ABSTRACT
A world-wide phenomenon in this era of rapid change is the movement of peasant and tribal peoples to large urban centers. They are attracted by the glitter of the city and the hope that they will escape the economic bondage of their rural environment. Unfortunately, the economic realities are usually harsh for such untrained people, and many of the city’s advantages are kept from them even when they live in it. Added to this is the fact that they have been uprooted from the familiar social environment of the village which they understood and where they had a place. In the urban slum they find what place they can alongside strangers who have come from villages or tribes or other parts of the country, who have different customs, and who may speak different languages. The old familiarity is gone, and often there is little to serve as a replacement. In a sense, such people live without any culture, having lost the means to follow village ways without learning or being permitted by circumstance to engage fully in the ways of the city. They live in a state of “anomie,” where there are no generally accepted norms of behavior. Such a social environment is a difficult one in which to promote organized change. But it must be dealt with because migration to the city, rather than diminishing, is likely to increase in the next few decades.
