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Modernization Theory: DISCOVERY 16 4 8 10:37 Title: Modernization Theory. By: Da Silva, Anna, Research Starters: Sociology (Online Edition), 2015 Database: Research Starters Modernization Theory Listen Australian Accent Modernization theory exemplifies a functionalist approach to inequality and focus...

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Modernization Theory: DISCOVERY

16 4 8

10:37

Title: Modernization Theory. By: Da Silva, Anna, Research Starters: Sociology (Online Edition), 2015 Database: Research Starters

Modernization Theory

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Modernization theory exemplifies a functionalist approach to inequality and focuses on the transition from "traditional" to "modern" society; it became an interdisciplinary (drawing on economics, political science, sociology, psychology, and history) approach to development and flourished in the 1950s and 1960s. Modernization theorists argued that modernization is inevitable, irreversible, and that the transformation from traditional to modern societies will occur in a linear way. Change can be achieved through the "diffusion" of modern economic and political institutions, technology, and culture through foreign investment and aid, and through education and mass media. Diffusion—or spread—of capital, technological innovations, and cultural traditions from developed to underdeveloped countries, is the mechanism that enables modernization. Modernization theory was widely criticized by the neoMarxists, dependency theorists, and world-systems researchers and was largely discredited in the 1970s. Keywords Diffusion; Economic Stages of Growth; Modern Societies; Modernization; Modernization Theory; Non-Communist Manifesto; Take-Off Toward Modernity; Traditional Societies; Value Convergence Modernization Theory

Overview Modernization theory is not a "proper" theory with explanatory claims, but rather a loosely defined approach to examining the processes of social change and the development of societies. It aims to answer the question of why inequality between nations persists, and offers blueprints for "development" along the "scientific-industrial lines pioneered by the West" (Adas, 2003, p. 36). Flourishing between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s in the United States, the modernization theory developed under the influence of scholars such as Walt Whitman Rostow, Bert Hoselitz, Daniel Lerner, Seymour Martin Lipset, Neil Smelser, David McCleeland, and others. Relying on an idea of a dichotomous split between traditional and modern, modernization theories are firmly rooted in nineteenthcentury theorizing. They evoke the polar opposites that Ferdinand Tönnies specified: Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society); they accepted Émile Durkheim's theorizing on mechanical versus organic solidarity; they borrowed Karl Marx's evolutionary progression from feudal-agricultural societies to capitalist-industrial economies; and they built on Max Weber's distinction between the traditional and rational forms of authority (Gereffi, 1983). Overall, modernization theories reject the ideas that "racial or innate deficiencies were responsible for the lowly position that the non-Western peoples" occupied in the hierarchy of the world nations (Adas, 2003). Instead, nations remained poor because whole societies cling to the "traditional" way of life instead of adapting "modern" institutions and technology and embracing "modern" attitudes. From the modernization theorists' point of view, "traditional values were not only mutable but could-and should-be replaced by modern values, enabling these societies to follow the (virtually inevitable) path of capitalist development" (Inglehart & Baker, 2000, p20). Modernization theorists assumed that modernization is an irreversible process, leading from traditional to modern societies, and that social change toward modernity will occur uniformly and in a linear way (Knobl, 2003). Historical Context Modernization perspective on (under)development emerged in the post-WWII era and was articulated against the backdrop of the Cold War. Concerned with the attractiveness of communism to the decolonizing nations, modernizers "sought to counter Lenin's argument with their own model of historical convergence" (Latham, 2003, p. 4). To the communist vision of class struggle leading to the abolition of private property and the dictatorship of the proletariat, the modernizers juxtaposed the ideas of "consensual https:

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democracy and liberal capitalism as the engines of progress" (Latham, 2003, p. 4). Moreover, while communism was still an unrealized utopia, proponents of modernization theory claimed that advanced nations—America, Western Europe, and Japan—have already reached the pinnacle of economic development, the "Age of High Mass-Consumption" (Rostow, 1990). Applications

Rostow's "Non-communist Manifesto" One of the most influential—if short-lived—articulations of the modernization theory was advanced by American economic historian Walt Whitman Rostow in his "non-communist manifesto" (1990), in which he argues that "take-off" toward modernity is achievable for the underdeveloped nations through the spread of modern economic organization and technology. Rostow's ideas were influential beyond the academic circles, since he served as the Kennedy administration's deputy special assistant to the president for national security affairs in the late 1950s. His ideas resonated in the wide-sweeping policies implemented during Kennedy's "Decade of Development," including increased US foreign aid to developing nations, military assistance, and overall emphasis on modernization (Haefele, 2003). Rostow's core theory of modernization centers around the idea of "economic stages of growth" and was conceived as an alternative to Marx's theory of economic development, which—among other things—posits the inevitability of the worldwide spread of communism. In the post-colonial reality of the 1950s, the threat of impoverished nations embracing the communist path of development was looming large. At the same time, the success of postwar reconstruction in Europe, particularly the Marshall Plan, convinced many policymakers that an economic aid program could be successful in the postcolonial world and would bring the developing nations into the folds of Western capitalism and liberal democracy (Haefele, 2003). Rostow argued that all societies can be positioned on the continuum of growth, and he identified five stages: • The traditional society, • The preconditions to take-off, • The take-off, • The drive to maturity, and • The age of high mass-consumption. These are not merely descriptive categories, but rather stages that Rostow claimed have an "analytic bone-structure, rooted in a dynamic theory of production" (Rostow, 1990, p. 12). Moreover, Rostow viewed all societies at any given time as positioned "merely at different points on the same developmental path" (Haefele, 2003). The Traditional Society The first stage on this continuum is what Rostow called the traditional society —a society whose resources are devoted primarily to agriculture and who exhibit a rigid hierarchical social structure rooted in it. Such societies' productivity is limited, and their value system could be described as a "long-run fatalism. " By long-run fatalism, Rostow meant the assumption that "the range of possibilities open to one's grandchildren would be just about what it had been for one's grandparents" (Rostow, 1990, p. 5). The Preconditions for Take-Off The next stage— the preconditions for take-off— rely on the spread of modern science and the ability of societies to harness the new scientific insights and translate them into technologies that increase productivity in both agriculture and industry. According to Rostow, such conditions first developed in Western Europe in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The transition from traditional societies to preconditions for take-off required major economic transformations and changes in social values. However, the most profound transformation of such societies was political, as the "building of an effective centralized national state —on the basis of coalitions touched with a new nationalism, in opposition to the traditional landed regional interests, the colonial power, or both, was a decisive aspect of the preconditions period" (Rostow, 1990, p. 7). This political transformation and the emergence of a strong nation-state is a necessary condition for the next stage. The Take-Off The previous stage prepares the ground for take-off, as new technologies spread through agriculture and industry and people are able to accept the new methods of production and rates of growth. Agriculture is commercialized and productivity in all sectors of the economy is high. This expansion of the modern sector "yields an increase of income in the hands of those who not only save at high https:

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rates but place their savings at the disposal of those engaged in modern sector activities" (Rostow, 1990, p. 8). Rostow argues that take-off is the stage at which old obstacles to economic growth are finally overcome, and "growth becomes its normal condition" (Rostow, 1990, p. 7). The Drive to Maturity The stage following the take-off and lasting some forty to sixty years, according to Rostow, is the drive to maturity. This period is characterized by sustained growth and progress, finally culminating in maturity. Maturity can be understood as a stage in which a society's economy has the capacity to produce "not everything, but anything it chooses to produce" (Rostow, 1990, p. 9). Having moved beyond the industries that flourished during the take-off stage, such societies are able to apply the most advanced technologies across a vast range of industries. Rostow offers contemporary Sweden or Switzerland as examples of an economy that may lack the raw materials to manufacture a particular product, but not the technological and institutional capacity to do so if it were their political or economic choice. The Age of High Mass-Consumption As societies reach the final stage of high mass-consumption, which for Rostow is the pinnacle of economic and political development, their leading economic sectors focus increasingly on producing consumer goods and services. In the late 1950s, when Rostow was formulating his theory, he considered America to have arrived at the stage of high mass-consumption; Western Europe and Japan as having approached it; and the Soviet Union as "engaged in uneasy flirtation" as it was technically able to enter the phase but lacking the political will and social leadership to embrace such changes (Rostow, 1990). The maturity stage preceding high mass-consumption prepares the ground for a large proportion of the population to be able to engage in luxury consumption, beyond the basics of food, shelter, and clothing. These societies see a larger proportion of urban populations and skilled jobs and a widespread diffusion of various advanced technologies of production. Even more importantly, the age of high mass-consumption witnesses a massive distribution of technological innovations—in the 1950s, this meant household electronic gadgets to the sewing machine, but most importantly the cheaply mass-produced automobile. Lastly, as a byproduct of moving beyond technical maturity, the age of high mass-consumption gives rise to the emergence of the welfare state, as such societies increasingly allocate more resources to providing social welfare and security. Modernization & Traditional Values As traditional societies transition to modernity, they adopt modern technologies and institutions. But what happens to the traditional values predominant in such societies? There are two schools of thought on the effects that modernity has on traditional values. The first view emphasizes "convergence of values as a result of 'modernization'" (Inglehart & Baker, 2000, p. 20). Convergence of values assumes that traditional values decline and are replaced with modern values. The other school argues instead that cultural values are more or less independent of economic conditions, and "convergence around some set of 'modern' values is unlikely and that traditional values will continue to exert an independent influence on the cultural changes caused by economic development" (Inglehart & Baker, 2000, p. 20). The convergence school was prevalent in the U.S. postwar modernization theory, and assumed that traditional values can—and should—change, a necessary precondition for a country's success on the capitalist developmental path. The "internal" focus on some perceived inadequacies of the traditional societies—of traditional economies, institutions, and cultural traits—was subsequently criticized by scholars who instead emphasized the role that external constraints have on a country's development. Instead of the "backwardness" of traditional values and institutions, these critics pointed to the legacies of colonialism and imperialism, and to the conditions of structural dependence as being responsible for underdevelopment. A more nuanced view on development argued that cultural change does not take a linear path, and while "economic development tends to push societies in a common direction… rather than converging, they seem to move on parallel trajectories shaped by their cultural heritages" (Inglehart & Baker, 2000, p. 49). It is therefore unlikely that economic development and cultural change would produce a homogenized world culture. Viewpoints

Critiques of Modernization Theory Although the modernization theory was rather influential in the United States for a short period of time, it was strongly criticized on a number of issues. For example, modernization theory was based on a problematic assumption that there was only one single viable path for development. According to Adas (2003, p. 39), "this constricted and rather unimaginative vision of what was in effect the future of humanity" was a political response to the threat of communism in the context of the Cold War. Moreover, it was a profoundly ethnocentric view, representing a "none too subtle form of cultural imperialism" (Adas, 2003, p. 39).

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Modernization was always viewed as a Westernizing process. In it, the traditional non-Western societies could only modernize if they "abandoned their traditional cultures and assimilated technologically and morally 'superior' Western ways" (Ingelhart & Baker, 2000, p. 19). And yet some successfully "modernized" non-Western societies were unexpectedly able to "surpass" their Western models on a number of important indicators. During the second half of the twentieth century, East Asia, for example, achieved the world's highest rates of economic growth; Japan was boasting the highest per capita income and the world's highest life expectancy, not to mention emerging as the world leader of automobile manufacturing and consumer electronics. Even more astonishingly, upon close examination, the United States seemed to be an exception, as "many observers of American life have argued—its people hold much more traditional values and beliefs than do those in any other equally prosperous society" (Ingelhart & Baker, 2000, p. 49). Other critics argued that Rostow's (and other modernizers') ideas were founded on a flawed assumption that there is a "causal relationship between development aid and economic development, on the one hand, and between economic development and its political consequences, on the other" (Kaufman, 1982, as cited in Haefele, 2003). The policies that flowed out of the modernization theory's recommendations assumed that there is indeed a "functional interdependence of economic growth and democratization" (Knobl, 2003, p. 102). In the late 1960s, more and more researchers demonstrated that "tradition is not at all the opposite of modernity" and that the idea of a "stable, homogenous, inflexible 'traditional' culture is wrong" (Knobl, 2003, p. 104). In fact modernization meant different things in different cultural contexts, and the belief that a "market society will automatically bring forward a democratic parliamentary system" was simply unsubstantiated by history (Knobl, 2003, p. 104). The theory was no longer convincing. Demise & Revival of Modernization Theory In the 1960s, despite increased foreign aid and assistance, the economic situation worsened in many already impoverished nations, particularly in Latin America. As Gereffi (1983, p. 6) puts it, "poor economic performance in many third world areas appeared to be at odds with the benefits espoused by adherents of the modernization approach." Despite massive foreign investment and aid, the gap between the rich and the poor nations has widened considerably since the 1960s. The "modernization theory tended to neglect external factors, such as colonialism, imperialism, and newer forms of economic and political domination" (Inglehart & Baker, 2000, p. 20). In response, the neo-Marxist criticism, dependency theory and world-systems theory emphasized "the extent to which rich countries exploited poor countries, locking them in positions of powerlessness and structural dependence" (Inglehart & Baker, 2000, p20). Thus, the underdevelopment and "backwardness" of the poor nations could be explained externally, as an outcome of the normal functioning of global capitalism. To put it bluntly, development and underdevelopment, rather than being the opposites of each other, are instead part of the same global economic process. In the famous first line of his 1967 book Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America, Andre Gunder Frank put it this way: "I believe, … that it is capitalism, both world and national, which produced underdevelopment in the past and which still generates underdevelopment in the present" (as cited in Kay, 2005, p. 1178). As for diffusion that constituted a link between the developed and the developing world, "linkages between the developed and underdeveloped countries were not the solution but the problem, perpetuating the underdevelopment of the latter" (Kay, 2005, p. 1180). Additionally, critics often challenged the modernization theorists' assertion that societies could—or indeed should—follow the same developmental path. Scholars pointed out that poor countries face obstacles to development that are very different from the ones that industrialized states had to overcome in the past. Such pervasive changes as economic globalization, the need to contend with rich industrialized states in the global competition, and the proliferation of entirely new forms of economic organization—such as the transnational corporation—create conditions that require different solutions from the developing states. These numerous flaws rendered modernization theory unconvincing and prompted Immanuel Wallerstein to pronounce it "dead" (Knobl, 2003, p. 97). And yet modernization theory resurfaced in both scholarly and public debates again in the 1980s. The main reason for the modernization theory's revival in the 1980s was the slow unraveling and demise of the Soviet empire. To the theory's proponents, these events seemed to confirm, as Knobl puts it (2003, p. 104), the "original assumption that there is one, and only one route to modernity, that the Soviet model failed because of its insufficient structural differentiation." New formulations of the modernization theory appeared, but they too seem to rely on the old and inadequate dichotomy between tradition and modernity, and none of the issues raised by the theory's critics have been resolved. Ironically, that is perhaps, the very reason for the theory's resilience despite its' flaws—it relies on the vague and ambiguous definitions of tradition and modernity and will possibly "proliferate endlessly despite all criticisms" (Knobl, 2003, p. 105). Conclusion Modernization theories examine social change and specify the ...