Re: Modernization Theory

Modernization theory may not be hegemonic among serious social scientists
who actually study the evidence, but among politicians, and especially among
"the masses", (for example, most college students in the US),  there is
still the very strong belief that when the USA intervenes in other
less-industrialized countries, it mainly brings more modern things, better
medicine, education, etc. , and that the enemies of the "USA" are poor
people who, for various superstitious reasons, don't want to accept the
benefits of modernization.  In fact, even some radicals and self-described
socialists and Marxists defended the military attacks on Afghanistan using
that same argument.  So as an idea in popular culture, it is still quite
strong.............

Alan Spector





----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Pugliese" <debsian@pacbell.net>
To: "Shelton Gunaratne" <gunarat@mnstate.edu>
Cc: "Alan Spector" <spectors@netnitco.net>; "WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK"
<wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2003 1:16 PM
Subject: Re: Modernization Theory


>   Modernization theory hasn't been hegemonic since the late 60's, though.
> Dead Horse.
> http://www.unc.
> edu/depts/diplomat/archives_roll/2001_07-
> 09/book_hunt_modern/book_hunt_modern.html
>
> Review by author of, "Ideology and American Foreign Policy."
>
> Modernization Theory: Ideology or Fad?
> review by Michael H. Hunt
> Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and "Nation Building"
in
> the Kennedy Era By Michael E. Latham. (Chapel Hill: University of North
> Carolina Press, 2000. Pp. xiv, 288. $45 cloth; $18.95 paper.)
>
> In the writing of U.S. foreign relations history, ideas are in. Prompted
> first by anthropologists interested in cultural systems and more recently
> by a post-modern preoccupation with language, historians have paid
> increasing attention to the underlying concerns shaping the outlook of
> policymakers. This focus on ideas has helped to demonstrate that policy
> develops within a constructed frame of reference. It has also helped to
> throw into the question the previously dominant realist paradigm. That
> paradigm asserts or at least assumes the existence of an objectively
> knowable international configuration of power and insists on judging
> policymakers by their success at grasping that international reality and
> responding with appropriately formulated definitions of the "national
> interest." Realist have not surprisingly resisted the notion that policy
> derives from intellectual constructs with deep domestic cultural roots.
>
> Michael E. Latham’s treatment of modernization theory in its heyday
> attempts to dispel any remaining realist resistance. In five tight,
> carefully constructed chapters Latham makes the case for modernization as
a
> potent policy ideology. He begins by defining ideology as "a conceptual
> framework that articulated a common set of assumptions about the nature of
> American society and its ability to transform a world perceived as both
> materially and culturally deficient". Specifically, modernization thinking
> posited a sharp distinction between traditional (read third world) and
> modern societies, with the United States standing as the epitome of the
> latter. It took for granted that development from traditional to modern
> proceeded along a single straight line. It confidently held that economic,
> social, and political change was interdependent within a society
undergoing
> development. Finally, modernization advocates expected contact with vital
> modern societies to accelerate progress in stagnant traditional societies.
>
> With this conceptual foundation laid, Latham goes on to show how
> modernization theory became orthodoxy within the social science community
> in the course of the 1950s as the third world emerged as a Cold War
> battleground. His chapter on the rise of what has been called the Charles
> River school of development (for the leading role of MIT and Harvard
> academics) was for this reader the most engaging in the volume. He then
> demonstrates through three cases studies the influence of both the theory
> and the theorists within the Kennedy administration during what proved the
> golden age of modernization thinking. The three test cases are familiar
and
> well chosen—The Alliance for Progress, the Peace Corps, and the strategic
> hamlet program in Vietnam. The characters promoting these policy
> initiatives turn out to be prominent academic proponents of modernization,
> notably Walt Rostow, Lucian Pye, Eugene Staley, and Lincoln Gordon. Under
> Kennedy, these and like-minded professors got not just to speak to power
> but also to put their hands on the levers.
>
> Latham’s careful development of his argument, building especially in the
> case studies on a well developed literature, should leave little doubt
> about the importance of ideas that were taken as self-evident at the time
> but that in retrospect seem debatable if not wrong headed. It is hard to
> imagine a realist, however skeptical, not having to concede the importance
> of a peculiarly U.S. model of development in shaping Kennedy programs.
>
> Like any valuable contribution, this book may help to settle one
> interpretive issue only to prompt fresh questions. First, does
> modernization deserve designation as an ideology in its own right? Or
> should it more properly be seen as an academic fad inspired by some more
> deeply rooted, widely held, and enduring set of ideas—what Latham calls
not
> ideologies but "perceptual frameworks" such as manifest destiny and a
> missionary/imperial outlook important in earlier U.S. foreign relations?
> What in other words is the threshold test for ideology? Latham’s use of
> ideology interchangeably with "conceptual framework" within which other,
> deeper, more persistent ideas operate accentuates the question. Are
> ideologies and conceptual frameworks really the same? A landscaping plan
or
> a course syllabus is also a conceptual framework, but are they thus
> ideologies? That virtually all endeavors are in some sense shaped by
> ideology does not mean that they all qualify.
>
> Second, how important is ideology relative to other forces that commonly
> influence policy decisions such as domestic politics and the personality
of
> leaders. Latham prudently makes no sweeping claims for the preeminence of
> the ideas that he examines. Indeed, he is quick to concede that
> modernization was but one influence at work shaping Kennedy's policy. The
> problem is that this interpretive pluralism yields an somewhat mushy
> interpretation. To test the importance of modernization ideas, Latham
could
> have asked if policy would have been substantially different without them.
> Did modernization merely reinforce trends in Kennedy's policies, or did it
> in some sense alter those trends? Absent modernization thinking, would
> Washington still have thrown money at a Latin America seemingly imperiled
> by the Castro revolution and currents of anti-Americanism? Would
relocation
> of Vietnamese peasants have gone ahead under U.S. auspices just as they
had
> under the French and Ngo Dinh Diem, even if there had been no modernizers
> around to offer a rationale for isolating insurgent fish from their
popular
> sea?
>
> Finally, were the modernizers entirely misguided in their preoccupation
> with gauging the global influence of the U.S. model? Latham’s treatment
> suggests that these Cold War intellectuals were lost in a fog of
> ethnocentrism and nationalism. To be sure, the author makes a convincing
> case for a good deal of both. But there may be something more at work in
> the modernization idea—that in fact the United States had by the 1950s and
> 1960s established itself in a rare if not unprecedented position of global
> significance. The United States was certainly an active, unrivaled
cultural
> as well as economic and political force throughout much of the world. It
> was also taken by other peoples as the first modern nation whose path of
> development had something to teach whether taken for good or ill. The
> current preoccupation with globalism may be, like the modernization
> concerns of an earlier day, a fad whose simplistic response to a changing
> world will seem several decades hence charmingly naïve. But proponents of
> modernization theory may have been wrestling, perhaps not altogether
> successfully, with a phenomenon that continues to fascinate and baffle—a
> multifaceted hegemony that the United States has managed to establish
> around the world.
>
> Latham, an assistant professor at Fordham University, will perhaps in
> future work return to some of these questions. In the meantime, he
deserves
> congratulations on a fine first book that makes a clear and compelling
> argument on a topic of considerable importance.
>
> On Sun, 22 Jun 2003 10:53:40 -0500, Shelton Gunaratne
<gunarat@mnstate.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > Modernization Theory arose from the work of Walt Rostow, Daniel Lerner,
> > David McClelland, Wilbur Schramm, Everett Rogers, and others. Its core
> > assumptions are found in Parsons's functionalist theory. Many call it
the
> > dominant paradigm.
> >
> > Dependency theory and the World-Systems Theory were instrumental in
> > discrediting the top-down Modernization Theory, which smacked of
> > "imperialistic" thinking.
> >
> > The complexity sciences, particularly Prigogine' theory of dissipative
> > structures, make a mockery of the presumptions of the Modernization
> > Theory: linearity and rversibility of time. It's a West-centric theory,
> > whose usefulness is quite doubtful.
> >
> >
> >
> >> ===== Original Message From "Alan Spector" <spectors@netnitco.net>
=====
> >> I have a student doing an independent study course on modernization.
> > Basically, what I need is the titles of two or three books on
> > modernization theory that explains it in simple terms. The student is
not
> > a sociology major and does not have a strong background in sociological
> > theory. This is meant
> >> to be a basic, introductory course, and readability is an especially
> > important aspect of these books.  So, if anyone can give me a few ideas,
> > that would be helpful. Feel free to e-mail me privately.\
> >>
> >> thanks,
> >>
> >> Alan Spector
> >>
> >> spectors@netnitco.net
> >
> > Shelton Gunaratne, professor
> > Mass Communications Department
> > Minnesota State University Moorhead
> > 1104 Seventh Ave. S.
> > Moorhead, MN 56563
> >
> > Tel. (218) 236-4035
> > Fax  (218) 236-2168
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Michael Pugliese
>
>
http://centre.telemanage.ca/quotes.nsf/quotes/10c5c725e1cd24e58525687b00673a
0f
>
> Brainwashing - A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psycho-politics
which
> is the Dianetics version published in 1955.
> Psycho-politics is a solemn charge. With it you can erase our enemies as
> insects. You (psychologists) can change their (leaders) loyalties by
> psychopolitics. Given a short time with a psycho-politician you can alter
> forever the loyalty of a soldier in our hands or a statesman or a leader
in
> his own country, or you can destroy his mind.
>
> Use the courts, use the judges, use the Constitution of the country, use
> its medical societies and its laws to further our ends... By psycho-
> politics create chaos. Leave a nation leaderless. Kill our enemies. And
> bring to Earth, through Communism, the greatest peace man has ever known.
> Thank you."
>
>