Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 July 2015
This is an age of identity crisis. Who am I? What are my roots? These are the central questions of our age. The search for identity is mixed with a wave of skepticism about development, technology and environment. This is a universal phenomenon. Questions about one's roots, about ecological and technological and demographic limits of growth and development (Olson and Landsberg, 1973; Schumacher, 1973) are being asked in the mass consumption societies of the developed world (Scitovsky, 1976; Hirschman, 1977). And they are being asked in the post-colonial societies of the developing world.
The timing of the global identity crisis is paradoxical. In the developed world economic affluence was expected to liberate man for leisure and creativity. In the search for material satisfaction, western man has lost his soul to “technomania” (Grant, 1969, p. 39). Christian fundamentalism and born-again Christianity are on a rising curve.
This is the introductory chapter of my forthcoming book, Identity and Development in Turkey and Malaysia: Studies in the Islamic Periphery, to be published by Routledge, London, early in 1990. I would like to thank the coordinating editor and two readers for their helpful comments