Modernization theory

About: Modernization theory is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 14641 publications have been published within this topic receiving 232469 citations.

Rethinking development : modernization, dependency, and postmodern politics

Abstract: Introduction Toward a Theory of Modernization Some Characteristics of Modernization Notes For a Theory of Non-Democratic Representation Equity and Allocation in Modernizing Societies Equity and Allocation in Industrial Societies Sanrizuka A Case of Violent Protest in a Multiparty State Thinking About Violence Notes on the Underground Left Violence and the National State The New Mytho/Logics and the Specter of Superfluous Man

Post-Communist Modernization, Transition Studies, and Diversity in Europe

Abstract: The majority of studies of post-communism – habitually grouped under the heading of 'transitology' – understand the transition ultimately as a political and cultural convergence of the ex-communist societies with Western Europe. Even those critical approaches that regard the post-communist transition as a relatively unique phenomenon (as in the approaches of path dependency and neo-classical sociology) tend to conflate normative prescriptions with empirical descriptions and to move within an overall framework of what Michael Kennedy has aptly called 'transition culture'. This article argues instead that the transition's nature can only be fully grasped if a case-specific and historical-contextual approach is taken. In theoretical terms, a three-step movement to grasp diversity in Central and Eastern Europe is proposed: (1) the acknowledgement of the plurality of modernizing agency and its creativity; (2) the acknowledgement of multi-interpretability and difference as primary elements of modernity; and (3)...

Urban Languages in Africa

Abstract: Against the backdrop of current research on the city, urbanity is understood to be a distinct way of life in which (in the spatial, factual and historical dimensions) processes of densification and heterogenization are perceived as acts of sociation. Urbanization is thus understood to include and produce structuration processes autonomously; this also includes autonomous linguistic practices, which are reflected as sediments of everyday knowledge in language and thus create the instruments needed for facilitating and generalizing such urbanization: urban languages. In this conceptual context, which looks at cities in Africa from the point of view of language sociology, two large phases of urbanization can be distinguished in Africa. The first phase is related to trade networks and cultural metissage of small groups of middlemen. The second phase, characterized by efforts to deal with Africa’s colonial history and to catch up with “the world”, presses ahead with the development of an autonomous, authentic modernity. The reconstruction of the development undergone especially by the more recent urban languages raises questions about the connotations of urbanization and modernization in contemporary Africa: on the one hand, dissociation from colonial legacies as well as from the postcolonial political elites, impotent administrations, and tribalist instrumentalizations of language and language policies; on the other, quite the reverse – the creation of autonomous African modernities that include the city (and the state), brought about by the interplay of both local dynamics and global flows.

The subject of modernity

Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The disenchantment of the world 2. The theory of the novel and the autonomy of art 3. Secularization and modernization 4. The subject and the state 5. Subjective desire 6. Possibilities of post-modernism Notes.