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Modern, Anti, Post, and Neo: How Intellectuals Explain “Our Time”

Jeffrey C. Alexander

in The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology

This chapter examines modernization theories of society and proposes that contemporary social theory must be much more sensitive to the apparent reconvergence of the world's regimes. It analyzes ... More

This chapter examines modernization theories of society and proposes that contemporary social theory must be much more sensitive to the apparent reconvergence of the world's regimes. It analyzes early modernization theory, its contemporary reconstruction, and the vigorous intellectual alternatives that arose. It contends that these theoretical developments are related to social and cultural history. It argues that the different formulations of modernity, socialism, and capitalism describe not only competing theoretical positions but deep shifts in historical sensibility.Less

 The Thirties to the Fifties: Totalitarianism and the Second American Enlightenment

David Ciepley

in Prophesies of Godlessness: Predictions of America's Iminent Secularization from the Puritans to Postmodernity

In the United States, in contrast to continental Europe, science and social reform maintained generally positive relations with organized Christianity into the twentieth century. After World War Two, ... More

In the United States, in contrast to continental Europe, science and social reform maintained generally positive relations with organized Christianity into the twentieth century. After World War Two, however, American social scientists frowned on religion's public role and embraced secularization theory despite its conceptual and empirical shortcomings. More important than the influx of European émigrés in effecting this shift was the reinterpretation of American democracy by native‐born social scientists. Under assault from Catholic intellectuals for their “moral relativism,” social scientists turned the tables, arguing that totalitarianism was the child of Catholic‐style moral absolutism, while democracy flowed from moral openness and skepticism. They buried the covenantal conception of America as a moral project and reinterpreted it as a regime of neutral process. Modernization‐secularization theory, as developed in the United States, projected this procedural, “secular Enlightenment” image of America onto the world stage, casting it as the telos of history.Less

After Modernization Theory: Historical Sociology and the Belicose Constitution of Western Modernity

Hans Joas and Wolfgang Knöbl

in War in Social Thought: Hobbes to the Present

This chapter explores the connections between war and modernity as well as developments in Anglo-American historical sociology and its emphasis on war. Within American sociology, the turn to “war” ... More

This chapter explores the connections between war and modernity as well as developments in Anglo-American historical sociology and its emphasis on war. Within American sociology, the turn to “war” was directly connected with the debate on modernization theory. This paradigm had not only forecast that the “underdeveloped countries” would come to resemble the United States and Western Europe both structurally and culturally: that they would become Westernized. Outside of Britain and the United States, historical sociology never managed to play much of a role. As far as Germany and France (as well as other European countries) are concerned, sociologists there either never really took a historical approach (Germany) or adopted a historical perspective molded by the dominant figure of Michel Foucault. This was evident in the debate on the “democratic peace” that took off in the 1980s and early 1990s, a debate of great relevance to social theory.Less

The Development Decade

Amanda Kay McVety

in Enlightened Aid: U.S. Development as Foreign Policy in Ethiopia

John F. Kennedy eagerly embraced the use of foreign aid as an instrument of foreign policy, reforming the existing Point Four model into the US Agency for International Development. Lyndon Johnson ... More

John F. Kennedy eagerly embraced the use of foreign aid as an instrument of foreign policy, reforming the existing Point Four model into the US Agency for International Development. Lyndon Johnson continued the tradition of rewarding allies with aid, but recognized that the United States needed to be more targeted in its application. Ethiopia made the cut in Johnson’s aid reforms and continued to receive large amounts of technical, economic, and military assistance throughout the 1960s. Haile Selassie’s stubborn resistance to meaningful political change, however, held the country back from the democratic change that the United States allegedly championed and paved the way for the 1974 revolution. Meanwhile, economists struggled to understand why two decades of foreign aid had not brought development to countries around the world. Aid was supposed to put itself out of business, but it had yet to do so.Less

Modernization Theories

Raj Kollmorgen

in The Handbook of Political, Social, and Economic Transformation

Modernization theories represent one of the most important and most controversial approaches in transformation research. After their golden age in the 1950s and 1960s, they came under pressure by ... More

Modernization theories represent one of the most important and most controversial approaches in transformation research. After their golden age in the 1950s and 1960s, they came under pressure by alternative approaches like World-Systems Analysis or actor-centred transition approaches. But modernization theories have experienced a renaissance with the epochal threshold of 1989/90 and the subsequent wave of democratization. Today, three major currents can be identified: neo-evolutionist approaches, structuralist modernization theory, and the approach of multiple modernities or comparative historical sociology. They consider transformation as a specific type of accelerated transition of traditional, partly, or alternatively modernized societies to hegemonic social modernity. Although all approaches have elaborated an explanatory interpretation framework for empirical analysis often combining various social levels, dimensions, and factors (like structures and actors, or economic and cultural factors), there is considerable need for further research and self-reflection concerning normative foundations, causal mechanisms, and their empirical operationalization, as well as ‘postmodern’ challenges.Less

Counterinsurgency and the Ideology of Modernization

M.L.R. Smith and David Martin Jones

in The Political Impossibility of Modern Counterinsurgency: Strategic Problems, Puzzles, and Paradoxes

This chapter looks at the revival of contemporary thinking about counterinsurgency (COIN), emphasizing its renaissance in the U.S. military. COIN's reemergence can be classified into two specific ... More

This chapter looks at the revival of contemporary thinking about counterinsurgency (COIN), emphasizing its renaissance in the U.S. military. COIN's reemergence can be classified into two specific schools of thought: a neoclassical school and a global insurgency school. The chapter proposes that modernization theory, renewed in the 1990s with the support of an end-of-history ideology assuming liberal democratic convergence, directly inspired the neoclassical thought. Neoclassicism viewed U.S. policy as a means of transforming traditional societies into modern, market-friendly, pluralist democracies. This procedure characterized COIN thinking, which led to a nation-building priority that sought to convert failing autocracies into emergent democracies, by means of both civilian and military measures. The chapter also examines the relationship between the U.S. preoccupation with a modernization plan and the reinvention of COIN after 2001.Less

International Social Development

Susan C. Mapp

in Human Rights and Social Justice in a Global Perspective: An Introduction to International Social Work

This chapter begins with a discussion of the effect of maps on our worldview. It then considers two primary theories of development: modernization theory and dependency theory. Distorted development ... More

This chapter begins with a discussion of the effect of maps on our worldview. It then considers two primary theories of development: modernization theory and dependency theory. Distorted development within countries is discussed and an overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.Less

Strategic Modernization Theory Bogs Down in the Vietnam Quagmire

Michael C. Desch

in Cult of the Irrelevant: The Waning Influence of Social Science on National Security

This chapter looks at the rise and fall of strategic modernization theory. One of the key figures in bridging the worlds of nuclear strategy and political and economic development, not to mention ... More

This chapter looks at the rise and fall of strategic modernization theory. One of the key figures in bridging the worlds of nuclear strategy and political and economic development, not to mention academia and policy, was the economist Walt W. Rostow. Unique among civilian development strategists, Rostow was not only a scholar of these issues; he also held a series of high-level U.S. government positions, which made him a direct formulator and implementer of policy. The chapter then outlines the intellectual context in which he formulated his universal model of strategic modernization and development. It also studies his arguments and shows how and why they provided U.S. policymakers with the mental map to interpret the Cold War in the Third World in a particularly threatening way and also to recommend strategies to respond to the challenge of underdevelopment there.Less

Bringing the Peace Corps Home: Development in the Black Freedom Movement

Molly Geidel

in Peace Corps Fantasies: How Development Shaped the Global Sixties

Following the paths of development workers and discourses as they returned home, the fourth and fifth chapters argue that the Peace Corps and modernization theory guided the vision and strategy of ... More

Following the paths of development workers and discourses as they returned home, the fourth and fifth chapters argue that the Peace Corps and modernization theory guided the vision and strategy of 1960s U.S. social movements, particularly in the later sixties as those movements attempted to become more internationalist and explicitly ideological. Tracing the connections between the War on Poverty, of which Sargent Shriver was the founding director, and the black liberation movement as it transformed from civil rights to Black Power, chapter 4 investigates how the civil rights and Black Power movements were influenced by liberal modernization theory and the ideal of heroic development work.Less

The Company and the Campus

Mark Neocleous

in Critique of Security

The chapter has two aspects. First, it explores what is commonly understood as the rise of private security. But instead of resting on the public-private distinction, the chapter instead argues that ... More

The chapter has two aspects. First, it explores what is commonly understood as the rise of private security. But instead of resting on the public-private distinction, the chapter instead argues that we need to understand security through the critique of political economy: that security is a commodity, like any other but also imbued with magical qualities. This is the root of security fetishism. The second aspect of the chapter is a critique of security intellectuals: academics that have operated to reinforce this fetishism, thereby becoming mere servants of the security state and allowing academic disciplines to become subservient to security.Less

Skeptical Patients: Performance, Social Capital, and Culture

Pippa Norris

in The Trust Crisis in Healthcare: Causes, Consequences, and Cures

This chapter seeks to explain the decline of trust of social and political institutions through three theories: institutional performance-based accounts, social capital theories, and cultural ... More

This chapter seeks to explain the decline of trust of social and political institutions through three theories: institutional performance-based accounts, social capital theories, and cultural accounts based on modernization theory. It also sheds light on confidence trends in thirteen institutions from the General Social Survey and suggests factors that can explain these trends. Based on this analysis, the implications for the future of healthcare and patient-doctor relations are explored.Less

Modernization, Globalization, and Satisfaction with Democracy

Kees Aarts, Carolien van Ham, and Jacques Thomassen

in Myth and Reality of the Legitimacy Crisis: Explaining Trends and Cross-National Differences in Established Democracies

This chapter tests the validity of the major propositions of modernization and globalization theories. Modernization theory attributes legitimacy decline to the socioeconomic and cultural ... More

This chapter tests the validity of the major propositions of modernization and globalization theories. Modernization theory attributes legitimacy decline to the socioeconomic and cultural transformation of advanced industrial societies after the Second World War, leading to value change and cognitive mobilization among citizens, while globalization theory attributes legitimacy decline to the negative consequences of (economic) globalization for citizens of lower socioeconomic status in advanced industrial societies. This chapter evaluates the empirical evidence for the effects of individual modernization and of economic globalization on political support, differentiating between citizens of lower and higher socioeconomic status. Using Eurobarometer data on political support from 1973 to 2015, the authors show that political support in most countries has increased among both the higher educated and lower educated. To the extent that there is support for the globalization thesis, the increase in satisfaction with democracy has been less pronounced among the lower educated, generating a widening “satisfaction gap.”Less

Reflections on the Concept of Modernity

Detlef Pollack and Gergely Rosta

in Religion and Modernity: An International Comparison

Part I contains theoretical reflections on the two central concepts of the book: modernity and religion. This chapter on the concept of modernity begins by addressing the main reservations that have ... More

Part I contains theoretical reflections on the two central concepts of the book: modernity and religion. This chapter on the concept of modernity begins by addressing the main reservations that have been expressed concerning the classic approaches to this concept in sociology. After discussing objections to modernization theory, the chapter presents an outline of a theory of modernity that serves as the basis for the argumentation of the entire book. The theory of modernity proposes three theses. First, that modern societies are characterized by principles of functional differentiation. Second, perpendicular to functional differentiation, which takes place horizontally, there is in modern societies also a form of vertical differentiation. Third, modern societies have established in the economy, politics, science, and other areas forums of competition, markets where different suppliers compete for acceptance. They are the driving forces behind the dynamism of modern societies.Less

State Dependency and Middle-Class Demand for Democracy

Bryn Rosenfeld

in The Autocratic Middle Class: How State Dependency Reduces the Demand for Democracy

This chapter clarifies the variation in middle-class regime preferences and details the individual-level logic of state dependency. It discusses key concepts and descriptive data on the ... More

This chapter clarifies the variation in middle-class regime preferences and details the individual-level logic of state dependency. It discusses key concepts and descriptive data on the middle-classes and state economic engagement in the countries under study. It also captures the distinction between highly educated white-collar and professional strata versus less educated routine and manual laborers. The chapter provides a normative view of the middle-class as a carrier of democracy, as synonymous with the capital-owning bourgeoisie, and as an exclusively income-based category. It highlights the middle-class of educated professionals in modernization theory and its values-based variants, including the “middle sector” that emphasizes on members of a broad range of occupational groups between the working class and economic elite.Less

Religion as a Political Factor in Latin America: The Peruvian Case

Jorge Aragón Trelles

in Democracy, Culture, Catholicism: Voices from Four Continents

Mainstream modernization and secularization theories once predicted a gradual decline in the importance of religion as a factor in people’s political orientations. Evidence has not borne out this ... More

Mainstream modernization and secularization theories once predicted a gradual decline in the importance of religion as a factor in people’s political orientations. Evidence has not borne out this prediction, with the persistence of religious affiliation in contemporary societies and the role religion has played in recent political movements. Aragón discusses how religion impacts Latin American politics today and, using public opinion data, explores whether Peru is a country where religious beliefs and practices are associated with political perceptions and preferences. Whereas progressive Catholicism has declined in Latin America in recent decades, evangelical Protestantism has grown. However, the data indicates that denominational differences have little impact on political participation, whereas the strength of one’s religious participation—whether Catholic or Protestant—does track favorably with increased political participation.Less

Wholesome Modernization

Charles R. Kim

in Youth for Nation: Culture and Protest in Cold War South Korea

The postwar crisis encompassed a cultural crisis wrought by wartime devastation and the rapid influx of Euro-American things and ways. Among mainstream intellectuals, wholesome modernization was the ... More

The postwar crisis encompassed a cultural crisis wrought by wartime devastation and the rapid influx of Euro-American things and ways. Among mainstream intellectuals, wholesome modernization was the preferred approach for overcoming this cultural crisis. This discursive schema was built upon the premise that South Koreans should adhere to a hybrid vision of culture that preserved the core elements of indigenous tradition, while incorporating selected, modernizing aspects of Euro-American culture. This chapter explores the women’s magazine Yŏwŏn alongside the popular films The Love Marriage (Chayu kyŏrhon, 1958) and A Female Boss (Yŏsajang, 1959) in order to demonstrate that this hybrid culture vision deliberately promoted the maintenance of male privilege for the youth generation. The cultural conservatism of wholesome modernization was multiply determined by historical and contemporary influences.Less

Studying Sufism in Context

Rüdiger Seesemann

in The Divine Flood: Ibrahim Niasse and the Roots of a Twentieth-Century Sufi Revival

This introductory chapter lays out the book's theoretical and methodological agenda, which aims to combine the philological study of texts with the study of the communities where these texts are ... More

This introductory chapter lays out the book's theoretical and methodological agenda, which aims to combine the philological study of texts with the study of the communities where these texts are produced or used. Engaging critically with philological (“orientalist”) and anthropological approaches to the study of Sufism, it points out the weaknesses of both and shows how assumptions about modernization and popular religion have shaped representations of Sufism in the 20th century. The chapter also tackles simplistic notions of “African” Islam, which is supposedly less orthodox than “real” (read Middle Eastern) Islam, and exposes their origin in colonial discourses about “maraboutism.” Drawing on Redfield's concept of great and little traditions, the chapter makes an analytical distinction between scholarly and popular understandings of Sufism. These are not conceived as separate categories, but as the product of the interaction between leaders and followers engaged in a constant process of interpreting religious ideas and practices.Less

Heroic Development in an Age of Decline

Molly Geidel

in Peace Corps Fantasies: How Development Shaped the Global Sixties

Geidel explains how the United States used modernization theory to maintain power in a time when countries all over the world were moving towards decolonization. “Modernity” was the end goal rather ... More

Geidel explains how the United States used modernization theory to maintain power in a time when countries all over the world were moving towards decolonization. “Modernity” was the end goal rather than creating freedom in the economies and governments of Third World regions. The Peace Corps was very popular at the time it was formed because it fulfilled a masculine fantasy of heroism. Today, the Peace Corps is made up of more women than men. Its value to Americans lies in nostalgia.Less

Kennedy, Johnson and the USOIDP: Theory and Practice

in The evolving role of nation-building in US foreign policy: Lessons learned, lessons lost

This chapter contrasts the Kennedy administration's approach with that of Eisenhower, examining how political culture shaped its ‘modernization’ theoretical framework and its application in ... More

This chapter contrasts the Kennedy administration's approach with that of Eisenhower, examining how political culture shaped its ‘modernization’ theoretical framework and its application in developing areas in the form of the United States Overseas Internal Defence Policy, or USOIDP. The chapter also explores the implementation of the Kennedy-Johnson era approach and contrasts cases of two recipient countries. One is Indonesia, where the US had limited access to government. The other is South Vietnam, where access was almost unlimited. The USOIDP represented a broad and ambitious effort to integrate nation building and economic aid programs of the so-called ‘other war’ with military measures such as the expanded use of special operations forces, counter-insurgency and Citizens' Irregular Defense Groups or CIDG.Less

Filming Modernity in the Tropics: The Amazon, Walt Disney, and the Antecedents of Modernization Theory

Barbara Weinstein

in Intimate Frontiers: A Literary Geography of the Amazon

Through an analysis of the documentary film The Amazon Awakens (1944) this essay posits the use of the tenets of modernization theory in the film’s representation of the Amazon as a way to invent it ... More

Through an analysis of the documentary film The Amazon Awakens (1944) this essay posits the use of the tenets of modernization theory in the film’s representation of the Amazon as a way to invent it as a region ripe for development as long as the necessary technological and financial resources become available. In contrast to earlier “civilizing missions” that characterized the heyday of colonialism and neo-colonialism when imperial powers emphasized the need to inculcate “backward” peoples with the rudiments of modern culture and civilization, The Amazon Awakens portrays a society poised to take immediate advantage of the technology and capital the US is eager to provide. To be sure, the Amazon had to be “awakened,” and had to throw off old habits and attitudes, but the film portrays the region’s inhabitants as predisposed to do precisely that. Finally, Weinstein focuses on the elements that the movie decides to include (local industry) and exclude (ecology and indigenous rights), to argue these decisions are systematic and serve to advance and enhance a narrative of Amazonian (natural and human) history that is coherent with the film’s modernization discourse.Less