Book Review: Social Implications of Industrialisation and Urbanisation in Africa South of the Sahara
| DOI | 10.1177/002070205701200314 |
| Date | 01 September 1957 |
| Author | J. Henry Richardson |
| Published date | 01 September 1957 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
BOOK REVIEWS
237
of
literature
but
as
a record
of
that
atmosphere
in
which
the
attitudes
and
values of
the
present
settler
community
were
largely
formed.
McGill
University
R.
C.
PRATT
SOCIAL
IMPLICATIONS
OF
INDUSTRIALISATION
AND
URBANISATION
IN
AFRICA
SOUTH
OF
THE
SAHARA.
Prepared
under
the
auspices
of
UNESCO
by
the
International
African
Institute.
1956.
(Paris:
UNESCO. 743pp.
$9.00.)
The
recent
achievement
of
political
independence
and
self-
government
by
Ghana,
which
is
a
tribute
both
to
the
progress
made
by
the
people
of
that
country
and
to
the
enlightened
colo-
nial
policy
of
the
British
Government,
has
intensified
interest
in
the
advancement
and problems
of
African
peoples.
Though
Africa
is
still predominantly
rural
and
agricultural, industrialisa-
tion
and
the
growth
of
urban
centres
are
proceeding
rapidly
and
the
trend
will
continue.
Major
changes
in
traditional
ways
of
living
are
involved
and,
especially
since
the
war,
many
detailed
researches
have
been
made
by
anthropologists,
economists,
socio-
logists,
and
psychologists
into
living
and
working
conditions
in
mining
and
industrial
centres.
The
results
already
yield
a
wide
range
of
information
which
provides
a
basis
for
devising
policies
to
guide
future
developments
and remedies
where
conditions
are
shown
to
be
unsatisfactory.
The
volume
under
review
gives
summaries
by
Meran
Mc-
Culloch
of
thirty
such
studies,
reproduces
fifteen
papers
pre-
sented
by
experts
at
the
UNESCO
Conference
on
the
social
ef-
fects
of
economic
developments
held
at
Abidjan
in
1954,
and
there
is
a
detailed
account
of
an
eighteen-month
social
survey
in
Stanleyville
in
the
Belgian
Congo.
In an
introduction,
Daryll
Forde,
Director
of
the
International
African
Institute,
brings
together
many
of
the
pieces
of
a
complex
mosaic.
The
scope
is
wide
geographically and
in
the
subjects
investigated.
Included
are
centres
in
British,
French,
and
Belgian
colonies,
in
the
Rhodesias
and
the
Union
of
South
Africa,
with
their
differing
policies
and
systems
of
government.
Among
them
are
such
widely
separated
places
as
Brazzaville,
Elizabethville,
Nairobi,
Sekondi-Takoradi,
Kampala,
Leopoldville,
Dakar,
the
copperbelt
towns
of
Northern
Rhodesia
and
the
gold
mining
communities
on
the
Witwatersrand.
Health
and
nutrition,
housing,
educa-
tion,
aptitudes,
migration,
labour
conditions,
marriage,
delinqu-
ency,
the
impact
of
a
cash
economy,
and
the
pull
of
tribal
associa-
tions
and
ways of living
are
all
reviewed.
Here
is
indeed much
food
for thought
and
action.
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