Showing papers on "Modernization theory published in 2012"

Are Cultures Becoming Individualistic? A Cross-Temporal Comparison of Individualism–Collectivism in the United States and Japan:

Abstract: Individualism-collectivism is one of the best researched dimensions of culture in psychology. One frequently asked but underexamined question regards its cross-temporal changes: Are cultures becoming individualistic? One influential theory of cultural change, modernization theory, predicts the rise of individualism as a consequence of economic growth. Findings from past research are generally consistent with this theory, but there is also a body of evidence suggesting its limitations. To examine these issues, cross-temporal analyses of individualism-collectivism in the United States and Japan were conducted. Diverging patterns of cultural changes were found across indices: In both countries, some of the obtained indices showed rising individualism over the past several decades, supporting the modernization theory. However, other indices showed patterns that are best understood within the frameworks of a shifting focus of social relationships and a persisting cultural heritage. A comprehensive theory of cultural change requires considerations of these factors in addition to the modernization effect.

The Economics of the Food System Revolution

Abstract: A revolution in food systems—food supply chains upstream from farms, to the food industry in the midstream segments of processing and wholesale and in the downstream segment of retail, then on to consumers—has been under way in the United States for more than a century and in developing countries for more than three decades. The transformation includes extensive consolidation, very rapid institutional and organizational change, and progressive modernization of the procurement system. In this article we examine the economics of these system-wide changes. We argue that the steps of conceptualizing and empirically researching this transformation—its patterns and trends, determinants, and impacts on farms and processing small and micro enterprises—are still in their infancy because of (a) remaining limitations on data suitable for formal modeling and hypothesis testing and (b) the sheer complexity of food system– related decisions that need to be modeled and understood. With the rapid accumulation of high-quality data now under way, conceptual and theoretical progress is also likely to be rapid.

Towards a regenerative paradigm for the built environment

Abstract: The concept of regenerative design and development is situated within the broader theoretical context of sustainability. The emerging regenerative paradigm is contrasted with the two current sustainability paradigms – internationally negotiated ‘idealistic’ public policy and private sector ‘Ecological Modernization’ – that seek to maintain the status quo. Each of these sustainability paradigms is explained though a brief historical narrative to illustrate their response to broader social pressures, the main critiques of each and some commonalities. It is argued that the dominant sustainability paradigms are reaching the limitations of their usefulness due to their conceptual foundation in an inappropriate mechanistic worldview and their tacit support of a modernization project that prevents effective engagement with a complex, dynamic and living world. The regenerative paradigm provides an alternative that is explicitly designed to engage with a living world through its emphasis on a co-creative partnersh...

Critical perspectives on historical collapse

Abstract: Historical collapse of ancient states or civilizations has raised new awareness about its possible relevance to current issues of sustainability, in the context of global change. This Special Feature examines 12 case studies of societies under stress, of which seven suffered severe transformation. Outcomes were complex and unpredictable. Five others overcame breakdown through environmental, political, or socio-cultural resilience, which deserves as much attention as the identification of stressors. Response to environmental crises of the last millennium varied greatly according to place and time but drew from traditional knowledge to evaluate new information or experiment with increasing flexibility, even if modernization or intensification were decentralized and protracted. Longer-term diachronic experience offers insight into how societies have dealt with acute stress, a more instructive perspective for the future than is offered by apocalyptic scenarios.

Arming without Aiming: India's Military Modernization

Abstract: India's growing affluence has led experts to predict a major rearmament effort. The second-most populous nation in the world is beginning to wield the economic power expected of such a behemoth. Its border with Pakistan is a tinderbox, the subcontinent remains vulnerable to religious extremism, and a military rivalry between India and China could erupt in the future. India has long had the motivation for modernizing its military uit now has the resources as well. What should we expect to see in the future, and what will be the likely ramifications? In Arming without Aiming , Stephen Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta answer those crucial questions. India's armed forces want new weapons worth more than $100 billion. But most of these weapons must come from foreign suppliers due to the failures of India's indigenous research and development. Weapons suppliers from other nations are queuing up in New Delhi. A long relationship between India and Russian manufacturers goes back to the cold war. More recently, India and Israel have developed strong military trade ties. Now, a new military relationship with the United States has generated the greatest hope for military transformation in India. Against this backdrop of new affluence and newfound access to foreign military technology, Cohen and Dasgupta investigate India's military modernization to find haphazard military change that lacks political direction, suffers from balkanization of military organization and doctrine, remains limited by narrow prospective planning, and is driven by the pursuit of technology free from military-strategic objectives. The character of military change in India, especially the dysfunction in the political-military establishment with regard to procurement, is ultimately the result of a historical doctrine of strategic restraint in place since Nehru. In that context, its approach of arming without strategic purpose remains viable as India seeks great-power accommodation of its rise and does not want to look threatening. The danger lies in its modernization efforts precipitating a period of strategic assertion or contributing to misperception of India's intentions by Pakistan and China, its two most immediate rivals.

Mapping Chinese Folk Religion in Mainland China and Taiwan

Abstract: The revival of folk (popular) religion in China in the last three decades has been noted in many publications and documented in ethnographic studies. However, until now there has been no quantitative study that provides an overall picture of Chinese folk-religion practices. This article is a first attempt to draw the contours of Chinese folk religion based on three recent surveys conducted in mainland China and Taiwan. Three types of folk religion are conceptualized: communal, sectarian, and individual. Different types of folk religion may have different social functions and divergent trajectories of change in the modernization process. At present, in spite of the dramatic social, political, and cultural changes in modern times, the adherents of folk religion still substantially outnumber the believers of institutional religions in Chinese societies.

The Planetary Rift and the New Human Exemptionalism A Political-Economic Critique of Ecological Modernization Theory

Abstract: Environmental sociology must address two challenges, emanating both from without and within. The world is faced with a growing planetary rift, as planetary boundaries are being crossed. At the same time a new exemptionalism in the form of ecological modernization theory has arisen within environmental sociology, resurrecting many aspects of the human exemptionalist model characteristic of post–Second World War modernization theory that environmental sociology in its formative years opposed. The answer to these two challenges, it is argued, lies in the development of a political-economic and rational-historical critique of the capitalist environmental regime in the traditions of Marx and Weber. This demands, however, the outright rejection of the new exemptionalism.

Agroecology: Foundations in Agrarian Social Thought and Sociological Theory

Abstract: This article examines the origins and impacts of agricultural modernization to reveal the social foundations of agroecology as both scientific discipline and agrarian social movement. The impacts of capitalism on rural societies have provided a focus for social thought and mobilization since the 1800s and so we consider some of the competing discourses that have accompanied the development of industrial agriculture. We also reflect on the emergence of modern environmental concern and how growing preoccupation with the negative impacts of industrialization has prompted radical proposals for the reformulation of longstanding sociological assumptions and approaches to agricultural and rural development.

Struggling over the boundaries of belonging : A formal model of nation building, ethnic closure, and populism

Abstract: This article explores the conditions under which political modernization leads to nation building, to the politicization of ethnic cleavages, or to populism by modeling these three outcomes as more or less encompassing exchange relationships between state elites, counterelites, and the population. Actors seek coalitions that grant them the most advantageous exchange of taxation against public goods and of military support against political participation. Modeling historical data on the distribution of these resources in France and the Ottoman Empire from 1500 to 1900 shows that nation building results from strong state centralization and well-established civil societies; ethnic closure, from weak state capacity and civil societies; and populism, from medium centralization and weak civil societies. The results are consistent with French and Ottoman political histories of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The World and the West: The European Challenge and the Overseas Response in the Age of Empire

Abstract: Part I. Conquest: 1. The Pattern of Empire 2. Technology and power 3. The politics of Imperialism Part II. Culture Change under Imperial Rule: 4. Culture change in plural societies: South Africa and Central Asia 5. Culture change in Mexico 6. Administrative choices and their consequences: examples from Bengal, Central Asia, Java, and Malaya Part III. Conversion: 7. Christian missions in East Africa 8. Varieties of defensive modernization 9. Meiji Japan: revolutionary modernization 10. Ottoman reactions to the West Part IV. The Drive for Independence and the Liquidation of Empires: 11. Non-European resistance and the European withdrawal 12. Personal and utopian responses: millenarianism 13. The search for viable independence: Indonesia 14. Paths to viable independence: Ghana.

Secularization and modernization: the failure of a ‘grand narrative’

Abstract: This historiographical review offers a critical reconsideration of a central component of modernization theory: the model of secularization devised within the sociology of religion, and especially the version sustained by sociologists in the UK. It compares that model with the results of historical research in a range of themes and periods, and suggests that those results are now often radically inconsistent with this sociological orthodoxy. It concludes that an older historical scenario which located in the early modern period the beginnings of a ‘process’ of secularization that achieved its natural completion in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries is finally untenable, and it proposes a broader, more historical conception of ‘religion’ able to accommodate both persistent religiosity and undoubted changes in religious behaviour.

A History of Social Justice and Political Power in the Middle East: The Circle of Justice From Mesopotamia to Globalization

Abstract: 1. Introduction: The Circle of Justice 2. Mesopotamia: "That the Strong Might Not Oppress the Weak" 3. Persia: "The Deeds God Likes Best are Righteousness and Justice" 4. The Islamic Empire: "No Prosperity without Justice and Good Administration" 5. Politics in Transition: "Curb the Strong from Riding on the Weak" 6. The Turks and Islamic Civilization: "The Most Penetrating of Arrows is the Prayer of the Oppressed" 7. Mongols and Turks: "Fierce toward Offenders, and in Judgements Just" 8. Early Modern Empires: "The World is a Garden, Its Wall is the State" 9. Modernization and Revolution: "No Justice without Law Applied Equally to All" 10. The Middle East in the Twentieth Century: "A Regime Can Endure with Impiety but not with Injustice". Epilogue

Development, Dams and Dilma: the Saga of Belo Monte:

Abstract: The Belo Monte hydropower scheme on the River Xingu in Brazilian Amazonia symbolizes the persistent contradictions between industrial modernization and resource conservation in a fragile environmen...

The Meaning of the Nuclear Evolution: China's Strategic Modernization and US-China Security Relations

Abstract: Will China's development of a new generation of nuclear weapons impact US-China security relations in important ways? One's answer depends on how one views the following: whether or not Chinese lea...

Tourism for Development

Abstract: A broad agreement exists that tourism is an effective instrument for social and economic development. However, there is no specific theoretical or practical framework of tourism for development to be found. Even the key issues have remained unformulated: concept of development, tourism's contributions to development, and tourism policy and governance for development. This chapter first summarizes the development paradigms held in the last decades (modernization, neoliberalism, dependency, and sustainability) vis-a-vis tourism, and then goes on to consider proposals emanating from New Institutional Economics and the Theory of Social Capital. It concludes with the results of a 2011 enquiry, involving some 60 international experts.

Postcolonialism and organizational knowledge in the wake of China’s presence in Africa: interrogating South-South relations:

Abstract: China’s presence in Africa appears to be part of a new geopolitical dynamic that may be affecting the way management and organizational knowledge from the South should be conceptualized and studied. The purpose of this article is to interrogate the adequacy of emerging critical management theories premised on challenging the West’s modernization projects, particularly Postcolonial and Dependency Theories, in the light of a changing geopolitical dynamic. It discusses the need for a new theoretical lens through which to understand and research China’s presence in Africa at organizational and community levels. It points to the lack of empirical knowledge at these levels, and proposes a research agenda based on an interrogation of China’s previous anti-colonial relationship with African countries and the way its present-day motives are played out at organizational level, and with an aim to understanding the extent to which China’s engagement is given voice to African management and organizational knowledge.

The Mexican experience with financial sector liberalization and prudential structural reform

Abstract: 18 INTRODUCTION 19 CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF MEXICOS'S RECENT POLICITAL ECONOMIC HISTORY AND OF ITS PATH TOWARD ECONOMIC MODERNIZATION AND FINANCIAL LIBERALIZATION (INCLUDING POLITICAL CONFRONTATIONS) 32 1.1 RECENT HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT OF MEXICO'S ECONOMIC MODERNIZATION 33 1.1.

Family Life and Developmental Idealism in Yazd, Iran.

Abstract: BACKGROUND This paper is motivated by the theory that developmental idealism has been disseminated globally and has become an international force for family and demographic change. Developmental idealism is a set of cultural beliefs and values about development and how development relates to family and demographic behavior. It holds that modern societies are causal forces producing modern families, that modern families help to produce modern societies, and that change is to be expected in the direction of the modern family. OBJECTIVE We examine the extent to which developmental idealism has been disseminated in Iran. We also investigate predictors of the dissemination of developmental idealism. METHODS We use survey data collected in 2007 from a sample of women in Yazd, a city in Iran. We examine the distribution of developmental idealism in the sample and the multivariate predictors of developmental idealism. RESULTS We find considerable support for the expectation that many elements of developmental idealism have been widely disseminated. Statistically significant majorities associate development with particular family attributes, believe that development causes change in families, believe that fertility reductions and age-at-marriage increases help foster development, and perceive family trends in Iran headed toward modernity. As predicted, parental education, respondent education, and income affect adherence to developmental idealism. COMMENTS Although our data come from only one city, we expect that developmental idealism has been widely distributed in Iran, with important implications for family and demographic behavior. 1. Introduction In this paper we investigate the extent to which the beliefs and values of developmental idealism have been disseminated in one city of Iran. Our research is motivated by Thornton's (2001, 2005) theory that developmental idealism has been disseminated globally and has become an important force for family and demographic change. Developmental idealism is a set of cultural beliefs and values about development and how development relates to family and demographic behavior. It grows out of the modernization/development framework that has dominated much of social science and public policy for centuries (Mandelbaum 1971; Nisbet 1975/1969). Although the modernization/development model has, for many reasons, been heavily criticized recently as an academic and policy framework, its influence remains far-reaching in academia and public policy (Mandelbaum 1971; Nisbet 1975/1969; Wallerstein 1991). The modernization model has for centuries posited societies as occupying different positions along a developmental ladder, with northwest Europe and its diasporas identified as modern or developed and other countries defined as traditional or less developed. The model tells people that they live in a dynamic world, with change moving from tradition towards modernity. The model specifies that the good life is found in northwest Europe and its overseas populations and that less-developed societies should model more advanced ones. Developmental idealism draws from this modernization framework beliefs and values for living in the world. It states that societal attributes defined as modern are good and include such things as urban living, industrial production, and high levels of education and wealth. It also indicates that modern families are good and labels the following attributes as modern: individualism, autonomy of children, marriages arranged at mature ages by the prospective bride and groom, romantic love, nuclear families, equality between women and men, and planned and low fertility. In addition, several aspects of personal and family life such as divorce and non-marital sex, non-marital cohabitation, and non-marital childbearing have become associated with modernity in recent decades, although they are often seen as negative rather than positive. …

A future for the theory of multiple modernities: Insights from the new modernization theory:

Abstract: ResumeIn recent years, the concept of multiple modernities has emerged to challenge the perceived Eurocentrism and unilinearity of traditional theories of convergence, and has led to renewed effort...

Constructing Commonality: Standardization and Modernization in Chinese Nation-Building

Abstract: This essay examines the importance of Chinese nation-building in the contemporary era. Defining nation-building in terms of processes that help to bridge local differences especially but not only when also distinguishing China from the rest the world, I argue that a focus on globalization has masked the importance of Chinese nation-building to contemporary social change. I analyze three very different societal arenas in which national forms of commonality are being constructed: the consolidation of the education system, the expansion of the urban built environment, and the spread of the Chinese Internet. Though each arena illustrates a very different aspect of the nation-building process, they all result in an increased degree of commonality in lived experience and communicative practice across China.

What’s New in the New Industrial Policy in Latin America?

Abstract: Latin America was an aggressive practitioner of industrial policies (IP) in the years 1950-1980. During much of the period the general practice was in line with the then mainstream thinking in development economics. Significant growth, industrialization and modernization took place, but serious flaws in concept and execution of the IP caused them to fail as a vehicle for economic catch-up with rich countries in an era of an expansive world economy. A very serious Latin American external debt crisis in the 1980s, coupled with the ascendance in international discourse of arguments for retrenchment of the State in economics and life, contributed to a pendulum swing in the region to the policies of the so-called Washington Consensus. Major structural adjustments and reforms designed to bring the free market forward and push back the market governance of the State dominated the 1980s and 1990s. In recent years, however, countries in Latin America have witnessed a renaissance in the deployment of systematic IP. This paper explains why IP have emerged and why they are a necessary step for the more profound structural change needed to drive sustained high rates of growth. Based on illustrated cases which we think reflect the current state of affairs in the region, the paper highlights the nature of the shift to a more proactive state promotion of industrial and services upgrading, as well as the important new characteristics of the current outbreak of IP which are different from the ones of the past and offer hope for greater success. It also identifies a legacy of some bad habits which linger and need to be addressed with urgency if the new trend is to be successfully consolidated.

The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order

Abstract: David Ekbladh. The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. Pp. xvi. 386. Most twentieth-century Americans...

The Sober Revolution: The Political and Moral Economy of Alcohol in Modern France, 1954-1976

Abstract: This dissertation examines how, after World War Two, the French state and powerful interest groups shifted the debate over drink from an issue of personal morality into a battle of political economy. Contrary to the widely held Tocquevillian assumption that France has had weak and fragmented interest groups with little capacity to influence state policy, this dissertation argues that a relatively weak public health movement became influential when it struck alliances with powerful state and economic interests. Working together, the different and sometimes antagonistic interests of doctors, French and European technocrats, luxury winegrowers, and automobile and insurance groups combined to issue alarms about France's allegedly rising alcoholism and mobilize public opinion against the country's alcohol producers and industrial, mono-cropping winegrowers. This movement was abetted by important structural transformations: the fall of the Fourth Republic (1946-1958) and the foundation of the Fifth (1958-), where a strong executive branch circumvented the industrial wine lobby and Parliament; the end of empire, which meant the eventual termination of cheap Algerian wine imports; and the creation of the European Community, which adopted France's luxury Appellation d'origine controlee (AOC) labeling system and discouraged industrial wine production and consumption. In short, I maintain that this anti-alcohol campaign helped prepare appellation wine producers and the state for competition in the world economy. This dissertation uses drink as a prism through which to understand France's dramatic economic modernization after World War Two. It contributes to our understanding of France and Europe's so-called Economic Miracle, particularly the role of the state and the wine industry in shaping European market integration. Against the common view that the wine industry has been a conservative force in French society, this dissertation argues that it played an active role in its own modernization in order to compete internationally in the context of European integration and, by the 1970s, globalization.

Debates over colonial modernity in east asia and another alternative

Abstract: The introduction of the term ‘colonial modernity’ in historiography of the early 1990s provided an alternative to ‘modernization theory’ and an international focus to writing about Japanese and other imperialisms on the China mainland. This neologistic phrase also raised many other questions: the historicity of the national focus versus ‘regionalism’ in Asian Studies; the role imperialist social science in US Asian studies; the project of globalizing historiography and what units of comparison – value, nation, subalterneity, etc. – were viable in global studies; and the importance of ephemera and immanent critique in colonial modernist studies. Here the essay takes earlier debates about colonial modernity and modernization theory as a given foundation. The further step is to take seriously questions of selling, buying, investing, marketing and advertising under colonial modern conditions during the mobilization of international capital into aggressive corporate form. This historical focus is a means of op...

A historical overview of Korean public administration: discipline, education, association, international cooperation and beyond indigenization

Abstract: Modern public administration was introduced in Korea more than half a century ago. Over the past several decades, Korea has achieved substantial economic growth as well as the significant developme...

Globalization and the modernization of medical education

Abstract: Background: Worldwide, there are essential differences underpinning what educators and students perceive to be effective medical education. Yet, the world looks on for a recipe or easy formula for the globalization of medical education. Aims: This article examines the assumptions, main beliefs, and impact of globalization on medical education as a carrier of modernity. Methods: The article explores the cultural and social structures for the successful utilization of learning approaches within medical education. Empirical examples are problem-based learning (PBL) at two medical schools in Jamaica and the Netherlands, respectively. Results: Our analysis shows that people do not just naturally work well together. Deliberate efforts to build group culture for effective and efficient collaborative practice are required. Successful PBL is predicated on effective communication skills, which are culturally defined in that they require common points of understanding of reality. Commonality in cultural practices and expectations do not exist beforehand but must be clearly and deliberately created. Conclusions: The globalization of medical education is more than the import of instructional designs. It includes Western models of social organization requiring deep reflection and adaptation to ensure its success in different environments and among different groups.

Religion in Politics How Does Inequality Affect Public Secularization

Abstract: This study investigates the factors that affect variations in secular attitudes toward politics. The literature suggests that modernization may weaken traditional bonds with religious adherence and...

The Chinese Navy: Expanding Capabilities, Evolving Roles

Abstract: : Few issues are as important to U.S. national security analysts as China s military modernization, a process that has benefited directly from the past two decades of dramatic economic expansion. This book addresses the Chinese navy the People s Liberation Army Navy, or PLAN the service that has most dramatically benefited from increased defense funding. This collection of essays surveys and analyzes the most important aspects of China s naval modernization. The book s 10 chapters represent papers delivered at a 2007 conference, but have been updated and, most importantly, framed by expertly written introductory and concluding chapters that bring the book firmly into the century s second decade.