Modernization theory

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

Toward a restatement of demographic transition theory.

Abstract: Interpretations of past population movements and expectations about future trends rest primarily on the "demographic transition theory". However over the years there has been a failure to update the theory. Subsequently researchers have tended to obscure the important distinction between the origins of fertility decline and the demographic history of societies experiencing such decline. This paper argues that an inadequate understanding of how birth levels first begin to fall has led to a premature gloom about the success of family planning programs and unnecessary hysteria about the likely long-term size of the human population and to antagonisms between countries at different stages of demographic transition. It is the contention of this paper that there are only two fertility regimes: one in which there is no economic gain to individuals from restricting fertility and one in which there is economic gain from such transition. Furthermore the author posits that the transition of a society from one with economically unrestricted fertility to one with economically restricted fertility is a product of social change. The forces sustaining economically unrestricted fertility are strengthened by economic modernization accompanied by specific types of social change. Three types of societies are discussed: primitive traditional and transitional societies. Lastly the author maintains that unlimited fertility eventually crumbles in transitional societies and such crumbling as well as its preconditions is unrelated to reductions in family size subsequently occurring in transitional societies.

Rural Development: From Practices and Policies towards Theory

Abstract: Both in practice and policy a new model of rural development is emerging. This paper reflects the discussions in the impact research programme and suggests that at the level of associated theory also a fundamental shift is taking place. The modernization paradigm that once dominated policy, practice and theory is being replaced by a new rural development paradigm. Rural development is analyzed as a multi-level, multi-actor and multi-facetted process rooted in historical traditions that represents at all levels a fundamental rupture with the modernization project. The range of new quality products, services and forms of cost reduction that together comprise rural development are understood as a response by farm families to both the eroding economic base of their enterprises and to the new needs and expectations European society has of the rural areas. Rural development therefore is largely an autonomous, self-driven process and in its further unfolding agriculture will continue to play a key role, although it is a role that may well change. This article provides an introduction to the nine papers of this ‘special issue’ and the many reconfiguration processes embodied in rural development that they address.in rural development

Late Victorian holocausts : El Niño famines and the making of the Third World

Abstract: "Late Victorian Holocausts" focuses on three zones of drought and subsequent famine: India, Northern China and North-Eastern Brazil. All of these countries were effected by the same global climatic factors that caused massive crop failures, and all experienced brutal famines that decimated the populations. The effects of drought were magnified in each case because of singularly destructive policies promulgated by different ruling elites. The author, Mike Davis, argues that the seeds of underdevelopment in what later became known as "The Third World" were sown in this era of high imperialism, as the price for Capitalist modernization was paid in the currency of millions of peasants' lives.

Social Mobilization and Political Development

Abstract: Social mobilization is a name given to an overall process of change, which happens to substantial parts of the population in countries which are moving from traditional to modern ways of life. It denotes a concept which brackets together a number of more specific processes of change, such as changes of residence, of occupation, of social setting, of face-to-face associates, of institutions, roles, and ways of acting, of experiences and expectations, and finally of personal memories, habits and needs, including the need for new patterns of group affiliation and new images of personal identity. Singly, and even more in their cumulative impact, these changes tend to influence and sometimes to transform political behavior.The concept of social mobilization is not merely a short way of referring to the collection of changes just listed, including any extensions of this list. It implies that these processes tend to go together in certain historical situations and stages of economic development; that these situations are identifiable and recurrent, in their essentials, from one country to another; and that they are relevant for politics. Each of these points will be taken up in the course of this paper.Social mobilization, let us repeat, is something that happens to large numbers of people in areas which undergo modernization, i.e., where advanced, non-traditional practices in culture, technology and economic life are introduced and accepted on a considerable scale. It is not identical, therefore, with this process of modernization as a whole, but it deals with one of its major aspects, or better, with a recurrent cluster among its consequences.