Showing papers on "Modernization theory published in 1971"

Modernization theory and the sociological study of development

Abstract: Summary The focus of this article is methodological and macro‐sociological. Its purpose is to disentangle some of the issues which arise in the sociology of development, and to question the assumptions and implications of a particular mode of conceptualization based on the notions of modernity and modernization which has provided the characteristic theoretical framework of the sociology of development. The principal assumptions of modernization theory as understood here—often enough made explicit by those who use this approach—are (1) that modernization is a total social process associated with (or subsuming) economic development in terms of the preconditions, concomitants, and consequences of the latter; (2) that this process constitutes a ‘universal pattern’. Obviously among various writers there are differences of emphasis with respect to the meaning of modernization, partly due to its relationship with—or derivation from—that most contentious concept ‘development’. For Lerner modernization is ‘the soc...

A Theoretical Approach to Military Rule in New States: Reference-Group Theory and the Ghanaian Case

Abstract: A Striking characteristic of the literature on military rule in developing countries is the gap between theoretical expectations and political, social, and economic reality. On the one hand, practitioners of comparative social and political theory have tended to view the military, at least in the non-Latin American area, as an organization capable of playing an important modernizing role. On the other hand, empirical researchers, often the very same individuals who at a different time wear the hat of the “theoretical practitioner,” have found the performance of the military as political agents of modernization to have been rather dismal.

An Ethical Model for the Study of Values

Abstract: The author challenges conventional notions of societal development as dynamic economic performance, modernization of institutions or proliferation of goods and services. For him, authentic development aims toward the realization of human capabilities in all spheres. He examines common assumptions of social scientists who study value change in non-technological societies, contrasting these with another view on the dynamics of value change. Dr. Goulet presents an alternative research model which requires researchers to make themselves vulnerable to the populace under study.

Beyond Tradition and Modernity in Madras

Abstract: The study of the modernization of non-Western cultures has been dominated by the metaphor of the ‘take-off’ introduced by the economists and by the assumption of incompatibility between ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ cultures. These interpretations of modernization are shared by both those who view it as a process of diffusing Western culture and by those who view it as an internal process of development which may require an external stimulus to ‘trigger’ the ‘take-off’. On either view, modernization becomes a problem of suddenly transforming a ‘traditional’ type of culture, society, and personality into a ‘modern’ type. This view of modernization is supported, and perhaps suggested, by the classical nineteenth-and early twentieth-century social science theory of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ societies as opposed types, a theory associated with the names of Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Maine, and Tonnies, among others.

The Modernizing Impact of Urbanization: A Causal Analysis

Abstract: Although the concepts of modernization and urbanization are closely linked in the cognitive system of most social scientists, this linkage does not rest on a satisfactory empirical basis. What we do know is that over the long run urbanization and modernization have tended to develop over time, both in the developed countries and in the underdeveloped world.1 But the processes by which this has occurred have been summarized only in crude, soliptic terms. That is, regardless of the exact conceptualization of "urbanization" or "modernization," we know that each affects the other, so that a persistent covariation is found, whether one looks at cross-sectional or longitudinal data. Yet this finding has become a trivial observation. One means of attempting to unravel the underlying causal processes is to focus on individuals undergoing social change rather than on the institutions which are changing. Rather than focusing on the city, one can study the city dweller; similarly, one can examine the degree to which such individuals behave in a "modern" fashion, rather than how the occupational, educational, and other institutions of societies change. This approach has been most cogently put by Inkeles and his colleagues, who have for some time been concerned with the process of "becoming modern."2

Housing Finance in Nigeria

Abstract: Two types of urbanization can be identified. The first type is the technologically supported urbanization, the type taking place in the more advanced countries of the world.1 In those parts urbanization may not be an undesirable phenomenon; the degree of urbanization there has been proved to be highly associated with the advanced industrialization, the high degree of technology, the fast pace of modernization and progress, and the rapid economic development, all of which characterize these industrially advanced countries.2 The second type is the socio-economically handicapped urbanization. This is the type of urbanization taking place in the emerging nations. Here the countries concerned have very small and insufficient resources upon which they could depend to meet the challenges of urbanization.3 Moreover, these countries have inadequate economic activities, and hence inadequate employment opportunities which can absorb the 'huge never ending cohorts of babies and peasants swelling the urban masses.'4

The Social Costs of Modernization: Ecological Problems in the USSR

Abstract: V IRTUALLY all of the existing literature on modernization is V concerned with the virtues of modernity. It focuses on the gains to be derived from modernization-industrialization, material progress, social welfare, political rationality, etc. But experience suggests that gains are usually achieved at some cost: the drive toward modernity seems invariably to produce new social and personal problems. In the USSR-perhaps the world's most developed underdeveloped countrythe modernization process has been accompanied by massive social costs. To be sure, the Soviet regime has been responsible for a number of significant achievements, and has fashioned a central authority capable of mobilizing the nation's resources toward social, political, economic, and scientific-technical change as effective as that of any country. But Soviet modernization has been achieved at a heavy cost. Traditional patterns of family life, religion, personal freedom, and community organization have been disrupted. The USSR is presently faced with a growing drinking problem, crime and juvenile delinquency, the beginnings of a drug problem, and alienation and emotional tension among substantial numbers of citizens. These difficulties have accompanied the Soviet Union's rapid social and economic change. In an assessment of the Soviet experience, then, achievements must be weighed against failures, and gains must be balanced against perceptible costs. Perhaps this cost/benefit dualism can be seen most clearly in the realm of ecology: the ambitious Soviet effort to transform the environment, despite (or rather because of) its many successes, has at the same time resulted in much harm. Recent years have witnessed growing evidence of pollution and misuse of the land throughout the Communist world. States as different as Czechoslovakia, Poland, Rumania, and the

Continuities of Social Mobility in Traditional and Modern Society in India: Two Case Studies of Caste Mobility in Bengal

Abstract: The Sadgapas and the Tilis, two Bengali castes broke with their parent castes. They formed themselves into new castes which gained higher social status than their parent castes in terms of the local caste hierarchy in Bangal. The emergence of the Sadgopa caste, as distinct from the Tilis, occurred at a period when none of the technological, political, and intellectual developments had yet occurred in Bengal that are generally used to characterize modernization. They were established as a caste by the second decade of the nineteenth century while the history of their growth and development goes back to the second half of the sixteenth century. On the other hand, the Tili movement took an extensive form in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Tilis receives wider social recognition as a caste during the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century. The Tili movement was accelerated by modern conditions. Apparently the external factors helping social mobility varied from the case of the Sadgopas to that of the Tilis. But there are certain common features of development in both cases. Both the Sadgopas and the Tilis had collectively abandoned their traditional occupation to switch over to comparatively more lucrative and prestigious occupations, and became landowners. Complete dissociation from the traditional occupations which identified them with lower social ranks made it easier for the Sadgopas and the Tilis to aspire for better social status. But the crucial factor in their movements for mobility was ownership of land, which enabled them to have direct control over the life of the people in their respective areas and enhance their social prestige and power. This was the source of their strength as distinct groups and die source of their collective power to bargain successfully with the rest of the society for higher status. The incentive of corporate social mobility originated, both under traditional, pre-modern circumstances and under the circumstances of modernization, from the achievement of each group of a sense of corporate solidarity, regarding internal as well as external prestige. This enabled the groups to break away from the parent castes and to form new castes with higher social status. Previous writing on the subject has made this corporate solidarity a function of response to external forces, which are identified with only factors of modernization. It is the contention of this paper that corporate solidarity could have had its genesis in prcmodern times as well and that modernization marked only its acceleration.

Some problems of time-series analysis in research on modernization*:

Abstract: Even before the rapid progress of econometrics, attempts were made in the other social sciences to develop procedures appropriate to quantitative analysis and explanation of macro-processes. If we take a new look at the traditions of the Political arithiiietick and Staatenkunde of the 17th and 18th centuries, we discover that in the early stages of the social sciences no differentiation had yet been made between economic, political and sociological analysis, and there was no distinction between statistical methodology and substantive research 1. This retrospective approach does not have the purpose of arguing against the scientific division of labor, but is adopted in order

The Modernization of the University: The Impact of Function on Governance.

Abstract: (1971). The Modernization of the University: The Impact of Function on Governance. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 42, No. 6, pp. 430-441.