Uprooting has to do with one of the fundamental properties of human life-the need to change-and with the personal and societal mecha- nisms for dealing with that need. As with the more general problems of change, uprooting can be a time of human disaster and desolation, or a time of adaptation and growth into new capacities. The special quality of uprooting is that the need to change is faced at a time of separation from accustomed social, cultural, and environ- mental support systems. It is this separation from familiar supports that either renders the uprooted vulnerable to the destructive...