Showing papers on "Modernization theory published in 1994"

Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order

Abstract: The theme of reflexivity has come to be central to social analysis. In this book three prominent social thinkers discuss the implications of "reflexive modernization" for social and cultural theory today. Ulrich Beck's vision of the "risk society" has already become extraordinarily influential. Beck offers a new elaboration of his basic ideas, connecting reflexive modernization with new issues to do with the state and political organization. Giddens offers an in-depth examination of the connections between "institutional reflexivity" and the de-traditionalizing of the modern world. We are entering, he argues, a phase of the development of a global society. A "global society" is not a world society, but one with universalizing tendencies. Lash develops the theme of reflexive modernization in relation the aesthetics and the interpretation of culture. In this domain, he suggests, we need to look again at the conventional theories of postmodernism; "aesthetic modernization" has distinctive qualities that need to be uncovered and analyzed. In the concluding sections of the book, the three authors offer critical appraisals of each other's viewpoints, providing a synthetic conclusion to the work as a whole.

Orientalism, postmodernism, and globalism

Abstract: It is often thought that the development of capitalism and the modernization of culture have brought about a profound decline of religious belief and commitment. The history of Christianity in the last two decades appears to be a good illustration of this general process of secularization with the undermining of belief and commitment as Western cultures became industrial and urban. However, in the twentieth century we have seen that Islam continues to be a dominant force in politics and culture not only in the Orient but in Western society. In this challenging study of contemporary social theory, Bryan Turner examines the recent debate about orientalism in relation to postmodernism and the process of globalization. He provides a profound critique of many of the leading fissures in classical orientalism. His book also considers the impact of the notion of the world in sociological theory. These cultural changes and social debates also reflect important change in the status and position of intellecuals in modern culture who are threatened, not only by the levelling of mass culture, but also by the new opportunities posed by postmodernism. He takes a critical view of the role of sociology in these developments and raises important questions about the global role of English intellectuals as a social stratum. Bryan Turner's ability to combine these discussions about religion, politics, culture and intellectuals represents a remarkable integration of cultural analysis in cultural studies.

Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture

Abstract: Fast Cars, Clean Bodies examines the crucial decade from Dien Bien Phu to the mid-1960s when France shifted rapidly from an agrarian, insular, and empire-oriented society to a decolonized, Americanized, and fully industrial one. In this analysis of a startling cultural transformation Kristin Ross finds the contradictions of the period embedded in its various commodities and cultural artifacts -- automobiles, washing machines, women's magazines, film, popular fiction, even structuralism -- as well as in the practices that shape, determine, and delimit their uses. In each of the book's four chapters, a central object of mythical image is refracted across a range of discursive and material spaces: social and private, textual and cinematic, national and international. The automobile, the new cult of cleanliness in the capital and the colonies, the waning of Sartre and de Beauvoir as the couple of national attention, and the emergence of reshaped, functionalist masculinities (revolutionary, corporate, and structural) become the key elements in this prehistory of postmodernism in France. Modernization ideology, Ross argues, offered the promise of limitless, even timeless, development. By situating the rise of "end of history" ideologies within the context of France's transition into mass culture and consumption, Ross returns the touted timelessness of modernization to history. She shows how the realist fiction and film of the period, as well as the work of social theorists such as Barthes, Lefebvre, and Morin who began at the time to conceptualize "everyday life," laid bare the disruptions and the social costs of events. And she argues that the logic of the racism prevalent in France today, focused on the figure of the immigrant worker, is itself the outcome of the French state's embrace of capitalist modernization ideology in the 1950s and 1960s.

Success and Education in South Korea.

Abstract: ment in Japan has become widely known,1 and South Korean students have recently achieved the highest mean scores in science and math in the International Assessment of Educational Progress (IAEP) administered by the Educational Testing Service to 13-year-olds in 19 countries, with Taiwanese students having achieved second highest.2 This international success is well known in South Korea, having been widely reported in the media, and has become a source of national pride. It is not immediately apparent why children in South Korea and Taiwan should be so successful in science and math. Neither subject is a traditional strength of East Asian intelligentsias, and educated Koreans often respond to questions about South Korean students' mastery of math by noting that none of the world's famous mathematicians have been East Asian. Lip service has been given to scientific and technical education since the founding of the Republic of Korea in 1948, but the actual emphasis in educational planning up until the 1970s was citizenship educationinculcating loyalty, patriotism, self-reliance, and anticommunism. Even the ideology of modernization introduced in the early 1960s focused on spirit rather than technology. In-su Son has characterized the educational policy of Huii-s6k Mun, minister of education and culture during the Democratic Party Government of 1960-61, thusly: "If modernization is realizing humanity by making daily life more rational, then the spiritual aspect of modernization is even more important than the material, and the spiritual must precede [the material], if only in stages ... human propensities and the structure of consciousness must be reconstructed as the driving force of social reform."3 Serious and sustained special attention to scientific and technical education came only in 1973

Political Values in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania: Sources and Implications for Democracy

Abstract: Employing data from three surveys of mass opinion conducted in Lithuania, Ukraine and European Russia during 1990, 1991 and 1992, we examine three prominent but competing hypotheses about the source of political values in the post-Soviet societies: historically derived political culture, regime indoctrination and the effects of societal modernization. The literature on Soviet political culture argues that Russian mass values are distinguished by authoritarianism and love of order, values which will be largely shared by Ukrainians, especially East Ukrainians, whereas Lithuanian society would not evince this pattern. Our data do not support this hypothesis. We then examine acceptance of Soviet era norms, both political and economic. We do not find support for the argument that regime indoctrination during the Soviet period produced a set of ideologically derived values throughout the former Soviet Union and across a series of generations. The third hypothesis – that industrialization, urbanization, war and changing educational opportunities shaped the formative experiences of succeeding generations in the Soviet societies and, therefore, their citizens' values – receives the most support: in each of the three societies, differences in political values across age groups, places of residence and levels of education are noteworthy. The variations in political values we find across demographic groupings help us to understand the level of pro-democratic values in each society. We find that in Russia and Ukraine more support for democracy can be found among urban, better educated respondents than among other groups. In Lithuania, the urban and better educated respondents evince pro-democratic values at about the same level as their counterparts in Russia and Ukraine, but Lithuanian farmers and blue-collar workers support democracy at a level closer to urban, white-collar Lithuanians than to their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts. In all three societies, those citizens most likely to hold values supportive of democracy are those who are less favourable to Soviet-era values and less convinced of the primacy of the need for social and political ‘order’. Those who desire strong leadership, however, tend to have more democratic values, not more authoritarian ones.

The Military, Militarization and Democratization in Africa: A Survey of Literature and Issues

Abstract: The studies of African military establishments that appeared from the late 1960s, after the first wave of coups, were very much the products of their time. The theories of modernization and political development that were their starting point were the ideas of an epoch: that of decolonization, nation-building, internationalization of capital, consolidation of U.S. hegemony, and globalization of American social science. They are of interest now because aspects of that epoch are repeating themselves: in particular, the reassertion of U.S. and western hegemony, the return to free market orthodoxy, and a “third wave” of transitions to democracy (Huntington 1991). Three overlapping debates dominated the literature on the military in developing countries during the 1960s and 1970s. They revolved initially around the conditions of democracy and civilian control. They shifted to the role of the military in modernization or development as armies moved into politics, then focused on political order following deep hegemonic crises in developing countries themselves and in their relations with the West. Early studies of newly formed African armies and police establishments saw them as part of an institutional transfer of western paradigms of governance, along with the Westminster model and Gaullist presidentialism. Military professionalism was integral to the neocolonial enterprise of transferring power to elites, requiring accelerated training in metropolitan and local academies of African “Narcissuses in uniform” (First 1970, chap. 3).

Adult Education in the American Experience: From the Colonial Period to the Present

Abstract: Part One: Adult Education in Early America Part Two: The Early National and Antebellum Eras Part Three: Adult Education in an Era of Modernization Part Four: The Nation Amid Crisis and Recovery Part Five: America at the Peak of World Power.

Living arrangements of elderly Chinese and Japanese in the United States

Abstract: Living arrangements of elderly persons have been extensively studied in Asian countries and in the United States. Particularly at issue has been whether the elderly live in an extended family household, a nuclear family household, live alone, or in an institution. Cohabitation of two or more adult generations has been very common in most Asian countries. In China, the three-generation family continues to be an important family type today. A recent study estimated the proportion of three-generation and other extended family households in China at 20% in 1987 (Yi, 1991). More than half of the rural persons aged 60 years and over and more than a third of their urban counterparts lived in three-generation households in 1987 (Yi, 1991). In Japan, half of elderly persons lived with their married children in the early to mid-1980s (Kojima, 1989; Zenkoku Shakai Fukushi Kyogikai, 1982). Although the proportion of elderly parents living with married children in Japan is declining, the process seems to be very slow. In the United States, however, extended family households have never prevailed. Even during the preindustrial era, this pattern was temporary and seldom widespread (Doty, 1986; Gordon, 1978: B. Laslett, 1978; P. Laslett, 1972). In the 1980s, about 8% of non-Hispanic white Americans lived in households containing at least one extended family member (Angel & Tienda, 1982). In 1981, only 3% of elderly persons aged 60 years or older in the United States lived with their married children (Zenkoku Shakai Fukushi Kyogikai, 1982). The proportion was estimated higher at 6% among elderly American women (Wolf & Soldo, 1988). Despite noticeable differences in patterns of elderly living arrangements in Asian countries and in the United States, relatively little is known about how these patterns have changed as persons of Asian origin become integrated into American society. As Cowgill (1986) observes, "Chinese and Japanese people carry the culture pattern with them when they migrate to other parts of the world, although the circumstances of the migration and the treatment in the host country obviously condition the duration and strength of its persistence" (p. 44). This paper addresses several related issues. How do living arrangements of elderly Chinese and Japanese differ from those of non-Hispanic whites? What determines the living arrangements of elderly Chinese and Japanese Americans? To what extent do immigrant status and processes of assimilation affect these living arrangements? We examine these issues using the 1980 U.S. Census data. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Theories about elderly living arrangements in Asian countries have emphasized the effects of modernization and culture. Modernization theory has focused on the effects of technological advancement, industrialization, modern education, and functional specialization on aging and the family. The modernization theory of aging and elderly living arrangements may be summarized in Cowgill's (1986) argument. First, the development of health technology has increased longevity. This has resulted in prolonged retirement of the elderly which is often accompanied by a significant loss of income and social prestige. Second, industrialization has required a separation of work from home and a highly mobile work force, which has weakened familial ties to a particular geographical area. Third, modern education has led to changes in values and intellectual development across generations. Younger people have come to place greater emphasis on self-fulfillment as individuals rather than on their responsibilities toward their kin. Finally, increased specialization in social institutions has reduced traditional family functions. Modernization makes extended family living less essential and economically less advantageous, and thus facilitates the transition to nuclear family living arrangements. Modernization has promoted nuclear family households, which are compatible with the mobile and flexible nature of modern living. …

Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany

Abstract: In much the same way that Japan has become the focus of contemporary American discussion about industrial restructuring, Germans in the 1920s debated economic reform in terms of Americanism and Fordism, seeing in the United States an intriguing vision for a revitalized economy and a new social order. During the 1920s, Germans were fascinated by American economic success and its quintessential symbols, Henry Ford and his automobile factories. Mary Nolan's book explores the contradictory ways in which trade unionists and industrialists, engineers and politicians, educators and social workers explained American economic success, envisioned a more efficient or "rationalized" economic system for Germany, and anguished over the social and cultural costs of adopting the American version of modernity. These debates about Americanism and Fordism deeply shaped German perceptions of what was economically and socially possible and desirable in terms of technology and work, family and gender relations, consumption and culture. Nolan examines efforts to transform production and consumption, factories and homes, and argues that economic Americanism was implemented ambivalently and incompletely, producing, in the end, neither prosperity nor political stability. Vision of Modernity will appeal not only to scholars of German History and those interested in European social and working-class history, but also to industrial sociologists and business scholars.

Relational Practices and the Marginalization of Law: Informal Financial Practices of Small Businesses in Taiwan

Abstract: There is a significant relationship between Taiwan’s rapid economic development and indigenous Taiwanese social practices and ideas about law. This relationship has generally been misconstrued or overlooked by much of the academic literature discussing Taiwan’s economic “miracle.” Networks of interpersonal relationships have played a significant role in promoting economic development, while the ROC legal system has often been reduced to a role of enabling those relationships rather than establishing the kind of universal normative order often associated with the idea of a modern legal system. A substantial component of Taiwan’s economic development has taken place in the informal sector, outside the purview of the ROC legal system. This study is the first attempt to develop a systematic account of the marginalization of Taiwan’s modern legal system and the concomitant heightened significance of alternatives, such as networks of personal connections or informal surrogates for legal regulation, in contributing to Taiwan’s rapid economic development. The role played by the ROC legal system in indirectly supporting relational practices is not one that can readily be expressed in terms of legal theories constructed to account for the relationship between law and development in Western nations. The conflict between contemporary Taiwanese social reality and liberal-democratic theory, when recognized, is usually followed by exhortations for the Taiwanese system to further modernize, thus resolving any conflict in favor of the Western model. If, however, Taiwan’s system is not so much moving toward convergence with Western models as developing along alternative lines, then analyzing how formal legal institutions in Taiwan are marginalized may better explain processes of economic development and democratization in many nations outside the Western legal and political tradition.

News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897

Abstract: "News Over the Wires" tells the story of the development of the news wire service as a business operation strategically positioned between the telegraph industry and the press. This unique history of telegraphic news gathering and news flow evaluates the effect of the innovative technology on the evolution of the concept of news and journalistic practices. It also addresses problems of technological innovation and diffusion. Menahem Blondheim's main concern, however, is the development of oligopoly in business and the control revolution in American society. He traces the discovery of timely news as a commodity, presenting a lively and detailed account of the emergence of the New York Associated Press (AP) as the first private sector national monopoly in the United States, and Western Union as the first industrial one. The book assembles, in a narrative parade of personalities and episodes, a wide-ranging body of primary sources, many of them previously untapped. It reconstructs the career of AP's maverick manager, Daniel H. Craig, and highlights his achievements as one of the most creative and effective, if least appreciated, of America's great system builders. The Associated Press and Western Union provide a novel perspective on processes of modernization and national integration in America. "News Over the Wires" demonstrates the significance of the monopolistic structure of the news business and its important impact on economic development, on the political process, and on social integration in general.

Rethinking Modernization and Modernity in Japanese History: A Focus on State-Society Relations

Abstract: T here was a time, not so long ago , when the primary fault line in American studies of Japan lay not between “Japan-bashers” and “Japanapologists,” but between those who presented the history of Japan in terms of an ongoing process of modernization and those who did not. During the 1970s, younger scholars of Japan attacked modernization theory with considerable passion (see Dower 1975), eliciting rather defensive responses from its practitioners. The 1980s saw the emergence of yet another, though somewhat smaller, generation of American scholars, which has been not so much anti-modernizationist as non-modernizationist. Like the critics of the 1970s, historians of this newest generation have dealt with conflict, social problems, and state repression, but most no longer believe it necessary to discuss the problems raised by modernization theory.

Must it be the rest against the West

Abstract: This article bases a discussion of the key global problem of the final years of the 20th century on Jean Raspails neglected futuristic novel "The Camp of the Saints" which describes the pilgrimage of a million desperate Indians from Calcutta to the French Riviera to escape widespread famine and concentrates largely on the varied responses of the French as they decide how to deal with the advancing multitude. The book thus highlights the existence of and relationship between an unbalance of wealth and resources and of demographic trends in the world. The authors of the article first heard of Raspails book during discussions about illegal migration such as that undertaken by 290 Chinese refugees by boat in 1993. Raspails novel was largely dismissed as a racist tract but he continued its theme by declaring in 1985 that the fast-growing non-European immigrant component of Frances population was endangering French cultures. Despite public outcries against such comments this remains a touchy subject in France and the debate is echoed by apologists on both side of the immigration issue in the US. However uncomfortable Raspails vision is and however repulsive readers find his language the demographic imbalances and disparities in wealth he describes exist. Although some theorists propose a "coming global boom" a close look at those who would benefit from the constant modernization of the world economy shows that the worlds winners will be coming out on top and the plight of the billions of poor is beyond their notice. The world must grapple with the problem of the emergence of demographic-technological "fault lines" are between fast-growing adolescent resource-poor undercapitalized and undereducated populations and technologically inventive demographically moribund and increasingly nervous rich societies. The only possible solution seems to be to simultaneously persuade political leaders to recognize the interconnected nature of our global problem and to use human ingenuity resourcefulness and energy to slow down or reverse worldwide demographic and environmental pressures. We may have to witness widespread societal destruction with repercussions that affect rich countries before anything is done.

Implicated: The United States in Australia

Abstract: America is deeply implicated in Australia's economic, political and cultural history. Although it has not simply imposed on Australia a version of itself nor made Australia a dependent "Americanized" satellite, the U.S. has remained an ambiguous model, a promise as well as a threat, to the smaller Pacific nation since well before its Federation. Despite the decline of American power and the end of the Cold War, the implications of American power and example continue to color Australia's political and social identity. This book examines the various ways by which Australia negotiated military alliances, economic accommodations and cultural meanings with the U.S. as both societies traveled the path of modernization.

State power and social forces: State power and social forces: on political contention and accommodation in the Third World

Abstract: A STATE-IN-SOCIETY APPROACH The recent renewal of intellectual interest in the state has made a number of salutary collateral contributions to the field of comparative politics. One of these has been to provoke a certain rejuvenation of the comparative study of politics and society in the low-income countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Moving beyond the lamentable dialogue of the deaf to which the debates between both modernization and dependency analysts had descended in the 1970s, numerous stimulating monographs published during the 1980s have been successful in “bringing the state back in” to Third World studies. It often happens in the social sciences, however, that new gains made on one analytical front may only give rise to yet newer and yet more challenging problems of analysis on other fronts. Against this generic malady, the recent state-oriented studies have shown no immunity. Furthermore, a common tendency to mistake analytical claims for empirical ones has shown itself to be especially problematic for this line of inquiry and research. The general analytical claim concerning the primacy of state can easily lead, for example, to the fallacious view that states in low-income settings are always and inevitably the most significant social actors on the scene. And the research agenda that, in turn, can flow from a view of the state-as-domineering- Leviathan is almost bound to be deficient for the study of most countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where really-existing states have so rarely achieved such colossal proportions, and where those that might be classified as genuine goliaths have so often proved to be but crippled giants.

Revolutions: Theoretical, Comparative, and Historical Studies

Abstract: Preface. Introduction: The Comparative and Historical Study of Revolutions. Part I: THEORIES OF REVOLUTION. 1. Classic Approaches. Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. The French Revolution and the Growth of the State by Alexis de Tocqueville. Charismatic Leaders versus Bureaucracy by Max Weber. 2. The Debate on Modernization. Revolution and Political Order by Samuel P. Huntington. Does Modernization Breed Revolution? by Charles Tilly. 3. The Origins of Revolutions. Peasants and Revolutions by Eric R. Wolf. Revolutions: A Structural Analysis by Theda Skocpol and Ellen Kay Trimberger. Revolutions in Modern Dictatorships by Jack A. Goldstone. Agency and Culture in Revolutions by Eric Selbin. 4. The Outcomes of Revolutions. Revolution and the Rebirth of Inequality: Stratification in Postrevolutionary Society by Jonathan Kelley and Herbert S. Klein. Gender Outcomes in Revolutions by Valentine M. Moghadam. Dictatorship or Democracy: Outcomes of Revolution in Iran and Nicaragua by John Foran and Jeff Goodwin. The Impact of Revolutions on Social Welfare in Latin America by Susan Eckstein. Counter-Revolution by Fred Halliday. Revolution and War by Stephen Walt. Revolution and Revolutionary Waves by Mark Katz. Part II: COMPARATIVE AND HISTORICAL STUDIES OF REVOLUTION. 5. Republican Revolutions. The English Revolution: A Structural-Demographic Approach by Jack A. Goldstone. The French Revolution: The Abolition of Feudalism by John Markoff. The American Revolution: The Radicalism of Revolution by Gordon Wood. 6. Marxist Revolutions. The Russian Revolution of 1917: Autocracy and Modernization by Timothy McDaniel. The Chinese Communist Revolution by Mark Selden. The Cuban Revolution by Thomas M. Leonard. 7. Revolutions Against Dictatorships. The Mexican Revolution by Walter L. Goldfrank. The Nicaraguan Revolution by Thomas W. Walker. The Iranian Revolution by Jerrold D. Green. The Philippines People Power" Revolution by Richard J. Kessler. 8. Revolutions Against Communism. The East European Revolutions of 1989 by Jeff Goodwin. Revolution in the U.S.S.R., 1989-1991 by Jack A. Goldstone. The Chinese Student Revolt in China (Tiananmen), 1989 by Martin King Whyte. 9. Guerrilla and Ethnic Revolts. A Comparative Sociology of Latin American Guerrilla Movements by Timothy Wickham-Crowley. South Africa: The Struggle Against Apartheid by Gay Seidman. The Palestinian ''''Intifada'''' Revolt by Glenn E. Robinson. The Afghanistan Revolutionary Wars by Anwar-ul-haq Ahady. A Brief Guide to Further Reading. Bibliography. Copyrights and Acknowledgements. Index."

What Makes Peasants Revolutionary

Abstract: The centrality of peasants in modern revolutions was underscored for the first time in contemporary U.S. scholarship by Barrington Moore, Jr. in Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modem World. Eloquently, the opening sentences of Moore's chapter on "The Peasants and Revolution" declared that the "process of modernization begins with peasant revolutions that fail. It culminates during the twentieth century with peasant revolutions that succeed. No longer is it possible to take seriously the view that the peasant is an "object of history," a form of social life over which changes pass but which contributes nothing to the impetus of these changes."' Published in 1966, Social Origins in fact proved uncannily prescient and timely in its emphasis on the revolutionary potential of the peasantry. When Moore's great opus was in preparation during the 1950s and early 1960s, neither Marxism nor orthodox social science paid much heed to the roles of agrarian classes in "the making of the modern world." The peas-

Land Use Rights Reform and the Real Estate Market in China

Abstract: China's economic modernization has led to the emergence of an embryo real estate market. The changes from the old system are dramatic, and the Chinese population is becoming used to market forces d...

Jewish life in Renaissance Italy

Abstract: With this heady exploration of time and space, rumors and silence, colors, tastes, and ideas, Robert Bonfil recreates the richness of Jewish life in Renaissance Italy. He also forces us to rethink conventional interpretations of the period, which feature terms like 'assimilation' and 'acculturation'. Questioning the Italians' presumed capacity for tolerance and civility, he points out that Jews were frequently uprooted and persecuted, and where stable communities did grow up, it was because the hostility of the Christian population had somehow been overcome. After the ghetto was imposed in Venice, Rome, and other Italian cities, Jewish settlement became more concentrated. Bonfil claims that the ghetto experience did more to intensify Jewish self-perception in early modern Europe than the supposed acculturation of the Renaissance. He shows how, paradoxically, ghetto living opened and transformed Jewish culture, hastening secularization and modernization. Bonfil's detailed picture reveals in the Italian Jews a sensitivity and self-awareness that took into account every aspect of the larger society. His inside view of a culture flourishing under stress enables us to understand how identity is perceived through constant interplay - on whatever terms - with the Other.

Cultural Change In Postwar Taiwan

Abstract: Introduction - change and contention in Taiwan's cultural scene, Stevan Harrell and Huang Chun-chieh. Part 1 Culture in "crisis" - views of the past and outlooks for the future: cultural policy in postwar Taiwan, Edwin A. Winckler civil society and Taiwan's quest for identity, Thomas B. Gold Taiwan and the Confucian aspiration - toward the twenty-first century, Huang C.C. and Wu Kuang-ming. Part 2 Culture at the individual level - education and attitudes: investment in education and manpower development in postwar Taiwan, Sun Chen transformation of farmers' social consciousness in post-war Taiwan, Huang C.C. Part 3 Culture with a small c - everyday life: playing in the valley - a metonym of modernization, S. Harrell changes in postwar Taiwan and their impact on the popular practice of religion, David K. Jordan tourism, formulation of cultural tradition and ethnicity - a study of the Daiyan identity of the Wulai Atayal, Hsieh Shih-chung. Part 4 Culture with a big c - literature and the arts: sociocultural change as reflected in short fiction, 1979-1989, Chu Yen modern poetry in Taiwan - continuities and innovations, Michelle Yeh after the empire - painters of the postwar generation, Jason C. Kuo feminist consciousness in the contemporary fiction of Taiwan, Sung Mei-hwa.

National Value Differences: Modernization or Institutionalization?

Abstract: 1. Determinants of values STUDIES OF VALUES have been successful in establishing strong explanatory models of the relation between socio-economic data and values at the individual level. At the national level, however, the results have been much less clear. Analyses with countries as the unit often conclude that there are major national differences which cannot be explained. The European Values Surveys Group (EVSG) had conducted surveys in many European countries around 1981 and in almost all European countries in 1990. These data sets offer interesting possibilities for a closer analysis of differences in values on a national level but the general results have been rather confusing. It has not been possible to produce evidence for simple theoretical explanations and there is, for example, no indication that the economic and political ties which bind the EU countries together have resulted in greater similarity among these countries. On the contrary, an analysis of the EVSG data in the EEC countries conclude that "national culture and opinion in Europe remain robustly diverse" (Ashford and Timms, 1992:112). Much of the research in which countries have been compared has been governed by a more or less explicit use of modernization theory. It is supposed that countries can be ranked as more or less modern and that the modernization process results in lesser emphasis on traditional values and value differentiation. Based on a comparison of the 1981 and 1990 EVSG data Estes, Halman and de Moor (1993) have tried to use modernization theory but have concluded that such a theory could not adequately describe the changes. This may be due to large cultural differences, but the same disappointing picture appears when relatively culturally identical countries are studied. Comparisons among the Scandinavian countries for instance show that a high level of life satisfaction and weak religiosity is found in all countries (Listhaug, 1990). It is tempting to explain such common values with a similar economic development and a somewhat identical culture, but a closer investigation of Scandinavian values concludes that "there is no uniform pattern of values in the Scandinavian countries.... As far as values are concerned Scandinavia is heterogeneous" (Halman, 1992:21). This article tackles the problem by a different method. Countries are characterized by different institutional characteristics and these institutional characteristics have impact on the values of the population. Some of the social institutions are relatively similar in several countries (e.g. family or religious structures) and others may be specific to only one nation. This suggests hypotheses that social institutional factors may explain differences in values, i.e., that the value differences can be explained not by nation which is a theoretically weak variable--but by institutions which exist in several nations. Some countries may have several identical institutions while other institutions may be specific to a given country. The research strategy of this article is to analyze the institutional characteristics of the European countries and show the impact of such characteristics on values. Three types of institutional arrangements have been selected: family, the welfare slate and the nation. In all cases there are institutional structures which have existed for many years, but the character of these institutions do not have a one-to-one relationship to the economic development of the European societies. This gives an opportunity to test two kinds of general assumptions: modernization approach and the social institution approach. The tests are conducted on EVSG 1990 data which are the most comprehensive and recent data set. The first part of the article outlines the two general approaches in order to be able to formulate two alternative hypotheses on values. Based on this the relation between values and modernization on the one hand and institutional arrangements on the other is carried out for the three above-mentioned values. …

Modernization and Its Discontents Revisited: The Political Economy of Urban Unrest in the People's Republic of China

Abstract: The euphoria over economic liberalization in China was shattered by the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989. This article uses rational choice theory to explain why these demonstrations should occur during a period of rapid economic growth, why college students (arguably, the privileged elite of China's youth) should serve as the instigators of these demonstrations, and why workers and other groups that had not participated in previous waves of demonstrations joined those of 1989. Despite remarkable growth in the Chinese economy, the costs and the benefits of reform increasingly have been allocated not by impersonal market forces nor the authority of the party but by corruption and favoritism. This became the issue that linked the interests of workers and students and allowed the mobilization of workers by students. Theory suggests that discriminatory allocation of the costs and benefits of reform encouraged coalitions that made it rational for individuals to participate in demonstrations.

Dependency theory and its relevance today: international institutions in telecommunications and structural power*

Abstract: The majority of political theories have arisen in opposition to existing theories and the interests they represent. Dependency theory was no different in this regard. It arose as a reaction to ‘modernization’ theory, which linked industrialization to political development and to those theories of political development which themselves represented American interests during the period of the Cold War.1 It arose also in reaction to the economic theory of ‘trickle down’ which characterized the post-war social democratic concern with economic growth and Keynesian economics in industrialized countries and which linked the poor in the industrialized West with the poor in the non-industrialized South. In both, Keynesian based, state led policies of capital investment were expected to provide the locomotive for indigenous development.

Women Kerala and some development issues.

Abstract: The review of Keralas "progress" in socioeconomic development and "improved conditions for women" was considered less a development model for other Indian states as a lesson in the trade-offs of demographic transition and the imprint of Keralas adoption of the "Western modernization" notions. Although demographers are pleased with the progress in Kerala toward demographic transition individual lives are still not experiencing equality or freedom and are bound by ideological hierarchies. A critical appraisal of how Kerala society is changing is lacking. The wholesale adoption of the "developed country" model has negative consequences such as Keralas high suicide rates. The superficial freedoms women have gained act to obscure the lack of emancipation of women. Feminist consciousness is lacking. The image of a Kerala woman has taken on the character of being "self-effacing weak and dependent" from television serials. Mens "women in development programs" or income generation schemes for women have not instilled in women independence but rather social adjustment. Although womens groups particularly in "non-gazetted officers organizations" have increased these groups were ineffective in raising issues specific to women or in stopping the movement of female dominated industries out of state. Female agricultural workers also did not protest when paddy cultivation declined in the state. The total number of employed women in Kerala was higher than the national average but the number of marginal workers was lower. Womens survival has been largely dependent on the availability of marginal work. Regular salaried positions are desired but not available for most women. Official development policies in Kerala created a goal of balanced regional development but neglected regional culture needs and resources. Uniformity rather than diversity was the objective. The message giver was viewed as superior and the receiver as inferior much the same way as colonialism was used for control. Consumer culture introduced via the television set has affected everyday life. The Kerala traditions of pride freedom and dignity have been replaced with modern traditions of greed corruption opportunism deceit and hypocrisy. Consumer buying has moved in the direction of purchases of "nutrient-rich and luxury-expensive commodities." A closer examination of measures of progress has revealed a different picture of Kerala.