The roots of most African cultures lie deep in the soil of the countryside, where an agrarian way of life has thrived for centuries. The same could be said of most cultures of the world. As anthropologist Robert LeVine puts it:

"For at least 3,000 years, a majority of the world's families have lived by their own agriculture or animal husbandry, embedded in local associations of kin and neighbors, conducting their lives according to local standards of maturity, morality and personal well-being. Rural population growth in the Third World during this century has so outpaced the spread of urban-industrial pattens that agrarian life-with domestically organized food production as its basis-remains the majority condition of humanity.

But cultures change; in fact, all cultures are always changing. To be sure, some change faster than others (at one time or another), but inevitably all cultures must respond to environmental pressures, economic needs, new political structures or the introduction of innovative technologies or ideologies. This has certainly been the case in Africa.

Perhaps no continent in history has changed as dramatically as Africa has in the past 40 years. In 1950, there were only three independent African states: Egypt, Ethiopia and Liberia. Today there are 5 1. In 1950, only 11 percent of sub-Saharan Africans lived in cities; by 1980 that figure was 24 percent and it is projected to rise to 45 percent by the year 2010.

In actual numbers, the urban population has grown from 21 million in 1950 to 93 million in 1980 to a projected 441 million in 2010, an overall increase of 2, 100 percent in 60 years, making Africa the fastest urbanizing region in the world. Nigeria, Africa's largest country with a 1999 population of 115 million, is urbanizing even more rapidly than the continent as a whole. It is projected to have 94 million city dwellers by 2010, a figure larger than the total population of Nigeria itself in 1984.

SOCIAL CHANGE

Even more significant than the emergence of new states and the shifting of populations-indeed, related to these phenomena-the changes taking place in the daily lives of the people-in their jobs, their education, their marriages, and their family relationships. What these changes demand in the way of adjustment by both individuals and groups is hard to measure. It means that more than 800 self-contained ethnic groups are being asked to pay allegiance to new governments and to cooperate with other groups in a way that was neither necessary nor desirable in the past. It means that new jobs in the cities will uproot people from the "sec urity" of the land and throw them into alien towns. It means that people must develop new social contacts in these towns, supplanting old customs of friendship, marriage, dress, and entertainment. It means Western-style education that will drive a wedge between children and parents. In short, it means the painful-but in many respects desirable-transformation of familiar reality. Imagine a world where everything you know and believe is no longer quite what it was. That is the world many Africans see and feel today.

This tug of war between tradition and change, this mixed blessing of modernization in Africa, was dramatically described by Anatole Broyard, the late literary critic of the New York Times, in a review of Girls at War and Other Stories by Chinua Achebe, the well- known Nigerian writer:

...[In Africa] every man, woman and child is confronted with not one but two cultures, 1,000 years apart. In a single decade, they may experience changes that we diffused through all our history. And when you think how fiercely we fought, step by step, both for and against each stage in that long evolution, you get some idea of what the African faces. It is no wonder that he suffers from a severe case of cultural indigestion. His for met tribal life, still clinging to his unconscious, is rather like the church in Europe's Middle Ages, offering a two-edged promise of spiritual security and physical poverty. If he gives it up, however, he has nothing to sustain him but the mythology of materialism and the totems of technology. His imagination, which has always grazed in green fields, will have to find what it can in the gutters of "progress."

Surely, not all Africans exist in this state of limbo. The majority of Africans still live in rural areas and pursue an agrarian way of life, influenced by modernization to be sure but not overwhelmed by it. And a sizable minority live in cities, many of them comfortable and conversant with Western lifestyles, representing in some cases the third or fourth generation in their families to grow up speaking English or French, attending universities, and pursuing careers in medicine, law or engineering.

Nevertheless, the give and take between old and new, traditional and modern, provokes a lively contest in contemporary Africa, sparking social change throughout the continent. The fact of this change is hardly news, however, especially if we accept the notion of ubiquitous culture change; the important issue is how Africa or any particular culture is changing? From what to what? And with what effect on the lives of its people? To help answer such questions, the work of a contemporary German sociologist, Ralf Dahrendorf, is very instructive, both intellectually and pedagogically.

Dahrendorf argues that all cultures offer their members a set of "life chances" or opportunities for self-development and personal fulfillment. When a child is born, the child is given a cultural road map, so to speak, laying out what the culture considers the most fruitful path through life. The roads on this map, open to each child, can be seen as the "life chances" offered by the culture.

OPTIONS AND LIGATURES

According to Dahrendorf, "life chances" are composed of two elements: 11 options" and "ligatures." Options refer to the possibilities open to individuals to make personal choices. Ligatures refer to the social connections in a person's lifeto allegiances, to the ties that bind. All cultures, according to Dahrendorf, offer their members a combination of options and ligatures; however, some cultures emphasize options while others emphasize ligatures.

Historically, African societies tended to be weighted on the side of ligatures. Individuals were connected to several groups: to a nuclear family, an extended family, a clan, a tribe, an age group that went through initiation together, and perhaps a secret society that a person would join in adulthood. Membership in such groups came automatically, providing a social context for the individual's life, which bestowed a ready-made identity and a sense of belonging. On the other hand, options were limited in pre- modern African societies. Individuals had little freedom when it came to choosing a mate, a job, a place to live, religious beliefs or political systems. Young Africans typically would follow in the footsteps of their parents and elders.

By contrast, modern-day American society allows young people (and old) to choose from a multitude of options concerning education, careers, lifestyles, even sexual preferences; and it offers almost unlimited mobility-geographically, professionally and socially. At the same time, however, it provides few ready-made ligatures. Families are small and unstable; extended families are a thing of the past; and other connections through school, work, clubs or the neighborhood tend to be cut short by mobility. One-fifth of all Americans move every year. A sense of belonging then, is hard to come by. Identity in the US does not come from birth into a particular family followed by automatic membership in a series of groups. Rather, it comes from a life that is carved out, designed, built, and sometimes redesigned and rebuilt over a lifetime by the individual. As the saying goes in business, "You're only as good as your last sale."

A shorthand way to characterize these two societies-traditional Africa and modern America-is to call one a "belonging society' and the other an "achieving society," suggesting that a person's identity is inherited in a "belonging society," but created by the self in an "achieving society." However, as Dahrendorf points out, there are options for choice (achievement) and ligatures for connections (belonging) in all societies. The main difference is where the emphasis lies. Moreover, the word "achieving" suggests that productivity automatically follows increased individuality, but this is not always the case. Japan, for example, a society known for its ligatures, is highly productive.

It is generally true, however, that preindustrial, agrarian societies tended to offer more ligatures than options to its members; and industrial and post-indus trial societies tend to emphasize options at the expense of ligatures. Neither one is inherently more fulfilling to the individual. Indeed, an extreme in either options or ligatures can create a lopsided lifestyle that in effect reduces life chances. As Dahrendorf puts it, "Ligatures without options are oppressive whereas options without bonds are meaningless."

WHAT PRICE MODERNITY?

It should be noted, however, that modernity has significantly increased human options and to that extent has increased life chances. People who today are free to choose from a variety of careers and lifestyles, not to mention an expanded number of leisure activities and information sources, clearly have more life chances than their ancestors of only 100 years ago. But at what price? Some sociologists argue that the West, and the US in particular, has gone too far in the direction of options, producing a radical form of individualism (me-ism) that emphasizes personal rights at the cost of social The result, they argue, is loneliness, alienation, a 50 percent divorce rate and rampant crime.

One political scientist, Robert Putnam, has likened American social life to "bowling alone." People in the US, he avers, have become so individualistic and even isolated that they cease to join bowling leagues as in the past and now often bowl alone. While the majority of bowlers still bowl with other people, the image of the solitary bowler has become a metaphor for extreme individualism in American society.

Obviously, the goal of any society is to strike a balance between options and ligatures in a way that optimizes life chances, Both Africa and the United States are struggling to do exactly that. In fact all cultures, consciously or unconsciously, are always struggling to do exactly that.

Leon E. Clark is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at American University, where he founded and directed the International Training and Education Program. He is the author of several books and numerous articles on cross-cultural studies and international education. His most recent book, Through African Eyes, Vol. 2, Culture and Society. Continuity and Change, was published in January. This article is drawn from that book.