Modernization Theory

Classical Theories

The “classical” theories of modernization of the 1950s have indeed identified the core characteristics of modernity and of modern society, such as the decomposition of older “closed” institutional frameworks; the development of new structural, institutional, and cultural features and formations; and, to use the terminology of Karl Deutsch, the growing potential for social mobilization. The most important structural dimension of modernity attesting to the decomposition of former relatively narrow formations was seen in the growing tendency for structural differentiation—manifested, for example, in growing urbanization; commodification of the economy; and in the continual development of distinctive channels of communication and agencies of education. On the institutional level, such decomposition gave rise to the development of new institutional formations—such as the modern state, modern national collectivities, and new market (especially capitalist) economies—that were perceived or defined to some extent at least as autonomous and that were indeed regulated by specific, distinct mechanisms—such as rules of the market, of bureaucratic organization, and the like. [Page 1609]In some later formulations, it was the development of such distinct autonomous spheres, each regulated by its own logic, that was very often defined in the essence of modern institutional formations. Concomitantly, modernity was seen as bearing a distinct cultural program and shaping a distinct type of personality characteristic.

These theories, as well as classical sociological analyses of Marx, Durkheim, and to a large extent even of Weber (or at least one reading of him), have implicitly or explicitly conflated the structural and cultural major dimensions of modernity, as they saw it developing in the West. A very strong, even if implicit, assumption of the studies of modernization was that the cultural dimensions or aspects of modernization—the basic cultural premises of Western modernity, the “secular” rational worldview, including a strong individualistic orientation—are inherently and necessarily interwoven with the structural ones. Accordingly, most of the classics of sociology as well as the studies of modernization of the 1940s and 1950s and the closely related studies of convergence of industrial societies have assumed, even if only implicitly, that the basic institutional formations, the definitions of the institutional arenas, the modes of their regulation and integration that developed in European modernity, and the cultural program of modernity as it developed in the West will “naturally” be ultimately taken over, with possibly local variations, in all—or at least in the “successful”—modernizing societies. It is further assumed that this project of modernity, with its hegemonic and homogenizing tendencies, will continue in the West and, with the expansion of modernity, will prevail throughout the world.

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