Modernization and Hegemony

> 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
I agree--a lot of the intellectuals (using the term loosely) who actually get 
talked about in the mainstream press--Huntington, Friedman, Fukuyama--owe a lot 
to modernization theory.  The more general cultural background against which 
modernization/globalization operate, not mentioned in the book review posted, 
is the belief in progress, that embrace of the most 'advanced' technologies 
leads to happiness, that economic growth is also more or less equal to 
happiness, that rational understanding of the world is derived from science..   
These ideas had (and continue to have) a very powerful, almost unchallenged 
hold on nearly all major political actors all over the world.  When northern 
hegemony was first challenged in the twentieth century, the Soviet Union and 
the US both promised that, if their leadership was accepted, they would bring 
all these things to the 'developing' world (and bring them faster, and more 
thoroughly, than their rival).   If these ideas are rejected, its difficult to 
see what the North has to offer the South.
Steven Sherman