Modernization theory

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

The Modernization of Fatherhood: A Social and Political History

Abstract: Prologue: 1932 1: The Modernization of Fatherhood 2: The Historical Roots of Standard North American Fatherhood 3: Fatherhood and the Baby Doctors 4: Men and Infants 5: Fathercraft 6: Fatherhood and the Popular Press 7: "Dear Mr. Patri" 8: "Honor Thy Father" 9: Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Index

Educational reconstruction and post-colonial curriculum development: A comparative study of four African countries

Abstract: Nation-building in modern Africa has faced the challenge of integrating multicultural traditions. Reform of inherited educational systems that largely functioned to maintain the colonial order of dependency and elitism has been an essential part of this task. Reconstruction of curriculum to reflect indigenous traditions, social change and empowerment was advocated by African critical theorists from the late 19 century to the present. This paper surveys African reform thought and curriculum development in Kenya, Mali, Mozambique and Nigeria since independence. Comparative analysis focuses on the inclusion of African culture, history and language in curriculum and innovation in methodology. Finally, African initiatives are contrasted with reconstructionist theory that integrates traditional culture with the demands of modernisation.

Night Market: Sexual Cultures and the Thai Economic Miracle

Abstract: In Thailand, a $4 billion per year tourist industry is the linchpin of the modernization process called the "Thai Economic Miracle". And what is Thailand's main attraction? Sex for hire. Year after year young women are lured to Bangkok to staff the teeming brothels, massage parlors, and sex bars that cater to male tourists from the United States, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, the Gulf States, Malaysia, and Singapore. Developed from Lillian S. Robinson's article in The Nation, Night Market traces the historical, cultural, material, and textual traditions that have combined in unique ways to establish sex tourism as an integral part of the developing Thai economy. It explores international sex tourism from the perspectives of economic-development planning, forced labor market choices, international sexual alienation, and textual traditions that have constructed sexual "Other" cultures in Western imagination.

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.

Ulrich Beck, `Risk Society' and the Media A Catastrophic View?

Abstract: Ulrich Beck has placed ideas of `risk society' on the intellectual map; his social theory of late modern society and its endemic production of potentially catastrophic risks has attracted, rightly, considerable academic interest in Europe and beyond. Dispersed across his writings is a view of the mass media which is theoretically positioned as playing a crucial role in processes of risk revelation, the social contestation that surrounds scientific knowledge of risks, and also processes of social challenge to `risk society'. It is surprising, then, that his ideas have so far been largely ignored by mass communication researchers — especially by those working in the fields of risk communication and the environment. This article offers a critical exposition of Beck's ideas on the mass media in `risk society'. It indicates how these are indebted to his wider social theoretical views on the historically unprecedented nature of contemporary `risks' and processes of `reflexive modernization', and opens them up to engaged discussion and criticism. Beck's thesis speaks to the conditions of our time and provides theoretical coordinates of potential use to mass communication researchers. It can be criticized nonetheless for its uneven, underdeveloped and often contradictory positions on the mass media.