Showing papers on "Modernization theory published in 2017"

Modernization, Democratization, and the Development of Welfare States in Western Europe

Abstract: The concept of modernization in this chapter emphasizes the multidimensionality and interre-latedness of developmental processes. It is concerned with the relationship between the growth of mass democracies and welfare state policies, since sufficient information on the growth of state bureaucracies is still largely missing for most European countries. The concept of modernization has largely replaced the traditional concept of development as well as superseded more specific concepts such as industrialization and democratization. The distinction between markets, associations, and state bureaucracies as the three main organizational sectors of society is used now to draft a sectoral model of the development of welfare states. Since the origins of the modern welfare states are closely related to the "social question" and the labor movement, differences in the strength and coherence of working class parties and trade unions are most important for explaining variations in welfare state developments.

Development and the Rights of Older People

Abstract: Older people have been all but invisible in international development policy and practice. Older people, typically characterized as economically unproductive, dependent and passive, have been considered at best as irrelevant to development and at worst as a threat to the prospects for increased prosperity. Consideration of family support systems begs the question of the quality of support available to older people without family resources. The polarization of 'traditional' and modern societies has compounded negative attitudes towards older people. It has been suggested that 'impoverishment in old age may be a common cross-cultural experience of the ageing process rather than simply resulting from 'modernization". Attempts to include older people issues on the international development agenda date back to 1948, at the initiative of Argentina a draft 'Declaration on Old Age Rights' was proposed at the United Nations General Assembly. However, it is also subject to the constructions by which each society makes sense of old age.

Networking China: The Digital Transformation of the Chinese Economy

Abstract: Hong focuses on how the state, in conjunction with market forces and class interests, is constructing and realigning its digitalized sector. State planners intend to build a more competitive ICT sector by modernizing the network infrastructure, corporatizing media-and-entertainment institutions, and by using ICT as a crosscutting catalyst for innovation, industrial modernization, and export upgrades. The goal: to end China’s industrial and technological dependence upon foreign corporations while transforming itself into a global ICT leader. The project, though bright with possibilities, unleashes implications rife with contradiction and surprise. Hong analyzes the central role of information, communications, and culture in Chinese style capitalism. She also argues that the state and elites have failed to challenge entrenched interests or redistribute power and resources, as promised. Instead, they prioritize information, communications, and culture as technological fixes to make pragmatic tradeoffs between economic growth and social justice.

Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernization under Atatürk and Reza Shah

Abstract: Nationalism, nation-building and 'defensive modernisation' were the main themes of the 'cultural revolution' underpinning the totalitarian and secular regimes of Ataturk and Reza Shah which replaced the traditional Qajar state of Iran and the long-declining Ottoman Empire. The authors trace the emergence of Ataturk and Reza Shah through the constitutional revolutions in Iran and the Ottoman Empire and the introduction of European social models, the establishment of dictatorship and of secularist reforms resulting in both cases in totalitarian, nationalist, and quasi-westernised states, and the personality cult of the leader. The legacy of both was a chasm between the elite and the masses and provided the seeding of an Islamic mass-movement.

Socioeconomic modernization of Russia and its Arctic regions

Abstract: This paper deals with the socioeconomic and technological development of Arctic regions of the Russian Federation in the context of a modernizing world. The methodological basis of the comparative analysis is the concept of primary and secondary modernization or integrated modernization for developing countries.

Establishing a Pure Land on Earth: The Foguang Buddhist Perspective on Modernization and Globalization

Abstract: With more than 150 temples in thirty countries, Foguangshan has developed over the last thirty-five years into one of the world's largest and most influential Chinese Buddhist movements. Each year millions of devotees participate in the ceremonies, educational programs, and social service projects organized by the disciples of Master Xingyun - a religious leader known not only for his charisma and energy, but also for his close ties to Taiwan's power elite, his positive attitude toward big business, and his involvement in both national and international politics. The result of two years of fieldwork in Foguangshan temples in Taiwan, the U.S., Australia, and South Africa, this volume is an unprecedented examination of the inner workings of a dynamic and innovative religious movement. Based on direct observations, private interviews, and careful textual and historical analysis, Stuart Chandler looks at the challenges faced by Master Xingyun and his followers as they try to adhere to traditional practices and values while tapping into the advantages afforded by modern, global society.

Modernization and Corruption

Abstract: Corruption obviously exists in all societies, but it is also obviously more common in some societies than in others and more common at some times in the evolution of a society than at other times. Impressionistic evidence suggests that its extent correlates reasonably well with rapid social and economic modernization. Corruption may be more prevalent in some cultures than in others but in most cultures it seems to be most prevalent during the most intense phases of modernization. Modernization also contributes to corruption by creating new sources of wealth and power, the relation of which to politics is undefined by the dominant traditional norms of the society and on which the modern norms are not yet accepted by the dominant groups within the society. It encourages corruption by the changes it produces on the output side of the political system. Modernization involves the expansion of governmental authority and the multiplication of the activities subjected to governmental regulation.

Rural development: From practices and policies towards theory

Abstract: The rural livelihood framework that has emerged from the debate on sustainable rural development is especially useful for analyzing rural development practices as actively constructed household strategies. Many scientists are finding it difficult to come to grips with the new model of rural development that emerges slowly but persistently in both policy and practice. Interactions with non-specific rural development policies at times are more important for their development. By stressing the dialectics between the real and the potential, rural development theory deviates intrinsically from the determinism of modernization approaches. If convincing and more comprehensive definitions are to emerge, it is essential that rural development be recognized as a multi-level process rooted in historical traditions. It is the complex institutional setting of rural development that makes it a multi-actor process. Perhaps the most dramatic expression of this has been the growing squeeze on agriculture and therefore on the rural economy in general.

How Merchant Towns Shaped Parliaments: From the Norman Conquest of England to the Great Reform Act

Abstract: We study the emergence of urban self-governance during the Commercial Revolution in the 12th- 13th century and show that municipal autonomy shaped national institutions over the subsequent centuries. We focus on England after the Norman Conquest of 1066 and build a novel comprehensive dataset of 554 Medieval towns (boroughs). We show that merchant towns were particularly likely to obtain Farm Grants – the right of self-governed tax collection and law enforcement. We present evidence that self-governance, in turn, fostered enfranchisement: Farm Grant towns were much more likely to be summoned directly to the Medieval English Parliament than otherwise similar towns. We also show that self-governed towns strengthened the role of Parliament: They resisted royal attempts to introduce patronage and maintained broader voting rights; they also raised troops to back Parliament against the king during the Civil War in 1642, and they supported the modernization of Parliament during the Great Reform Act of 1832. Finally, we compare England’s institutional path to Continental Europe and discuss the conditions under which urban self-governance fosters institutional development at a higher level.

The Tribute Trade System and Modem Asia

Abstract: In examining post-19th-century Asian economic history, the capitalism-industrialization framework has generally been used, with the degree of "modernization" being determined according to the degree of industrialization. The chapter provides that official letters should be exchanged between the Russian Senate and the Ch'ing Colonial Office. The central ideal of Sinocentrism was that of the unitary benevolence and dignity of the imperial institution and its ultimate extension to "all under Heaven". China and the Asian tribute trade system responded to Western countries and the imposed treaties from within the system. Hence it is difficult to define modern Asia clearly according to the change from the tribute system to the treaty system. It has long been the practice to analyze modern Asia from the viewpoint of nations and international relationships. The history of relations between China and Siam provides an interesting example of how Asian countries viewed Western countries and utilized them for Asian purposes.

Russia and Islam: A Historical Survey

Abstract: Preface Technical Note List of Maps Acknowledgements Glossary Russia's Encounter with Islam: (622-1480) Russia and its Muslim Neighbours: 1480-1881 Russia's Umma and Modernization at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century Muslin's under Soviet Rule: 1917-1991 Russia's Muslims after the Collapse of Communism Chechnya and Political Islam Conclusion Bibliography Index

Hollow Ecology: Ecological Modernization Theory and the Death of Nature

Abstract: The last few decades have seen the rise of ‘ecological modernization theory’ (EMT) as a “green capitalist” tradition extending modernization theory into environmental sociology. This article uses a synthesis of political economy, world-systems theory, and political, economic, and environmental sociology to demonstrate that the EMT presumption of growth and profit as economic priorities (alongside its neglect of core-periphery relations) produces many feedback loops which fatally undermine the viability of EMT’s own political, technological, and social prescriptions, alongside creating problems for the fundamental EMT concept of ‘ecological rationality.’ Furthermore, this article attempts to explain why “green capitalist” approaches to environmental analysis have influence within policy and social science circles despite their inadequacies within environmental sociology. Finally, this article argues that in order to address the ecological challenges of our era, environmental sociology needs to reject “green capitalist” traditions like ‘ecological modernization theory’ which presuppose the desirability and maintenance of profit and growth as economic priorities (and predominantly fail to critique power imbalances between core and non-core nations), and instead return to the development of traditions willing to critique the fundamental traits of the capitalist world-system.

REMAINS OF THE FUTURE: Rethinking the Space and Time of Ruination through the Volta Resettlement Project, Ghana

Abstract: Focusing on a planned scheme of resettlement undertaken in Ghana in the wake of independence in 1957, this essay explores how midcentury plans for modernization exist in disjunctive relation to unrealized material infrastructures. Drawing on ethnographic research in resettlement townships, the account describes the contemporary afterlives of the plan, tracing how its promised futures shadow present understandings of contemporary and future life. The essay examines the distinctive form that ruination takes not as once-functional, now-decaying infrastructure, but as the ongoing effects of an unrealized plan. Here, experiences of ruination are associated with a set of spatial and temporal dynamics that emerge as the felt negation of linear time and Cartesian space. Insofar as the recent scholarly turn to ruins assumes the existence of modernization, it in fact eclipses what is conceptually at stake in situations where modernization exists only as a promise.

The Indian Scenario

Abstract: The architecture of the Indian higher-education system is not a simple one, with the legacy of the British Empire, the distinction between deemed and non-deemed universities, aided and non-aided colleges, rural and urban institutions. The youth of the Indian population arguably constitutes the most decisive asset in the knowledge economy. The mass-scale of Indian higher-education as well as the increasingly significant role of the private sector, are posing new challenges to regulatory bodies. The supply of graduates assumes great importance in twenty-first-century India. The enhancement and the modernization of the Indian higher-education system have been redefined as a national priority, triggering a comprehensive wave of institutional reforms (RUSA, Campus Connect India, Think in India, and so on).

Introduction: A processual approach to informalization:

Abstract: This introduction briefly reviews the intertwinement of ‘informality’ and ‘modernization’ and their implications for the theory and practice of the city. The editors identify the importance of reco...

How Turkey’s slide to authoritarianism defies modernization theory

Abstract: Turkey’s current slide to authoritarianism creates a puzzle for democratization theory, as it challenges the commonly accepted relationship between wealth and democracy. There is a large consensus in the democratization literature that a robust civil society, a growing middle class, and high GDP per capita create a conducive environment for an authoritarian country to democratize and make it harder for democratic countries to turn authoritarian. Prominent scholars of Turkish politics used these arguments when conceptualizing Turkey’s liberalization and the checkered democratization process in the post-1980 period. Yet, despite positive economic growth, a flourishing civil society, and a rising middle class, Turkey drifted toward a competitive authoritarian regime during the past five years. The article addresses this puzzle and discusses how the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP) co-opted Islamic civil society organizations and attached conservative businessmen to the ...

Islamic Philanthropy in Indonesia: Modernization, Islamization, and Social Justice

Abstract: This article discusses the potentials and constraints of social justice philanthropy in Indonesia in the context of two trends – of growing Islamization and modernization. It employs interviews and recent observations together with survey data. Although the challenges facing social justice philanthropy remain immense, the pathways to development have been created; pathways through which the gap that exists between faith-based philanthropy and its secular counterparts may become smaller. Looking at growing philanthropization in the last 15 years and the pre-existing popularity of the concept of social justice among the population, could social justice and developmentalism may become the future of Islamic philanthropy in the country? The author argues that modernization and Islamization encourage the practice of philanthropy, but that they do not necessarily contribute to the development of a philanthropy that focuses on social justice. The modernization of the philanthropy sector has shown scattered pictures of development into a form of social justice philanthropy, which remains small but nevertheless encouraging.

Agricultural modernization and sustainable agriculture: contradictions and complementarities

Abstract: This paper explores the relations between agricultural modernization and sustainable agriculture. The point of departure is the observable decrease in the sustainability and social–ecological resil...

Envisioning the Arab Future: Modernization in US-Arab Relations, 1945–1967

Abstract: Decades before 9/11 and the 'Arab Spring', US and Arab elites contended over the future of the Middle East. Through unprecedented research in Arabic and English, Envisioning the Arab Future details how Americans and Arabs - nationalists, Islamists, and communists - disputed the meaning of modernization within a shared set of Cold War-era concepts. Faith in linear progress, the idea that society functioned as a 'system', and a fascination with speed united officials and intellectuals who were otherwise divided by language and politics. This book assesses the regional implications of US power while examining a range of topics that transcends the Arab-Israeli conflict, including travel, communities, gender, oil, agriculture, Iraqi nationalism, Nasser's Arab Socialism, and hijackings in both the United States and the Middle East. By uncovering a shared history of modernization between Arabs and Americans, Envisioning the Arab Future challenges assumptions about a 'clash of civilizations' and profoundly reinterprets the antecedents of today's crises.

Colonies in the Countryside: Doing Mission in Imperial Germany

Abstract: This article adds the rural area of Wilhelmine Germany to the rich field of studies on the colonial public sphere in order to reassess the role mission associations played. The main argument is that so called mission friends developed a specific agenda that overlapped with the official politics of the mission societies but emphasized different elements while downplaying perspectives crucial to official missionary propaganda. By constructing a heterotopia that spoke to rural populations experiencing the dislocations of modernization, the discourse of the mission friends offered these populations what Arjun Appadurai calls "imaginative resources of lived experience."

Modernization of the Approach to Usage of Region's Budget Resources in the Conditions of Information Economy Development

Abstract: The purpose of the article is to substantiate the necessity and to develop recommendations for modernizing the approach for usage of region's budget resources in the conditions of the information economy creation. The methodological provision of verification of the offered hypothesis includes the specially developed method for evaluating the effectiveness of usage of region's budget resources from the position of the information economy creation. For calculations, the article uses the information and analytical materials of the Russian specialized institutions that study the processes of development of the information economy: \"Research Financial Institute\", Ministry of Communications and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation, and expert and ranking organizations - the State Management and CNews. It is proved that the traditional approach to usage of region's budget resources, which is applied in modern Russia, contradicts the general national course for development of the information economy, as it does not stimulate the formation of information society and development of information and technological spheres of the regional economy and does not allow for development of interaction and cooperation of all interests parties within the budget process, which confirms the offered hypothesis. To solve the determined problem, the authors develop the modern approach to the usage of region's budget resources in the conditions of the information economy creation and offer practical recommendations for modernizing the existing approach in modern Russia.

Modernization and the Crisis of Development in Africa: The Nigerian Experience

Abstract: In this book, Jeremiah I. Dibua challenges prevailing notions of Africa's development crisis by drawing attention to the role of modernization as a way of understanding the nature and dynamics of the crisis, and how to overcome the problem of underdevelopment. He specifically focuses on Nigeria and its development trajectory since it exemplifies the crisis of underdevelopment in the continent. He explores various theoretical and empirical issues involved in understanding the crisis, including state, class, gender and culture, often neglected in analysis, from an interdisciplinary, radical political economy perspective. This is the first book to adopt such an approach and to develop a new framework for analyzing Nigeria's and Africa's development crisis. It will influence the debate on the development dilemma of African and Third World societies and will be of interest to scholars and students of race and ethnicity, modern African history, class analysis, gender studies, and development studies.

Jewish Liberal Politics in Tsarist Russia, 1900-14: The Modernization of Russian Jewry

Abstract: Acknowledgements - Abbreviations - Introduction - The Emergence of Jewish Liberals in Russia: from Acculturation to Revolution - The Revolution of 1905 and the Struggle for Legal Emancipation - The Road towards Self- Determination: New Elections, the Second Duma and the Search for a New Approach - Jewish Liberal Politics from 1908 to 1911: Re-organisation, Determination and the Beginning of 'Organic Work' - The 'Dark Years' after Stolypin: Anti-Semitism, Cooperation and the peak of 'Organic Work' - Conclusion: The Russian-Jewish Liberals and Their Position in European- Jewish History - Bibliography - Index

Russia on the Move-The Railroads and the Exodus From Compulsory Collectivism 1861-1914

Abstract: Western scholars of Tsarist Russia emphasize the continuity of collectivism on the Russian plain. Numerous endogenous factors explain the human clustering that occurred as kinship structures evolved into territorial agrarian communal patterns. In my Dissertation, combining the Westernizers and Slavophiles' conceptualization of the mir-the village commune-it is argued that precarious climatic conditions, uncertain yields, and the high frequency of famines and other calamities, caused peasant mutual-insurance strategies to take shape, resulting in krugovaya poruka ( mutual responsibility). Tsarist rulers exploited this practice to enhance tax extraction, impose social control. and reduce surveillance costs. The ensuing degradation of labor explains Tsarist Russia's perennial status as technology importer and debtor. The Imperial rulers' territorial aspirations that entailed the strategic import of railroads, however, incentivized the peasantry to accumulate literacy and other skills that by investing them with growing subversive and bargaining power, compelled modernizing reforms. By inducing a culturally revolutionizing reduction of temporal cognitive distances, the railroads linked the peasants of European Russia to urban industrial economies and to customary ( volost) and formal Imperial court systems, cumulatively reducing the costs of property and individual-dignity lawsuits while increasing the predictability of outcomes favorable to them. The railroads also dramatically mitigated the uncertainties and mortal perils of peasant life while introducing peasants to a plethora of institutions allowing rational choice , specialization and from 1903 onward, gradual delegation of property rights by the rulers. Challenging Gerschenkron , I posit that the nature of collectivism, changed after the Emancipation. The iron arms of the Tsarist state - the railroads that steered peasants to seasonal wage labor as well as permanent migration- paved the way to a modernizing transition from authoritarian obedience to rational utility maximization. The compulsory collectivism of the serfdom era, gave way to rationalist co operation and individualism. The delegation of household -head property rights in land, catalized by the railroads and codified in Stolypin reform, portended Russia's transition to a constitutional monarchy. As an epilogue , the empirical and concluding chapter of the dissertation reveals a positive correlation between a commune's distance from the nearest railroads stations and the proportion of peasant land cultivated in traditional collectivist repartitioning manner of the obshchina , and a negative correlation between distance from the railroads and proportion of individualistic modes of land cultivation. This empirical chapter, co-authored by my advisor, Professor Michael Keren, suggests that the modernization of Russia was occasioned by the railroads and occurred three decades before the advent of Stalinism.

Perspectives on Korean Music: Volume 1: Preserving Korean Music: Intangible Cultural Properties as Icons of Identity

Abstract: As Korea has developed and modernized, music has come to play a central role as a symbol of national identity. Nationalism has been stage managed by scholars, journalists and, from the beginning of the 1960s, by the state, as music genres have been documented, preserved and promoted as 'Intangible Cultural Properties'. Practitioners have been appointed 'holders' or, in everyday speech, 'Human Cultural Properties', to maintain, perform and teach exemplary versions of tradition. Over the last few years, the Korean preservation system has become a model for UNESCO's 'Living Human Treasures' and 'Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Mankind'. In this volume, Keith Howard provides the first comprehensive analysis in English of the system. He documents court music and dance, Confucian and shaman ritual music, folksongs, the professional folk-art genres of p'ansori ('epic storytelling through song') and sanjo ('scattered melodies'), and more, as well as instrument making, food preparation and liquor distilling - a good performance, after all, requires wine to flow. The extensive documentation reflects considerable fieldwork, discussion and questioning carried out over a 25-year period, and blends the voices of scholars, government officials, performers, craftsmen and the general public. By interrogating both contemporary and historical data, Howard negotiates the debates and critiques that surround this remarkable attempt to protect local and national music and other performance arts and crafts. An accompanying downloadable resource illustrates many of the music genres considered, featuring many master musicians including some who have now died. The preservation of music and other performance arts and crafts is part of the contemporary zeitgeist, yet occupies contested territory. This is particularly true when the concept of 'tradition' is invoked. Within Korea, the recognition of the fragility of indigenous music inherited from earlier times is balanced by an awareness of the need to maintain identity as lifestyles change in response to modernization and globalization. Howard argues that Korea, and the world, is a better place when the richness of indigenous music is preserved and promoted.