of all Yoruba, all crowned obas, and, most particularly, all Onis of Ife. On the other hand, there is some evidence that the Oni of Ife was to other rulers as Olorun is to other gods (Morton-Williams 1964:245). There is also a conquest version which is an account in historical rather than mythical time. In this myth (Johnson 1921:3; Okediji and Okediji 1966:65), Oduduwa, a human male, is said to have come from the east and settled at Ife. He had sixteen children or grandchildren whom

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he sent out to colonize and settle other areas. His offspring are believed to be the ancestors of all crowned obas, who thus are believed to trace their ancestry in a direct line to Oduduwa. Although there are differences in content in these myths, certain consistent themes emerge. One is the belief that lie Ife is the center of creation and the first Yoruba town. A second is the pervasiveness of sixteen and of sixteen plus one. The earth is divided into sixteen parts, that is, the four points of the compass and their major subdivisions, plus the center. Oduduwa brought sixteen companions with him, as did Olorun, so that there would be sixteen crowned obas for the sixteen regions of the world, plus the Oni of Ife. Oduduwa had sixteen offspring who founded Yoruba dynasties. The palm tree planted at Ife had sixteen branches and sixteen nuts plus the central trunk. A third theme, excepting Frobenius' account, is that Oduduwa is responsible for bringing the plan of the cosmos to earth and is also responsible for instituting the Yoruba political system. He was the first Oni of Ife and the ancestor of all Yoruba, thus forming a direct link between men and the gods, between historical time and mythical time. Ife is thus the supposed source of legitimacy for all rulers. Only those obas who can trace descent, real or fictitious, to the royal lineage of Ife are eligible to wear the beaded crown of office, the only insignia of legitimate rule (Ojo 1966:126). In theory, the Oni of Ife had divinely sanctioned control over all other obas, but in fact, Ife's authority was often disputed by other kings, and its hegemony has more often been spiritual than political (Smith 1969:108). Even so, Ife has remained a potent symbol of Yoruba unity and the sole source of royal legitimacy. Conceptually, then, the natural world should be a reflection of the supernatural world, divided into four parts and then into sixteen, plus a center, with four walls and four gates at the periphery. The holy city of He Ife is the earthly homologue of the crossroads of the universe, for the center is the most sacred portion of both sky and earth. The seventeen crowned kingdoms are the homologues of the seventeen parts of the heavens. The Oni of Ife, together with the sixteen crowned kings are the homologues of Oduduwa and his sixteen assistants or of the palm tree with its sixteen branches. Yet, although they are homologues, earth and sky are still distinct and opposed entities, and the opposition between them is symbolized by the opposition, both in personal characteristics and in contentious behavior, between Obatala and Oduduwa, who, despite their opposition, are eternally linked.

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State and Town Morphology In theory, the world should be laid out and organized according to the pattern originally set down at creation at lie Ife. In fact, the world is far different from the ideal, but it is evident that the Yoruba have tried on many different levels and as much as possible to create a social world which mirrors the supernatural world. This is particularly evident in the morphology of the capital town, which is the most important town in the state, particularly if it is also a crowned town. In theory, and sometimes in fact as well, the capital town is the geographic as well as the political, administrative, economic, and religious center of the state. Town morphology varies somewhat between the north and the south, paralleling a difference in kinship structure. Northern Yoruba are organized into agnatic lineages, while in the south cognatic lineages prevail.2 Southern towns are most often roughly rectangular in shape and are laid out on a grid pattern, the internal divisions or wards being made up of a number of rectangular compounds facing a street and divided from other wards by rubbish heaps in the rear (Lloyd 1960:26). Northern towns, considered "classical" Yoruba towns (Krapf-Askari 1969), are more nearly radial in shape. Krapf-Askari (1969:39) likens them to wheels, the obds palace being the hub, the town walls the rim, and the main roads leading out of town the spokes. Wards are located along these spokes and divided from each other by footpaths. In both north and south, the town is roughly divided into quadrants, with the center of the town being its most important point, replicating the design of the cosmos. It is evident that the Yoruba themselves thought of their towns as being replicas of the cosmos. According to Krapf-Askari (1969:39), there exists "a more or less identical morphology which seems to be postulated by the Yoruba themselves," although in fact few Yoruba towns totally conform to this model. Areas around Ife and Old Oyo, the most conservative of Yoruba kingdoms, most closely approximate the ideal, but in any case, it is clear that Yoruba towns are built according to a plan and not haphazardly. Although the contingencies of geomorphology and of history may have altered the final form, the ideal was still to be approximated as much as possible. Palace layouts seem to follow this blueprint with greater consistency than city layouts. Palaces are more nearly rectangular in shape than towns. Like the town, the palace is surrounded by a thick wall. In this 2

The reasons for the relationship between kinship and town morphology are obscure. This paper will confine itself primarily to a discussion of the northern Yoruba.

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wall is one main gate which connects the inner palace with the town. Facing the main gate is the oba's public throne, and the path between gate and throne represents the Chief Way. The palace itself is a compound, and like other Yoruba compounds, it consists of apartments built around a series of multiple rectangular courtyards, one courtyard leading to another. By law in the past, the palace was larger and had more courtyards than other compounds. Unlike other compounds, the palace itself occupies only a small part of its total area. The remainder is overgrown with trees and shrubs among which are located shrines, ritual groves, and graves of former obas. This bush area is closed to outsiders and is highly sacred. Within the palace proper, the courtyards nearest the gate are for public use, while the inner ones are private. The first courtyard is the location for public ceremonies presided over by the oba. Around this courtyard live retainers, servants, and guests — those persons whose contact with the oba is minimal. Each successive courtyard leading into the center is occupied by persons successively closer to the oba. The innermost ones are occupied only by the oba's closest wives, and it is here that they cook his food, working naked (Ojo 1966:134-138). The innermost courtyard is occupied by the oba himself. In addition to being his private quarters, this courtyard is also a shrine, for it is the center of the center and thus the most holy place in the kingdom, corresponding in importance to the crossroads of the universe. The most sacred of all of these is the Oni's private chamber at Ife. Also in the center of town is a statue of Olori Merin, who is not a god in himself, but a four-headed being representing the four gods of the crossroads (Dennett 1910:70; Ojo 1966:200). This being is believed to protect the town by guarding the four points of the compass at which are located the four main gates of the town. It is believed that without the protection of Olori Merin, enemies, evil spirits, and diseases can enter the town through these gates. Olori Merin is sometimes called the god of the four corners or the wind vane god (Ojo 1966 :200). Four times a year in the past, a four-day-old infant was sacrificed to him, one sacrifice for each cardinal point. Finally, important shrines and the oba's market are located in the center of town. Ife is an exception to this rule, for in Ife the largest shrines are not in the center of town but near the town walls. Likewise there is no oba's market in Ife, for the Oni is considered to be too sacred to be near such a profane thing as a market. In general, however, the main market is located in front of the palace, where the oba can exert his sacred influence on it so as to ensure honest dealings and to prevent disputes.

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Shrines dedicated to the patron of the marketplace, the god Eshu, are also located in the central market. Surrounding this core area are the houses of notables who are within the orbit of the palace. These are persons whose titles allow them to give service to the oba and include the Chief Councillor, the Chief Eunuch, the Chief Slave, and the Crown Prince (Krapf-Askari 1969: 44; Ojo 1966:135). The palace is located at the intersection of the town's two major roads. These roads divide the town into four parts. Ideally, each quadrant of the town is then divided into four more parts by two secondary roads, creating sixteen sections plus the center. In actual fact, such a neat division is not common. Only Ife and, to a lesser extent, Old Oyo, approximate the ideal (Frobenius 1913:281). In the past, Ife is said to have had seventeen quarters or wards, one in the center around the Oni's palace, four in the cardinal points, and twelve (three each) in between (Frobenius 1913: 279). Oyo had eight wards plus the central precinct. In both cases, the number of wards is a multiple of two plus the central area. In all towns, each ward is headed by a ward chief or bale, whose compound is a smaller version of the palace but much larger and more elaborate than those of ordinary men. As in the palace, ward chiefs live in interior courtyards, surrounded by their wives and their most trusted servants. As in the palace, guests are formally received opposite the main gate, which faces in the direction of the palace. The main gates of ordinary compounds in turn face the ward chief's compound, and the ward chief's compound is the central focus of the ward, just as the palace is the focal point of the town (Krapf-Askari 1969:43). The smallest dwelling unit in the town is the compound in which lives the lineage or family. Dennett (1910:90) cites the following Yoruba proverb: "A house is composed of four corners and is not otherwise complete." In other words, in order to be considered a proper dwelling, a compound has to be square and fully enclosed, just as the cosmos is. The head of the compound, who represents it to the outside world and who is responsible for its religious and economic well-being, occupies a relatively larger apartment directly opposite the main gate leading into the compound. The line from his apartment to the gate is the domestic unit's equivalent of the Chief Way. Those persons inhabiting apartments to the right of the head's apartments are of higher status than those living to his left. If the head is a wealthy or important man, he may reside in an inner courtyard, but his apartment is still on a line with the main gate, so that the Chief Way is maintained. On each level — ordinary compound, ward chief's compound, or palace — the layout of

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the universe is replicated both in physical structure and in social relations. Beyond the wards are the town walls, which contain major and minor gates. Four or multiples of four are the most common number of gates in Yoruba towns (Ojo 1966:141). The larger and more important the town, the greater the number of gates it has. Conversely, the greater the number of gates, the greater the prestige of the town. For example, Ibadan boasted of having sixteen gates (Biobaku 1965:16). Abeokuta had twelve gates (Lloyd 1967:6). Old Oyo, though a large and important town, had only four gates, roughly equal to the points of the compass (Awe 1967:15). Ikija had six gates, four located in the cardinal points, one leading to the forest, and one for the king's custom house (Biobaku 1965:16). Beyond the walls lies forested bushland. This area, in contrast to the town and its agricultural hinterland, is a polluted area. In it are hidden Egungun shrines, the Egungun being masquerades representing dead ancestors who are greatly feared. Also in this bush are the unburied bodies of witches, executed criminals, deformed people and debtors. It is an evil place, a "bad bush," "a sort of spiritual and moral sewer" (KrapfAskari 1969:50), "forbidding and forbidden to the uninitiated "(Ojo 1966:126). This area of "bad bush" presents certain contrasts and similarities to the bushland surrounding the palace. Palace bushland is also heavily forested and contains graves and shrines. It too is forbidden and dangerous to the uninitiated and is heavily invested with an aura of the supernatural. However, its graves are those of sacred persons, former obas, who were properly buried. They are not the repositories of unburied social outcasts. Palace shrines are those of royalty and hence of divinity, not Egungun shrines. The palace bush is certainly not a spiritual sewer: in fact it is the reverse, the location of many of the most sacred and holy objects in Yoruba culture. It could be termed a "good bush," equally as potent as the "bad bush," but vital to the well-being of the state. To add to the polarity between the two, it is noteworthy that the palace bush is located in the heart of the town, while the bad bush lies beyond its periphery, thus again repeating the theme of center versus extremity. Beyond the forested fringe is the countryside, the farming area. Again there is a contrast between north and south in the relationship of farmland to city. In the north, farmlands radiate outward from the town like spokes of wheels, whereas southern farmlands form a checkerboard pattern (Krapf-Askari 1969: 25-26). In both areas, however, Yoruba divide themselves into two kinds of people, the ara oko and the ara ilu

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(Krapf-Askari 1969: 25-26). Ara oko means farm people or bumpkins, persons whose homes are not in towns. Ara ilu refers to town dwellers who are seen as being more sophisticated than ara oko. The word ilu, however, means more than just the town. It also defines the area governed by the political institutions of the town, so that ilu includes the farmlands beyond the town which are owned and worked by town dwellers, or ara ilu people. Beyond the farmlands of the capital town are the subordinate towns and their lands. Subordinate towns are structured very much like capital towns, with the exception that they have no obas but are governed by bales whose installation has to be ratified by the reigning oba. These towns are divided into market towns, villages, hamlets, and camp settlements. The morphology of the Yoruba town, and, to a lesser degree, of the Yoruba state, represents an attempt to replicate the scheme of the cosmos. The capital town is the crossroads, the center of the state, and it is in the center of this town that one finds the most important political, economic, and religious institutions. Here is located the palace, the main market, and the major religious shrines, including the palace itself. The oba, as divine king and most sacred person in the kingdom, lives in the center of the palace. The central capital town is more important than the peripheral towns, just as the center of the town is more important and more sacred than its peripheries. The pattern is repeated again and again: the center of the earth, located at lie Ife; the center of the state, located at the capital town; the center of the town, the location of the palace and other important structures representing central institutions; the center of the ward, located at the residence of the ward chief; and finally, the center of the compound, located at the residence of the compound head. Each of these is conceived of as being square and four-fold, and while not all are walled, the compound, the palace, the city, the earth, and the supernatural world are walled. The larger of these have four gates or multiples of four, while the smaller have at least one gate leading directly to the head's residence and which represents the Chief Way. Thus again one finds dualisms and the repetition of the number four as the quintessential expression of stability and perfection.

POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS It is not within the scope of this paper to cover the Yoruba political system in detail. Rather, it will confine itself to a discussion of the ways

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in which the political system reflects the Yoruba world view. As already indicated, Yoruba political institutions were also designed to replicate the Yoruba concept of the cosmos. Their political system represents a transformation into political idiom of the ideal system described above, with its dualisms, its heavy emphasis on four, its distinctions between the center and the periphery, and the importance of the Chief Way. At the center of the government is the sacred obaship. Although the oba*s power in most kingdoms is largely symbolic, this symbol itself is vital to the well-being of the community. Like all divine kings, the oba is a mediator between men and the gods. He assures men of peace, prosperity, and a harmonious relationship with the gods, while at the same time he acts to assure the gods that men will treat them properly. In this manner, he preserves the smooth functioning of his kingdom. The oba is also the reincarnation of all his ancestors, including Oduduwa, so that he is a physical as well as a spiritual link between the natural and the supernatural, the living and the dead. The oba's installation sets him off from ordinary people. He loses all personal identity, including possessions, former wives, and family. In fact, he is hardly an individual at all. He exists alone in the remote center of his palace, apart from all men except a very few, appearing in public only on the rare but important occasions when he performs his public ceremonial duties. Not only is he physically secluded, but he is under heavy ritual restraint as well. He cannot be seen eating, and he is not allowed to touch the ground with his bare feet (Smith 1969: 110). His public appearances are confined to the outer courtyard of the palace, where he sits in state upon his throne opposite the main gate. When he does appear in public, he is surrounded by his many retainers, wives, slaves and chiefs. Umbrellas held in front of him screen him from the populace. His body is heavily robed, and his face is hidden by the beaded crown, his badge of office. He holds a white cow's tail before his mouth while speaking, while a specially titled chief repeats his words to the public, for the oba is not to be seen speaking or to be heard by ordinary men (Johnson 1921:50). A new oba is chosen from among the royal lineage by the council of chiefs. In the past, he was expected to eat the excised heart of the previous oba (Johnson 1921:40; Lloyd 1965:569), thus literally ingesting divinity. He then goes into seclusion until after the third appearance of the new moon after the death of the former oba (Johnson 1921:50). At Oyo (Johnson 1921), the oba's ceremony of installation took four days to complete, but these were not consecutive days. They took place every fifth day, that is, on the day following a four-day interim after

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the previous ceremony. Thus each ritual took place on successive days of the week, so that each occurred on a different god's day. The total number of days lapsed was sixteen. During this time, the oba changed into white clothing, symbolizing his rebirth as oba. In a sense, the oba is a living human version of the concentric circles of sacredness in the town. He lives in the center of the state, in the center of the central town, in the innermost reaches of the palace, in the center of ritual prohibitions, and is swathed in heavy clothes, his face hidden by the most sacred symbol of his office, the beaded crown. Physically and spiritually, he is the epicenter of the Yoruba state. Most sacred of all obas is the Oni of Ife, who lives in the center of the human world. Physically and politically, the arrangement of the oba's court resembles the arrangement of the cosmos. The entrance to the ceremonial court is directly opposite the throne, and the line from it to the throne and to the oba represents the Chief Way. On either side of the oba sit his councillors, those of the Right and those of the Left. Councillors of the Right have higher rank than those of the Left, paralleling the arrangement of the gods into those of the Right and the Left. No moral judgments are made concerning the oba's councillors, however. They are not divided into good and bad, but only into higher and lower rank. Persons from outside the palace who enter the obä's court walk along the Chief Way, kneel, and touch the ground first with their foreheads and then successively with their right and left temples (Frobenius 1913:279), symbolizing the Way, the Right, and the Left. Although at first glance this may seem to be triadic symbolism, in fact it still represents the four-fold division of the world, for there are two axes of orientation, the Chief Way and the Second Way. The Second Way in this case is represented by those councillors who stand to the right and to the left of the oba. A similar but less obvious situation exists when the oba is represented by three palace eunuchs. The oba himself generally remains secluded in his private apartments, but since his symbolic presence is required on many different occasions, he is represented in public affairs by the Eunuch of the Center, the Eunuch of the Right, and the Eunuch of the Left. The Eunuch of the Center, or the Chief Eunuch, represents him in court and in judicial proceedings. The Eunuch of the Right represents him at religious ceremonies, and the Eunuch of the Left in civil and military matters (Smith 1969: 16). The Eunuch of the Center has the highest rank. Whether the Eunuchs of the Right and Left are also ranked is unknown. If they are, one would expect the Eunuch of the Right to be higher than the Eunuch of the Left. Again, this arrangement appears to be triadic, but it should be remembered that, first, there are actually four persons

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involved, the oba and his three eunuchs; and second, the Eunuch of the Center represents the oba in court and apparently his personage also stands for the Chief Way, while the Eunuchs of the Right and Left represent the Second Way. It may be that the symbolism of this arrangement is more complex than the literature concerning it indicates, and it may be that both triadic and quadratic symbolism intersect in this instance. However, it does seem likely in the light of other data concerning the patterns of the ofeaship and of the Yoruba world view that at least a quadratic scheme is intended to be represented here. Morton-Williams (1964:245) feels that the oba's council is analogous to the gods who do Olorun's bidding and who are hierarchically arranged as are the oba's councils on earth. The oba, he indicates, is the earthly counterpart of Olorun, the supreme god. Like the gods, the members of the oba's council are ranked, the first four councillors of the Right being most important. Of these, the most important is the head councillor, called the bashorun (Johnson 1921:47). The bashorun, an Ifa priest, is one of the few persons who has access to the oba. Most important, the bashorun is responsible for determining the quality of the relationship between the oba and his orun, the oba's spiritual counterpart believed to be resident in the heavens. It is through his orun that the oba obtains his divinity. Once a year the bashorun divines in order to learn whether the oba and his orun are in harmony. If they are, all is well. If they are not, then the oba must perform sacrifices in order to regain harmony with his orun. In the past, if he failed to do so, as indicated by the Ifa system, the oba was forced to commit suicide. The bashorun also consults the Ifa oracle on behalf of the oba every fifth day, that is, on a different god's day each time. Dennett (1910: 90) claims that the Oni of Ife's council is believed to represent the council of the gods. The bashorun represents Ifa, the god of divination, whom Dennett states is believed to be the head councillor and chief advisor to the gods. Dennett also reports a legend to the effect that the first four advisors of the first Oni of Ife were called the "four great ones," and were comparable to the walls of the first Yoruba kingdom as founded by Oduduwa. Furthermore, these walls stood for the four major Yoruba kingdoms of Oyo, Ijebu, Egba, and Ekiti, Ife being the center. The four surrounding kingdoms lie roughly north, south, west, and east of lie Ife. Frobenius, who visited Ife in 1911, makes certain observations concerning the ancient court at Ife (Frobenius 1913:279). No other writer surveyed here has discussed this aspect of Ife, and it is uncertain as to whether Frobenius is reporting an actual situation or a situation which

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his informants believed to have been the case. In any event, it is of some importance that the following account is a Yoruba belief, if not an actuality. Frobenius was told that at one time the Oni of Ife had seventeen advisers. Eight were Councillors of the Right and nine were Councillors of the Left, the ninth councillor representing the central precinct. The other sixteen represented sixteen wards. At some subsequent time, however, a ruling Oni replaced representatives of the four highest offices with members of his own family, who normally would have been ineligible for such positions. He gave his own son the job of administering the central precinct. As a result, at the time Frobenius visited Ife, there were only twelve wards and twelve ward chiefs in the town. Whether or not there were sixteen wards and a central precinct in Ife is ultimately of less importance than the fact the Frobenius informants believed that there should have been, for it is an indication of the Yoruba concept of the ideal government. Bascom (1955:450), writing about Ife in the mid-twentieth century, notes that five ward chiefs and three other chiefs represent the interests of the people of Ife at court and, together with eight chiefs chosen from the palace retinue, make up the Oni's council. While it is uncertain whether the structure of Ife changed between 1911 and 1955, it is noteworthy that the focus of orientation and the total number of councillors are again a multiple of four.

TIME Like space and political institutions, time and diachronic events are ordered around the concept of multiples of two, most particularly four, eight, and sixteen. The obcC s installation is one example of this orientation, as is the bashorun's weekly divination for the oba. The year itself is seen as being of two types. One is the agricultural or natural year, in which seasons pass, and crops are planted, tended, and harvested. This year is not divided into fixed segments. The other kind of year is the ritual year, a series of alternating sacred and nonsacred times, in which segments of time are fixed. These years are cyclical and repeat themselves. In Leach's terms (1965) there are periods of ritually empty time alternating with periods of ritually active time, so that time is an "alternation between contraries," in which the participants, the nature of the world, and time itself alternate between sacred and profane states and are periodically transformed. Normal secular life takes place in the period between abnormal sacred events.

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Yoruba ritual time consists of a series of oscillations or pulses. There are four major annual pulses, corresponding with four major annual festivals associated with Olori Merin, the god of the four corners, in which a four-day-old infant is sacrificed to one of the gods of the cardinal points (Frobenius 1913: 304). The most important of these is held in June, when the festival is associated with the east. Another is held in September to the god of the north, one in December to the god of the west, and one in March to the god of the south (Frobenius 1913:258). These festivals last eight days. Interspersed between them are twelve minor festivals, making sixteen in all. The days on which they occur are determined by a pillar located in the center of the town. A circle is drawn around this pillar and marked off into four major and twelve minor sections. When the pillar's shadow falls upon one of these points, the festival begins (Oja 1966: 202). The pillar itself represents both the center of the natural world, lie Ife, and the center of the supernatural world, the crossroads. Daily time is also conceived of as a series of oscillations. The twentyfour-hour day is absent. Instead, there are a series of alternating periods of days and nights, each twelve hours long, from sunrise to sunset and from sunset to sunrise (Ojo 1966:201-202). Night is associated with Oduduwa, while day is associated with Obatala. Each of these periods is bifurcated by noon or by midnight, thus creating four quadrants or classes of time which rotate as the sun or moon travels up and then down the bowl of the sky. Dawn, noon, and midnight are sacred times. Whether sunset was also sacred is unknown. Dawn is the time at which divination is performed. Both noon and midnight are associated with "awe and fear" (Ojo 1966: 199). At these times it is believed that, as day is transformed into night and night into day, so nature also transforms itself and miraculous events may occur. Animals and trees in the forest around the towns may metamorphose, river spirits may appear in the rivers, and spirits and gods may enter the earth through the four gates of the cosmos. The world reverses itself at these times. It also reverses itself at times of annual festivals, for these are periods when gods and spirits are most active in the natural world. The Yoruba week is four days long, and the god of a given day is responsible for making that day safe for men. Frobenius (1913:256) claims that in the past each of the four days belonged not to one but to four gods, making a weekly total of sixteen. However, there is no substantiating evidence for this statement, nor does Frobenius make reference to it when discussing the gods of the crossroads, who, as he and

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other writers have pointed out, are the same gods as the gods of the week. In any event, one finds in the Yoruba week a rotating periodicity around the number four. Four and its multiples are important ways of marking time, and, as in other aspects of Yoruba culture, the higher the multiple, the more important the event. Eight has higher significance than four, and sixteen is higher than eight. For example, funerals of rich or important men last for eight days, while poor men's funerals last only four days. Most important festivals are eight days' duration, while less important ones take four days (Ojo 1966:185). Rain-making rituals last for eight days, and meetings of guilds or associations take place every four, eight, of sixteen days, depending upon the importance of the group (Ojo 1966: 215). For example, the powerful Egba and Oyo Ogboni societies meet every sixteen days, as do trade chiefs in charge of markets and as did heads of military societies (Biobaku 1965: 6). If a priests meet every sixteen days. The installation of a new oba of Oyo covers four days, but the total number of days elapsed is sixteen. The same principle holds true for market days. Yoruba markets are organized as cycles or rings. Each market takes place when it is the only one operating in the ring, and the system works so that no one area is more than four days without a market. Small periodic markets are held every four days, whereas larger and more important ones are held every eight or sixteen days. In rural areas market rings generally operate on four- or eight-day cycles. The order of the cycle seems to be roughly diagonal, beginning in the center, then progressing south, north, west, east, and returning to the center again (Hodder 1962: 105). In towns, the oba's market is generally held every eight or sixteen days. In large towns, there is usually one large market and four small ones located in the four major quadrants of the town. These rotate between the wards, with the oba's market coinciding with one of the smaller ones. Again one finds that the Yoruba define time as they did space, transforming spatial concepts to temporal ones. Four is the basic ordering device, as the year is divided into four parts and each part is again divided into four. As in other domains, multiples of four have higher prestige than four itself. And finally, underlying the Yoruba division of time is a dual system of alternating periods of sacred and nonsacred time during which the world itself is capable of transformations. IF A DIVINATION The Yoruba system of divination known as If a is extremely complex

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and cannot be dealt with in detail here. Nevertheless Ifa divination is of importance and must be touched upon, for it is the concept of duality which gives Ifa its order and form (McClelland 1966:423). Yoruba believe in an ordered universe which can be known to man through Ifa divination. It is believed that the results are controlled by the god Ifa, who personally supervises all divination, so that if correctly performed, Ifa divination gives infallible results. There are two principal methods of Ifa divination, one of which has higher prestige than the other, but both of which are similar (Bascom 1969a). The method with lower status, which is somewhat easier to manipulate, uses sixteen palm nut halves attached to two strings, eight halves on each string. The diviner, or babalawo, holds these strings so that four nuts fall on each side. He always uses his right hand in this operation. Even if they are left-handed, diviners do not cast with the left hand, for this is considered unlucky. The strings are then thrown into the air in such a way that the sides fall parallel. The nuts fall into a "heads" or "tails" position, and the resulting pattern is used to select an oracular verse, called an Odu (Bascom 1969a: 3; Lloyd 1965: 574). If a nut falls concave upwards the babalawo makes one mark on his diviner's tray. If it falls concave downwards, he makes two marks. The method with higher status does not use a chain. The babalawo holds sixteen nuts in his hands, claps his hands together, and tries to grasp as many nuts as possible with his right hand, so that he has only one or two remaining in his left hand (Bascom 1969a: 3; Dennett 1910: 148; Frobenius 1913: 251). If he catches one nut, he makes two vertical parallel lines on his divining board. If he catches two nuts, he makes one mark. If he has more or less than one or two nuts left, the cast does not count. If he repeats this action four times, he obtains one of sixteen basic figures or Odus. If he repeats it eight times, he will get one of 256 Odus. If he uses a chain, one cast will yield up one of the 256 figures. In either method, the figures or Odus are made up of four marks each. Four marks in a vertical column make half an Odu figure. Each half has sixteen possible forms. These forms represent deities, and the deities are ranked in hierarchical order, so that the figures are also ranked. The second half of an Odu is also made up of sixteen possible forms which can combine with any of the sixteen forms in the first column, giving a total of 256 possible Odus (Bascom 1969b: 70). Each of the sixteen possible combinations of four elements in a column is named, and the name of the Odu is the name of the right-hand column followed by that of the left. There are sixteen possible combinations in which the right- and left-

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hand columns are identical. These are the principal Odus. A further 240 have dissimilar columns, making a total of 256. The principal Odus have higher rank than the secondary ones. Each derivative figure has a compound name but not compound verses. Each compound figure forms a separate Odu with a separate set of verses (Bascom 1966:41). The compound figures are seen as paired deities. The relationship between the various Odus is metaphorically expressed in the following account (McClelland 1966: 425): Each Odu is a king who leaves his own kingdom to visit the Odu next below him in rank. The trip takes sixteen days. He stays with his host and then returns. His host then pays a return visit to his guest, also taking sixteen days to complete the journey. Thus there are a pair of visits, then the first Odu visits the third Odu, and another pair of visits takes place. In all, the first Odu makes fifteen visits and is revisited fifteen times, making thirty visits in all. Then the second Odu follows the same process, making fourteen visits and receiving fourteen in return, totalling twenty-eight visits. Each Odu in succession visits and is revisited by the Odus beneath him in rank. The final Odu does not inititate visits because he cannot visit himself, and he cannot visit anyone higher in rank than himself, so here the total is zero. The result is an arithmetic progression totalling 240. This is added to the sixteen single Odus, giving 256 or 2 8 . Each Odu has a set of myths or verses attached to it which can offer an explanation to a client by referring to an archetypical situation (Morton-Williams 1966:406). The solution to the client's problem is generally a sacrifice made to the Odu and possibly to other deities as well. There is a general Yoruba belief that there are sixteen verses for each Odu, or 4,096 verses, "...but as sixteen is a mystical number in Ifa divination, this is only a conventionalized statement and perhaps even an underestimate" (Bascom 1969a: 121). Bascom estimates the existence of about 4,000 verses as a conservative guess, since some Odus have more than sixteen verses attached to them. The number 4,096 is of importance because it represents a scale of two and can be written as 2 2 -2 3 -2 4 -2 8 -2 1 2 in a geometrical progression (McClelland 1966:425). These verses provide clues to the solution of the client's problem. The message given in the verses is further clarified by asking the oracle questions with a yes/no, either/or, or favorable/unfavorable answer (Bascom 1966:51). In other words, answers are phrased in terms of paired oppositions. Divining paraphernalia are also replete with dual and four-fold symbolism. The divining trays of the babalawos are essential elements in Ifa symbolism. These trays are generally round or rectangular. Rectangular

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types are found in the south, while circular ones are common in the north (Frobenius 1913:244). In this, they parallel differences in kinship systems and in town morphology, although why this should be so is not clear. In either case, the periphery of the tray is decorated while the center is smooth. Peripheries are divided into two major sections and two minor, making four in all (Frobenius 1913:244). Major divisions are at the top and bottom, while minor ones are at the right and left sides. These divisions represent the Chief Way and the Second Way. A representation of the god Eshu always appears at the top, and the tray is always held with Eshu facing east. His picture may also be repeated at the bottom and sides of the tray, or the bottom and sides may be demarcated in some other way, but the tray is always divided into four sections. The divining tray represents the heavens divided into four parts by two "roads." The center of the tray, although it is not marked, represents the crossroads of the cosmos. Frobenius (1913:254) states that these divisions on the tray are linked with the gods of the crossroads who accordingly govern their respective sections of the divining tray. Odugbesan (1969:200) also states that the divining tray represents the cosmos, its center standing for lie Ife as well as the crossroads of the heavens, and that the periphery of the tray represents Ife's widening influence on the world. Eshu is also represented in the nuts which the babalawo uses. The babalawo divines with sixteen nuts, but he places a seventeenth, sometimes carved in ivory, to the side of the tray, where it "stands sentinel" as a guardian (Dennett 1910:148; Odugbesan 1969: 201). This nut represents the head of Eshu (Frobenius 1913: 251), who is called the "chief of Ifa," or the "chief of the palm nuts." The sixteen nuts themselves symbolize Ifa. Again one finds the pattern of sixteen plus one repeated. A myth concerning the origin of these nuts as reported by McClelland (1966:424) emphasizes the importance of numbers in the Ifa system: A Divine Being who had been taught divination by the god Ifa arrived in lie Ife. Here he taught Ifa to sixteen men, all of whom were twins. A seventeenth man was rejected because he was not a twin. However, he was a son of Eshu and thus was feared, for it was dangerous to invoke Eshu's anger. Since this man could not be ignored, he became a special messenger between men on earth and Ifa in heaven and is the seventeenth nut. All the original sixteen were earthly counterparts of heavenly beings. Each nut therefore stands for four entities, a pair on earth and a pair in heaven, while the seventeenth stands for two entities, one on earth and the other the god Eshu. Divining bowls also utilize a two-fold division. These are for storage

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of divining paraphernalia. They are generally divided into a central section with four, six, or eight sections around it. The seventeenth nut and one set of sixteen palm nuts are kept in the central part, while the remaining sections are used for other divining paraphernalia, including other sets of nuts (Bascom 1969a: 33).

If a and Eshu As already shown, Ifa and Eshu figure importantly in Yoruba divination. They are also of interest because of their symbolic roles in the cosmos. The world as it exists ideally should be stable, ordered, predictable, and four-square, based on two paired. This condition is symbolized by Ifa. But in fact the world is not always stable, and the Yoruba take account of this situation by positing the existence of Eshu the trickster/ transformer, whose actions explain events which do not fit the ideal model. The concept of Eshu undoubtedly played an important role in the maintenance of belief in a stable universe during the upheavals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Yoruba country. Eshu is a god of reversals, unpredictable and changeable, while Ifa represents predictability and continuity. Like Obatala, Ifa is associated with white and with light. Like Obatala, he is also connected with the sun, with day, and particularly with dawn, the time of divination. Eshu, on the other hand, shares certain characteristics with Oduduwa. Like Oduduwa, Eshu is associated with blackness, with night, and with the new moon. Unlike Oduduwa, however, he is also linked with mischief, evil, and witchcraft. Eshu is responsible for the lack of order and stability in the world, but both Ifa and Eshu are associated with divination, and both must be taken into account when divining. Ifa makes accurate divination possible. Eshu is the troublemaker who can hinder or distort communication between men and the gods. Thus, in every divinatory attempt, he must be acknowledged and placated. Furthermore, it is Eshu who is sometimes credited with bringing Ifa divination to mankind and in one myth for creating Ifa himself (Frobenius 1913:230-232). In this myth, men had stopped sacrificing to the gods, who as a result had become hungry. Olorun then told Eshu to find sixteen palm nuts and to learn their meaning. If Eshu did this, the gods would have man's goodwill again and would be fed their sacrifices. Eshu obtained the nuts from a monkey, who told him to go to sixteen wise men in each of the sixteen places of the heavens, and these men would teach him the meaning of the nuts. Eshu did so, and he learned

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that men could avert bad luck and know the will of the gods by using the sixteen nuts. The palm nuts became the deity Ifa, while Eshu returned and stayed with Ogun, Shango, and Obatala. (These, along with Ifa/Eshu, are Frobenius' gods of the crossroads.) The sixteen wise men whom Eshu visited were the children of the goddess Yemaya, and all were born in one birth at lie Ife (Frobenius 1913:259). In another myth concerning the origin of divination (Gordon and Lancaster 1961: 23), lfa, prompted by his hunger, went to Eshu for aid. Eshu taught him divination. Thereafter Ifa could claim offerings made by diviners, but Eshu was to get a portion of every offering as his fee. Therefore Eshu is represented on the divining board. Ifa and Eshu are sometimes thought of as separate beings and at other times are thought of as one being, each name representing different aspects of the same character. In any event, these two gods are always closely linked and are mirror images of each other. Unlike Obatala and Oduduwa, there are no accounts of rivalry between them. One is the reverse of the other, but they work in harmony, not in opposition. In addition, unlike Oduduwa and Obatala, Eshu and Ifa are never thought of as consorts. Both are indisputably male. Outside of the spheres of divination and of crossroads, Ifa and Eshu are more frequently thought of as separate beings, and Eshu is the more active god. He is associated with markets and with thresholds of houses. He is said to be the messenger of the gods and represents their anger. He prompts men to disobey the gods, causing the gods to punish them. Men must divine in order to learn the cause of punishment, so that Eshu indirectly brings men into communication with the gods, most particularly Ifa (Westcott 1962:340). Eshu is perverse and reverse, a god of contraries and hence of dualisms. There are several myths illustrating this aspect of his character. In one (Wescott 1962:340), he persuaded the sun and the moon to change homes thus reversing the order of time. In another (Frobenius 1913:240-242; Wescott 1962:340-341), his role as transformer of order and divider of unity is explicit: Two men owning adjoining farms were lifelong friends and were famous for this friendship. Seeing this, Eshu decided to separate them. He walked down the path dividing their farms, wearing a hat which was black on one side and white on the other. He put his pipe at the back of his head and hooked his club over his shoulder so that it hung down his back. The two friends then quarreled over the direction he had taken and the color of his cap. They ended by becoming enemies. Thus Eshu separated those who had been united. Even descriptions of Eshu are contradictory. He is said to be both big

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and small, firstborn and lastborn, old and young, childless and a father to all, friendless and a friend to all (Wescott 1962). In his person he epitomizes dualities and oppositions. He is a homeless wanderer and yet is associated with the crossroads, the symbol of stability. He is symbolized by a broken calabash, the opposite of the unbroken calabash of creation. He is also represented by black and white cowrie shells, which Wescott (1962: 346) feels represent the world of extremes. He turns day into night, friendship into enmity, right into wrong, and makes the innocent guilty. In his person he embodies both positive and negative qualities. Yet despite the fact that he is a god of reversals, he is also associated with order and as such he fits the general Yoruba pattern. Frobenius (1913: 258-259), in describing rituals in temples dedicated to Eshu, finds a link between Eshu worship and the cosmic scheme. Eshu priests make offerings in a processional route from east to north to west to south. This order follows the same order as the sacrifices to Olori Merin, and the number four is significant: The processional of prayer, or sacred circumambulation, the symbolic apparatus of the service, the week-day sequence, the seasonal sacrificial order, and the turning round of the body during devotion, are in mutual correspondence down to the very smallest details. Eshu, along with Ifa, is most particularly associated with the east, the most important direction in Yoruba thought. He seems to be very closely connected with the Chief Way, a symbol of stability, order, and authority. He is also associated with the oba's market and therefore with the center of town, a sacred location. Yet in his person as troublemaker, he seems to contradict these qualities. In a sense, this is a contrary of contraries, and Eshu, more than any other deity, embodies the dualism pervasive in Yoruba culture. He takes things out of place, disrupts human life, and transforms qualities. But he himself has his own place in the cosmos, so that in the long run he only appears to create disorder. In actual fact, he maintains order by reminding men that all things must have their place. And proper place is an important quality of sacred things, as Levi-Strauss (1962:10) has pointed out:

It could even be said that being in their place is what makes them sacred for if they were taken out of their place, even in thought, the entire order of the universe would be destroyed. Sacred objects therefore contribute to the maintenance of order in the universe by occupying the place allotted to them.

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CONCLUSIONS In the Yoruba world view, all things have their place, which is precisely why they are sacred. Even Eshu, who seems to represent an inversion of all things, comes to have his place within the general intellectual framework. The pattern is repeated on various planes of thought, so that the place of each object is replicated on many levels. Duality and multiples of duality, pairs and oppositions, center and periphery, and the quadratic schemes of the cosmos are reiterated again and again. These concepts undergo transformations as they are applied to various conceptual domains, but the pattern itself and the relations between the component parts remain constant. Objects and events "which would otherwise seem wholly disparate and incomprehensible" are made comprehensible and are seen to be aspects of one grand cosmic scheme, resulting in an extremely complex but comprehensive world view. The consistency of this world view is remarkable. There is extremely little, if any, contradictory evidence from the many published sources on the Yoruba. The fact that there are so many published sources lends credence to the idea that the Yoruba do in fact possess a complex and consistent world view. Nevertheless, the existence of such an intellectual system raises several questions. One such question concerns the nature of the Yoruba informants who were interviewed and of the nature of the relationship between ethnographer and informant. One wonders whether those Yoruba informants who were interviewed were primarily Yoruba Ogotemmelis, intellectuals capable of seeing conceptual relationships within their own culture and of expressing these relationships in a clearer way than the ordinary Yoruba could. Unfortunately, no writer except Frobenius described his sources of information, and Frobenius' informants were not ordinary Yoruba but were priests and highly ranked titled men. If other Yoruba informants were also such men, it is possible that resulting descriptions of Yoruba culture are more precise and consistent than would be the case if those interviewed were "men in the street." The complexity of the Yoruba pattern further raises the question of the way in which Yoruba themselves perceive their own culture. Are there some who are philosophers, who spend their time in working out the intricacies of their own system? And are there others, laymen, so to speak, who are not particularly aware of the entire patterns but who merely follow accepted traditions? What is the psychological dimension for individuals living within such a culture? Unfortunately, this sort of information cannot now be obtained in full, for the system as it has

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been described in the preceding pages is now defunct in many ways. And finally, the question is raised as to whether there are differences between types of cultures in the way they organize their conceptual systems. Are there some societies like the Yoruba, the Dogun, and the Oglala Sioux who pattern their beliefs more consistently than others? Are there some cultures which are intellectually tightly woven and others which are loosely woven? Could the apparent differences between tightly woven and loosely woven cultures be merely a function of the informants chosen by the ethnographer, or is there a real difference between cultural types? If there is a real difference, what is it that cultures with tightly woven intellectual systems have in common with each other that they do not share with loosely woven systems? A subject such as the one discussed in this paper raises many questions which can only be answered by thorough empirical study, both in the field and in the literature.

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1934 Patterns of culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. biobaku, s. o. 1952 An historical sketch of Egba traditional authorities. Africa 22:35-49. 1956 "Ogboni, the Egba senate," in Proceedings, Third International West African Conference. Lagos: Nigerian Museum. 1965 The Egba and their neighbors: 1842-1872. London: Oxford University Press. DENNETT, R. E.

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1970 "Ethos, world view and the analysis of sacred symbols," in Man makes sense. Edited by Eugene A. Hammel and William S. Simmons, 324-338. Boston: Little, Brown. GORDON, TIM, MICHAEL LANCASTER

1961 Orisha houses in Ibadan. Ibadan 9:22-23. GRIAULE, MARCEL

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1962 "The Yoruba rural market," in Markets in Africa. Edited by Paul Bohannon and George Dalton, 103-117. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. IDOWU, R.

1962 Olodumare, god in Yoruba belief. London: Longmans. JOHNSON, SAMUEL

1921 History of the Yorubas. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. KRAPF-ASKARI, EVA

1966 Time and classifications: an ethnographic and historical case study. Odu 2:3-18. 1969 Yoruba towns and cities. Oxford: Clarendon Press. LEACH, EDMUND

1965 "Two essays concerning the symbolic representation of time," in Reader in comparative religion. Edited by William Lessa and Evon Vogt, 241-249. New York: Harper and Row. LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE

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1955 The Yoruba lineage. Africa 25:235-251. 1960 Sacred kingship and government among the Yoruba. Africa 30: 221-237. 1965 "The Yoruba of Nigeria," in Peoples of Africa. Edited by James L. Gibbs, 547-582. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1966 Agnatic and cognatic descent among the Yoruba. Man, n.s. 1:484—500. 1967 "Introduction," in The city of Ibadan. Edited by P.C. Lloyd, A. L. Mabogunje, and B. Awe, 3-11. London: Cambridge University Press. MABOGUNJE, A. L.

1962 Yoruba towns. Ibadan: University of Ibadan Press. 1967 "The morphology of Ibadan," in The city of Ibadan. Edited by P. C. Lloyd, A. L. Mabogunje, and B. Awe, 35-56. London: Cambridge University Press. MCCLELLAND, Ε. M.

1966 Two studies of Ifa divination: the significance of number in the Odu of Ifa. Africa 36:421^131. MORTON-WILLIAMS, PETER

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Yoruba culture. London: University of London Press.

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1966 The sociological aspects of traditional African names and titles. Odu 3:64-79. RADIN, PAUL

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Kinship and lineage among the Yoruba. Africa 25: 352-371. "Oshogbo - an urban community?" in Urbanization and migration in West Africa. Edited by Hilda Kuper, 85-109. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Kingdoms of the Yoruba. London: Methuen.

VERGER, PIERRE

1966 The Yoruba high god: a review of the sources. Odu 2:19-40. WESCOTT, JOAN

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WILLIAMS, DENIS

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An outline of the cosmology and cult organization of the Oyo Yoruba. Africa 34:243-261.

WOLF, ERIC

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Values, Science, and Settlement: A Case Study in Environmental Control

A. D. KING

This paper explores three interrelated problems: 1. How cultures perceive, explain, and modify their physical-spatial and natural environment. This includes a consideration of how systems of knowledge, especially "medical" knowledge, are developed which explain breakdowns in the man-environment relationship and also provide the means for repairing such breakdowns. "Breakdown" is understood as the development of a situation where the returns from a man-environment relationship fall short of normal expectations. Examples of such breakdowns would include an epidemic, earthquake, or flood. 2. How the knowledge of and explanations for the man-environment relationship in any culture lead to developing a technology to improve it. The concept of technology used here includes any modification of the environment by means of built structures, the spatial arrangements between them, the clearing of vegetation and similar activities. 3. How the successful functioning of this technology — the physicalspatial built form of an urban settlement — depends on the acceptance of a code of culturally determined behavior. The cultural context in which these issues are discussed is provided by a case study of European settlement in India during the nineteenth century. In examining historical material, therefore, the paper emphasizes two types of variables affecting man-environment interaction, the first cultural, the second temporal. EQUILIBRIUM IN MAN-ENVIRONMENT SYSTEMS A notion central to the concept of

ECOSYSTEM

and one that has been ap-

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plied in such other areas of man-environment interaction as urban planning, is that of EQUILIBRIUM (McCoughlin 1970:63). Here the concept of equilibrium is used in the following way. Each human settlement, be it an Indian village or a European metropolis, is a cultural product. In attempting to understand such a settlement, it is essential to use a holistic approach which comprehends the geographical setting, the world view, values, and behavior of the inhabitants and their material culture. The entirety is to be seen as a relatively harmonious, interacting system of parts. The notion of equilibrium arises from adopting such an approach. Each culture establishes a relationship with its physical environment, both adapting it and adapting to it. This may be called the MAN-ENVIRONMENT RELATIONSHIP or MER. From this MER, culture members have certain expectations which are in accordance with, and legitimized by, the prevailing world view and value system. For example, the expected length of life, the size of crops, the frequency of natural disasters, the rate of infant mortality, and the degree of physical comfort are all "returns" from the MAN-ENVIRONMENT RELATIONSHIP. These returns operate within certain limits of tolerance which for each culture have been determined by historical experience. The expectations of a culture from the relationship it establishes with its environment are balanced by the returns it gets from it. In this sense, there is equilibrium. Where a change occurs in the MER, it is a result of either a change in the environment or a change in man. For example, an epidemic, a drought or a flood may cause returns from a local MER to fall short of normal expectations. On the other hand, an altered state of knowledge in man as a member of a particular culture group may cause a rise in expectations from the MER. In either case, the equilibrium between returns and expectations is disturbed and a course of action follows (see Appendix). First, there is a state of dissatisfaction with the MER. This is followed by an investigation or inquiry into the MER which, in turn, leads to an explanation or theory to account for the disturbance in the equilibrium. For example, crops fail in a village. Why has this occurred? Varied explanations are offered. It may be due to a pest, drought, or the wrath of the gods. Arising from such explanations or theories, two courses of action are possible, each one affecting the MER. The first concerns man in relation to himself. Unless other explanations are forthcoming, he modifies his expectations and adjusts to the new MER. The second concerns man in relation to his environment. If his explanations or theories suggest it,

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he modifies the environment. Thus, in the example cited, he either adjusts to a lower standard of living and a happier life in the next world or, alternatively, he perhaps burns the crop area or modifies the system of irrigation. In either case, he modifies either HIMSELF (in terms of his expectations from the MER) or the environment. Either of these modes of action returns the MER to a sate of equilibrium. It is, of course, understood that any MER normally represents a culture-specific environment where expectations and returns are interpreted according to a set of culturally defined norms. With these preliminaries, we may turn to our particular case study.

THE BRITISH CANTONMENT IN INDIA: A CULTURE-SPECIFIC ENVIRONMENT The cantonment or permanent military station was the institutionalized form of settlement for the military representatives of British colonial power in India from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. In the following pages, the cantonment is examined as a culture-specific environment, a system of built forms and spatial relationships organized by a particular culture, at a particular time, and for a particular purpose. Insofar as it represents a limited area of territory modified by one culture, yet situated in the larger geographic area of another, the cantonment provides us with a unique example of how environments are modified according to culture-specific criteria. In examining the cantonment, attention will be paid to factors governing its location within the larger culture area of India, its overall layout, and its relationship to indigenous settlement areas. Particular attention is paid to built form and the utilization of space on and around the cantonment in comparison to physical-spatial arrangements in the indigenous city. In the mid-nineteenth century, there were some 227,000 members of the colonial military establishment in the host society, 85,000 of them European, the remainder recruited from the indigenous population. 1 These 85,000, the major focus of our interest, were located in some 175 purposebuilt cantonments, situated throughout the country. The number of European troops which such cantonments were meant to accommodate 1

The empirical data for this case study are drawn from two volumes of the Reports from Commissioners, Royal Commission on the sanitary state of the army in India, volume nineteen, parts one and two (Moore 1863). Both volumes cover some 900 pages. Except where otherwise stated, all quotations are from this source.

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ranged from 50 to over 4000, the average for the whole being about 800. Over half of these settlements were located on the plains, some 5 percent of them between 1,200 and 7,800 feet above sea level in the so-called hill stations, and the remainder a few hundred feet above sea level. The location of many of these cantonments was largely fortuitous, decided by the historical circumstances of the contact between the two cultures. Where battles were fought or territory taken over, camps were set up. In time, what was once a temporary settlement, became more permanent. Strategic considerations accounted for the fact that they were located near local population centers and generally occupied the most defensible positions. Cantonments were of two types. In the older places of settlement, such as Madras or Calcutta, either an indigenous walled fort, typical of many preindustrial cities, was taken over and adapted for accommodation, or a new fort was built and occupied. Sufficient ground outside the fort dividing it from the native city was cleared for tactical reasons. Alternatively and more frequently, a camp was set up next to the indigenous town. In comparison with this town, sometimes containing as many as a quarter of a million people, densely packed within two or three square miles of a defensive wall, the cantonment covered an extensive area (Plate 1). In the case of seven cantonments situated near major cities in northern India, the average ground area covered was from seven to eight square miles, accommodating, with European and native troops and ancillary personnel combined, not many more than 5000 inhabitants. Several factors account for this marked difference in settlement size and ensuing density. The first is political, the balance of power between conquered and conqueror resulting in little regard for spatial economy. Thus, within cantonment boundaries, functional parts were widely dispersed, with extensive ground areas between them. The second factor was the functional difference between a military and a civilian settlement. However, though all military establishments have functional requirements such as accommodating troops, housing equipment, arms, and transport, the manner in which these requirements are met depends on cultural and social organization. The layout of the cantonment depended on prevailing norms governing military organization in the field as well as norms of social organization in the metropolitan society. Accommodation was divided into three basic categories: for indigenous troops, metropolitan troops, and metropolitan officers. (There were no indigenous officers.) Native troops were housed in self-constructed, temporary huts, made from bamboo

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and matting and roughly arranged in native lines. At some distance from these European troops were accommodated either in tents or frequently in brick or wooden barracks. In earlier cantonments, these were often laid out in the form of a square and faced inwards onto it. Officers' quarters were particularly distinctive and took up extensive areas. Each officer was housed in his own, detached bungalow, centrally situated in a large plot or compound of half an acre or more. Senior officers' compounds in some cantonments were five or ten acres in size, dimensions accounted for by a set of culturally determined preferences and activity patterns, discussed elsewhere.2 Officers' quarters were grouped together, often along the parade ground, consuming a large proportion of the spatial area of the cantonment. Other areas were taken up by the specific requirements of the institutional system of the European military community: 3 religious institutions, in the form of Anglican, Catholic, and nonconformist churches and burial grounds; social and recreational institutions in the racket court, public rooms, and race course for European officers, and canteen, soldiers' gardens, ball court, and library for European soldiers; economic institutions in the bazaar and canteen; and hospitals for European and native troops. In addition, extensive spatial provision was needed for the occupational and functional requirements of the military inhabitants. These included separate parade grounds, shooting ranges, as well as accommodation for magazine, arms store, workshops, gunsheds and horse lines. All units, though carefully related in space according to military requirements, were widely dispersed across the cantonment. Practically all built structures, including barracks and hospitals, were of singlestory construction. Although the typical colonial cantonment occupied such an extensive spatial area in the early nineteenth century, an area accounted for by political, cultural or technological factors, its spatial requirements were to expand later in the century. This was due not only to the increased numbers of metropolitan troops accommodated after the conflict between the two cultures in 1857, but to a changed perception in the man-environment relationship.

a

See " T h e colonial bungalow-compound complex: a study in the cultural use of space" (King 1976) for a discussion of space utilization on the compound. 3 See "Cultural pluralism and urban form: the colonial city as a laboratory for crosscultural research in man-environment interaction," by A . D . King in this volume.

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MODIFICATION IN THE MAN-ENVIRONMENT RELATIONSHIP In terms of the model (above and in the Appendix), a change took place in the level of expectations from the man-envrionment relationship. Specifically, higher returns were demanded which were to be measured in decreased morbidity and lower death rates. As a consequence of these raised expectations, investigations were initiated, data collected and theories propounded to interpret these data; on the basis of these theories, changes were made in regard to the location of the cantonments as well as their overall physical-spatial arrangements. The change in the MER was brought about by the diffusion of new forms of knowledge from the metropolitan society. Here, a tradition of empirical investigation into natural phenomena, dating largely from the seventeenth century, had led to the development of various theories concerning the relationship of man to his physical environment, particulaily where it related to his physical condition and state of health. In the accelerated change in man-environment systems brought on by processes of urbanization in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, these theories had been developed, resulting not only in higher expectations from the MER but also in new criteria for the accommodation of urban populations. A new science-based technology was developed with which these criteria were met. In addition to this new technology — the provision of light, water, transport, waste-disposal systems — new social technologies had been evolved in the form of administrative and governmental organizations, and new social roles had been created. For example, local government was reorganized, improvement commissions were instituted, and voluntary organizations coped with the increasing number of problems generated by urban growth. New urban-industrial roles of public health inspector, civil engineer, and factory inspector were evolved as part of this process. In brief, change in the MER led to new forms of knowledge leading to modifications in the environment and man's relationship to it. The changed expectations from the man-environment system of the cantonment were brought about by comparing vital statistics from the metropolitan society with statistics from comparable populations in the colonial society. In the metropolitan society, annual mortality for soldiers during peacetime was 17 per 1000; in India, not counting mortality from war, the figure was 58. At the age of twenty, life expectation for European troops in the metropolitan society of Britain was 59.5 years; in the colonial environment of India it was 37.7.

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The investigation had, therefore, the task of explaining the causes of what were perceived as excessive rates of morbidity and mortality and of recommending measures to reduce them. 4 If these could be reduced to levels comparable to those in the metropolitan society, expectations would then be balanced by returns and the MER would again be in a state of equilibrium. The investigation that ensued suggested three types of explanation: The first cause of sickness was perceived as being ENVIRONMENTAL. Diseases were thought to occur as a result of a combination of factors such as air temperature, humidity, elevation, the presence or absence of particular types of vegetation, composition of the soil, and quality of water. The two other causes of excessive morbidity and mortality were seen to be BEHAVIORAL, the first relating to matters of diet (particularly the consumption of alcohol in quantities thought to be excessive); the second, relating to diseases stemming from particular forms of social relations (sexual diseases). In considering these three explanations, and the resulting modification of the MER of the cantonment, attention is especially drawn to their culture-specific nature. Not only were both behavioral explanations ones which applied mainly to the health of the European troops, but also environmental explanations of disease drew on culture-specific "science" stemming from experience in the metropolitan society. In this sense, therefore, we are discussing the ethnomedical explanations of the metropolitan culture. 5 LEVELS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL: A DESCRIPTIVE MODEL The perceived causes of high mortality and morbidity rates and the environmental response to them in this particular culture-specific environment can best be demonstrated by the use of the model shown in Table 1. The model is based on what McCoughlin (1970) has called "dissatisfaction with space-related activities." Such dissatisfaction may be overcome by three types of responses: locational, developmental, and behavioral. 4

The investigation referred to is that reported in the Royal Commission Reports indicated in Note 1 above. 5 The term "ethnomedical" is used to stress the cultural context of the explanations and the relativity of values on which they are based. It is, of course, clear that all medicine is ethnomedicine. For further discussion, see especially the papers included in Fabrega (1972).

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Table 1.

Model of levels of environmental control (from McCoughlin 1970)

Types of available response

1.

Locational

(move the location of the activity).

2. Developmental (modify environment to accommodate activity).

3. Behavioral (modify activity to accommodate existing environment).

Levels of environment

Illustrations of types of response

Case study: nineteenth century recommended responses

Ε X Τ Ε R Ν A L

1. Geographic region/area; elevation above sea level.

Move activity.

1. One-third of activity moved to the hills. 2. Activity to move to healthier sites.

Ε Χ Τ Ε R Ν Α L

2. Macroenvironment (locality/or area of services).

Plant trees, build walls, construct sewers, drain lakes.

Increase extent of built plant, modify systems of water supply, sewers, lighting, etc. Keep away from indigenous settlement.

3. Intermediate environment I (building).

Construct new, or modify old buildings.

Modify barracks, hospitals, etc.

4. Intermediate environment II (room).

Modify rooms and internal divisions of space (raise ceilings, more windows).

Modify windows, floors, ventilation systems, spatial distribution of activities inside building.

5. Microenvironment.

Modify headgear, clothing (warmer, different design).

Modify dress (especially headgear), flannel undergarment, uniforms.

6.

Physiological.

Modify behavior, e.g. bathe, wash food, modify diet, modify physiological system by drugs (biochemical).

Gymnasium made compulsory, alternative recreation encouraged, control sale of spirits, modify diet, reorganize activities.

7.

Cognitive.

Alter state of knowledge (resocialization) change value system.

Teach medical hygiene, reorient goals and provide opportunities to transfer to Civil Service.

I Ν Τ Ε R Ν Α L

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One might, for example, consider the problem of a family that needs to accommodate grandparents. The possible solution would be either to move house (locational), build an extra room (developmental), or reprogram activities and mealtimes (behavioral) to accommodate the new arrivals. In the model, the levels of environment are divided between the INTERNAL (the body), classified into the physiological and cognitive levels (6 and 7), and the EXTERNAL, a series of levels classified according to spatial distance or volume (5 to 1). The kinds of responses to a perceived dissatisfaction with the environment, available at these different levels, are shown in Table 1. A simple example may be used to illustrate these seven "levels of response." A man sits in a room; he has the feeling of being cold. Seven possible responses, giving different degrees of environmental control, are possible (Table 2). Table 2. Various levels of response to "feeling cold" Response Level of environment Change expectations (will stay cold)

7.

Cognitive

Modify physiological state (take warm drink; rub hands together)

6.

Physiological

Put on extra clothing

5.

Microenvironment (body covering)

Close windows: switch on electric heater

4.

Intermediate environment II (room)

Χ

Install central heating: double glaze windows

3.

Intermediate environment I (building)

Ε R

Erect high fence around house to counter winds: trim trees to allow exposure to sun

2.

Macroenvironment (locality)

Ν

I Ν Τ Ε R Ν A L

Ε Τ

Α L

Move to a warmer climate

1.

Geographic location, in terms of space or elevation

By distinguishing these seven levels of "environment" we are able more easily to identify those levels and types of responses which are (a) most effective and (b) least effective, in dealing with a problem caused by dissatisfaction with a particular environment. It becomes immediately clear, in the light of current bacteriological theories of disease, that the

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most effective way of dealing with problems of disease is at the INTERNAL, cognitive, and physiological levels, that is to say, by understanding the causes of disease and modifying our subsequent behavior accordingly. A second approach is through the use of preventive measures such as immunization, innoculation, and preventive or curative drugs. The primary concern of the metropolitan power with developmental and locational (i.e. environmental) responses at levels 1 to 5, as a solution to the problem of disease can therefore, in the light of our present state of knowledge, be seen as basically erroneous, if not totally irrelevant. The model also helps us to understand the state of equilibrium in the indigenous, Indian man-environment system. In brief, what made this work were essentially BEHAVIORAL factors, i.e. mores which determined that defecation be performed at a distance from living and eating quarters, strict caste rules governing the handling and consumption of food as well as the interaction between castes engaged in "unclean" activities and the remainder of the community, and the use of separate hands for eating and perineal cleansing functions. Such PHYSIOLOGICAL factors as the development of relative immunity from bacteriological infection through constant exposure to risk were also important. Finally, COGNITIVE factors explained the ability to accommodate what members of other cultures perceived as excessive sickness or mortality, and explain these as part of a totally different world view which held that life on earth was, in comparison to the world view of the metropolitan culture, a transitory experience. In considering the LOCATIONAL, DEVELOPMENTAL, and BEHAVIORAL response of the metropolitan power to the problem of excessive mortality and morbidity, we are able to see how the cantonment environment was modified, especially in terms of built form and the utilization of space.

LOCATIONAL RESPONSES TO DISSATISFACTION IN THE MER: THE CHOICE OF SITE The major environmental variables affecting rates of sickness and health were perceived as the nature, quality, and temperature of the local air and water, the presence of surrounding vegetation, and the relationship between these and people in the vicinity. Excessive mortality was ascribed to what, in the mid-nineteenth century, were termed zymotic diseases — diseases perceived as being caused by a process analogous to fermentation. The most common of these was malaria (literally, "bad air"), that subtle unknown agent or rather that

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cause of disease known only by its effects. Malaria was thought to depend on the interaction of three environmental elements: heat, moisture, and vegetable decomposition. It was most intense in low, warm and moist locations where there was a superabundance of vegetation and water, though it also occurred in dry situations without these conditions. It was thought that malaria could be checked by the withdrawal of any one of the three elements (i.e. heat, moisture or vegetable decomposition) on the coexistence of which it depends. It might be added that the true cause of malaria, infection by the mosquito, was discovered by Ross in 1896, some forty years after the period under consideration. Elevation was an important factor affecting these variables. Carefully chosen sites, with settlements situated away from the wet, windward side of mountain slopes, where the air was cool and dry and vegetation scanty, at heights between 2000 and 4000 feet were thought to be healthier. However, certain hazards had to be avoided: "ravines full of dead animals and the ordure of many thousands of natives" and "malaria-laden mists rolling up the mountains." This explanation for the causes of malaria, and the belief that they were considerably reduced by moving to higher elevations where cooler air temperatures prevailed, had profound effects on the settlement pattern and activity system of the European army in India. Since the early nineteenth century, European hill stations had been founded in the lower Himalayas and elsewhere for a variety of social, cultural, and strategic reasons. The particular ethnomedical theories of the 1860's now gave these places increasing importance. From then on it was recommended that, subject to strategic considerations, one-third of the European troops in India should be permanently located in the hills. On similar criteria, cantonments in malaria-prone areas were to be moved to healthier sites, defined according to the characteristics of their air, water, and vegetation. Similar environmental, and especially aerial factors were perceived as affecting the health of troops at the macrolevel. This level includes the spatial area enclosed by the boundaries of the cantonment and that part of the adjoining environment (generally understood to be in a radius of about two to three miles from the boundaries) affected by its presence. In addition to the factors mentioned above, stagnant water, excreta, decaying vegetable matter and "exhalations" from the human body were also considered instrumental in causing zymotic diseases. It was believed that the air given off from these sources was in some way poisonous and carried the means of infection. The infectious quality of the air and the degree of its pollution could be determined by olfaction.® β

A full discussion of the "aerial," "zymotic" or "miasmic" theories of disease is contained in Lambert (1963).

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The consequence of such theories was that "the mere fact that [neighboring native towns] are near to European barracks must necessarily exercise an injurious influence on the healthiness of both barracks and hospitals, if the native dwellings are in an unwholesome condition." The role of the prevailing winds in carrying infection-laden air from the "native city" to the cantonment was also perceived as crucial. In the early siting of cantonments, "no limit to the proximity by which these large native populations may approach European barracks nor to their position as regards prevailing winds" had been laid down. Apart from "noxious smells," indigenous sanitation habits, evolved over centuries in accordance with prevailing mores, and a complex concept of physical and social pollution, as also with prevailing levels of technology, were perceived as a further source of infection to the immigrant European culture. In one city, with an indigenous population of over 100,000, "the environs of the military cantonment are resorted to for the purposes of nature" giving rise by "the excessive accumulation of surface filth, to offensive odours injurious to the public health." The belief in this "aerial" theory of disease is well documented. Impure air and water may not be the only causes of cholera, dysentery, malaria... but when the source of these impurities is the exhalations from the human body, they are the most powerful exciting causes of these diseases.... I believe that the part which the excrementatious matters of the affected play in the dissemination of epidemic deseases is chiefly due to the gases given off by them immediately or soon after they are voided, which gases enter the system through the lungs (Clark 1864:16, 103)

The volume of air in barracks and tents per person was important because "organic matter given off by the lungs... tends to attach itself to the walls of tents" (Duncan 1888:58). The quantity of air needed in such tents was culturally, or perhaps racially defined, as also in all accommodation. "European inmates in tropical climates to have a minimum of 72 superficial feet and more, if possible, with 1000 to 1500 cubic feet of air.... For natives, these numbers admit of reduction... with 42 superficial feet and 600 cubic feet of air" (King 1880:220). This concern with quantity and quality of air had significant spatial and locational implications for the cantonment. The immediate neighbourhood of large cities, especially in the leeward direction are not satisfactory localities for our troops. The sanitary condition of all Indian towns cannot be described as less than vile.... Localities not susceptible of easy drainage would be shunned and old graveyards and sites of ancient cities escaped. The whole cantonment would front the prevailing winds, native houses, bazaars, burial grounds, places of Hindoo incremation, in fact, all

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essentials excepting wells, would be placed rearward to European residences... the station should be surrounded by a zone of one or two miles radius, free from cultivation and irrigation. Such extent of country should be grass land with clumps of trees or occasional gardens... all refuse from the cantonment should be removed by manual labour without these limits if not susceptible of being destroyed by fire within such space (Moore 1862:117-118). Similar considerations had led, in the eastern region of India, to the prohibition of agricultural activities of the indigenous population, involving irrigation, within five miles of military cantonments. Two issues are relevant here: first, the belief that air is the main agent of sickness, a belief unsupported by modern biologistic theories of medicine; second, that unfamiliar "smells" are an indicator of the "healthiness" of the air. As Hall (1959) points out, olfactory preferences are learned sensations, determined both culturally and socially. Apart from helping to determine the geographical location of the cantonment and its position in relation to indigenous centers of settlement, such ethnomedical theories also governed the design of built forms on the cantonment as well as their spatial distribution.

DEVELOPMENTAL RESPONSE: MODIFICATION OF THE LOCAL ENVIRONMENT The macroenvironment included the area around the cantonment within a radius of two or three miles. Within this macroenvironment, the enclosed area of the cantonment is considered, including the two intermediate levels of environmental control, the building and the room (Figure 1 and Plate 2). Within the confines of the cantonment, the complement of structures was governed by the functional needs of an army. Each built form was a manifestation of some aspect of the INSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM of the metropolitan culture as adapted to the colonial environment. As water supply and waste-disposal were also perceived as factors affecting morbidity, the reorganization of services was also seen as essential. Again, this had spatial implications. In the early cantonments, water had been distributed in accordance with the practice of the indigenous culture, delivered by the bhisti [water carrier] in leather skins. Though some stations had "plunge baths," no special accommodation existed for washing or bathing. Latrines and urinals were situated in outbuildings at a distance from the barracks. These usually had no drainage arrangements, the excreta being regularly

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Figure 1. Levels of environmental control. Level 2: modification of the macroenvironment. Proposed air-cooling system consisting of a series of linked wells. The flow of water between them, by first reducing the ground temperature, lowers the external air temperature, thereby reducing the risk to health states on the cantonment, ca. 1863.

removed by indigenous sweepers and buried. Concern with environmental causes of disease now changed these arrangements. Barracks were to be supplied with sufficient ablution and bathing accommodations and a constant water supply. Drinking fountains with filtered water were to be provided. Iron or earthernware water latrines drained to an outlet were to be introduced, cesspits abolished, and urinals supplied. The effect of the "aerial" or "zymotic" theories on the built environment of the cantonment can best be illustrated with reference to the barracks and the hospital. In these, personal "air space" became the main cause of concern (Figure 2). Though it varied in detail, one basic model of barrack accommodation existed in most cantonments: this was a single-story hut with doors on opposite sides, and walls protected by verandas. Other, less frequent models were the casemented variety, built on two floors; another had a center portion carried higher than the two sides, with air circulating through windows in the clerestory. There being no restriction on ground area consumed, single-story structures were the most common. The size of such barracks was determined by the size of various military units, in turn, determined by tactical or strategic considerations. Consequently, a company might be accommodated in one large barrack, although the dimensions of these varied. The largest, accommodating 400 men, was 100 yards short of half a mile long, though only 20 feet wide.

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The annexed figure (1) drawn to scale, represents the 14 cubic feet ot air wnicn are used up per nour by each individual. This quantity of air, when returned from the lungs, exhausted of the vital element oxygen, is charged with carbonic acid to such an extent that it vitiates to a great and poisonous degree 100 cubic feet more of air. The adjoining sketch, drawn to the same scale as the former, contains 125 cubic feet of space, which is more than is provided for those living in Rose-alley and many other places to which we have directed attention. The figure A is a man of ordinary size compared with the cubic space provided in the dwellings in the alley ; and when we consider that in the St. Pancras dormitory, where 164 cubic feet were allowed to each person, Dr. Jones found that the air contained about thirty times its proper amount of dangerous carbonic acid,—as a matter of course the air in the dwellings in Rose-alley must be in a dreadful state of poisonous adulteration. The next drawing represents a cubic space of 512 feet, a trifle more than the quantity allowed in the best of the London barracks. The last engraving shows the proportion which 1,000 cubic feet bear with the above, and is the amount of space allowed in several hospitals. Even this is insufficient, without other arrangements: indeed, with 2,000 feet impurity gets in excess. Figure 2. 1859

Individual air space: environmental "science" in the metropolitan culture,

In this barrack, each man had 1000 cubic feet of air space and about 64 square feet of personal ground area. Smaller barracks, more recently erected, and accommodating only 16 men, measured a mere 48 by 24 feet, and gave 1703 cubic and 72 square feet of personal space to each man (Figure 3). Dissatisfaction with returns from the man-environment relationship, however, demanded that new barrack accommodations be designed in accordance with medical rather than strategic or administrative criteria. As the main variable affecting health states was thought to be the nature,

380

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temperature, quality, and quantity of available air, it was important to know where beds were placed in relation to windows, how air entered the barrack room, the height of bed legs above the floor surface, the height of barrack buildings above the surrounding ground area, whether windows were with or without glass, and whether doors were closed in the evening. Throughout all cantonments, the average personal space for each European soldier was between 60 and 70 square feet and between 650 and 700 cubic feet. Concern for an improved return from the MER lead to raising these norms. In future barracks, personal air volume was to be between 1000 and 1500 cubic feet, superficial areas, from 80 to 100 square feet, "according to the airiness of the position." In future, beds were to be kept three feet apart. The overall size of barracks was to be limited. Not more than a quarter of a company were to be housed in one building. Small barracks holding not more than sixteen men were to be preferred. Heavier demands were made on space not only by replacement of larger structures by smaller ones but also by the arrangement of smaller barracks en echelon to encourage circulation of air around them (Figure 4). Hospitals were modified along the same principles. The number of beds per ward had varied between 16 and 228 and their lengths from 60

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to 633 feet. In the revised recommendations for hospitals, the earlier personal volume of air space of 1000 to 1200 cubic feet was to be increased to a minimum of 1500; the superficial area, previously 660 to 960 square feet, was to be increased to a minimum between 800 and 1040. Each bed was to have a minimum of eight feet of wall space.

THE MICROENVIRONMENT The fifth level of environmental control to be considered was the microenvironment of body-cover. Though extensive attention was given to this subject in the course of the investigation only brief reference is made here to illustrate prevailing cultural theories. In the belief that "flannel moderates evaporation from the surface of the skin without heating it," thereby controlling body temperatures and the chills which were perceived as leading to sickness, flannel underclothing was recommended for all European troops. The most extensive discussion was devoted to headgear. The protection of the head from direct sunlight was considered the most fundamental prerequisite of health — "excessive heat on the brain produces moral depression." The concern with this level of environmental control is manifest in the credence given by members of the metropolitan culture to the complex technology incorporated in the design of culture-specific headgear for use in tropical environments (Plate 3).

THE BEHAVIORAL ELEMENT IN THE MAN-ENVIRONMENT RELATIONSHIP The causes of what were perceived as unsatisfactory "returns" from the MER of the cantonment have been classified into the ENVIRONMENTAL and the BEHAVIORAL. Though such a categorization may be heuristically useful, it overlooks the essential interdependence between environmental and behavioral factors in any man-environment system. Environmental elements, such as water, air or vegetation become significant in explana-

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tions of "health" states only when examined in relation to actors in contact with them; similarly, the significance of actors' behavior as it is thought to relate to "health" can be appreciated only if related to the environmental context in which it takes place. The presence of polluted water is not in itself a health hazard; it only becomes so when the actor decides to drink it. Likewise, the act of drinking water is not in itself a health hazard; it only becomes so if the water is polluted. What is at issue here is a matter central to this discussion, namely, the behavioral context of health and the cultural context of behavior. It was a matter also appreciated, if not fully understood, by those representatives of the metropolitan power undertaking the investigation into the MER of the cantonment. "Personal habits indulged in with impunity in this country [Britain] send men in large numbers to hospital in a climate [India] where personal hygiene is as important as public hygiene to the interests of the State." Provided that this interrelatedness is recognized, it is nevertheless convenient to treat the various variables perceived as affecting "health" states as those which are PRIMARILY environmental, and those which are PRIMARILY behavioral. The first behavioral cause perceived as resulting in lower states of health was a matter of diet, particularly the consumption of alcohol in excess of culturally defined limits of tolerance, a practice referred to as intemperance. Officially prescribed norms of the military establishment permitted each member to purchase one-twentieth of a gallon of raw spirit or one quart of malt liquor each day. If this was consumed, the annual intake of raw spirit was equal to some eighteen gallons. The effects of this level of consumption were thought to account for the prevalence of liver diseases, apoplexy and other disorders. It was usual for some 10 percent of all hospital admissions to be attributable to alcoholism. The second behavioral cause of reduced states of health was seen to arise from particular social relationships, shared with female members of the indigenous society, and which resulted in what were referred to as sexual diseases. Both intemperance and sexual disease were perceived as occupational diseases, resulting from the system of supervised inactivity which formed the customary behavior for the army in India. The soldier rises at gunfire, attends his parade or drill which is over soon after sunrise. He then returns to his barrack and during the hot season, he is not allowed to leave till late afternoon. At one o'clock, he consumes a large amount of animal food and vegetables, porter (perhaps a quart) and spirits. He has few

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or no means of occupying himself rationally. He lies on his bed and perhaps sleeps most of the day. He has his evening parade or drill, and his turn of guard duty once every 5,7 or 10 days.

Three solutions were recommended to solve these interrelated problems. Each had important spatial implications for the cantonment environment. In the first place, as indigenously produced liquor was seen as the major source of intemperance, troops should be kept away from the bazaars. As bazaars were also the source of sexual diseases the separation of cantonment and indigenous town was seen as a major deterrent. The removal of troops from indigenous sources of women and liquor was also seen as a great advantage of the hill station. In most hill stations, the difficulty of approach, except by the authorized public roads would greatly facilitate the exclusion of two at least of the greatest banes of cantonment life on the plains, the poisonous spirituous liquors of the bazaars and the venereal infection.

The second solution was to provide alternative modes of activity. Many cantonments already provided space for recreational activities, introduced into India from the culture of the metropolitan society. Here, such activities had developed, particularly since the eighteenth century, to occupy the increasing amount of nonworking free time associated with the development of industrial societies. Many of such activities had begun in a preindustrial context, with little specialized equipment, and had taken place in the open fields round the villages of an agrarian society. Increasing industrial urbanization, accompanied by more formal social organization, institutionalized such leisure activity, leading to the formulation of rules and the provision of specialized localities as part of the urban environment. The activities were based on one principle which had important and extensive spatial implications: the projection of solid and hollow spheres, of various sizes, properties and weights, in diverse directions by a combination of human and animal power, generally, though not invariably, assisted by specialized forms of equipment. Such ball games already provided for in the cantonment could include cricket, quoits, billiards, bagatelle, backgammon, football, rackets, skittles and polo. Other activities for which space was occasionally provided included horse jumping, horse racing, and fencing. Dissatisfaction with the health-lowering levels of inactivity suggested that such facilities were neither sufficiently available nor ample enough to occupy the attention of the cantonment's inhabitants. It was therefore proposed that "the means of instruction and recreation be EXTENDED to meet the requirement of each station." Covered sheds were to be

384

A. D. KING

provided for exercise and gymnastics. Libraries were to be built or improved, with better books and periodicals provided, and reading rooms were to be established. Workshops and soldiers' gardens were to be introduced. The third solution to the problems of intemperance and sexual diseases was thought to be an increase in the proportion of married men on the cantonment. The fact that neither problem existed to any extent among indigenously recruited troops was ascribed to the fact that marriage amongst them was unrestricted. In terms of spatial requirements, this solution demanded an extension of married accommodation. It is worth mentioning, in conclusion, that the fundamental reason for the location of European troops in India was political. In the dominancedependence relationship inherent in colonialism, armed force was the ultimate sanction. Yet where cantonments had been located and laid out according to fortuitous or strategic criteria in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, criteria of "health," interpreted according to culture-specific explanations and causes of disease, completely decided layout and location even in the early twentieth century. According to the Cantonments manual, 1909, it should be carefully borne in mind that the cardinal principle underlying the administration of cantonments in India is that CANTONMENTS EXIST PRIMARILY FOR THE HEALTH OF THE BRITISH TROOPS and to considerations affecting the wellbeing and efficiency of the garrison, all other matters must give place (Mackenzie 1929:114; original emphasis).

THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF ENVIRONMENT AND BEHAVIOR The successful functioning of any man-environment system depends not only on a technologically modified environment but also on a valuebased learned code of behavior. Such behavior consists of a set of institutionalized norms, either internalized as part of cultural socialization or enforced by a system of sanctions. The cantonment was a culture-specific environment situated in an alien cultural setting. European inhabitants could be expected to follow norms of behavior internalized as part of their socialization in the metropolitan culture. For members of the indigenous society, however, such norms were alien and had to be learned. It was therefore essential for a new code of behavior to be devised governing the operation of the cantonment environment and the interaction of members of the indigenous society with it. The power structure of colonialism enabled such a code to be

Values, Science, and Settlement: Environmental Control

Plate 1.

The cantonment and indigenous city. ca. 1840

A- D , KING

AMD ε Ν V1 RONS • ·

«Μ.- tin·? *:**

Mm

I'aifj

jM'i ..!.:·

fio/s/h/r &>K)Hd middle class women lower class women | boundary of the sidewalk Figure 1.

The places in the landscape (9 A.M-10 P.M)

396

JAMES S. DUNCAN, JR.

the lower class accepted the middle-class status claims. The landscape was spatially divided into what I have called "paths," those portions of the landscape used as routes by pedestrians, and "places," those used as gathering places. The "paths" tended to be shared by both groups but the "places" were segregated by class. Figure 1 demonstrates the degree of spatial segregation in the "places" in the landscape. The low status claims of the lower class in the landscape were reflected and perpetuated by their relegation to one small "place" at the corner of the street. To implement such a division of public space clearly requires a large degree of consensus, extending across the boundaries between social worlds, concerning the identity of members of each social world, their status claims relative to each other in the landscape, and how these claims are to be acted out in the landscape. The shared connotative meaning of very public landscapes is often facilitated by blatant cues in the form of signs so that people will know how to behave. Often in semipublic places, such as ethnic neighborhoods that are controlled by a single social world, cues such as signs on stores are absent, as the connotative identity is shared by all who are welcome to use the landscape. The notion of strategies is of great importance when considering the landscape as communication. Our identity is largely a function of how we behave and how others behave toward us. Strategies are important, therefore, because one must plan how one wants others to behave toward one, and to recognize how others intend one to behave toward them. Since objects and landscapes are an important part of our identity, we incorporate them in our strategies. I use the term strategy here in a very broad sense, to include not only conscious behavior such as asking oneself how one should behave in a given place or what impression one is giving by being associated with a given place, but also unconscious behavior. I believe I can show that different social worlds have institutionalized strategies for the purpose of group presentation of self, and that these strategies are probably adopted and used unconsciously. A good example of these unconscious strategies was discovered in my study of Hyderabad. In this locale, the middle and the lower class, the men and the women, could all be seen acting out their identities. The pace of movement along the "paths" in the landscape varied according to social status. Two lower-class women in this landscape, which is controlled by the middle class during the day, would tend to walk very quickly and take up a minimum amount of space by walking one behind the other (see Plate 1). By doing so they were making minimal spatial claims and acting out their social identity as subordinates in the land-

Landscape and the Communication of Social

Identity

397

scape. Lower-class women tended to walk much more slowly and side by side in a lower-class landscape further down the street, demonstrating that their social identity changed as the total landscape changed. Middleclass men, on the other hand, ambled along two and three abreast, their pace and positioning showing their dominant position in the landscape (Plate 2). It was interesting to note who stepped aside for whom. Middleclass women acted out their subordinate identity by yielding to middle-class men. Lower-class men and women yielded when they encountered middleclass men and women. The posture of the various groups in the "places" in the landscape is also important in terms of social identity. As Figure 2 demonstrates, the middle-class men positioned themselves for interaction. They stood in groups of twos and threes to form what Gerson (personal communication) has referred to as a group bubble. These men put little distance between individual members of the subgroup and a larger distance between each subgroup. This group bubble was never penetrated by the lower class or by middle-class women. The posture of these men and the location of the group bubble is evidence of the very strong spatial claims on the part of the middle-class men. The lower-class men, as shown in Figure 3, adopted a very different group posture. They occupied a remote corner of the landscape that could not be used as a "path" and had no amenities that would make it desirable as a middle-class "place." They adopted a deferential posture, lining the walls of their "place," putting as much distance as possible between individuals, and seldom communicating. The lack of communication shows further deference as they clearly did not regard the area as a "place" where friends meet but as a "place" where individuals could come and rest temporarily out of the sun. The behavior of the lower-class men did much to reinforce the notion that this was a middle-class landscape with the lower class tolerated as unwelcome guests. After ten o'clock at night, however, the middle class left the landscape, and the control shifted to the lower class. They acted out their new identity as the dominant group in the landscape by taking over the middleclass "places," walking more slowly and side by side, and interacting freely in the landscape. Strategies are also employed in more "private" landscapes. A good example is drawn from my study of a village in Westchester County. The design of the landscape is an important indicator of identity. Members of the Alpha landscape would often judge newcomers by their landscape tastes and used this as a sorting mechanism for deciding whether an individual was a potentially welcome addition to their social network. The underlying assumption was that landscape tastes serve as a good

398

JAMES S. D U N C A N , J R .

I

boundary

of group

1

boundary

of

one Figure 3.

bubble

sidewalk

person

Group posture in lower-class place

indicator of a person's lifestyle, values, in short, his social identity. Usually, the fact that someone lived in the Beta landscape was in itself enough to indicate to the Alphas that he was not their type of person. As a consequence, people who wanted to get into the Alpha's clubs would probably have had to move into the Alpha landscape first, thereby acting out an important part of the Alpha's social identity.

nLandscape ad the Communication of Social Identity

399

The landscape that groups are associated with becomes particularly important in that often the landscape that a group inhabits is one of the few things that members of other social worlds know about that group. A dramatic example of this and the fact that landscape tastes are viewed as an extremely important facet of social identity was provided by my study of the old and new elite in Hyderabad. Both groups often used the same terms to describe the people living in the other landscape as they used to describe the landscape itself. The old elite characterized the new elite's landscape as "ostentatious display." "The houses stand out in an immodest way; with their low walls they are showpieces to the public." They characterized the members of the new elite as people who have "lost their traditional values of modesty...." "They are superficial and everything is for show." The new elite express similar distaste for the old elite's landscape and for the old elite itself. "The old city is a slum." "There are no rich in the old city any more. They don't really have any money. Maybe they did, but they have lost it all by now. Why would anyone with money want to live in a slum?" The new elite did not consider their landscape to be immodest, nor did the old elite consider theirs to be a slum. Both groups had adopted strategies that gained them their identities within their respective worlds. The fact that outsiders awarded different meaning to their landscapes was of little consequence to them. This lack of consensus across the boundaries of social worlds is of great importance, however, to an individual who wishes to change social worlds. These individuals who find themselves between social worlds are in a difficult position in terms of strategies. For to be accepted as a member of a new social world the individual must successfully adopt the strategies of that world. The problem lies in the fact that these strategies are extremely complex as they are the method by which a group acts out its identity. Some of these strategies concern the landscape. An example of this is drawn from my study in Westchester County. A builder in the area was trying without success to sell houses to the Alphas. He adopted a correct strategy by building them in the Alpha landscape, but he was losing sales by making small but symbolically significant mistakes. For example, he lined the outside of the fireplaces in Delft blue tiles but used imitation tiles rather than genuine old Delft. Given the Alphas' dislike of imitation, mistakes such as these were making the difference between selling houses and not selling them. The classic example of the difficulty in adopting other worlds' strategies is the social type known as the nouveau riche. Such a person is often ridiculed by the group he aspires to because his strategies concerning the objects he surrounds himself with may fail. He may know the identity which he wishes to take on but he is unable to signify it to others. Strategies involving social identities are often so

400 Landscape and the Communication of Social Identity

complex that it usually takes a full generation to change social worlds. The notion of social control is also of great importance to any consideration of landscape as communication. If we are to use objects and whole landscapes as cues to appropriate behavior and as a result of our social identity, then we must control the landscapes so that the desired communication takes place. As the landscape is a combination of artifacts and activity, it is the latter, which has the potential to be unstable, that must be controlled. We have a variety of mechanisms of social control, some informal. Among the informal ones are consensus and peer pressure. These informal ones are, in my opinion, the most powerful ones. We also have such formal mechanisms as zoning boards, policemen, street gangs, and school teachers. Every landscape has these guardians whose job it is, in part at least, to maintain appropriate definitions of the situation. These guardians only take over when the informal social controls fail. No landscape can survive for long unless it can act as a medium for the communication of identities, for when the landscape fails to act in this manner not only is its identity damaged but also the identity of the actors who inhabit it. In conclusion, it is very difficult to interpret behavior extracted from the context of the immediate physical and social surroundings, and yet the study of the surroundings or landscape has been severely neglected. In everyday life, however, people are constantly aware of landscape and use it as one of the important cues to the definition of the situation and the identities and intentions of others. Accordingly, people employ a variety of strategies including positioning themselves in the landscape or in other cases actually designing the landscape in order to communicate their own social identity. Anthropologists, geographers, and sociologists, therefore, could profitably consider landscape as an active agent of communication and as a dynamic and integral aspect of any social situation.

Plate 2.

Landscape and the Communication of Social Identity

401

REFERENCES DUNCAN, JAMES S., JR.

1972 The social order of 200 yards of public street in Hyderabad, India. Proceedings of the Middle States Division, Association of American Geographers. 1973 Landscape tastes as a symbol of group identity: a Westchester County village. The Geographical Review 63. i.p. "Landscape tastes and social groups in Hyderabad, India," in Explorations in Indian social geography. Edited by David E. Sopher. GERSON, ELIHU M.

1971 "Notes on locales." Unpublished manuscript, Syracuse University. GOFFMAN, ERVING

1959 The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday. 1963 Behavior in public places: notes on the social organization of gatherings. New York: Free Press. 1972 Relations in public: microstudies of the public order. New York: Harper and Row. HALL, EDWARD

1966 The hidden dimension. London: Bodley Head. STONE, GREGORY P.

1962 "Appearance and the self," in Human behavior and social processes: an interactionist approach. Edited by A. M. Rose, 86-118. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. STRAUSS, ANSELM L.

1961 Images of the American city. New York: Free Press.

SECTION FIVE

Case Studies

Introduction

The papers in this section address two closely related questions which are also related to the three basic man-environment studies questions: the nature of culture-specific design and the effects of environments on people, specifically whether there are consequences on behavior of certain environmental decisions, and how particular environments and environmental changes relate to behavior and to sociocultural change. Once again there is a lack of data relating to these kinds of questions. I have found that in conversations applied anthropologists (and anthropologists generally) are able to give much anecdotal material about the disastrous consequences to particular groups of certain environmental decisions but that these have rarely been studied formally. Similarly in the applied anthropology literature one hardly ever finds any discussion of the role of culture-specific design, the effect of the built environment — settlements, neighborhoods, dwellings, and so on. Yet it seems important to consider the role and effects of such variables in processes of change, successful adaptations, cultural survival, and so on. In fact, culture-specific design, based on traditional culture, may provide a baseline from which to evaluate directions of change or the effects of change. At the largest scale, and dealing with an EXISTING situation, Olusanya discusses migration patterns in Nigeria. Migration is of course a specific example of choice and as such one can see it as involving both push and pull factors. Migration is also an instance of HABITAT SELECTION, and hence an instance of the most important effect of the social and physical environment on behavior. It is therefore possible to posit a process of matching against some ideal, possibly embodied in images of the good

406

Introduction

life, of opportunities, of specific environment (all in the PERCEIVED environment). While in this paper the discussion is mainly in terms of economic forces, the literature on intraurban migration 1 and historical migration 2 or even economic location (Wilson 1966) suggests that environmental aspects and ideals do play an important role (Rapoport 1972). But, for our purposes, the most significant point to emerge from Olusanya's paper is how a particular settlement pattern makes possible the migration of other groups and how such migration is made difficult by other forms of the physical environment. This illustrates both the importance of the environment in facilitating certain behaviors and the effect of such forms on the contact and the coexistence of cultural groups and hence on patterns of culture change. This has clear analytical and policy implications; for one thing, and this is often neglected in the applied anthropology literature, the success of migration and settlement schemes may be linked to the form of settlement patterns and to the form of settlements and dwellings (e.g. Eidt 1971). More generally, there is also the effect of the social and symbolic aspects of the environment in the study of migration—in the study of SUCCESSFUL migration and the cultural survival of migrant groups as in the clear evidence about the importance of "home" and place as described by Olusanya and others. Omori and Hanifi describe unplanned change; in both cases traditional villages are in the process of being engulfed by cities. Tadros deals with PLANNED change. Omori in his presentation described more physical aspects of the village than are to be found in his paper which, unfortunately, was not rewritten. He deals mostly with social change but his discussion suggests some interesting questions about the physical implications of such social and economic change: whether such changes are desirable or undesirable, inevitable or not; whether there are any lessons for us in the traditional Japanese model, both socially and environmentally. Another important question is what are the effects of physical form on changes, i.e. can the built environment help, modify, or hinder social change (Rapoport 1969; Olusanya, this volume)? As one hypothetical example some relationship can be shown between family structure farms groupings 1

and

the house, garden, and street farm/structure and relation to village neighborhoods

For a recent review of the literature see Moore (1972). See the work of Wreford Watson, L. R. Heathcote, David Stea, Kenneth Thompson, and others. 2

Introduction

407

Omori suggests that urbanization is a deviation from the ideal in the village, which is COLLECTIVE in terms of the family, ownership, legal and economic responsibility, and religious observance. Yet it is known that as cities grow and villages merge with urban societies they often survive as urban villages (whether in Mexico City, Cairo, London, or Tokyo). In Tokyo, for example, there are approximately 7000 chome which are, in effect, urban villages (Canter and Canter 1971; Smith 1971). Is this a viable pattern? Does it have implications for the case in question? In the village, homesteads seem to be divided into two groups — juchos and kojus. An interesting question is about their spatial or physical equivalents, i.e. is a jucho a spatial unit wiule a koju is aspatial? If this is so, then changes in physical form will have differential effects on the two groupings. Another question relates to time: the pattern of living in villages and working in the city may not be a transitional, temporary phenomenon but one of relative permanence. Thus in West Germany it is still a common pattern, and seems an extremely long-term one, linked to other cultural patterns of urbanization (Holzner 1970). Once again, what are the implications of this for the case of an urbanizing village? Thus Omori's paper, while dealing apparently little with the built environment, raises many important questions primarily about the effects of social change on the environment, effects of the environment on differential change, and thus has important policy implications. It also provides interesting comparison with Hanifi's paper. In that paper Hanifi examines a similar process but in the very different context of Afghanistan and raises very similar questions about the relationship of the city and adjacent traditional villages. I would argue that the relation of a village to a city is partly dependent on the physical form of the city. For example a city which is an aggregate of relatively self-contained units which are like villages (the classical Moslem city can be seen in this way) will have different effects from those of a city like Kabul which does not follow that pattern (and which, with its old, condensing nucleus and new, spreading periphery, rather resembles the colonial city described by King in Section 1). This suggests that traditional urban forms may, in fact, have advantages in this respect allowing for the nondestructive absorption of villages (as well as other advantages to which I have already referred). The question already posed with regard to Japan can be restated more generally when linked with Hanifi's paper: given some urban forms, can villages be absorbed and not be destroyed and, under these conditions, can the city be seen as a complex system of "villages"? This raises some important theoretical issues about the nature of "urbanism" and cities. Clearly urban theories

408

Introduction

should apply to all cities and if we broaden the sample in this way the discussion about villages and urbanization may become very different; may, in fact, link Japan, Afghanistan, Mexico City, and Western cities. The relation of the village to city in the case described by Hanifi is also one of conflict in terms of values: the city is loved and desired and also feared. Clearly the dominant value orientation will have a major impact on the conflict resolution (i.e. the choice made) as it does on urban form. In the latter case it has clearly been shown that the antiurban bias in the Anglo-American intellectual tradition has had major effects on urban form (White and White 1962; Glass 1955) and different values also help link urban form and culture (Meyerson 1963). We can thus suggest a single model which relates how villages react to cities, how cities are shaped and their parts renewed, where people migrate, and so on in terms of ideologies, values, and images and in very diverse settings. Thus when Hanifi states that new quarters of Kabul deteriorate rapidly because they are built quickly and are overcrowded, we might ask whether this is because they are no longer homogeneous, because their form is less suitable in relation to family structure, the role of women, or larger groupings and also in terms of address, orientation, house settlement system, and so on. Both of these are aspects of culture-specific design and related to cognitive styles. The destruction of the village of Kamari, near Kabul, can then be seen as a special case of a more general phenomenon — the relation of villages to cities. This raises the whole question of cultural and physical continuity and the effect of environment on the survival of cultures as well as the valuable lessons embodied in traditional forms (Rapoport 1973a, 1973b). This has important policy implications in terms of value judgments about whether cultural continuity, physical and behavioral, is desirable or undesirable, whether lifestyle changes are necessary, whether "modernization" and industrialization are inevitable or synonymous, and also about the relationship of all these to the built environment. In discussing a PLANNED change, Tadros again raises the issue of the relationship of physical form and the success of settlements, migration, and resettlement. It appears that social homogeneity and the nature of the physical environment at various scales are important variables in the success of various developments — planned or unplanned, traditional or "squatter." There seem to be links here to the choice model, to images, to the role of the environment in facilitating or inhibiting behavior and modifying communication, to the social meaning of form and its communicative role for homogeneous cultural groups. This case study is a good example of the importance of culture-specific

Introduction

409

design and the general need to be SPECIFIC to which 1 have already referred, i.e. to analyze in some detail without overgeneralizing. Other case studies in Egypt have stressed the special case of the Nubians whose dwellings and settlements had special meaning. Tadros's study raises a general question: why is nomadism seen as bad? This is clearly a value judgment which may be extremely difficult to justify. Why, in fact, should traditional systems be replaced? Traditional systems could work with agriculture as they have worked with industry for Australian aborigines and some American Indian groups. 3 More generally still, the problem of unnecessary or arbitrary change comes to mind as, for example, in the case of administrative districts different from traditional, ritually important divisions. In the projects described by Tadros there was no real participation by those affected, nor was there any use of man-environment studies data. Yet there was considerable evaluation and some attempt to change and modify projects as a result of feedback. In this sense the project is in advance of many others and the specific problems encountered are of great interest showing some relationships between behavior and built form which are not normally considered in design or planning. At the same time, however, proper evaluation is only possible if objectives are clearly and explicitly stated, and in this task, at least in relation to the built environment, man-environment studies can help greatly and, at least potentially, so can anthropology. Given the papers in this section — effects of environment on migration, the effects of planned and unplanned change — a general question seems to be raised: what kinds of sociocultural and other man-environment relations data, and what theoretical approaches would be most relevant to the design of valid environments? This, of course, was the general question proposed as the desired conclusion to be reached by this Conference. While far from fully answered, at least some outlines seem to emerge from the papers in this volume.

REFERENCES CANTER, DAVID, SANDRA CANTER

1971 8

Close together in Tokyo. Design and Environment 2(2).

Anecdotal material describing how the tribe is used as a working group allowing for nomadism, sharing, and so on and allowing production to be continuous with shifting populations. There seems to be some relationship to work structuring in modern industry.

410 Introduction

EIDT, ROBERT C.

1971 Pioneer settlement in northeast Argentina. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. GLASS, RUTH

1955 Urban sociology in Britain. Current Sociology 4(4). HOLZNER,LUTZ

1970 The role of history and tradition in the urban geography of West Germany. Annals, Association of American Geographers 60(2). MEYERSON, MARTIN

1963 National character and urban form. Public Policy 12. MOORE, ERIC G .

1972 Residential moblity in the city. Commission on College Geography, Resource Paper 13. Washington, D.C: Association of American Geographers. RAPOPORT, AMOS

1969 "The pueblo and the hogan: a cross-cultural comparison of two responses to an environment," in Shelter and society. Edited by P. Oliver. London: Barrie and Rockliff. 1972 Environmental quality in designing a new town. Royal Australian Planning Institute Journal 10(4). 1973a The ecology of housing. Ekistics 36(213). 1973b The city of tomorrow, the problems of today and the lessons of the past. DMG-DRS Journal 7(3). SMITH, RICHARD A.

1971 Crowding in the city: the Japanese solution. Landscape 19(1). WHITE, MORTON, LUCIA WHITE

1962 The intellectual versus the city. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. WILSON, ANDREW

1966 "The impact of climate on industrial growth: Tucson, Arizona: a case study," in Human dimensions of weather modification. Edited by W. R. Derrick Sewell. Department of Geography Research Series 105. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Residential Patterns and Population Movement into the Farmlands of Yorubaland

PHILIP O. OLUSANYA

Since the early years after World War II when the tempo of rural-urban migration in Nigeria began to accelerate as a result of overall population growth and the increasing socioeconomic disparities between urban and rural areas (Olusanya 1972; Green 1972; Prothero 1968: 252), much attention has been devoted to the problems of urbanization, and proposals have often been put forward designed to stem the rush of rural dwellers to the towns. In an attempt to solve the urban population problems of particular areas or states, however, the equally important question of the mass movement of population from the rural area of a given state to the rural area of another or from one rural area to another within a state and the factors associated with this movement, which tends to further impoverish the area of out-migration, have been virtually neglected by planners. Of course, rural-rural migration is not new in Nigeria, and attention has been drawn to its existence and neglect (Barbour 1965: 47-68). The volume and distance traversed have, however, considerably increased since 1930 following the establishment of civil administration spanning virtually the whole country, and so has the banning of human sacrifices which in the past made it hazardous for one to venture beyond his clan territory. Today, large numbers of Ibo, Igbira, Urhobo, Hausa, and Ibibio migrants are to be found particularly in the Yoruba cocoa belt and the Benin rubber belt (Udo 1972: 1). In other words, the direction of ruralrural migration in Nigeria has by and large been north-south and eastwest, the larger stream being toward the main Yoruba cocoa belt in the eastern sector of the Western State, beginning roughly from Ife Division. The emphasis here will be on migration into the farmlands of the Western State from the savannah region immediately north of the forest belt. We

412 P. O. OLUSANYA

will examine the socioeconomic factors that act as a "push" to, as well as those that attract, the migrants. These factors have hitherto been the subject of much speculation and intelligent observation. Although these speculations and observations often contain some truth, they are not specific enough to provide a clear understanding of the process. We will also examine some aspects of Yoruba social organization which are particularly favorable to the influx of rural dwellers from other parts of the country. Finally, we will consider the question of the identity of the migrants, what land tenure rights they have, whether they are permanent or temporary settlers, their reasons for leaving their home areas, their link with the area of origin, and their contribution to the socioeconomic development of the area of settlement.

SOURCE OF DATA AND SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE RESPONDENTS Exploratory investigation during the early stages of the study in 1971 revealed that migrant farmers are concentrated in the eastern quadrant of the Western State which coincides with the largest cocoa-producing area of Yorubaland. In this eastern sector, about 600 villages and hamlets almost exclusively inhabited by these migrants were discovered, the highest concentration being in Ife Division. These migrant settlements are located within short distances of the villages of the landlords. The main survey was therefore restricted to this area, not because there are no migrant farmers elsewhere in the state, but because they are scattered over a wide area and their number in any given place is comparatively insignificant. Moreover, unlike those in the eastern sector, they invariably live with their hosts in the same communities so that locating them for interview would have been an extremely difficult task. Eight hundred and fifty-three migrant households were interviewed between July and September 1972. The preliminary data used here are drawn from this survey. The migrant farmers are not homogeneous in terms of ethnic group or area of origin. They may be divided into three categories: (a) migrants indigenous to the Western State but from outside the survey area, (b) migrants from the neighboring Kwara State, and (c) the rest of the migrants who are from other states in Nigeria. Table 1 shows the relative proportions of these groups. The group of migrants from other areas of the Western State preponderate. They constitute about 70 percent of the total migrant farmers. Of the migrants

Residential Patterns and Population Movement into Yorubaland

Table 1.

413

Place of origin of the migrants Percent

State of origin

Number

Western State Mid-West State East-Central State South-Eastern State Kwara State Benue-Plateau State

604 41 36 4 162 6

70.8 4.8 4.2 0.5 19.0 0.7

Total

853

100.0

from outside the Western State, however, the Kwara group is by far the largest, being 19 percent of the total or approximately two-thirds of migrants from outside the Western State. A little less than 5 percent are from the Mid-West State immediately to the east of Yorubaland and in the same vegetation zone, and the East-Central State or Iboland further east across the River Niger. The other groups — South-Eastern and Benue-Plateau States — constitute less than one percent of the total. A breakdown of the figure for the indigenous group in Table 2 reveals Table 2.

Migrants of Western State origin by division of origin

Division of origin

Number

Percent

Egba Egbado Ibadan Oshun Oyo Akoko Ekiti Ondo Owo Ife Ilesha Akure

7 1 22 304 17 38 63 4 4 95 43 6

1.2 0.2 3.6 50.3 2.8 6.3 10.4 0.7 0.7 15.7

Total

604

100.0

7.1 1.0

that three out of every five of the migrants, as would be expected, are from the savannah belt in the extreme north of Yorubaland, where, as will be shown later, the soil is relatively poor and the climate is not suitable for the cultivation of a variety of crops. Oshun, Oyo, and Akoko Divisions of the Western State lie largely in this vegetation zone, so that if the total number of migrants from the savannah region is taken regardless of whether they originate from within or without the Western State, the overall proportion of migrants from this zone will be a little over

414

P. O. OLUSANYA

three-fifths of the total. The migrant farmers can thus be said to be predominantly from the savannah region of southwest Nigeria. Although the migrants were engaged in various occupations prior to leaving home, most of them were farmers while the rest were largely petty traders, laborers, craftsmen, washermen, hunters, and the like (Table 3). It must not be thought, however, that those who said they were Table 3.

The nature of the migrants* occupations before leaving home

Occupation

Number

Farming Trading Artisan Laborer (washerman, hunter, etc.) Teaching/clerical None - attending school N o response

563 65 80 59 8 25 53

66.0 7.6 9.4 6.9 0.9 2.9 6.3

Total

853

100.0

Percent

nonfarmers before migrating were completely divorced from agriculture. The persons concerned more often than not have farms of their own on which they largely subsist and from which they may occasionally derive additional incomes. The amount of time devoted to farming is related to the type of nonagricultural occupation engaged in. A mason or road laborer, for example, may spend more of his time on his farm during periods when building activities or road works are considerably reduced. The migrants have various types of tenure rights as Table 4 shows. Table 4.

Types of tenure rights

Types

Number of migrants

Percent

Inherited from parent Acquired from family land Bought from other family Rented from other family Pledged to me Sharecropping Leased to me Transferred to me by other farmer Various combinations of other types

92 319 61 48 34 41 79 97 82

10.8 37.4 7.1 5.6 4.0 4.8 9.3 11.4 9.6

Total

853

100.0

About 52 percent acquired rights to the land they cultivate through outright purchase, tenancy or subtenancy, pledging, sharecropping, leasehold, and various combinations of these. About 45 percent have tempo-

Residential Patterns and Population Movement into Yorubaland

415

rary rights to the land they cultivate. Considering the data presented in Tables 1 and 2, the proportion in the latter category (i.e. excluding cases of outright purchase) should have been substantially higher. As, for example, 359 of the migrants are from Oshun, Oyo, and Akoko Divisions of the Western State which are clearly outside the survey area, and as 162 of them are from Kwara State, and 87 are from East-Central State as shown in Table 1, then the total number of migrants who are both from outside the survey area and outside the Western State is 608. It is, therefore, highly improbable that as many as 411 (Table 4) or 48.2 percent of the migrants inherited their land from parents or acquired it from family land. This distortion is probably due to a misunderstanding of the question and consequent misrecording of the responses by the interviewer.1 For example, the interviewers might have interpreted the words "acquired from family land" to mean that the migrants acquired the holdings from the family land of their landlords. If it had been understood as meaning their own family land, the responses in this category would probably have been reduced to almost nothing. It is possible, however, that the parents of the migrants had bought the land outright from the original owners some years back so that it could have been inherited by sons or part of it could have been acquired by them; this was actually why the first two categories were included. Nevertheless, the number involved would certainly be negligible considering the system of land tenure among the Yoruba (Adegboye 1967: 340; Olusanya 1969: 30). In fact, according to Udo (1972: 3), a widespread source of friction between migrant farmers and their hosts is the tendency for some of the migrants to claim title to the land which they have cultivated for many years. This has resulted in a new regulation in Owo, Western State, in which migrant farmers are obliged to take out short leases of rarely more than two years, after which the lease may be renewed. It is correct to say, therefore, that the vast majority of the migrants have only temporary tenure rights to the land they cultivate and can be regarded as tenant farmers of a sort, and that they are mainly from the savannah region of southwestern Nigeria. FACTORS CONSTITUTING A "PUSH" TO THE MIGRANTS Southwest Nigeria, from which an overwhelming majority of the migrants originate, may be divided roughly into two vegetation or farming zones — 1 The question was structured.

416

P. O. OLUSANYA

the forest and the savannah. In the forest zone, which is well watered by heavy annual rainfall, oil palm, kolanut, cocoa (the most important export crop), and other important food crops are to be found. In the most northerly part of the region, the forest gradually thins out and the vegetation takes on the character of savannah. Here rainfall is relatively scanty and there is often an acute shortage of water, especially during the dry season (Olusanya 1969: 28). The savannah zone, therefore, tends to be much poorer than the forest zone.2 This area (particularly Oshun Division) for several decades has exported people not only to the forest zone to the south, but also to other West African countries, especially to Ghana before the Aliens Compliance Order of 1970 forced them to return in thousands. Further north, the savannah extends beyond the Western State into the neighboring Kwara State which forms part of an ecological zone known in Nigerian geography as the "Middle Belt" and spans the central portion of the country from Borgu in the west to Adamawa in the east. Migrants from this area constitute about two-thirds of migrants from outside the Western State. Buchanan and Pugh (1955: 61-63), who seem to be the authors of the Middle Belt concept, contend that very low population densities are typical of most parts of the Belt. Although this view has been criticized on the grounds that the population figures on which it was based were unreliable and that the authors had at their disposal only data on divisional population densities that obscured local variations, the generalization is valid even when more adequate and recent population figures are used, since the Belt contains more extensive empty areas than any other part of Nigeria (Agboola 1968: 292-293). The generalization is, however, subject to certain reservations. Sparseness of the population in the Belt, for example, does not apply to the whole area. Ilorin Division is a case in point. This Division of the Kwara State has a fairly dense rural population with densities varying from 200 to 400 persons per square mile (Agboola 1968: 292). So also has Kabba 2

The sharp socioeconomic contrast between communities in the savannah belt and those in the rain forest was described by Lloyd (1955: 236) as follows: "Today, one would have to go to the savannah country to the north of Oyo to find towns almost completely composed of traditional compounds. In the cocoa belt the old compounds are vanishing and being replaced by modern one-and two-storied, cement-faced residences." Also this contrast has been held responsible for what the International Labour Organization team in Western Nigeria referred to as "scholarization" or the level of primary school enrollment. According to the team, "Divisions with high cocoa production, or Divisions with large capital-forming centres have progressed." (International Labour Organisation Mission 1965: 28). These large capital-forming centers and centers of high cocoa production, incidentally, are in the forest belt.

Residential Patterns and Population Movement into Yorubaland

417

Province which, together with Ilorin Province, constitutes Kwara State. The overall population density of Kabba Province was 117 in 1963. The Kwara State must therefore be regarded as a densely populated area within the Middle Belt in spite of the existence of areas of low density. Added to the high density of Kwara State is the fact that this area is predominantly rural with only 18 percent of the total population living in communities with 20,000 or more inhabitants. While this proportion may appear impressive in terms of the overall degree of urbanization in Nigeria, 3 in terms of the distribution of the urban population over a land area of 28,672 square miles, the pace of urbanization can be said to have been very slow in this State. There were only nine towns in Kwara State according to the 1963 census. Two of these, Ilorin (208,546) and Offa (86,425), contained 70 percent of the total urban population of the State; within Ilorin Division itself, there were no other settlements with more than 5,000 inhabitants outside of Ilorin town and "small agricultural settlements, which give the Division some of the highest settlement densities in the area [and are its] predominating feature" (Agboola 1968). The remaining seven towns had populations varying between 20,000 and 32,000 and these, within the Nigerian context, are invariably overwhelmingly agricultural communities. In the State as a whole, most of the few industries are concentrated in Ilorin, the capital, so that the State does not provide an adequate outlet for prospective rural-urban migrants. The problems of the area have been further complicated by the unsuitability of most parts for large-scale agriculture and cattle raising which thrive in the savannah land in the extreme north of Nigeria. Various studies of the soils carried out in the past indicated that there is widespread occurrence of iron-pan surface underlying shallow red loams, and that the iron-pan soils come near to the top soil on the higher and middle slopes. The thickness of the iron-pan layer in the Kabba area is said to be as much as four feet (Agboola 1968: 295). While this satisfies the inhabitants' need for food crop production, it does not offer opportunities for the cultivation of export crops. However, a more important factor which prevents the cultivation of export crops is climate. Cocoa cannot thrive here; neither can other cash crops such as kolanuts and oil palm found in abundance in the Western State, and groundnuts which grow well farther north. A case in point is the failure of repeated attempts to introduce the Allen variety of cotton into the area from 1910 to the 1930's. These experiments showed that 4

About 19 percent of Nigeria's population lives in communities with at least 20,000 people and in most of the other states the proportion is around 10 percent.

418 P. O. OLUSANYA

rainfall and pests are important factors in the failure of the crops. It was found that rainfall in August and after October had an adverse effect on cotton fields (Mason and Jones 1924; Golding 1925). In the Middle Belt as a whole, the more humid conditions, the taller grasses, and woodland vegetation along the river valleys tend to offer a more favorable habitat to the tsetse fly which causes trypanosomiasis and thus make it much more difficult to rear cattle than in the less humid climate of the northern plains where Nigeria's cattle population is concentrated. The mass movement of farmers from the Guinea savannah to the forest zones is thus a reaction against the limited opportunities in that area. The process has become particularly pronounced since the cocoa boom of the 1950's and has led to the emergence of two categories of migrant farmers in the Western State. In the first category are farmers interested mainly in the cultivation of cocoa and in the second category are farmers from outside the forest zone who take up land for food crop production and sale to both indigenous and migrant cocoa farmers. In addition to the Western State being the most urbanized area of Nigeria, with the implication that the demand for food crops will be high, many rural districts are short of food because of the concentration of local inhabitants on tree crop production for export. This overemphasis of the indigenous farmers on tree crop production is in turn a product of their social organization. The food situation is such that the inhabitants have to purchase up to 50 percent or more of their food requirements for the year (Udo 1972: 1). Many of these food crop farmers are Igbiras from the Igbira Division of Kabba Province. Their hamlets (Aba Igbira), consisting of several mud huts with grass roofs, are dotted here and there in the small patches of grassland that punctuate the forest zone. Their main crop is yam which is transported in lorries to the Yoruba towns by urban middlemen or brought by travelers or local inhabitants in small quantities for direct consumption. In many areas (notably Imesi-Lasigidi, Ile-Oluji, and Igbara Oke), the landlord almost invariably lives in the nearby town though he may have a house in a rural settlement which he visits occasionally or regularly, depending on circumstances. The migrant camps or settlements are usually named after him and he is responsible to the local authority of the area for collecting taxes from his tenants as it is not always easy for tax clerks to know their exact number or location in the bush. In other cases, the settlements, as in the case of the Igbira group, are given names denoting the origin of the migrants (Aba Ilorin, Aba Oyo, etc.). The illiterate

Residential Patterns and Population Movement into Yorubaland

419

or semiliterate among the landlords tend to live more permanently in their farm villages and can to some extent supervise the migrant farmers. ASPECTS OF YORUBA SOCIAL ORGANIZATION The unsuitability of the soils and climate of the Guinea savannah constitutes an important factor in the mass exodus of farmers in this area, and the forest belt immediately to the south is the destination of large numbers of these migrants because of the opportunity it offers them for planting cocoa (in particular for export) and food crops to cater to the increasing demands of the local inhabitants. That the Yoruba forest abounds with opportunities for farmers is, however, not sufficient to account for the presence and continued influx of migrant farmers. Of course, although there is probably no area in Nigeria where such a concentration of migrant colonies is to be found as in the Yoruba area, migrants from depressed areas also find their way to other prosperous agricultural areas of southern Nigeria such as the rich farmlands of the Cross River district and areas immediately north and east of Port Harcourt in eastern Nigeria. However, the conditions governing their acceptance by the host communities in these areas are different from those in the Yoruba cocoa belt. For example, according to Udo (1972:2), migrants are more welcome in districts where they perform duties which do not bring them into direct competition for opportunities with the indigenous people. He gives as an example the Abakaliki district in eastern Nigeria where migrant tenant rice farmers are favorably received because the indigenes attach more importance to yam cultivation than to that of rice cultivation, and where the swamps, which the migrants cultivate, are not suitable for yams and thus were formerly left uncultivated. In the Yoruba forests, in contrast, no such conditions exist and both migrant and indigenous farmers plant cocoa or any other crops they like. The only stipulated condition is that rent should be paid either in cash or in kind. This partly accounts for the influx of farmers to the area, though it does not explain why numerous colonies of migrants are to be found there, with freedom to cultivate any piece of land of high or low quality as long as they are prepared to pay for it. Much more important, therefore, is the pattern of residence of the Yoruba, which makes prospective and long-staying migrant farmers welcome in this area, not merely as farm laborers (though a number may have initially come in this category in order to secure much needed funds for farming implements and a few other essential articles) but largely as tenants.

420

P. O. OLUSANYA

The existence of large Yoruba settlements dates back some two to three hundred years (Bascom 1959: 31). The Yoruba, in other words, are traditionally town dwellers, though they were (and a substantial proportion of them still are) urban farmers. 4 A belt of farmlands usually surrounded the town and sometimes extended a few miles outside it. Farmers whose farms were on the outskirts of the town usually returned every day to their homes in town, while those whose farms were about a day's walk from town (probably a development of later years) usually stayed for many days, sometimes months, on their farms, returning to their "home-towns" 5 occasionally for rest and religious celebrations. This was what Lloyd (1959: 46) meant when he said: Among the northern Yoruba all members of the town officially reside within its walls; on the blocks of farmland are hamlets. The Yoruba farmers here are commuters of degrees varying from the man who visits his farm once monthly or weekly to supervise his sons and laborers, to the poor farmer who lives in the hamlet throughout the year, returning to the town only for its annual religious festivals or for important lineage functions. This system of dual habitation was, and is still to some extent, one of the distinguishing characteristics of the social organization of the Yoruba (Goddard 1965: 21). The rapid pace of urbanization among the Yoruba in the past four decades, with the concomitant diversification of the towns' economy, has, however, modified significantly this pattern of residence. Today over 50 percent of the total population of the Western State live in communities with at least 20,000 inhabitants in contrast to about one-fifth for Nigeria as a whole. About a quarter live in communities with at least 100,000 people. In 1952 only 38 percent of the population lived in communities with 20,000 or more people and about 20 percent in those with 100,000 or more people. This situation has been brought about largely by the mass migration of rural dwellers to the towns on a scale probably unprecedented since the cessation of intertribal wars in the dying years of the last century. It would appear that in the early days of settlement farms were within short distances of the town, so that it was unnecessary to have farm villages, and that farmers lived in town and did their farming from there. Later, however, farming had to be done much farther afield, probably as a result * This is what Kenneth Little (1960: 92) refers to as "rus in urbe" 1 The distinction between "home-town" and village (which is usually regarded as a work camp) among the Yoruba is so important that in some areas persons dying in the village are almost invariably conveyed to their ancestral compounds in the town (Olusanya 1969: 6-10).

Residential Patterns and Population Movement into Yorubaland

421

of population growth. Since farming was almost the only way to make a living, it was imperative to live very close to the main source of livelihood, at least for short periods. Semipermanent farm villages were therefore indispensable and farmers moved back and forth between village and town. Today it is generally accepted that migration, especially of youth, is from village to town. This is attributable to the spread of education in the Yoruba area since the introduction of free primary education in 1955 coupled with the increasingly sharp socioeconomic disparities between the urban and the rural sectors. The rural-urban drift has been facilitated by the fact that most village Yorubas belong to one town or another, and the average distance between a village and a large town is rarely more than twenty miles. In the past, poor communications made for extensive stays in the villages. Today, however, the complex network of roads, which links one town with another and the numerous satellite villages with their parent towns, and the significant developments in transportation make it easy for people to move between village and town and between one town and another. In a rural-urban migration study a few years ago, it was found that many of the inhabitants of the village Oluwatedo northwest of the Western State were not only regularly visiting their home town Oyo because of easy transportation, but were spending much more time there than in the village. In fact, some were permanently based in the town and paid only occasional visits to the farm (Olusanya 1969: 22). Table 5.

Place of residence of landlord

Place of residence

Number

Percent

In this village In another village In the town N o response (laborer, farm inherited, etc.)

333 135 330 55

39.0 15.8 38.7 6.5

Total

853

100.0

This migration trend is clearly visible in Table 5 which shows the place of residence of landlords as stated by the migrants in the present study. Roughly two-fifths of the landlords lived in town, while about half either lived in the villages where the migrants were interviewed or in another village. Considering what has been said about the system of dual habitation, the latter group of landlords can hardly be regarded as permanent village dwellers, since their length of stay in the village or town depends on circumstances.

422

P. O. OLUSANYA

The availability of alternative modes of employment (retail trading, crafts, drumming, etc.) in the large and growing town makes protracted stays on the farm unnecessary, while the comparatively poor living conditions in the rural area make continued stay there unattractive. This situation has encouraged the mass immigration of tenant farmers from other areas and has facilitated their acceptance by the Yoruba landlords. The influx of migrant farmers is in turn tending to encourage what might be termed absentee landlordism among the forest Yoruba.

THE MIGRANTS' REASONS FOR LEAVING HOME So far a description of the background factors that predispose the migrants to leave their home areas has been given. While it is obvious from the facts that economic considerations are very important in the decision of the rural migrants to leave home for another rural area, one frequently finds that there are other noneconomic factors which contribute to the volume of emigration. This is supported by the responses shown in Tables 6 and 7. Table 6.

Which is better: life in home area or in the present place o f settlement

Responses

Number

Percent

Present village/settlement Home area N o difference Don't know/no response

770 46 17 20

90.3 5.4 2.0 2.3

Total

853

100.0

Table 6 gives the responses of the migrants to the question as to whether or not they considered life in their home area preferable to life in their present settlement. Nine-tenths of the migrants, as would be expected, expressed a preference for life in their present area of settlement while a little less than a tenth either preferred their home area and had migrated for some reasons that are noneconomic (see below) or felt that there was no difference. In Table 7 we show the responses of the migrants to the question: Why did you not stay in your home area to do the kind of work you are doing now? They show a variety of reasons for migrating to their present settlement. A little over four-fifths of the migrants gave economic reasons in general, and about seven-tenths gave reasons that were specifically related to the unsuitability of their home areas for large-scale commercial farm-

Residential Patterns and Population Movement into Yorubaland

Table 7.

423

Migrants* reasons for not staying at home

Reasons

Number

Percent

Former work not lucrative No fertile land for planting cocoa Insufficient farmlands Land not fertile generally Family reasons Change of environment Not sufficient palm trees No cocoa plantations in home area (produce buyer) No work (laborer and mason before migrating) Trouble in home area No response/can't say

105 127 292 168 25 41 3 1 13 11 67

12.3 14.9 34.2 19.7 2.9 4.8 0.4 0.1 1.5 1.3 7.9

Total

853

100.0

ing. Taking the responses individually, by far the most important reason given by the migrants for leaving home is the insufficiency of farmlands: about one-third of the migrants gave this reason. Next in importance is infertility of the land in the home area generally: about one-fifth of the migrants gave this reason. Next to this is the unsuitability of the home area for cocoa in particular. All told, a little over one-third of the respondents migrated from their home areas because the land was either unsuitable for cocoa or generally infertile. It is interesting to note the responses of those migrants who had other than economic reasons for leaving home. Almost one-tenth of them gave such reasons. Some left their homes for "family reasons" which are not specified; others left because of trouble in the area, and yet others migrated simply because they wanted a change of environment.

RELATIONSHIP OF THE MIGRANTS TO THEIR HOME AREAS To the Yoruba, like other southern Nigerians, the home area is very important. That is where most of his kinsmen live and that is where he hopes to be buried if he happens to die unexpectedly in a "foreign" territory. He makes sure that he visits there at least once a year for the annual family reunion (Adepoju 1972: 11; Olusanya 1969: 7). In some cases, his children are sent there to live with relatives when they reach school age. He considers himself a failure in life unless he can erect a building of his own, superior in architectural design to the dwelling units in the lineage compound, or refashion the family house. Above all, his aged parents

424

P. O. O L U S A N Y A

who, in conformity to tradition, must be provided for live there: hence his strong links with the home area and his consequent lack of a spirit of commitment to the socioeconomic development of the host area. One clear evidence of strong attachment to the home area is the regular cash remittance home and the purposes for which it is used (Adepoju 1972: 12). Data relating to home remittance are presented in Tables 8, 9, and 10. As Table 8 shows, about 55 percent of the migrants said that they had sent money home during the past year. The proportion who said that they had sent nothing home seems unusually large, considering the responses in the other tables below. It is possible that the respondents misunderstood the words "send money home" as excluding cash taken home personally by them during home visits. This would be the case if the homes of the migrants are within short distances of their area of settlement. As Table 9 shows, amounts varying from 1 Nigerian pound (about 3 U.S. dollars) to just over 80 Nigerian pounds (about 240 U.S. dollars) were sent home by the migrants in the year preceding the survey. About 11 percent, 19 percent and 25 percent respectively sent home sums of money ranging from £50 to over £80, £30 to over £80 and £20 to over £80. If we then include the migrants who sent home amounts between £10 and Table 8. Did you send money home during the past year? Percent

Response

Number

Yes No No response

468 372 13

54.9 43.6 1.5

Total

853

100.0

Tabel 9. Amount remitted home by migrants during the past year Number

Percent

Nothing £1 - £ 9 £10 — £ 19 £20-£29 £30-£39 £40-£49 £50-£59 £60-£69 £70-£79 £80 and over No response

385 105 147 55 40 27 20 20 9 43 2

45.1 12.3 17.2 6.5 4.7 3.2 2.4

Total

853

100.0

Response

2.4

1.0 5.0 0.2

Residential Patterns and Population Movement into Yorubaland

Table 10.

425

Purposes for which money was remitted home by migrants

Responses

Number

Maintenance of relatives (parents, children, etc.) Building

408 60

87.2 12.8

Total

468

100.0

Response

Number

Percent

Yes No No response

500 333 20

58.6 39.0 2.4

Total

853

100.0

Table 11.

Percent

Migrants* intention to return home

£20, the proportion of migrants would increase to 45.4 percent. These proportions are significant because of what they imply about the demand on the total incomes of the migrants which, under conditions prevailing in agriculture in Nigeria, are generally small compared with nonagricultural urban incomes. The purposes for which the remittance is made are shown in Table 10. By far the largest share of money went to the maintenance of relatives. The rest was for building. Another evidence of the migrants' strong link with home is their intention to return home permanently at some future date (e.g. at old age). Table 11 shows that about three out of every five migrants intended to return home to settle. A large proportion (39 percent), however, said that they had no intention of returning home. One can, however, be sure only of those who were definitely committed to returning home, since the implication of their response is that except for economic conditions in the home area, they were quite satisfied with the home situation in general. As for the other group, conditions do change and the home situation which displaced them might improve in the future, so that their attitude to their home areas might become positive. On the other side of the coin are those indices that show a detached attitude toward the host area on the pari of the migrants and so buttress their strong attachment to the home area. Two of these are intermarriage with the women of the receiving area and ownership of buildings (as distinct from huts in the settlements) in any neighboring town. The relevant figures are shown in Tables 12 and 13. Over four-fifths of the migrants

426

P. O. OLUSANYA

Table 12.

Migrants' intermarriage with the host population

Response

Number

Yes No N o response

125 724 4

14.7 84.9 0.4

Total

853

100.0

Table 13.

Percent

Migrants' ownership of buildings in the towns around settlement

Response

Number

Percent

Yes No N o response

157 639 57

18.4 74.9 6.7

Total

853

100.0

said they did not marry any of their wives from among the people of the area in which they were working, and three-quarters said they did not own any buildings in any of the towns around. This strong link with home area has been a source of conflict between the migrants and the host population. One specific source of conflict, naturally, is the failure of many of the migrants to pay their taxes and rates to the host area where they earn their living. Many of them go home to pay their flat rate taxes and rates and, according to Udo when accosted by tax agents of the district where they settle, they would readily produce their current tax and rates receipt... In the case of the Igbira migrant farmers the practice ... was caused by the Igbira local authority which required that all migrants should pay their rates in their districts of origin. The reason for this ruling appears to be associated with the fact that the local authority was losing much of its revenue as a result of increasing migration of adult males to other parts of the country (1972: 4). This lack of the feeling of belonging is, of course, not peculiar to the respondents in this study, but is a general characteristic of African migrants (Busia 1950; Acquah 1958: 104-105). One of the conditions attached to granting of citizenship to migrants in the Ahafo district of Ghana, for example, is that they should become fully identified with the host community by taking part in all communal projects directed at improving the locality, making monetary contributions like other citizens whenever the occasion demands it, and putting up permanent buildings in order to prove that they do not intend to send all their savings to their village of origin (Adomako-Sarfoh 1970).

Residential Patterns and Population Movement into Yorubaland

427

CONCLUSION There are two ways in which the mass movements of population from the savannah region to the forests of Yorubaland may be viewed. In one sense the migrants may be said to have increased the economic growth of the host territory because they pay some kind of rent to landlords in the area. They also pay (albeit grudgingly) taxes to the local authority of the area. Furthermore, the fact of their presence in large numbers underlines their indispensability to the host population who by and large have other urban interests and so could not make farming a full-time occupation, quite apart from their continued migration to their home towns on a more permanent basis than before. About two out of every five landlords live in town and the remaining are by and large not permanent village dwellers, so that other urban activities would occupy their time while they are away from the village. In another sense, the migrants may be regarded as exploiters. In spite of the fact that they pay rent to the landlords and taxes to the area of settlements, many malpractices have been reported whereby the share tenants, for example, falsify the quantity as well as the quality of grade of cocoa with a view to cheating the landlords. It is said that suspicious landlords often insist on being present when dried cocoa beans are being bagged and graded for marketing (Udo 1972: 3). This has been a source of constant friction between the migrants and their hosts. Moreover, a large part of the money derived from the host area is diverted to the home areas of the migrants, so that in terms of the development of the host area the direct contribution of the migrants is negligible. Perhaps this is inevitable in a country where socioeconomic disparities between political or geographical regions are very large and where the meager resources of government are inadequate to bring about rapid overall development. It is only by this means that some kind of economic equilibrium can be brought about between regions of the country.

REFERENCES ACQUAH, IONE

1958 Accra survey. London: London University. ADEGBOYE, R. O.

1967 The need for land reform in Nigeria. The Nigerian Journal of Economic and Social Studies 9:339-350.

428 Ρ. Ο. OLUSANYA

ADEPOJU, A.

1972 "Some aspects of migration and family relationships in south-west Nigeria." Seminar on Rural and Urban Family Life in West Africa, University of Ghana. ADOMAKOSARFOH, J.

1970 "Migrant farmers and cocoa farming in Brong-Ahafo South." First West African Regional Conference of Commonwealth Geographers, Legon, Ghana. AGBOOLA, S. A.

1968 "Some factors of population distribution in the Middle Belt of Nigeria: the examples of northern Ilorin and Kabba," in The population of tropical Africa. Edited by J. C. Caldwell and C. Okonjo, 291297. London: Longmans. BARBOUR, Κ. M.

1965 Rural-rural migrations in Africa: a geographical introduction. Cahiers de Γ Institut de Science Economique Appliquie. BASCOM, w .

1959 Urbanism as a traditional African pattern. Sociological Review 7:31. BUCHANAN, Κ. M., J. C. PUGH

1955 Land and people in Nigeria. London: London University Press. BUSIA, Κ. A.

1950 Survey of Sekondi-Takoradi. London: Crown Agents for the Colonies. GODDARD, S.

1965 Town-farm relationships in Yorubaland: a case study from Oyo. Africa 35:21. GOLDING, F. D.

1925 A statistical survey of the infestation of Dysdercus spp. on cotton in Nigeria. Fourth Annual Bulletin of the Agricultural Department, Lagos. GREEN, L.

1972 "Migration, urbanization and national development in Nigeria." Eleventh International African Seminar on Modern Migration in Western Africa, IDEP, Dakar. INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANISATION MISSION

1965 Some trends in education in Western Region of Nigeria, 1955-1965. Ibadan: Western Nigeria Government. LITTLE, K.

1960 West African urbanization as a social process. Cahiers d'Etude Africaines 3:92. LLOYD, p . c .

1955 The Yoruba lineage. Africa 3:236. 1959 The Yoruba town today. The Sociological Review 7:46. MASON, T. G., G. H. JONES

1924 A first survey of factors inhibiting the development of the cotton crop in Nigeria. Third Annual Bulletin of the Agricultural Department, Lagos. OLUSANYA, P. O.

1969 Socio-economic aspects of rural-urban migration in Western Nigeria. Ibadan: Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research.

Residential Patterns and Population Movement into Yorubaland

1972

429

"Socio-economic disparities and internal migration in Nigeria: mass exodus of village dwellers to Yoruba towns." Eleventh International African Seminar on Modern Migration in Western Africa, IDEP, Dakar. PROTHERO, R. M. 1968 "Migration in tropical Africa," in The population of tropical Africa. Edited by J. C. Caldwell and C. Okonjo, 250-263. UDO, R. κ. 1972 "Social relations of rural-rural migrants with host communities in southern Nigeria." Eleventh International African Seminar on Modern Migration in Western Africa, IDEP, Dakar.

A Process of Urbanization: Economic and Social Innovations in a Suburban Village at Fukuyama, Japan

MOTOYOSHI OMORI

INTRODUCTION Problem and Method Ikenouchi, outside of Fukuyama, is a village in a developing stage of urbanization because of its proximity to a city which has been rapidly industrialized with the establishment of a large steel plant. The village displays what is designated as kengyoka [wage-employment of farmers], a prevailing phenomenon all over the country. Kengyoka increases the problem of decline in agricultural production and the tendency toward disorganization in conventional rural societies. Current industrial growth in Japan has created an amazing demand for manpower in urban centers, which have absorbed a large number of immigrant laborers from rural areas. Since the early 1950's, adult male labor has increasingly been drawn off and farm work left to housewives and old people. This leads not only to a stagnancy of productivity, a diminution of income, and difficulties with technological and managerial improvements, but also to the breakdown of a cooperative system of production and marketing organizations (Kawamata 1963). All of this results in an unavoidably drastic change in social norms and institutions in the rural community. Villages remote from an urban center suffer either from kasoda [a labor overflow], or dekasegi [a long-term labor emigration], both of which seriously threaten the coherence of the rural community. Around an urban industrial center, on the contrary, innovations proceed moderately and steadily. One can engage in wage-labor during weekdays and in farming on the weekend. The labor balance is similar to the balance between con-

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ventional norms of behavior and newly introduced ones. The family types, marriage pattern, domestic division of work, and collective activities reveal the parallel existence of, and oppositions between, conventional and innovated norms. The balance will, however, sooner or later be lost, and the innovative will surpass the conventional. Under these circumstances, it is significant to examine determinant factors which either accelerate or restrain the changes, i.e. the urbanization of a suburban village. The author, in collaboration with Yoshifumi Ueta, his agricultural economist colleague, undertook a field survey in the farming village of Ikenouchi from August 1970 to December 1971. With a few research assistants we visited the village repeatedly, staying overnight mostly on weekends or during vacations, while making door-to-door interviews. In addition to the questionnaires, the official documents and statistical records kept at the town hall and at the Agricultural Cooperative Association were also consulted. We designed the research project so that we might investigate a situation where wage-labor predominated in order to study its effects on social institutions, such as family structure and communal organizations, as well as the social norms contained in them. An ideal model of a conventional Japanese village community may be one which is a local corporate group, the members of which share the right to use a jointly owned property, collective legal and economic responsibilities, and religious performances. The corporate group consists of homesteads, each of which is a patrilineal, composite family maintained over generations by the rule of a centralized authority focused in the family head, characterized by arranged marriage, succession and support of the parents by the eldest son, and by a collective responsibility shared by the family members in legal, economic, and religious activities. Strict discrimination among the homesteads in accordance with landholding and affiliation to ie [homestead] might also appear in most of the villages (Fukutake 1959). We will, then, explore the hamlet, Ikenouchi, contemplating the social characteristics indicated above. Description and analysis will cover the family structure, kinds of wage-labor and of farming, and the collaborative system in the community.

The City and the Village Ikenouchi is one of the fifteen hamlets which compose the town of Kumano-cho. Kumano-cho had been a county township for eighty years until it was merged with the city of Fukuyama in 1956. In 1955, the city consisted of 35,271 households engaging in agriculture (25 percent),

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manufacture (24 percent), commerce (23 percent), and other industries or services. The 8,646 manufacturing households undertook small-scale steel, machine, textile, or furniture industries. By 1960, the municipal population had grown to 177,142, and its industrial composition had largely changed. In 1965, the number of agrarian households had decreased to 6,126 (12 percent of a total of 49,050 households), while those households undertaking manufacture had increased to 14,278 (29 percent). In 1965 the large-scale, heavy industry plant, Nihon Kokan or Japan Steel Pipe Company, having enlisted over 15,000 employees, set up its operation at Fukuyama. It has boosted production by the small-scale manufacturing industries and increased their absorption of immigrant laborers from agricultural environs. The city has grown to be the second largest in Hiroshima prefecture, containing a population of 250,934 in 1970, which is an increase of 38 percent since 1960. Geographically speaking, the city has expanded toward the north and west environs where small hamlets and their farmlands formerly were scattered across the gently sloping hills and narrow plains. On the west, the city faces the Seto Inland Sea, the Fukuyama Bay, a part of which was reclaimed for the installation of the heavy industry plant. A cluster of steep hills, 1,000 to 1,500 feet in altitude, on the southern side blocks any enlargement of the residential area in that direction. Behind the hills, at an altitude of 300 feet, lies the hamlet of Ikenouchi. Two roads lead to it from the urban center: one runs directly, winding up the cliff, while the other makes a detour, so that it is twice the distance of the first. Both are paved but are partly single track. Accordingly, it takes half an hour by auto and an hour by bus to reach the village, for the closest bus stop is over a mile away from the hamlet. At the center of the confined valley, which is open to a basin on the north and gradually rises to the south, are a watch tower, a kojinsha [a shrine for a Shinto deity], and a kominkan [a public hall]. In the surroundings are forty scattered compounds. The buildings were all constructed several decades ago and retain their original outward forms, though some now have zinc-covered roofs and windows with aluminum sashes. Most of the compounds stand in a line along a narrow road at the foot of the eastern hillside, and the rest stand together on the opposite hillside. In between, terraced farmlands are laid by gradual steps, and pine trees grow on top of the hills paralleling one another on both sides of the valley. No dual system of social organization, nor any distinct function of a dozoku [a quasi-kin grouping], emerge at the hamlet. Ikenouchi, however, reveals a somewhat autonomous character in its political, economic, and religious actions. There is an organization dividing the component home-

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steads into five juchos [neighborhood groups]. Another cleavage is that of kojus [funeral associations]. Collaborative actions are also discerned in seasonal work at the jointly owned forests and in periodical religious performances at the hamlet shrines. A fire squad is another important organization for collective action, for it consists exclusively of adult males of the hamlet and fights fires in the component homesteads.

FRAMEWORKS OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC LIFE Family Structure The number of Ikenouchi residents registered at the town hall is one hundred and sixty-four (seventy-seven males and eighty-seven females), who compose forty-seven households and dwell in forty compounds. The family structure appears to be still under the influence of conventional norms. At Ikenouchi, the household is not necessarily a unit of people living in the same compound and taking part in productive and consumer activities, but is, at most, a nominal partition of homestead members to receive tax reductions. The forty homesteads, on the contrary, are the essential units of the community. They consist of three single persons, fourteen nuclear, and twenty-three composite familes. Only four out of the second group are, however, nuclear families in the proper sense and equated as independent social units. The remaining thirteen families are of the single or nuclear type not because they were made up as such in accordance with a new norm, but because their junior members have emigrated and the aged have been left behind. These thirteen families show transitional forms of composite families and should be kept separate from those established by the new norm, that is, the autonomy of the individual couple (Koyama 1960). An ideal type of composite family is that composed of several nuclear families. But only five of twenty-three have this pattern, while others are those including either a widow-mother (fourteen cases), a widow-father (one case), or a widow-mother-in-law(three cases). The homesteads, then, do not exceed six persons (four cases). The family ties are consanguineous (nineteen cases, real and quasi-adoptive), affinal (three cases, a widow living with her parent-in-law), or both (only one case). Adoption for the maintenance of a homestead has not lapsed but is a persistent practice (ten out of forty-five successions). Adopted successors are not always the muko yoshi [spouses of the daughter of the former homestead head] (two cases), nor the homestead head's close kin. Thirty-five successors are real

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sons: sixteen the eldest, six the second, ten the third,and three the fourth. In addition to these, seven potential successors, six of whom are eldest sons, live with present heads. Accordingly, the succession by the eldest son is, as yet, highly valued. The eldest sons in twelve homesteads have, on the other hand, been out of the hamlet for schooling or employment. It is assumed, then, that these emigrated sons might have married and settled down permanently in their distant residences. A mapping of the birthplaces of married women shows that wives used to be taken from neighboring villages within five miles. No wife over the age of fifty-six (twenty-eight wives) came from outside the Hiroshima prefecture. Among these, two were born at Ikenouchi, seven are from other hamlets of Kumano-cho, and the remaining eighteen are from communities in the vicinity. Village endogamy occurs among wives between the ages of thirty-six and fifty-five, i.e. five endogamies out of twenty-eight, of which, again, twenty women are from the neighboring villages, two from other countries, and one from outside the prefecture. A marked contrast is afforded by wives under thirty-five years of age, of whom three have married into Ikenouchi from other prefectures: two from Osaka and one from Okayama. Their husbands had worked in these regions and married the women before they returned to the hamlet. Another wife came from the center of the city of Fukuyama. These four marriages are still exceptional cases, because the spouses were chosen not by their parents' arrangement but by the husband's personal decision.

Wage-labor and Farming The constant drain of manpower from rural societies brings about drastic changes in their economic and social life. In order to overcome the problem of lost manpower, the government has pursued a plan usually called Kozo Seisaku [an improvement policy directed at the backward structure of current agricultural industry, which promotes mechanization, joint management, and extension of individual farms] (Kawamata 1963; Minakawa 1966; Shimazaki 1965). For Ikenouchi, however, the physical features and location of the village render the policy ineffective. Further, the current number of private vehicles enables the residents to work in the urban center and yet continue farming around the village. Only twelve homesteads concentrate on farming. Among them, seven lack a wage-earner, for the present members are too old. The twenty-eight wage-earning homesteads are composed of three types: type A (fourteen homesteads), in which the homestead head himself is doing wage-labor

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and his wife is farming; type Β (eleven), in which the head and his wife engage in cultivation while an offspring is in wage-labor; and type C (three), in which both the head and the wife are wage-earners and one of their parents concentrates on farming. These distinctions in the division of labor influence the income and the management pattern of agriculture as well as the thought and behavior of the homestead members. They are, then, closely connected with the developing stages of urbanization in the hamlet. There are forty wage-earners (twenty-four men and sixteen women) in all, half of whom (twelve men and eight women) are industrial workers, a quarter (six men and four women) are white-collar workers, such as school teachers, employees at the town hall or firms, and another quarter (six men and four women) are sales persons, a taxi driver, and a waitress. Three-quarters of the forty (seventeen men and thirteen women) work in the old city wards, i.e. the town situated in the lowland, while another quarter (seven men and three women) work in the neighborhood of the hamlet. Roughly speaking, the homestead heads and their wives, who are all, except one man, over the age of forty, engage in unskilled labor from which none earns a high wage. They are, on account of this, not fully emancipated from farmwork. The youth, in contrast, have permanent employment as skilled laborers, jobs which promise a reasonable amount of income. This may end their dependence upon farmwork and set them free from a reluctant life in the rural region. In reality, however, over half of the young (seven men and six women in all) are potential heirs who will stay in the hamlet. It is likely, then, that wage-labor will sooner or later cause them to drop farming from their homesteads. A concentration in farmwork does not make as much difference in rice cultivation as it does in vineyard farming. At Ikenouchi they grow a small amount of rice. Each homestead cultivates dispersed rice fields of fewer than fifty ares in all. Although the harvest is small, the rice does bring a stable cash income, for the government, in order to protect the farmers, buys up the rice at a price which is raised at intervals of every few years. Utilizing such machinery as a motor cultivator and an automatic sprayer, and having seasonal days off for concentration on farming, the wage-earning farmers are still able to carry on rice cultivation. However, vineyard cultivation, in addition to rice, may be too much of a burden. Since 1955, Nogyo Kyodo Kumiai [the Agricultural Cooperative Association] has introduced and improved vineyard cultivation to yield the farmers supplementary income. The Shinko-kai [hamlet improvement association] granted a lease of a piece of the jointly owned lands for applicants to grow vines. In 1970, fifteen homesteads individually cultivated

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vineyards from six to thirty-five ares in area. Arranging them in the order of amount of vineyard cultivation, the upper ten homesteads consist of eight composite families (containing five or six people) and two nuclear ones (containing three or four). They are also composed of two type A, five type B, and three concentrated farming homesteads. No type C is included among them, and, on account of this, it is apparent that vineyard cultivation requires a good deal of exclusive concentration. The pattern of wage-earning and farming has a direct bearing on the annual income of every homestead. In 1970, three type C homesteads earned the equivalent of 2,400 to 7,000 United States dollars, fourteen type A's received $800 to $7,000, eleven type B's got less than $5,100, and twelve concentrated farming homesteads achieved less than $4,500. The single exception is a type Β homestead whose head owns a small-scale steel plant in another town and who has a annual income equivalent to $12,000. The concentration of labor in rice and vineyard cultivation is much less profitable than that in wage-labor. This expanding difference in profit may lessen an elder's authority and power within the homestead and the community. At Ikenouchi, however, this is not actually the case. Farming is still important at every homestead, providing rice and green vegetables for home use. And, more significantly, in an emergency, any resident can lean on the homestead head who is exclusively entitled to soliciting communal help from other homesteads.

Community Organizations Koju and jucho are the two fundamental groupings of homesteads forming the network of collaboration and mutual aid. Members of each koju are not always adjoining, but are invariably affiliated with the same Buddhist sect, either Hokke or Nenbutsu sect. There are four kojus at Ikenouchi, three Hokke and one Nenbutsu (Shinshu and Shingonshu together) sect. The component homesteads (five to twelve each) cooperate in the performance of funeral ceremonies. Aged men assume leadership in the collective work of arranging the details of the funeral. The youths inform the deceased's relatives of the obituary notice and receive the condolence callers, who contribute koden [funeral offerings]. Women of the koju prepare the special dinner which is served to the callers. Every homestead head in the hamlet attends the ceremony and contributes to the expense, but it is the same koju that offers the necessary labor services for the funeral. Jucho is a multipurpose grouping. It is well known that the jucho used to be the minimum unit of self-government, a subdivision of a hamlet in

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the feudal age. At Ikenouchi, six to ten neighboring homesteads form a jucho, and five juchos then compose the hamlet. Han is another name for jucho, newly adopted specifically for administrative convenience. A jucho or a han is at present a subordinate unit of three distinct organizations, Shinko-kai, Fujin-kai, and Chochiku-kumiai, and fills each subordinate role simultaneously. The Shinko-kai, to begin with, is an inclusive, corporate, and collaborative organization of the hamlet as a whole. It administers the communal property, i.e. some twenty hectares (fifty acres) of jointly owned land, has charge of seasonal religious performances at the Shinto shrines, and also makes administrative decisions as a hamlet council as well as transmitting notices from the town hall. In conformity with these functions each jucho fulfills duties involving periodical labor service in order to maintain the forests, i.e. jointly owned lands, clean the hamlet shrines, and repair the roads in preparation for observing the Shinto festivals twice a year. Every homestead head is responsible for offering the assigned laborers for these tasks. The hamlet council is held at the public hall in February, when the homestead heads assemble to discuss their plan for the year's projects, financial problems, and the election of five jucho leaders and five other hamlet leaders. As a subdivision of Fujin-kai [a women's society], each jucho, in turn, cleans the Shinto shrines and the public hall once every month, when, in principle, wives of the homestead heads are required to participate in the collective work. Five jucho managers, women elected by the members of each jucho, arrange an annual sightseeing bus tour and occasionally invite specialists in various fields who give lectures on current or domestic affairs at the public hall. These provide appropriate opportunities for closer relationships among the women. The Chochiku-kumiai [a savings association) is a city-wide organization which encourages savings for tax payment. As its subordinate unit, a jucho leader collects monthly installments and deposits the money with the Agricultural Cooperative Association, which, in return, advances funds to the depositors for machines and for rebuilding houses. An old people's association, a children's group, a youth group, and a fire squad are other groupings at Ikenouchi. The first three might be the remnants of an age-set system but are now only groupings for closer acquaintance and recreation. One of the most significant tasks which had been assigned to the youth association was fire fighting, which is now taken over by a fire squad. Its members are male residents of fifteen homesteads in Ikenouchi. Once every month, on Sunday, they meet to overhaul the small fire engines kept at the hamlet and to carry out a fire drill. Their work is important for it takes time for a fire brigade equipped with

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powerful fire engines to reach the detached hamlet. In 1970, the squad was composed of four homestead heads and eleven young men, most of whom are potential successors to present homestead heads. Their repeated meeting and collaborative activities increase the cohesion of the homesteads' heirs.

CONCLUSION Urbanization in Ikenouchi has affected family structure and altered conventional productive undertakings. The innovations have had, however, little eifect upon the community organizations or its cohesive integrity. The conventional system of cooperation continues to work efficiently, and every person has to rely on it to live in the community. Moreover, every resident of Ikenouchi is possibly aware that, with the rapid expansion of the urban residental area, the price of land has risen surprisingly, so that the jointly owned twenty hectares of land could be sold for some hundred thousands of dollars. Emigration or withdrawal from the community organizations might result in a severe loss on the occasion of its disposal by sale. A progressive increase in the urban population, however, appears likely to change current rural circumstances within a few years. Suburban villages have, one after another, been merged into urban residential quarters. At Ikenouchi, too, the growing demand for a higher standard of living, rising educational expenses, and the trend to full engagement in wage-labor may motivate the residents to sell their lands, communal as well as private. Then, with the number of outside wage-earners multiplied, traditional community organizations will encounter unavoidable difficulties in continuing cooperative undertakings. New types of associations, such as those seen in every ward of the urban center, will substitute for conventional ones. The rural residents will be reorganized not for collaboration in economic or religious activities to achieve community integrity, but into associations or sections merely for administrative purposes and seasonal recreation for the individuals.

REFERENCES FUKUTAKE, N.

1959

Nihon sonraku no shakai kozo [Social structure of Japanese villages].

Tokyo: Todai shuppan kai.

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KAWAMATA, S. 1963 Sonraku kozo to nogyo kindaika [Village structure and modernization of agriculture]. Tokyo: Toyokan. koyama, τ., editor 1960 Gendai kazoku no kenkyu [Studies on modern families]. Tokyo: Kobundo. MINAKAWA, Y. 1966 "Shugyo kozo no kindaika" [Modernization of working patterns], in Sonraku shakai kenkyu. Edited by Sonraku shakai kenkyu kai [Circle of the Studies on Rural Societies]. Tokyo: Hanao shobo. SHIMAZAKI, M. 1965 Nihon noson shakai no kozo to ronri [Structure and logic of Japanese rural societies]. Tokyo: Todai shuppan kai.

Preindustrial Kabul: Its Structure and Function in Transformational Processes in Afghanistan

M. JAMIL HANI FI

In our rapidly but disproportionately transforming ethnographic world, it is pertinent, and increasingly necessary, to pose the question of how and why sociocultural realities have continued rather than to posit the more conventional question of why such realities have changed. It is the former rather than the latter query that thas provided the focus for anthropological researches on non-Western peasant and tribal systems during the past three decades. The cultural anthropologist's active concern for examining stability rather than dynamics has arisen not only from his responsibility to provide the profession with an intelligible, coherent style of life based on a limited span of first-hand investigation but also from his theoretical concern with the overall sociocultural reality. This orientation preceded the Malinowskian functional studies of structural content during the period immediately after World War I. It characterized the fundamental frame of reference of the French school of social anthropology toward the end of the last century. Indeed, the basic premise of Emile Durkheim's works was a consistent and constant concern with the question of the reality and existence of society and the continuities inherent in it. In this paper I shall be concerned primarily with the cultural continuities — in form and in content — of the preindustrial city of Kabul, the capital of the Republic of Afghanistan. The effects of the physical expansion of Kabul on the surrounding satellite villages, specifically Kamari, a village of about 3,500 people located approximetely three miles southeast of Kabul, will be examined. Kamari is a wheat-growing horticultural village situated on the east bank of the Logar river, at the northern foothills of Monaray Ghar mountain range, which demarcates the south-

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eastern peripheries of the Kabul Valley. Its population is comprised of bilingual Tajiks. As in many other areas of Afghanistan, Pushtu and Dari (Afghan Persian) are the spoken languages of Kamari. Sunni Islam is the main religion and the primary element in the social organization of the village. Kamari is one of many similar cultural groupings surrounding the city of Kabul, with a symbiotic relationship that varies from village to village according to geographical distance and the kinds of the sociocultural transactions each village has with Kabul. The structure and the content of such relationships seem to have a significant degree of historical continuity. The definable changes are seen in the shifts in geographical distance instigated primarily by the physical expansion of Kabul, on the one hand, and, on the other, by the constant struggle of the satellite villages to maximize their geocultural distance from Kabul by redefining (in a literal sense) their own physical layout, conducive to and consistent with maintaining the preferrred historical-stable distance between themselves and the city of Kabul. In other words, the traditional no-man's neutral geocultural zone has been constantly changing due to Kabul's process of expansion. Afghanistan is substantially rural, and only about five percent of its approximately fourteen million population lives in cities larger than 10,000. Six cities, Herat, Jalalabad, Kabul, Kandahar, Kunduz, and Mazar, account for about 75 percent of the urban population. All these cities have much historical depth, and reflect the cultural traditions of which they were once an integral part and from which they are now politically separated. These varied cultural traditions are those that flourished and still exist outside the national-political boundaries of Afghanistan. For example, Herat has been historically part of Iran and is more substantially similar in culture content and form to a Persian-Tajik tradition than to anything within Afghanistan. Obviously, there are some major common denominators with other groupings in Afghanistan such as Islam and the Persian and/or Pushtun languages. But the variation on such broad themes, reflected in the various parts of the country, provides for substantial uniqueness. Kandahar and Jalalabad have a PushtunIndian cultural atmosphere, while Mazar-i-Sharif and Kunduz are reflections of Central Asian — Tajik and Turkoman — cultural varieties. Even Kabul, until recently, was largely Persian until Pushtuns were encouraged by the Afghan government to settle the city. Similar encouragement was provided for "Pushtunization" of other parts of Afghanistan, especially in the north. Thus, all major Afghan cities are homogeneous and reflect regional cultural uniformity. Kabul is the only major Afghan city where one finds significant heterogeneity.

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The internal cultural uniformity of urban settings in Afghanistan and the rest of Central Asia is consistent with the sociological type of "preindustrial city" for which Gideon Sjoberg (1960) provides distinct diagnostic features. It should be stressed, however, that the preindustrial urban variety predominant in Central Asia, particularly in Afghanistan, is functionally specialized, structurally stratified, static with regard to structural content, and entails an overwhelming depth through time. Moreover, urban settings in Central Asia, by virtue of being parts of larger sociocultural-national settings, are politically dependent on outside consideration. Although it is not our purpose in this paper to entertain an analysis of taxonomies, it should be stressed that the political dependency of urban settings must be taken seriously in our attempts at classification and comparison. The obvious implication of the ethnographic reality is significant since our preindustrial types in Central Asia must be considered noncorporate, open, marginal, and culturally significant only in the context of a much larger, extraurban cultural phenomenon. Unlike other major preindustrial cities in the southern tier of Central Asia, Kabul never achieved any religious importance. Its role has been primarily political, cultural, economic, and commercial. It is suggested that the anthropological accounts regarding other urban sociocultural entities in this region and elsewhere ought to be reexamined with respect to closeness, independence, cultural self-sufficiency, and marginality, particularly in contemporary non-Western social systems. Anthropology in particular has been prone to generate rather attractive conceptual taxonomic categories for which there has rarely existed a corresponding ethnographic reality. Anthropological works in Mesoamerica (Redfield 1956; Wolf 1957; Lewis 1960); circum Mediterranean (Banfield 1958; Miner and De Vos 1960; Gulick 1955); Central Asia (English 1968; Dupree 1966; Alberts 1963); and South Asia (Dube 1955; Marriott 1955) are among contributions that in one way or another, and in varying degrees, suffer from overabstraction, conceptual acrobatics, and/or misleading (and at times erroneous) ethnographic accounts. Kabul is a rather new city by comparison with other preindustrial cities in Afghanistan. Its political significance dates back to the beginning of the Mongols when, early in the sixteenth century, they made it a stopping point on their way to India. Prior to this, from the fifth to seventh centures, the Kabul Valley was an alternate political base for the Ratbil kings of the Kushan dynasty. The city became a nominal capital in 1773 when Timur Shah moved the seat of government from Kandahar to Kabul. Timur Shah is the son of Ahmed Shah Sadozai of the Durian tribe, considered by many to be the father of modern Afghanistan because

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he made the first systematic attempt to integrate the various sociocultural groupings within the present boundaries of Afghanistan. However, the present boundaries were not formally consolidated until the late nineteenth century. Prior to the formal move by Timur Shah, the city was primarily a Tajik commercial center, with much cultural homogeneity, serving at times as a buffer between rival groups within the country. The physical layout of the city was defined by at least two major considerations, the two major sects of Islam, shia and sunni. It is assumed that quartering of these two major sects, in addition to the concentration of a small ruling elite and occupational classes, determined the overall physical plan of Kabul until late toward the end of the Sadozai political reign in Afghanistan. In 1835, when Dost Mahammed from the Mohammedzai branch of the Durani tribe and founder of the recently deposed Afghan royal dynasty proclaimed himself Amir, he moved the political capital with him as his two terms of Amirship, marked by acute political instability within Afghanistan, made it imperative for him to work from a rather portable capital. Only in 1880, when Abdul Rahman, the grandson of Dost Mohammed, assumed the Afghan throne, did Kabul once again become the political capital of the country, a role it served until the present time. The population of Kabul at the time of Abdul Rahman's ascendence is estimated to have been between 50,000 to 100,000 people. With the increasing political stability throughout Afghanistan, and the mounting political role Kabul had assumed, the capital became the only significant and central political focus in the country. With a political dimension added to its commercial role, the capital remained fairly stable in form and function. From 1900 until the end of World War II no significant changes in the morphology can be recorded. However, it should be mentioned that the new political significance which the city had assumed toward the latter part of the nineteenth century led to the building of such new functional structures as the Amir's palace, a few government buildings and schools, and later some mini-palaces within and outside the city for the exclusive use of the royal family and their close associates, a pattern which continued until recently. During the 1920's, however, Amir Amanullah, the grandson of Abdul Rahman, made some accelerated and rather hasty provisions for urban planning, Western-styled public buildings, and other European imitations. The ruins of a few such completed structures attest to the failure of Amanullah's designs and to an ill-timed (perhaps unnecessary) cultural encounter between West and East. Prior to Abdul Rahman's establishment of a solid political base in

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Kabul, there was only one visible structure in Kabul, Bala Hisar, a military fort (southeast of the present city), built by the Sadozais (see Plate 1). Is is assumed (in the absence of reliable evidence) that immediately before the fall of the Sadozais there were some other important physical structures, such as mosques, public baths, religious shrines, and one or two generalized market places on the outskirts of the city as well as closer to the urban core. The only visible change between the period 1880-1945 was the substantial increase in the population of Kabul, which almost doubled itself to about 200,000. The corresponding physical growth of the city was merely reflected in physical expansion of old quarters outwards in an east-southeast-southwesterly direction. Nevertheless, the increase in size was confined to south of the Kabul river, which presently divides the city into north (new) and south (old) zones. The only major developments north of the Kabul river during this period were the elaboration of the royal palace, initially built by Abdul Rahman, quarters for military garrisons, a few government buildings, and an arms factory. Even the first secular high school and the first military academy were built south of the Kabul river. The latter was constructed adjacent to the Bala Hisar. The old city (with Shor Bazar as its core), sprawling south of the Kabul River, was and still is the hub of commercial activity (Plate 1). It is zigzagged by specialized quarters (marked by protective, confining high walls) and eventually leads to the large covered general bazaar, called chowk. The minor alleys (foot paths) were primarily tributaries to the major alleys and bazaars and generally emanated from the various entrances to the quarters. The small quarters were comprised of kinship groups (corresponding to occupational categories) and the larger quarters included broad ethnic groups. Only the non-Muslim groupings, the Hindus and Jews, occupied quarters which were totally surrounded by Muslim groupings, all of whom had either direct or guaranteed secondary access to outside the city or to a rural no-man's land. Access to the city from across the Kabul river was provided by various bridges, of which many are still in use. In fact, some of the north-south thoroughfares of the northern part of Kabul emanate from the northern tips of these bridges, articulating the old and the new parts in a smooth, coherent blend. The bazaars are identified by occupational-functional references and the quarters by ethnic and/or religious terminology. The general markets are so located as to be easily accessible to outsiders (the surrounding farming villages). With the recent expansion of Kabul in all directions the distance between it and the surrounding farming communities has

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been shrinking rapidly. There are no data on the stability of the economic and cultural relationships between the various quarters or zones of Kabul and any particular rural villages. If such stable relationships existed, we can assume that they were determined by mere proximity. The city was, until the early 1940's, administered by the provincial government of Kabul, but only with regard to policing and collecting sanitation taxes. For administrative purposes the city was divided into districts (nahias), which generally corresponded to traditional quarters. Their main function was that of keeping a kind of "law and order" and drafting into the Afghan army able-bodied young men. In 1945 there were thirteen nahias, of which twelve were in the old city. The alleys and pathways, by and large, did not have names, and the houses were not numbered. Individual houses (living quarters) were identified by tachynomic reference, or by referral to a location near a commonly known "landmark." Toward the late 1940's and early 1950's the Afghan government embarked on "economic development" plans which in one way or another required a new or more elaborate bureaucracy and accommodations, both cultural and physical, for a new kind of foreign and domestic elite. In addition, beginning in the late 1930's and early 1940's, Afghanistan established new and varied "diplomatic," "cultural," and "economic" ties with foreign governments. There were such ties prior to this period but on a smaller scale and with very few foreign governments. Of particular interest were the increasing numbers of foreign educators who began teaching on a selective basis at all levels in formal educational institutions. This led to a need for "new" developments and housing facilities for the "foreigners." Because most of the educational, governmental, and other agencies were already to the north of Kabul river, the new facilities were built close to them. Thus, the so-called "new city" or shahri now was created to provide living quarters and other secondary requirements for the new elite and the non-Afghans (Plate 1). The physical plan (if there was such a thing) was a mere replica of ethnic quarters to the south of Kabul river. No attempt was made to build public facilities such as centralized sewage disposal and centralized water resources for this area. The physical structures were imitation Western abodes that used traditional building material, architecture, style, and technology. Late in the 1940's, the government (through the office of the first elected "mayor" of Kabul, a German-educated Afghan engineer) embarked on an "urban renewal" plan which primarily involved the demolition of a large part of the old Kabul just south of the river, and the creation of a broad boulevard, Jadi Maiwand (Plate 1), styled after an imaginary Western counterpart. The project was carried out swiftly, an east-

Preindustrial Kabul

447

west strip of the old city was demolished, and the construction of new "modern" buildings began. These new, modern buildings turned out to be mostly brightly painted restorations of partially demolished old structures. As a result, thousands of "old city" dwellers were dislocated and were provided with easy credit and lots in the prearranged subdivisions (,kartas) in all parts of the old and new Kabul. These subdivisions, which were built rapidly with all the traditional trimmings, not only increased the physical size of Kabul, but attracted many tens of thousands of the rural population from all parts of the country to become city dwellers. This was a possibility that rural people had both idealized from the outside and feared when they were not physically and culturally a part of it. As the Afghan government's commitments to "development" increased and as "urban" dwelling became both an easily attained attraction and at times a necessity, new subdivisions (kartas) were created. A significant expression of this process has been the mushrooming of the population of Kabul from about 250,000 in 1950 to about 500,000 in 1969, when the first official census of Kabul was taken by the Afghan government, with the help of the United Nations. In spite of this enormous growth in population and in size, Kabul has expanded its size only by creating replicas of its older substructures (kartas) or traditional compounds of the existing preindustrial city, with little change in cultural content. The streets and dwellings of the city have neither names nor numbers. Giving directions to a stranger, for example, is a predestined exercise in futility. The newly created quarters, aside from their outwardly European appearance, are genuine replicas of old preindustrial Kabul. True, there has been a limited amount of "new industry" (invariably located outside the city) on a very limited scale, which is at times a mere elaboration of an antecedent cottage industry; there are some paved roads, some very new "modern" buildings. But the sociocultural atmosphere, or rather, the content of Kabul's physical form, consists of alarmingly fattened continuities from past cultural traditions. One might state with much accuracy that Kabul has become obese and larger, but it is a macrocosm of an old microcosm, both in form and content. The process may be correctly described as an urban "slash and burn." It is not our purpose here to discuss in detail the continuities of cultural patterns, but specifically to discuss the effect of the expanded morphology of Kabul on a nearby farm village, Kamari. The remainder of this paper will discuss specific physical and cultural changes which have come about in Kamari due to the physical expansion of Kabul (Plate 2). Kamari is one of the many dozen service villages that have existed in the

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Kabul River valleys. Their historical function has been to provide the city with agricultural and horticultural produce. They get necessary cash for their crops, fruits, and vegetables from city dwellers and others such as the seminomadic pastoralists, who settle around the village during the summer and work as farm laborers. Historically the nomads have acted as cultural brokers between the city and the village and other nearby groups. Indeed, in Kamari, where about fifty households of these nomads were employed during the summer of 1970, they provided a cultural contact between the village and Kabul in a variety of ways, chiefly by running constant errands for their village employers in the city, such as purchasing goods, food, and other items available only in Kabul. But the third-party activities these migrants perform are not anough to stop physical and cultural distances between Kabul and Kamari fiom shrinking. As indicated earlier, during the past two decades Kabul has been expanding at an unprecedented rate in all directions and particularly northwest and southeast. Before 1950, the distance between southeastern outer limits of Kabul and Kamari was about six miles. There was no bus service between the city and Kamari, and the only ways of getting to and from Kabul were walking, riding a donkey, or taking buses and trucks traveling between Kabul and Jalalabad via the old gravel road, about a mile south of Kamari. Thus Kabul, and everything it symbolized and stood for, was quite remote. It was present, or rather, immediate, by virtue of the government representative (hakim) in the district of Bagrami, in the province of Kabul. Only in cases of serious dispute, and for pressing personal reasons, would a Kamari wal venture out to Kabul. Landholdings were fairly large, and they were concentrated mostly in the hands of local landlords who lived either in Kamari or close by in another village. There were no residents of Kamari who worked in Kabul, and there were no "Kabulis" who resided permanently or seasonally in Kamari. There are no census figures, but it is estimated that the population of Kamari was more than 3,500. There were no schools in the village, but access was available to a government elementary school for boys up to third grade in Bagrami, about one and one-half miles away. The local mosques were the only agencies for formal education, which consisted totally of reading and memorizing the Koran. There were no formal social contacts between Kamari and other nearby villages. All males interviewed who had been married during the 1950's had married within Kamari across clan or lineage lines. Thus, Kamari had existed as a self-sufficient community, at least with respect to subsis-

Preindustrial

Plate 1.

Kabul

Aerial view of K a b u l , A f g h a n i s t a n

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tence and other economic and social considerations. The only permanent dependency it has had on Kabul has been for collecting human waste for use as manure from those areas of Kabul that are closest to it. But since they collected waste during the early morning hours, partially to avoid being seen, and partially to out-collect other villages engaged in the same enterprise, contact with the inner dynamics of the city were minimal. Waste continues to be collected on donkey back and along the same pattern. Only the location of collection in Kabul has changed to a newer and closer mena (mena is the Pushtu equivalent of karta) about three miles from Kamari (Plate 2). Toward the latter part of the 1950's and during the early 1960's the Afghan government's plans for economic development took on an added dimension of acceleration in Kabul and elsewhere. The country embarked on its second five-year-plan for economic development. The net result of these developmental schemes, aside from quantitative statistical gains, was the boost provided to the expansion of Kabul. Some new structures were built, commensurate with new functions. Many existing facilities were enlarged to accommodate an increased number of traditional responsibilities. Alongside these elaborations, Kabul became an attractive place for commerce, both national and international, and for the Afghan farmer and farm worker as they became replaced by machines and Western technological substitutes. At the same time, Kabul, not having provided enough employment opportunities for its new residents, became populated by a substantial number of unemployed, who, among other things, could become a major instrument of political unrest and instability in the future. In any event, the physical growth of Kabul remained unchecked, and it has remained so until now. Because they had been hastily built the new subdivisions of several years ago became dilapidated, over-crowded slums. Consequently, the government has followed the precedent of creating new subdivisions or kartas for residential purposes wherever possible. To the north and northeast the city has already reached the foothills of Khayr Khana pass, a remote agricultural land a few years ago. The same pattern holds true for the expansion for residential areas in all other directions. In fact the process of "slash and burn" assumes a real urban dimension. The problem has reached such unchecked proportions that the surrounding hills of Kabul have become literally covered due to the almost free-for-all grabbing for a small plot of land. Because centralized sewage facilities and water are nonexistent, the location of a new building becomes a secondary consideration. Because there is no comprehensive uniform housing code and very little means of enforcing

450

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the existing regulations, the construction of very poor dwelling units continues. Understandably, no statistics are available about the housing developments and new construction. Prior to 1960 the Shah Shaheed karta, southeast of Kabul, was the new development closest to Kamari. In the mid-1960's Shah Shaheed became a run-down residential slum and almost tripled in population. The same pattern characterizes all other subdivisions constructed in the 1950's and 1960's. Beginning in 1965 permits were issued for construction in the Said Noor Ahmad Shah mena which further reduced the distance between Kabul and Kamari. In addition, a new textile factory was constructed halfway between the southeastern boundary of Said Noor Ahmad Shah mena and Bagrami, the seat of the Bagrami district, one mile from Kamari. As of July 1970 twenty-seven Kamari wal were employed in this factory in semiprofessional jobs. The road to Bagrami from Kabul was paved in 1969. Taxi service has been inaugurated, and regular bus service, four times daily, has begun. Meanwhile, two elementary schools (up to third grade), one for boys and one for girls, have been established. The three-grade elementary school in Bagrami has been expanded to the sixth grade. The success of all these new facilities is due, to a large degree, to the moving into Kamari of a number of government officials and their families, most of whom work for the local district government. Some six families have moved from Kabul and commute to their jobs in Kabul from Kamari. With the opening of the two new schools and the expansion of the third, the number of teachers has increased, and almost all the male teachers live in Kamari in newly built houses which resemble closely their counterparts in the encroaching subdivisions of Kabul. The women teachers, however, still commute from Kabul. Since Kamari has become a potential new subdivision for Kabul, the land values have nearly doubled during the period of 1969 to 1970. Real estate speculation seems to play a major part in land transactions and land prospecting. Individual Kamari wal landowners still seem to resist these intrusions, but the number of such individuals, as small as it is, seems to be decreasing. Major landholders and prospectors from Kabul are most active in capitalizing on the increasing visibility and accelerated proximity of Kabul. Thus, we can see an urban "slash and burn" process of uncontrolled expansion in a preindustrial city resulting in the decimation of a village which then becomes nothing but an urban slum. The process described here has significant sociocultural consequences for Kamari and similar communities, and for the Republic of Afghanistan whose political viabili-

Preindustrial Kabul

451

ty as a nation-state has always benefited from the diversity of the small, agricultural (rural) traditions. The success of the modernization government plans in Afghanistan will rest substantially on how effectively they can bring the country into the twentieth century while preserving the best of its rich and diverse agricultural-nonurban past.

REFERENCES ALBERTS, ROBERT C.

1963 "Social structure and culture change in an Iranian village." Ann Arbor, University of Michigan microfilms. BANFIELD, EDWARD C.

1958 The moral basis of a backward society. Glencoe: The Free Press. DUBE, s . c .

1955 Indian village. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. DUPREE, LOUIS

1966 Aq Kupruk: a town in northern Afghanistan. American University Field Staff, Report Service, South Asia Series 10 (9-10). ENGLISH, PAUL WARD

1968 "The preindustrial city of Herat, Afghanistan." Mimeographed manuscript. GULICK, JOHN

1955 Social structure and culture change in a Lebanese village. Viking Publications in Anthropology 21. New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation. LEWIS, OSCAR

1960 Tepoztlan: village in Mexico. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. editor 1955 Village India: studies in the little community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

MARRIOTT, MC KIM,

MINER, HORACE M., GEORGE DE VOS

1960 Oasis and Casbah: Algerian culture and personality in change. University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology, Anthropological Papers 15. Ann Arbor. REDFIELD, ROBERT

1956 Peasant society and culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. SJOBERG, GIDEON

1960 The preindustrial city. New York: The Free Press. WOLF. ERIC R.

1957 Closed and corporate peasant communities in Mesoamerica and central Java. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 13 (1).

Problems Involved in the Human Aspects of Rural Resettlement Schemes in Egypt

HELMI R. TADROS

Human settlement has been defined as "development of viable communities on new or unused land through the introduction of people" (United Nations 1966:1). In actual practice there are two models for land settlement, one which may be termed "spontaneous" and the other "paternalistic." The spontaneous settlement leaves full scope for individual initiative, but no effort is made by national or international agencies to increase the competence of the settlers, either as individuals or as a group, and no attention is paid to the proper place and function of the settlement within the national context. The second model, on the other hand, pays attention to the technical education of the settlers, to the extent of providing them at times with technically advanced tools and equipment (United Nations 1966 :iii). We shall deal here with the second type, i.e. the paternalistic. In other words, our chief concern will be with planned resettlements arising from developmental efforts undertaken by the Egyptian government as an effective instrument toward relieving population pressures on the old settled areas while increasing the nation's food production. The large-scale planning of new settlements is a relatively recent experiment in developing countries. The proper planning of land-settlement schemes based on adequate preinvestment surveys of physical and human resources as well as the social setting and human values does not need stressing. Proper planning reduces the elements of failure. However, planning is one thing and implementation another. Inadequate implementation usually results in serious difficulties which later require costly adjustment. Some projects, however, have been in operation for a number of years and a considerable amount of administrative experience has

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been accumulated. Unfortunately, little systematic evaluation has been undertaken of the human and social factors involved in land settlement and community development, nor have most of the experiences of planners and field administrators been recorded in such a way as to be of benefit in the designing of new projects. Settlement projects are not only very complex and diverse but are also very risky investments. They often fail, and when this happens the main sufferers are the settlers. And, if they succeed, they are apt to draw resources away from other rural areas, which then fall further behind. We do not intend to make an exhaustive presentation of all the problems exemplified by the newly settled areas. The purpose, rather, is to give some concrete illustrative examples of problems involved in each of the three types of rural resettlement found in Egypt. These three types of settlements involve three main subcultural groups. These are, first of all, the peasants who represent a voluntary type of settlement, the Nubians who represent a forced type of settlement and, finally, the nomads who are being encouraged to become sedentary in the northwestern coastal region.

POPULATION PROBLEM Intimately connected with the economy of Egypt and thus with resettlement schemes is its population problem, i.e. the relation between the number of people and their rate of increase on the one hand and the agricultural and industrial resources on the other. Egypt's annual birth rate is now about 43 per thousand and its death rate about 17 per thousand, giving it a net annual increase of 26 per thousand. These three rates are considered among the highest in the world. In addition, the application of new methods of epidemic control, the improvement of sanitation, and the development of public health facilities and child welfare centers will soon bring the death rate, especially infant mortality rate, well below the present levels. The combination of a high rate of population growth, limited agricultural area, and the underdeveloped condition of industry gives the country a low standard of living with an average annual income of $150 per head. In 1907 Egypt's population amounted to 11.3 millions with a cultivated area of 5.4. million feddans.1 In 1970, the population tripled to 33.4 millions while cultivated area increased only to 6.5 million 1

A feddan is equal to 1.038 acres.

Human Aspects of Rural Resettlement Schemes in Egypt

455

feddans (about 3 percent of the country's total area), averaging less than one-fifth feddan per capita. As for the density of population, the inhabited and cultivated area consists of 34,815 square kilometers, resulting in a density of 745 persons per square kilometer, with 660 persons per square kilometer of cultivated land. Egypt's economic resources are mainly agricultural and the bulk of agricultural products is consumed near the point of production. Furthermore, industry is still in its early stages and it is not yet able to absorb the surplus rural population which has remained on the land. The Egyptian government is therefore trying to raise the capacity of industry to absorb increases in the labor force, and to extend the cultivable land area while simultaneously increasing the productivity of the existing arable land. It is also attempting to convince the people of the merits of family planning and birth control. The problem of family planning and birth control, especially in rural communities and among the lower working class, is not one of knowledge and availability of contraceptive devices but rather of the willingness to use them. Such willingness comes only with a new way of life and broader horizons for the individual. In the traditional agricultural society children are economically productive and inexpensive to rear. In addition, large family numbers draw increased social prestige to the family unit. Furthermore, high fertility rates, the fear of divorce due to loss or lack of children, and fatalism add to the problem. AGRICULTURAL MEASURES TAKEN BY THE GOVERNMENT In Egypt agriculture is important because it makes up about 30 percent of the national income, absorbs about 57.1 percent of the labor force, brings in most of the country's foreign exchange, provides support for perhaps three-quarters of the population, and determines the entire mode of life for most of the people. But it is clearly vain to hope for a rapid expansion of the gross national product if the main sector of the economy remains traditional in its mode of agricultural production. Unless agricultural output can be expanded to meet the increasing food demand economic development will continue to suffer. In order to attain the goal of increased agricultural output, the Egyptian government has taken the following measures:

Agrarian Reform The goal of agrarian reform, according to Dr. Sayed Marei (1957:197),

456

HELM] R. TADROS

Deputy Prime Minister and former Minister of Agriculture, who has guided it from its inception, is "to give the peasant both higher income and the dignity, independence, and initiative that accompany individual ownership." The difference between land settlement and agrarian reform is that the first forms new farming units and rural communities while the second reforms the existing rural economy (El Ghonemy 1971:7). The basic problem facing rural communities in Egypt before the 1952 Revolution was the concentration of the principal means of production, namely capital and land, in the hands of a few. In the early fifties, about 3 percent of all landowners possessed approximately half of the total agricultural area, with an average of 670 feddans per head, as compared to an average of 8 feddans among the rest of the landowners. By way of example, this means that those owning 5 feddans or less had an annual income equal to less than half of one day's income of the big landowner. It was, therefore, necessary to widen the base of the already existing landholdings and to develop land reclamation projects that would progressively add new areas. These land reclamation projects were greatly needed to meet the increasing problem of overpopulation and unemployment and to alleviate the increasing pressures on available land which resulted in lower incomes for agricultural workers and discouragement due to lack of incentives. Landownership was limited in four main stages: (1) Law 78 of 1952 limited landownership to a maximum of 200 feddans per individual; (2) Law 127 of 1961 lowered the maximum limit to 100 feddans·, (3) Law 15 of 1963 decreed government requisition of all land owned by foreigners; and (4) Law 50 of 1969 reduced the maximum limit to 50 feddans per person, and 100 feddans to the family as a unit.

Vertical Intensification Increasing the productivity of the existing arable land is done through various means, principally through improvement and conservation of soil fertility, introduction of new crop varieties, distribution of better and higher yielding seeds, intensive application of fertilizers, control of insects and plant diseases, improvement of livestock breeds by selection, introduction of new hybrids, control of animal diseases, and use of agricultural machinery.

Human Aspects of Rural Resettlement Schemes in Egypt

457

Horizontal Expansion The main objectives in the horizontal expansion of agriculture are: to provide employment for the growing population; to expand domestic production to meet the increased demands of home consumption while simultaneously promoting the development of export industries to balance current imports; and to create institutional structures conductive to cultural change. Land reclamation schemes are the vehicles for accomplishing the above objectives. In Egypt, there are about 1,300,000 acres being reclaimed that will eventually involve the resettlement of about two million inhabitants.

ADMINISTRATIVE SETUP The Ministry of Land Reclamation (Government of Egypt 1971:12-39) operates with the help of four autonomous bodies: 1. The General Authority for Land Development (GALD). 2. The General Authority for Desert Development (GADD). 3. The General Organization for Land Reclamation (GOLR). 4. The General Authority for the Cultivation and Development of Reclaimed Land (EACDRL). GALD was founded in 1954 and is concerned with the design of irrigation-drainage networks and the general design plans for reclamation projects and new villages as well as the paving of the internal canals and the formulation of community infrastructures. GADD was founded in 1958 and is concerned with research, investigation and exploitation of artesian water as well as the study of agricultural and livestock production suitable for desert areas. Moreover, GADD has the responsibility for rehabilitation projects concerned with the sedentarization of the nomads. The authority's main activities are centered in the New Valley project, the Northwest Coastal project, the Northeast Coastal project in Sinai, Sinai projects east of the Suez Canal, the Mariout Extension project and the Minya project (Figure 1). GOLR was established in 1961 and is charged with the task of coordinating the work of the six companies concerned with the execution of reclamation projects. The complete utilization of the Aswan High Dam water will result in the reclamation of 1,300,000 acres of land, to be settled and developed under the supervision of EACDRL. Its main function is to bring the reclaimed land areas to a level of soil fertility and productivity adequate

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International boundaries -.-.-.-.-.- Tracks Working zones of the Authority for the Cultivation and Development of Reclaimed Land 6. Northern Tahrir 1. Northwestern Delta 7. Southern Tahrir 2. Eastern Mid-Delta 8. Southwestern Tahrir 3. Western Mid-Delta 9. Central Egypt 4. Eastern Delta 10. Upper Egypt 5. Mariout

Human Aspects of Rural Resettlement Schemes in Egypt

459

for distribution to settlers. EACDRL further helps the latter by providing them with a number of community services designed to bring about an improvement in economic and social conditions and hence in the living standard of the farmers. Since EACDRL (El Abd 1971:16-18) is the most important authority dealing with land reclamation, cultivation and settlement, it may be appropriate here to discuss in some detail its administrative setup and how its different departments at the national level are functioning in an integrated way. EACDRL was established through presidential decree in April 1966, with the aim of integrating under one central authority the efforts of the various organizations such as the Egyptian-American Rural Improvement Services, the Tahrir Province project, and the Egyptian Organization for Rehabilitation which deals with land cultivation and resettlement. EACDRL is at present supervising the cultivation and development of approximately 700,000 acres in the Nile Valley and Delta. This area is divided into the following ten working zones (Figure 1): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Northwestern Delta Eastern Mid-Delta Western Mid-Delta Eastern Delta Mariout Northern Tahrir Southern Tahrir Southwestern Tahrir Central Egypt Upper Egypt

Each zone presently covers about 70,000 acres and is divided into farms of about 5,000 acres each. EACDRL has four departments which are responsible for the basic phases of development: 1. The Land and Water Department determines the means of maximum utilization of land and water resources. 2. The Plant Production Department supervises all aspects of agricultural production in each district. 3. The Engineering Department deals with civil engineering, agricultural machinery and maintenance. 4. The Migration Settlement and Community Development Department selects and transfers families from overpopulated areas to newly reclaimed land, assists their readjustment, and supervises the economic

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HELM! R . TADROS

and social development of the communities. It is also responsible for the welfare of the migratory laborers. Auxiliary departments of EACDRL include the Legislative Department, the Department of Finance and Administration, and the Planning and Training Department. The seven departments are also represented at the zone level. Heads of the zone departments, while working under the supervision of their administrative general directors of the zones, still receive their technical guidance from the departments at the headquarters level. It is the responsibility of the president of the Board of Directors, in cooperation with the director of the Authority and the director of each department, to plan the utilization of the land and the resettlement of the people and to guide and supervise the zone directors responsible for the implementation of these plans.

THREE TYPES OF RESETTLEMENT "The ultimate measure of success in community building in settlement programs is the extent to which the settlement community becomes a self-managing and self-sustaining social, civil and economic unit, functioning harmoniously with other units of the society in the context of a general national development plan" (Wen 1971:19). In other words, the ultimate aim of the Egyptian government is to integrate these newly settled areas into the life of both the region and the nation of which they are a part in order to enable them to contribute fully to national progress. Despite governmental efforts to link the new communities with both regional and national objectives, research investigations have revealed the existence of major problems obstructing their integration.

Voluntary Peasant

Resettlement

In voluntary rural resettlement there is the option of selecting those peasants whom EACDRL considers the most promising farmers and settlers from a variety of places, thereby creating entirely new communities. EACDRL's Migration, Settlement, and Community Development Department is responsible for the social aspects of resettlement. Settlers are carefully chosen on the basis of individual and familial qualifications such as the following: a settler must be a literate "able farmer," twenty-

Human Aspects of Rural Resettlement Schemes in Egypt

461

one to fifty years old, have a maximum family of five, a clear police record, and be ready to join the agricultural cooperative. Transportation is provided for the transfer of families, each of which, upon arrival in the reclaimed area, receives a house, a cow, simple furniture, a maximum of 5 feddans of land, and the green crop on the land. The families are provided with public services (i.e. educational, health, social, and religious), supplied by the national service departments. Furthermore, the Migration, Settlement, and Community Development Department promotes the rehabilitation of the settlers by implementing programs aimed at the economic, social, and political advancement of communities and by encouraging cooperation among the settlers to solve mutual problems and to plan and execute local development projects. Vital to this development are the local organizations. The settlers form cooperative agriculture societies through which agricultural and marketing activities are regulated and seeds, fertilizers, and tools are provided. In each village, a community council represents the people and copes with major local problems. Functional committees advise on specific aspects of community development including health, family planning, housing, child welfare, small-scale industry, vocational training, and cooperatives (El Hamamsy and Tadros 1971). The following are some of the problems exemplified by the voluntary peasant resettlement: To meet socialist land reform ideology, most of the peasant settlers are chosen from among poor landless agricultural workers. From the past twenty-five years of accumulated social science knowledge, however, we have learned that people at the absolute bottom of the economic structure are the most resistant to change. The opportunities for success would no doubt be much greater if selection were directed at those representing middle- and higher-income groups (Foster 1971:13). CONFLICTING OBJECTIVES

The Egyptian criteria of settler selection limit selection to those age groups vital to the maintenance of the community. However, in their overemphasis on agriculture as the previous occupation of each settler, planners overlooked the other occupational roles vital to a self-sustaining community. Hence no consideration was given to supplying the often isolated communities with the important services of carpenters, smiths, tailors, barbers, etc. When the first death occurred in the newly settled area of Quta, for instance, the people found themselves in a most distressing situation upon realizing that they did OCCUPATIONAL IMBALANCE

462

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not have an undertaker. Egypt's newly settled areas, without exception, suffer from an occupational imbalance (El Hamamasy and Abou Seoud 1962:17). Community development programs aim not only at providing services to settlers but also at obtaining their maximum participation once these services are provided. If planned participation is not provided for, or does not work, the settlers are likely to solve the problems themselves through unplanned means that may have serious consequences. Agricultural cooperatives are one example of settlers' participation but there is general agreement that these cooperatives have not been totally successful. One explanation given is that this is due to the attitude of administrators who tend to take over the cooperative and make it an arm of government authority. Another explanation refers to the settlers' lack of sufficient education and experience. One example of settlers' popular participation is their membership in advisory committees at local, regional and national levels. The danger here is that many of the elected settler representatives do not represent the interest of the whole community as much as they do their own private interests (Fernea 1971).

SETTLERS' PARTICIPATION

In the Ibis area in the Northwestern Delta sector, the resettlement project started with the construction of COMBINED A N D CENTRAL VILLAGES

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what is called "combined villages." According to this system, a village is located in the center of an agricultural area ranging from 2 to 3 thousand acres. The village embraces in its center almost all of the public facilities needed (i.e. school, hospital, commercial center, agricultural cooperative, mosque, etc.). Surrounding the village, the houses of settlers and service employees are constructed in a rectangular shape. Farmers' houses are constructed in clusters of 12 with wide roads intersecting the village. A combined village usually consists of about 400 houses (Figure 2). As a result of the concentration of settlers in these combined villages, some farmers happened to live very close to their fields while others had to walk for more than two kilometers to reach their lands. Therefore the system of constructing combined villages had to be revised and instead EGOLCD introduced the system of constructing what is called central villages. According to this system a central village is set up as a kind of service village. The services (administrative, economic, or social) are centered in this village, associated with which are a number of subvillages ranging between two and fifteen. A subvillage is usually composed of between 36 and 90 settlers' houses only. Houses are built in blocks of 18. Thus the number of houses is usually a multiple of 18, i.e. 36, 72, 90, and so on. The only public facilities provided within the subvillages are a small mosque and sometimes private grocery stores. All other services must be sought at the central village with which the subvillages are affiliated. The only houses located within the central village itself are reserved for settlers whose lands are just adjacent to the village or in the near vicinity of the village, and for officials and workers involved in nearby organizations and public utilities (Figure 3). The advantage of the new village system is that no settler lives more than half a kilometer from his farm. But in return for this convenience, settlers and their family members must travel a distance of perhaps over two kilometers to reach the central village and the public utilities and services provided there. If we add to this the absence and/or scarcity of means of transportation like cars and buses, one can think of the hardships a sick person, for instance, has to face if he wants to reach the hosptial or of the daily trip youngsters of six years and over have to make in order to reach their school whether in the cold, rainy winter days or in the hot summer season. Hence neither the combined village nor the central village proved able to meet the situation adequately. Another peculiar observation in relation to the first ten combined and central villages constructed in this area is that these villages do not bear names, being identified only by a serial number that indicates the chrono-

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Figure 3.

Subvillage

Subvillage

Subvillage

Subvillage

Plan of a central village and its subvillages

logical order of their construction. For example, Village 1 was the first to be built back in 1954, while Village 10 came later in 1968. As for central villages, subvillages, like villages, are also identified by the numbers they carry. For example Village No. 5 in this area has six subvillages which are called 1:5,2:5,3:5,4:5,5:5, and 6:5 consecutively. As for Village 6, it has eleven subvillages. So when a settler is asked about the name of his village, the answer might be 3:5 or 10:6 and the like. The big question that can be raised here is: "Can man develop loyalty to a number?" First-hand observation indicates that a settler's house in any reclaimed area of the ten sectors is far different from a farmer's house in any Egyptian traditional village. Houses are built of red brick with concrete roofs. But the most striking change in house design in the first ten villages in the northwestern Delta sector, however, is the disconnection of stables from the houses. Rather than being enclosed within the house area, stables are grouped together at the outskirts of the village, although each settler has his own stable with private entrance and set of keys. The house entrance leads to an unroofed yard 5.5 by 8 meters which may be used for future construction if the settler wants to build an addition to his house. The house includes an unroofed living area 5 by 2 meters, a lavatory and bathroom 1 by 2 meters, and two bedrooms 3 by 3.5 meters each (Figure 4). When newly arrived, a settler who had always lived under very poor

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Human Aspects of Rural Resettlement Schemes in Egypt

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