Showing papers on "Modernization theory published in 1984"

Politics, culture, and class in the French Revolution

Abstract: When this book was published in 1984, it reframed the debate on the French Revolution, shifting the discussion from the Revolution's role in wider, extrinsic processes (such as modernization, capitalist development, and the rise of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes) to its central political significance: the discovery of the potential of political action to consciously transform society by molding character, culture, and social relations. In a new preface to this twentieth-anniversary edition, Hunt reconsiders her work in the light of the past twenty years' scholarship.

The State-Society Struggle: Zaire in Comparative Perspective

Abstract: Thomas M. Callaghy has written a truly admirable study of state formation in Africa that is at once bold and provocative. Focusing specifically on Zaire, the study boldly and convincingly situates the state formation process in contemporary Africa within a comparative and historical framework that is astutely informed by the current theoretical debates on the state and by a judicious blend of analytic categories derived from Weberian sociology, Marxist analysis, organization theory, modernization and development approaches, and world-system and dependency-underdevelopment perspectives. This ambitious framework is operationalized with the help of an impressive array of extant theoretical and empirical studies, enriched by primary data collected in Zaire. It is also a provocative study, for Callaghy proceeds from what, at first blush, seems to be a preposterous assumption that the state formation process in contemporary Africa is similar to and comparable with the state formation process in Latin America and especially seventeenth-century France. The central thesis of the study is that the state formation process in contemporary Africa is no different than in early modern Europe and early postcolonial Latin America, or, for that matter, anywhere else. Methodologically, therefore, the "state formation experience of other areas and periods is indeed germane to the study of state formation process in Africa and ... the use of comparative perspective helps to highlight key aspects of African politics today that have been neglected or inadequately conceptualized" (pp. xixii). Everywhere, the process of state formation entails a struggle between a group of centralizing elites and a diverse set of powerful and autonomous internal and external groups over the location and distribution of political power and economic resources. Essentially, this is a struggle for sovereignty, for domination over internal societal groups and autonomy vis-a-vis external actors and forces. Everywhere the struggle proceeds slowly, unevenly and incrementally, involving a varying mix of conflicting and complementary interests, confrontational and cooperative strategies, and coercive and cooptive techniques. Nowhere is the eventual outcome of this struggle predetermined or unambiguous. This central thesis is methodically elaborated in two crisply written and tightly argued parts of the book, comprised of eight chapters which are liberally footnoted, often with long explanatory notes. Part I elucidates the comparative and analytic perspectives which inform the study. Part II focuses directly on the statesociety struggle in Zaire. Chapter I employs the current theoretical debates on the state to categorize Mobutu's Zaire as the contemporary African variant of an "early modern" absolutist authoritarian state with a strong organic-statist orientation and associated but weak corporatist structures linking state and society. Comparison with Latin America serves to emphasize the quintessentially uninstitutionalized character of this state in which state structures, societal configurations (especially class and ethnicity), and state-society relations are all in flux and in the process of formation. Zaire in this respect conforms not to the bureaucratic-authoritarian model of contemporary Latin America or Bonapartist France, in which state

The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India

Abstract: Stressing the variations in meaning of modernity and tradition, this work shows how in India traditional structures and norms have been adapted or transformed to serve the needs of a modernizing society. The persistence of traditional features within modernity, it suggests, answers a need of the human condition. Three areas of Indian life are analyzed: social stratification, charismatic leadership, and law. The authors question whether objective historical conditions, such as advanced industrialization, urbanization, or literacy, are requisites for political modernization.

Trajectories of Development: A Test of Ecological-Evolutionary Theory

Abstract: To test a fundamental hypothesis of ecological-evolutionary theory, that technical and economic heritage affects current rates and patterns of development, Third World societies were classified as "industrializing agrarian" or "industrializing horticultural" on the basis of their dominant subsistence technologies prior to sustained contact with industrial societies and industrial technology, and then compared on five basic dimensions: (1) current levels of technological and economic development, (2) informational resources, (3) rates of economic growth, (4) vital rates, and (5) trade dependency. Predicted differences were found on all dimensions. Alternative explanations were explored and rejected, and it was also demonstrated that these differences were not explained by netzwork position in the world economy or by recency of national independence. These findings suggest that the impact of techno-economic heritage on development merits further investigation. What forces determine the trajectories of development of societies in the modem world? Why have some societies been so much more successful than others in achieving economic growth and higher standards of living for their citizens? Various answers have been given to these questions in recent decades. Modernization theorists such as Parsons and Inkeles have stressed the importance of belief systems and values, following the early lead of

Traditional Agricultural Knowledge: Past Performance, Future Prospects, and Institutional Implications

Abstract: Whether as economists concerned with agricultural development or conservationists concerned with sustaining the services of environmental systems, we have been of multiple minds with respect to traditional agricultural practices and their supporting cultural systems. Traditional knowledge has been viewed as part of a romantic past, as the major obstacle to development, as a nonissue, as a necessary starting point, and as a critical component of a cultural alternative to modernization. Only very rarely, however, is traditional knowledge treated as knowledge per se in the mainstream of the agricultural development and environmental management literature, as knowledge that contributes to our understanding of agricultural production and the maintenance and use of environmental systems. Our views have an extended romantic antecedent. But with modernization we rather

Kinship ideology and practice in Latin America

Abstract: In this volume an international group of anthropologists and historians examines the complex relationships between family life, culture, and economic change in Latin America and the Caribbean. Dissatisfied with interpretations based on European experience, these scholars incorporate the particular histories, ideologies, and aspirations of New World peoples into analyses informed by general theory.The study of kinship in Latin America has been in the past dominated by anthropologists concerned with primitive Indian groups. The few scholars who have investigated family life in urban or more developed rural groups have focused on what they believe to be the impact of modernization on traditional systems brought from Europe or carried forward from an Indian past. In "Kinship Ideology and Practice in Latin America," the contributors show that, contrary to the belief that urbanization and economic development lead to individualism, social atomization, and the dissolution of the family, the rich as well as the poor of Latin America are sustained by, and use, extensive kinship ties.The essays include analyses of kinship and godparenthood among slaves in the West Indies and Brazil; studies of Andean kinship from Incan times to the present; and descriptions of kinship and marriage among Brazilian slum dwellers and plantation workers, Mexican millionaires, cowboys, and peasants, and the Jamaican middle class. One essay uses translations of original documents to follow the changing meanings of such concepts as love, "heart," concupiscence, and carnality during the economic changes that affected colonial New Mexico. Each contribution focuses on a particular aspect of the four major areas covered: the definition and dynamics of kinship, familial ties originating in nuclear relations and their extensions, the meaning and institutionalization of "compadrazgo" (ritual kinship), and the organization of marriage.In his introduction, Raymond Smith discusses the present state of kinship theory with special reference to the issues illuminated by these essays. He notes that contributors from varied backgrounds in history, anthropology, and sociology meet on common ground because "given a theoretical approach that views society as a process in time, structures by principles that are historically reconstituted, reproduced, and transformed, it is evident that history and social science cease to be distinguishable." With this premise, "Kinship Ideology and Practice in Latin America" should appeal to scholars from a number of disciplines.Originally published in 1984.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

The Function of Commercial Centers in the Modernization of European Capitalism: Amsterdam as an Information Exchange in the Seventeenth Century

Abstract: During Amsterdam's development as the commercial center of Europe in the seventeenth century, an informal “information exchange” appeared among the economic and political institutions of the city. Informational economies of the types discussed by Stigler, North, and Pred led to the emergence of Amsterdam as the focal point of information flows throughout Europe. They also encouraged a high level of innovation within all functional areas of Amsterdam's information exchange—especially in long-term data analysis—which contributed to the general modernization of capitalism.

Make Money not Babies: Changing Status Markers of Northern Thai Women

Abstract: There is a sizable literature, both anthropological and popular, on the question of how "modernization" or "urbanization" affects the status of women in "traditional" societies.' Observers of the status of women in post-World War II Thailand report increasing gender differences in social position, prestige, and power that selectively disadvantage the majority of women. The observers usually associate this loss of status by women with increased alliances between Thailand and Western nations and with the modernization of the peasant socioeconomic order.2

China's modernization: Are young women going to lose out?

Abstract: In carrying out its modernization program, the Chinese government emphasizes that it will have to rely heavily on young people because of the dire shortage of expertise in China caused by the disruption of professional training during the Cultural revolution...

The Economic Transformation of the Republic of China on Taiwan

Abstract: Just as the Greek hero Odysseus faced many misfortunes and great challenges and yet overcame them before returning to his beloved Ithaca, so, too, the Republic of China on Taiwan in 1949–50 faced insurmountable odds and difficulties and year-to-year crises thereafter, and yet also overcame them to achieve economic modernization and prosperity.

Science, Technology and Education in the Development of Indigenous Technological Capability

Abstract: In broad comparability with the changes in economic theories and policies of the last chapter, the period 1960 to 1980 witnessed shifts in education and development theory which have resulted now in the beginnings of interest in the notion of indigenous technological capability The critique of the 1960s’ faith in investment-in-education-and-modernisation has been sufficiently widespread that there is no cause to rehearse it here;1 equally, criticism of dependency theory, which was one of the successors to the modernisation era, has also been effective in undermining the cruder versions of cultural imperialism and of the alleged subordination of the entire education apparatus to the economic system and the international division of labour2 The other successor to the short-lived modernisation period was the very wideranging concern for equity, employment, income distribution and basic needs, especially in regard to rural and marginal urban populations3 This had a much greater impact on educational thinking from the late 1960s than did the dependency literature Then finally from the mid to late 1970s, research on education and labour markets started turning up evidence of significant autonomy and self-reliance at the national, regional and community level

Des industries rurales à la protoindustrialisation : historique d'un changement de perspective

Abstract: From Rural Industries to Proto-industrialization : a New Perspective. ; ; The development of the concept of proto-industrialization has renewed historians' interest in rural industries. The existence and importance of these industries had been known for a long time, but the application of the "modernization" framework to historical studies had removed them from the stage for a while. Definitions must be distinguished from hypotheses. Even though the growth of rural industry is at the heart of proto-industrialization, the definition of the concept also includes a number of allied phenomena, all of which are observable within the spatial framework of the region. As for the hypotheses, the relationship between rural industry and demographic change must surely be their fundamental and most novel aspect. Despite what some recent critics have asserted, the latest empirical studies mostly confirm the existence of a correlation, imperfect but significant, between rural industry and demographic expansion by way of nuptiality.

Second language acquisition: the intergroup theory with catastrophic dimensions

Abstract: Few European social psychological publications have concerned themselves with the social problems of bilingualism in general, or with second language acquisition (SLA) in particular. This is in contrast to, for example, a good deal of research interest shown in Canada (e.g. Gardner & Kalin 1981; Lambert 1967). Yet, why should SLA concern social psychologists, whether they be Canadian, European or Asian? There are many answers to this question and we shall highlight just a few. The most prominent is the fact that the vast majority of nations in the world are multicultural and most of these are multilingual. Europe itself can arguably be considered a laboratory for the study of bi- and multilingual issues. Furthermore, a large proportion of children are schooled in their second rather than their mother tongues, the language of the curriculum often being that of a former colonial power or of the dominant ethnic elite. For example, most speakers of English have learned the language as their second tongue (Macnamara 1967). It is true that, at the same time, we are witnessing increasing contemporary pressures towards political and economic interdependence, centralization, modernization, and the like, which might nullify multilingualism and relegate it to the status of a phenomenon of the past. However, and in some ways in response to the above forces (Tajfel 1978a), the recent resurgence of interest in ethnic revivals and national identity which many regard as a distinctly modern process (Fishman 1977; Ross 1979), has been reflected world-wide in the resurrection and modernization of ‘old’, as well as in the creation of new, languages.

Early Modern European Society

Abstract: 1. Identities and Horizons 2. Leisure, Work and Movement 3. Communities of Belief 4. The Ruling Elite 5. The Middle Elite 6. Solidarities and Resistance 7. Gender Roles 8. Social Discipline and Marginality 9. Modernization and the Individual 10. The Absolute State

Varieties of paternalism: industrial structures and the social relations of production in american textiles

Abstract: STUDENTS OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE AND America have frequently made note of paternalist relationships between masters and workers as one dimension of the social relations of production in emergent capitalist manufacturing.' For adherents of modernization approaches, those relationships may represent a way-station along the road to cost-conscious, rational, business practice. For some Marxist historians, they can be seen as an obstacle to workers' realization of their class position and their appreciation of the surpluses being wrung from their labor. For others, paternalism might seem to be an extension of patriarchal family authority from the farm or home/workshop into the factory and mill, a reconstitution of the father's dominion over a set of industrial children. In my work on the textile trades in nineteenth-century America, principally centered on Philadelphia's industry, and in the literature of the textile manufacture in New England and the South, evidence of factory paternalism abounds. Yet when examined closely, the relationships in place at Lowell or Manchester, those in Philadelphia, and those in the rural North or in the post-Reconstruction Carolinas are strikingly dissimilar. If paternalism is not to become a spongy term, calling forth only imagery of a fuzzy, vaguely friendly form of domination, it may be worth pursuing the elements that constituted various forms of paternalism, to link them to particular constellations of material and cultural contexts, and to speculate as to the logic and character of obligation that surfaced in different settings.

Rangaku and Westernization

Abstract: The continuities between the study of the West through Dutch in Tokugawa Japan and the program of modernization in the Meiji period seem self evident. The influence of Holland through Deshima became the focus of the life work of Itazawa Takeo and others well before the war, and it received detailed discussion from Charles Boxer in 1936. Nevertheless issues of the importance and influence of Tokugawa rangaku continue to be debated, and that debate greatly enriches our feel for Japanese society then and now.

Modernization and Democratic Reform in China

Abstract: C hinese notions of popular government have undergone several metamorphoses in the twentieth century. The traditional Confucian concept of the imperial mandate of heaven" gave way to the ineffectual parliamentary institutions and tutelary democratic ideology of the Republican period, which in turn led to a new form of popular mobilization in rural areas and the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. The chaotic consequences of revolutionary populism during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) have led since the death of Mao in 1976 to the current situation: rethinking the problem of democracy in China and experimentation with new political forms. 1 Post-Mao democratic thought, the subject of this article, is concerned to an unprecedented degree with institutional guarantees of popular influence and greater autonomy for political, legal, and social structures. The present flurry of reform in democratic theory and politics is primarily Chinas response to its own history and to inherent problems of modern government. The Cultural Revolution demonstrated that a large-scale society with a complex division of labor is too diverse and too fragile to rely for popular control on unstructured mass action. Democratic institutionalism has appeared in China as a political adjustment to the needs of a modern state. This is not to say that the Chinese response to modernity (itself an ambiguous concept) is identical to the Western response. But no matter how individuated Chinese politics is, it is not incomparably unique. The objective of this article is to analyze the interrelationship of modernization and democratic reform in post-Mao China in the areas of ideology and central policymaking. Democratic political reform in China has a special relationship to economic modernization. For most people, democratic reform is subordinate to economic objectives in that it is justified by its role in mobilizing mass enthusiasm. Some, to be sure, see democracy as an end in itself. Socialist democracy is, in any case, seen as a guarantee of orderly procedure and of mass control over local leaders, not as an assertion of absolute individual rights. Socialist modernization is complementary to socialist democracy. The most recent official statement, by Party Chairman Hu Yaobang at the 12th Party Congress, states: "The steady development of socialist

Politics and Female Status in North Africa: A Reconsideration of Development Theory

Abstract: is presented in theories of societal development. Modernization theory hypothesizes a positive relationship between female status and level of socioeconomic development, while the more recent conflict perspective asserts that foreign capitalist penetration is negatively associated with female access to opportunities in the modern sector. This paper assesses the applicability of these two major theoretical perspectives for explaining national differences in female status among the five North African Muslim states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, utilizing a composite female modernity index derived from secondary sources. The results of this analysis suggest that neither theoretical paradigm adequately accounts for observed national variations in female access to educational, economic, and family limitation opportunities. The remainder of this paper proposes an alternative theoretical framework to explain these divergent national patterns of female participation. It highlights the central role of political elites in the late-developing states and suggests an empirical relationship

Federalism and Modernization: Canada and the United States

Abstract: Since World War II, the federal systems in the United States and Canada have moved in opposite directions: the U.S. has become increasingly centralized, while the provinces in Canada have gained power at the expense of Ottawa. These divergences can be explained by such societal factors as economic structures, international commitments, and locations of minority populations; and by institutional factors, such as the number of constituent units, methods by which provincial authorities are represented in federal legislatures, and especially by the contrast between Canada's Westminster-type institutions and the U.S. separation of powers. These differences are illustrated by intergovernmental fiscal processes, energy policies, and federalmunicipal relations. They cannot be accounted for by modernization theories, but rather by economic structures, demographic distributions, and especially constitutional and institutional arrangements.

The Rockefeller Foundation, China, and Cultural Change

Abstract: In 1915, on hearing of the Rockefeller Foundation's desire to set up a medical school in Peking, Paul Reinsch, the United States minister to China, remarked approvingly that the foundation's plans were "in full accordance with the traditions of our past relations with China, where the activities of our people have been religious, cultural and educational in a far greater measure than they have been commercial." Reinsch's comment highlights two key elements of the relationship between the United States and China: the vital role that policymakers assigned to the cultural dimension of that relationship; and the conviction that the management of cultural contacts was properly a nongovernmental function. The Rockefeller Foundation's attempt over the course of forty years to channel China's modernization in a liberal direction epitomizes the marriage of national interest and private policymaking. At the same time, the Rockefeller experiment in the management of ideas also provides an example of how an important aspect of United States foreign relations can be understood "less from the study of diplomatic correspondence in government archives than from an examination of extragovernmental forces. " ' Despite the fact that the bulk of its expenditures would be made in medicine, the foundation always defined its purposes in sweeping civilizational terms that transcended its seemingly narrow focus on medical matters. That expansive outlook first became evident in the educational origins of its China program, which articulated the cultural objectives that would become the hallmark of its handling of Chinese affairs. In October 1906 Ernest DeWitt Burton

Community Participation and Modernization: A Reexamination of Political Choices

Abstract: A critical issue facing democratic societies is how to integrate the concept of citizen participation with the technocratic nature of modern organizations. The issue of participation in the workplace has a long and controversial history in organizational theory. 1 The nature and extent of citizen participation in governmental organizations, an issue of concern since the formation of Greek city states, takes on added significance under the pressures of modernization.2 Classic democrats, while acknowledging the complexity of modern society, have concluded that participation is too crucial an element of citizen development to be sacrificed to the demands of modernity.3 On the other hand, pluralist theorists, while acknowledging the importance of participation in

Underdevelopment and Dependency: Maritime India during the Raj

Abstract: An extensive body of literature has grown up in recent years devoted to the analysis of the causes of what is certainly the most pressing economic issue of our time: the unequal distribution of the world's wealth and income, and in particular what in shorthand may be called ‘the underdevelopment of the Third World’. Tremendous progress has been made by radical as well as more conventional social scientists, and our understanding of the processes of interaction, economic as well as otherwise, between the metropolitan core of western colonial powers and indigenous societies in the periphery has benefited commensurately. Naturally, the debate has tended to focus on the major sectorsinvolved in the processes of economic growth and modernization, agriculture and industry, with infrastructure a poor third. Nevertheless, it is somewhat surprising to observe that what to many students ofEuropean expansion has appeared to constitute the essential element intheir ability to explore, gain access to, and exploit the periphery, hasbeen completely neglected: ocean transport, or to put it differently, themain body of the infrastructure of the world economy. In some ways, no dependence is felt to be so absolute as that of the country that sees itscoastal traffic dominated and its exports carried by foreign-owned ships.

Mafia, peasants and great estates : society in traditional Calabria

Abstract: The nature of traditional societies in Mediterranean countries and the effect on those societies brought about in the twentieth century, have long been debated; but in general these debates has started from an assumption of the relatively homogenous nature of traditional peasant society. In this book Pino Arlacchi demolishes that assumption by demonstrating that within the Italian region of Calabria there existed not one but a range of 'traditional' societies. This book will be of interest to a wide range of sociologists, anthropologists, historians and development economists concerned with the nature of traditional societies and the impact of modernisation on them. Written in a vivd style and offering fascinating insights into the people and history of Calabria, the book will also appeal to general readers interested in the Italian south and the mafia.

Railroads and the Efficiency of Internal Markets: Some Conceptual and Practical Considerations

Abstract: The effect of advances in transportation on economic modernization and growth has long been an area of major interest for economic historians and development economists. This has been particularly true in the last 20 years, during which practitioners and critics of the new economic history have concentrated their efforts-partly in response to Rostow's leading-sector postulate-on the economics of railways in nineteenth century Europe and America. Most of these efforts were directed toward questions of railroads' backward linkages and the methodological and empirical issues implied by the social saving concept as a measure of their direct contribution to aggregate economic activity.' Another aspect of the railroads' modernizing effect is their role in integrating markets and improving resource allocation through production and trade. But despite their importance in the interplay among modern infrastructure, economic efficiency, and growth, this aspect has received much less attention in the literature. As a result, several issues concerning the market-integrating effects of railroads (as well as of transport improvements in general) remain unresolved or at least require some clarification. I shall attempt to respond to this need by elaborating on some of the conceptual and practical questions related to (a) the notion of markets and market integration as an allocative device; (b) the distinction between the quantity and price characteristics of market unification; and (c) the link between the economic gains from market integration and the railroads' social savings. In so doing I shall draw both on my own research on the unification of the Russian grain market2 and on other studies in the field. Let us open the discussion with the notion of markets and the methodological and empirical meaning of "market integration" as a