Unit 5 References

Modernisation
Contents
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Understanding Modernisation
5.3 Giddens’s Theory of Modernity
5.4 Decline of the Paradigm
5.5 Postmodernism
5.6 The Debate
5.7 Modernisation and Globalisation
5.8 Conclusion
5.9 Further Reading
Learning Objectives
After going through this unit, you will be able to:
• understand the concept of modernisation;
• critically discuss the contemporary theories of modernity; and
• explain how modernity is cross-linked with development.

5.1 Introduction
Through the four units of Block 1 we have already acquired a basic understanding
of the concept and process of development and other related concepts. We
also understood that there are varied perceptions about the concepts and
process of development and that these perceptions are not static but keep
on changing. Although we did refer to some of these perceptives in Block 1,
in the present Block (Block II), we will be dealing with them in greater detail.
Let us start with modernisation.

The concept of modernisation emerged as the response of the western social

science to the many challenges faced by the Third World. With the process of
political decolonisation following the Second World War, the new nations were
in a hurry to launch massive programmes of economic development and technical
change. The need for developing new paradigms to shape and order their
development programme was strongly felt. Modernisation was one such
formulation which held out considerable promise.

In this unit, we explore the concept of development in the context of

modernisation. At the outset we discuss the notion of modernisation as a
paradigm in sociological literature, particularly in the writings of Giddens. The
purpose here is to develop an understanding of modernisation theory and
then go on to its criticism and emergence of postmodernism as a paradigm.
In the course of tracing this trajectory we explore the many dimensions of
development that acquire importance at different stages.

5.2 Understanding Modernisation

Modernity may be understood as the common behavioral system that is
historically associated with the urban, industrial, and literate and participant
societies of Western Europe and North America. It is characterised by a rational
and scientific world-view, growth and the ever increasing application of science
and technology, which is coupled with the continuous adaptation of the
institutions of society to the imperatives of the world-view and the emerging
technological ethos. 79
Approaches to
Sustainable Development Box 5.1: Concept of Modernity
Modernity involves the rise of modern society (secularised societies with an
institutional separation of the state from civil society, a much greater degree of
social and technical division of labour, and the formation of nation-states uniting
cultural and political borders), a rationalistic epistemology, and an individualistic
and objectivistic ontology” (Torfing 1999: 303).

A series of societal changes are implicit in the process of modernisation.

Agrarian societies are characterised by the predominance of ascriptive,
particularistic and diffused patterns; they have stable local groups and limited
spatial mobility. Occupational differentiation is relatively simple and stable;
and the stratification system is deferential and has a diffused impact. The
modern industrial society is characterised by the predominance of universalistic,
specific and achievement norms; a high degree of mobility; a developed
occupational system relatively insulated from other social structures; a class
system often based on achievement; and the presence of functionally specific,
non-ascriptive structures and associations. Historically evolved institutions
continuously adapt themselves to the changes dictated by the phenomenal
increase in the human knowledge that has resulted from the control humanity
has over its environment. Modernisation theory does not clearly spell out its
distributive objectives. The emergence of an implicit egalitarian and
participative ethos does, however, indicate the narrowing of social gaps and
promotion of greater equality as desirable ends.

Modernisation, as a form of cultural response, involves attributes which are

basically universalistic and evolutionary; they are pan-humanistic, trans-ethnic
and non-ideological (Singh 1961). The essential attribute of modernisation is
rationality. Rationality transforms thought processes at the level of the individual
and in the process permeates the entire institutional framework of society.
Events and situations are understood in terms of cause and effects. Strategies
of action are determined by careful means-ends calculations. Rationality begins
to characterise all forms of human interaction and enters into people’s vision
of a new future as well as into their strivings for the attainment of the
objectives they set for themselves. The concomitant structural changes and
value shifts bring about fundamental changes in the entire cultural ethos.

Box 5.2: Meaning of Rationality

The term rationality denotes thought and action which are conscious in accord
with the rules of logic and empirical knowledge, where objectives are coherent,
mutually consistent and achieved by the most appropriate means.

The conviction that rationality, or reason, is the distinctive characteristic of

human beings has made it a central theme in western philosophy for over two
thousand years. In so far as this has led to an over-estimation of the place and
power of reason in human society, it has been criticised as the doctrine of
rationalism.

Max Weber, especially in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 1921, has been responsible
for the most extensive use of the term in sociology. He classifies all action into
four types : purposively rational, (‘Zweckrational’) action, where means are
correctly chosen to obtain ends; value rational (‘Wertrational’) where action is
in accord with conscious value standards; affectual; and traditional; the last two
types being regarded as deviations from rational action” ( Albrow 1968: 154).

In his essay The Change to Change: Modernisation, Development, and Politics

Huntington (1976: 30-31), has identified the following characteristics of the
modernisation process.

i) Modernisation, and by implication development, is a revolutionary process.

80 Efforts are made to transform rural agrarian cultures into urban industrial
 cultures. This is what Alvin Toffler (1980) would describe as the move from References
the first wave to the second wave.
ii) The process of both modernisation and development are complex and
multidimensional with a series of cognitive, behavioral and institutional
modifications and restructuring.
iii) Both are systemic processes since variation in one dimension produces
important co-variations in other dimensions.
iv) They are global processes.
v) They are lengthy processes.
vi) Movement towards the goals of modernisation and development takes
place through identifiable phases and sub-phases.
vii) They are homogenising processes.
viii) Except temporary breakdowns, both are irreversible processes.
ix) They are progressive processes. In the long run they contribute to human
well-being, both culturally and materially.

Reflection and Action 5.1

What do you understand by modernisation?

Modernisation theory evolved from two ideas about social change: the
conception of traditional vs. modern societies, and positivism that viewed
development as societal evolution in progressive stages of growth (Deutsch
1961; Rostow 1960). Concern with development emerged in the 1940s as a
fallout of the process of decolonisation and reconstruction after the Second
World War against the backdrop of the Cold War. Developing countries could
evolve the traditional society by rationalising them through a linear process in
the course of which they could “evolve” into becoming a country in a modern
and developed society. The evolutionary theory of development identified the
different stages, variables and processes through which a society develops.
Positivist evolution implied that all societies would pass through the same set
of stages from traditional to modern society that the western society had
passed. These stages were: (i) the traditional society; (ii) preconditions for
take-off; (iii) take-off; (iv) the drive to maturity; and (v) the age of high mass
consumption. The progression of society through these stages of modernisation
is better known as Rostow’s stage theory (for more details refer unit 2 of this
course).

Modernisation theory took development into a more inter-disciplinary realm.

It advocated social and institutional change to facilitate economic
transformation. It was through theorisation on modernity that sociologists
made their first foray into development studies.
Discussion on modernity in the present day centers on “multiple modernities.”
The notion of multiple modernity expounded by Eisenstadt explains that
modernity in the West has brought up consequences that have a wide bearing
across the world. These consequences, however, have not resulted from the
global transplanting of the western mode of modernity, but are modern
situations of various types and characteristics in various non — western
countries. Eisinstadt, (1996: 1-2) one of the major advocates of this idea, said,
“The actual developments in modernising societies have refuted the
homogenising and hegemonic assumptions of this western programme of
modernity. While a general trend towards structural differentiation developed
across a wide range of institutions in most of these societies in family life,
economic and political structures, urbanisation, modern education, mass
communication and individualistic orientation — the ways in which these arenas
were defined and organised varied greatly, in different periods of their
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Approaches to development, giving rise to multiple institutional and ideological patterns”. He
Sustainable Development thought that the best way of explaining modern society and the history of
modernity is to regard it as “a story of continual constitution and reconstitution
of a multiplicity of cultural programs”.

Through the notion of multiple modernities Eisenstadt, however, does not

mean only to propose a new description or narrative of the history of modernity.
He argues that modernity and westernisation are not identical. His notion of
multiple modernity is not only descriptive but also normative, though in a
negative sense. Diffused benefits which leave a large section of humankind
untouched, homogenisation in the face of rising ethnicity and pluralities of
culture consciousness, the social cost and cultural erosion implicit in the
process pose serious concerns.

Following Parsons’s well-known “pattern variables”, modernisation assumes that

status is determined by achievement rather than ascriptive criteria; patterns
of interaction are governed by universalistic rather than particularistic norms;
expectations and obligations in the system of role relationship acquire greater
specificity and replace the diffuse system that characterised the traditional
order. Units of society tend to be more specialised and self-sufficient. There
is increasing evidence of role differentiation, solidarity and integration.
Eisenstadt (1996) suggested that modern society emerges as a consensual
mass society and crystallises as a nation-state. Modernised societies operate
through institutional structures that are capable of continuously absorbing the
changes that are inherent in the process of modernisation. A series of
organisations that are complex and differentiated, relatively self-sufficient
and functionally specific seek to discharge functions in diverse and disparate
fields. Simultaneously, the roles of family and kinship based organisations get
more narrowly defined. Government and associated units – the bureaucracy,
economic and financial institutions, armed forces and organisations dealing
with specific functional areas such as education, health, housing, public
transport and recreation assume increasingly important roles.

Box 5.3: Role of the Government in Modernisation

By and large, the government is vested with an important role in modernising
the country and planning the economy. In the words of Wilber and Jameson
(1988: 9),
“The government must intervene in the economy to offset the anti-development
impact of the two types of obstacles to development. On the side of non-rational
behaviour, the government can attempt to convince its citizens of the need for
‘modernisation’ while, at the same time, substituting its own enterpreneurial
ability and knowledge to fill that vacuum. On the side of markets, the government
can again offset the difficulties through economic planning. By developing a
coherent overview of the economy through the various means at its disposal, the
orthodox result of growth in income can be attained”.

5.3 Giddens's Theory of Modernity

Recent social changes have led to debates over the very nature of the
contemporary social world. There is a debate between those who continue to
see contemporary society as a modern world and those who argue that a
substantial change has taken place in recent years and that we have moved
into a new, postmodern world. Most of the classical sociologists were engaged
in an analysis and critique of modern society which is clear in the works of
Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel. As we move into the 21st century, it is
obvious that today’s world is a very different place. The issue is whether the
changes in the world are modest and continuous with those associated with
modernity or are so dramatic and discontinuous that the contemporary world
is better described by a new term, “postmodern.”
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A host of social changes are fundamentally altering our world, and traditional References
“class politics” and faith in progress are being replaced by “identity politics”
and “new” social movements such as feminism, gay liberation, ecologism,
ethnic revivalism, religious neofundamentalism” (Tucker Jr 1998: 126). These
changes have brought with them a challenge to the “philosophical discourse
of modernity”. The conceptual framework of social science and the historical
legacy of Enlightenment rationality have been challenged by new postmodern
knowledge, of which contends that reason is a form of illegitimate power that
marginalises and excludes cultural vocabularies that do not conform to its
categories.

Giddens said that in order to understand and conceptualise contemporary

society, we need a new sociological theory capable of grasping its complexity.
He describes the modern world as a “juggernaut”. Modernity in the form of
a juggernaut is extremely dynamic, it is a “runaway world” with great leaps in
the pace, scope and profoundness of change over prior systems (Ritzer 2000
: 424). Giddens defines modernity in terms of four basic institutions. The first
is capitalism, characterised by commodity production, private ownership of
capital, propertyless wage labor and a class system derived from these
characteristics. The second is industrialism, which involves the use of inanimate
power sources and machinery to produce goods. Industrialism is not restricted
to the workplace, and it affects an array of other settings, such as
“transportation, communication and domestic life” (Giddens 1990: 56). The
third, is surveillance capacities which is defined as “the supervision of the
activities of subject populations (mainly, but not exclusively) in the political
sphere” (Ibid 1990: 8). The fourth is military power, or the control of the
means of violence, including the industrialisation of war. It should be noted
that at the macro level, Giddens focuses on the nation-state (rather than the
more conventional sociological focus on society), which he sees as radically
different from the type of community characteristic of pre-modern society.

According to Giddens, modernity is given dynamism by three essential aspects:

i) Time-space separation: With modernisation, time was standardised. In

large part, social interaction does not take place at the same time and in
the same place. Relationships with those who are physically absent and
increasingly distant become more and more likely. New technological
measures also call for expansion of our space which means that we can be
in the same space though not necessarily in the same locale. The modern
rational organisation, for example, has been able to connect the local and
the global in new ways. A modern company can function because it has
been possible to break the time-space connection.

ii) Disembedding of social systems: Earlier the institutions and actions of

society were embedded in the local community. The condition has changed
because social relations are lifted out of the local interaction context by
disembedding mechanisms. Giddens distinguishes between two types of
disembedding mechanisms which contribute to the development of modern
institutions: i) symbolic tokens; and (ii) expert systems. Together these
are called abstract systems. Money is an example of a symbolic token. It
places time in a bracket as it functions as a means of credit. It represents
a value that can be later used to purchase new goods. The standardised
value allows transactions to be carried out without actually meeting, thus
fracturing the notion of space. New patterns of interaction are created
across time and space.

Expert systems are defined as, “systems of technical accomplishment or

professional expertise that organise large areas of the material and social
environments in which we live today” (Ibid: 27). The most obvious expert
systems involve professionals like lawyers and physicians. Consider the
following example. In travel by bus one enters a large network of expert 83
Approaches to systems including the construction of the bus, roads and the traffic control
Sustainable Development system. The bus can be taken without possessing knowledge of how these
systems are constructed. One only needs the money for the ticket (another
expert system). The expert systems also help to move social relations from
one given context to another. Such a disembedding mechanism requires
a time-space separation.

iii) Reflexivity of Modern society: According to Giddens, reflexivity, the third

contributing factor in society’s profound process of transformation, is of
two forms. The first is a general feature of all human action. The second
type of reflexivity is unique to modernity. Modern society is experiencing
a reflexivity at both the institutional and personal levels, and this is decisive
for the production and change of modern systems and modern forms of
social organisation. Giddens defines reflexivity as institutions’ and
individuals’ regular and constant use of knowledge as the conditions for
society’s organisation and change. The firm undertakes market surveys in
order to establish sales strategies; the state conducts censuses in order
to establish the tax base. This increased reflexivity is made possible by
the development of the network of mass communication. With an expansion
of the time-space dimension, the social practices are constantly
investigated and changed on the basis of newly acquired information.
Today we reflect on tradition and act in accordance with it only if it can
be legitimised via reflexivity.

To sum up, Giddens states that modernity’s culture of incessant reflexivity

creates a post-traditional social world. As modernity spreads throughout the
globe, it encourages the rise of expert, abstract systems of knowledge,
represented by the social and natural sciences. These expert systems encourage
constant change and reflexivity, which separates time and space from their
particular context, re-embedding them in new ones. He also views new social
movements, centered on a new life politics, as integral to the texture of
modern life. He rejects the claim of surpassed modernity and rejects most, if
not all, tenets associated with postmodernism.
Reflection and Action 5.2
What are the main features of Giddens’s theory of Modernity?

5.4 Decline of the Paradigm

The modernisation approach dominated the social science domain in the West
and in several parts of the Third World for a decade and developed most
between the late 1950s and the mid-1960s. Towards the end of the 1960s,
however, it began to lose appeal. The gap between promise and performance
of modernisation was too wide to escape attention. The absence of results
generated mass apathy and anger and left the modernising elite confused. In
the process, the concept of modernisation got demystified.

It was observed that the paradigm of modernisation sought to transfer

technology without effecting necessary institutional changes. Imaginative and
systematic efforts were to be directed towards institution building for
accomplishing the highly specialised and differentiated tasks implicit in the
process of modernisation. The notion of rationality, which was the cornerstone
of modernisation paradigm, was itself ambiguous. It is now recognised that
rationality can be of different kinds operating at different levels and in different
contexts. The explanatory power of the paradigm was limited and the guidelines
for action embodied in it were somewhat obscure. It was evasive on the vital
issue of the poverty of the masses, especially in the less developed countries.
The formulation did not take into account the qualitative changes in the
problems that humanity faces. The prospects of modernisation and development
against the backdrop of the realities of the contemporary world order were
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not clear. Thus the global context of modernity remained unexamined. The References
notion of ceaseless and limitless modernisation has been challenged powerfully
from other quarters, especially by environmentalists and conservationists. Non-
renewable natural resources, on which the edifice of modernisation is built,
are being rapidly depleted; and adequate, efficient and economic substitutes
are not yet in sight. The consequences of environmental pollution and ecological
imbalance are dangerous. Many vital questions regarding the desirability and
possibility of modernisation remain unanswered. This arrests the search for
meaningful alternatives and inhibits reflection and action aimed at appropriate
solutions.

5.5 Postmodernism
A major challenge to sociological theories of modernity came from the
theoretical position of postmodernism. Postmodernism denies any meaningful
continuity in history. It is a new historical epoch that is supposed to have
succeeded the modern era or modernity. As Habermas states, postmodernism
is akin to “the anarchist wish to explode the continuum of history”, demolishing
theories of modernity in doing so (Tucker Jr. 1998: 131).

Giddens distinguishes between postmodernism and post-modernity.

Postmodernism refers to the recent changes in architecture, literature, art,
poetry while post-modernity refers to recent institutional changes in the
social world. He finds the latter more important but does not believe that
post-modernity theoretically captures the meaning of these social changes. In
his view, the contemporary pervasiveness of reflexivity makes useless the
distinction between modern and postmodern eras.

For some theorists postmodernism means that we have entered a new,

postindustrial world, which problematises old assumptions, including ideals of
social progress, the importance of class as a source of social identity and the
very idea of a unified self. A new social world requires new knowledge.
Postmodernism destabilises contemporary social theory. It values difference,
as there are no absolute values that command our allegiance. Postmodernism
critiques all limiting assumptions in social and political life, especially those
based on rationality that seek to exclude multiple perspectives on the world.
It is suspicious of any evolutionary theory and all centralising tendencies and
celebrates a diversity of approaches to social life and decentralised social
movements.

5.6 The Debate

Giddens shares many of these themes with contemporary sociological theorists
such as Habermas, Touraine and Melucci. These authors attempt to grasp the
distinctive culture of late modernity that is fragile, ever-changing and different
from that which preceded it. Due to the worldwide spread of capitalism, the
mass media and industrialism, contemporary society is a global society. More
and more people realise that their identities and moral systems can no longer
rely on taken-for-granted traditions. With the decline in tradition hence, there
has been a rise in reflexivity (Giddens 1990).

These theorists view modernity as an unfinished project and construct a

narrative of modernity which culminates in a reformed vision of rationality,
universality and evolutionary development. For Giddens, as for these theorists,
in the late modern era of highly differentiated and specialised Western
societies, conflicts arise in the areas of information and communication. The
line between public and private issues becomes blurred. Reflexivity relates self
with society in ever changing ways.

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Approaches to Critiquing postmodernism, Giddens and other contemporary sociological theorists
Sustainable Development reconstruct modernity viewing it as internally complex. Like Weber, they are
especially aware of the problems created by a rationality which destroys
meaning. Like the postmodernists, they recognise that a major problem of
modern culture has been the destructive potential of a rationality that is not
sensitive to social and natural contexts. Such a concept of rationality also
undermines the conditions of self-government, largely by translating social
questions into issues of technical, undemocratic policy.

Habermas is the strongest defender of the legacy of modernity against the

postmodern criticisms of it. He sees in modernity tendencies towards rampant
instrumental rationality that destroys alternative, more democratic visions of
social life. Like Parsons, he states that a universalistic rationality is a major
achievement of modernity, which must integrate an increasingly differentiated
and complex modern society. Rise of different types of reasoning constitute
the key feature of the modern world. Modernity cannot rely on traditional
justifications of rule and action and must ground its criteria for evaluation
within its own history. In the absence of tradition, communicative rationality
takes on the ethical role of coordinating diverse social actions. He sees the
culture of modernity embodied in communicative rationality as concerned
with establishing autonomy and justice. For Habermas, this communicative
context informs the acquisition of knowledge, the transmission of culture, the
formation of personal identity and more general processes of social integration.

He further contends that new social movements provide avenues for the
development of new values and identities. Arising in a post-traditional and
post-industrial society, new social movements represent the main vehicle by
which a non-instrumental, communicative rationality can be brought into public
life. New social movements associated with late modernity, such as feminism
and environmentalism, have fundamentally changed the nature of politics. In
sum, Habermas contends that modernity establishes inseparable links between
rationality and freedom as demonstrated in the great modernist
accomplishments such as democracy and human rights. New social movements
are expressing and attempting to implement these achievements in new ways.
His championing of the legacy of modernity distances him from the
postmodernists.

Like Touraine and Melucci, Giddens theorises a reformed view of modernity

that is much more critical than that of Habermas. They argue that new social
movements raise novel issues of cultural identity in a global context marked
by rapid increases in communication technologies and recognition of the
importance of cultural differences. Melucci and Touraine contend that modern
societies exist in a post-industrial context, and cultural strife between diverse
groups has replaced class struggles over the distribution of resources as central
social conflicts. Modern societies are in chronic combat over the possession
and very definition of cultural codes and information. New social movements
are the primary agents and carriers of innovative discourses and practices in
the struggles of the late modern era.

These theorists critically engage the postmodern persuasion, arguing that

modernity has not been superseded but remains an unfinished project, as
modernist beliefs and practices are still central to contemporary societies.
They believe that rational reflexivity has replaced tradition as the main form
of social solidarity in the modern world.

Giddens differs from these theorists in that he takes tradition more seriously.
In the new distinctively modern-risk society, people draw on expertise, re-
evaluate it in terms of their own particular cultural context and then utilise
this knowledge to evaluate their everyday actions. He argues that modernity
excludes and marginalises particular groups of people who do not fit into
86
these categories. He agrees with the postmodern claims that the foundations References
of knowledge are fragile and there is no inherent progress in history, and the
new social movements are raising qualitatively new issues about social life. He
believes that personal identity has also become less firm and more fragmented
in the modern world. However Giddens disagrees with many postmodern tenets.
He prefers the idea of late modernity to that of post-modernity. “People do
not live in fragmented, unconnected lives; they still construct narratives about
their selves, but they do so in ‘post-traditional’ conditions” (Tucker Jr. 1998: 143).

5.7 Modernisation and Globalisation

The intellectual portrayal of modernisation was, as a political and economic
proposition, coming to the fore following World War II. It equated the
intellectual, cultural and technological advance of victorious nations as
something that needed to be emulated by the “poorer less civilised” people
of the world. This is connected to the process of “modernity” which was a
project of global conquest – originating in Europe. By Globalisation, we mean
the profound reorganisation of manufacturing, trade and services within a
globally encompassing system. It points to a phenomena identified
interchangeably as a process, a historical event or the end result of shifting
“ethno – techno, media – finance and ideo – scapes” ( Appadurai 1996: 32).
Accordingly, it replaces the unavailing verb, modernisation, because modernists
and their opponents depended on model dualistic analysis such as “centre
periphery”, “north – south”, “First World – Third World”, “developed –
developing”, etc.

The concept of modenisation was very much tied to the idea of recreating
the world in the image of America and Western European principles and culture.
More recently, discussions on Globalisation describe a process by which the
world is becoming increasingly interconnected and unified, subject to
homogenous and uniform processes of cultural unification. Characters such as
Michael Jackson or the corporate logos of McDonald and Nike are examples of
global awareness.

5.8 Conclusion
The similarities between classical modernisation studies and new modernisation
studies can be observed in the constancy of the research focus on Third world
Development.

There are important distinctions between the classical studies and the new
studies of the modernisation school. For example, in the classical approach,
tradition is seen as an obstacle to development whereas in the new approach
tradition is an additive factor of development. With regard to methodology,
the classical approach applies a theoretical construction with a high level of
abstraction; the new approach applies concrete case studies given in a historical
context. Regarding the direction of development, the classical perspective
uses a unidirectional path which tends towards the United States and European
model, the new perspective prefers a multidirectional path of development.
Finally, the classical perspective demonstrates a relative neglect of the external
factors and conflict. This stands out in sharp contrast to the greater attention
to the external factors and conflicts bestowed by the new approach.
Development, in the changed context, poses a challenge and, at the same
time, presents an opportunity.

This unit begins with an attempt to understand the process of modernisation

and the evolution of modernisation theories. The unit goes on discussing how
the theoretical position of post-modernism pose challenge to the sociological
theories of modernity. We also saw how Giddens and other advocates of
87
Approaches to modernisation thoeries defend their theories and why they prefered the idea
Sustainable Development of late-modernity to that of post-modernity. The unit sums up with an analysis
of interrelationship between modernisation and globalisation.

5.9 Further Reading

Dube S.C. 1988. Modernisation and Development. Vistaar publications: New
Delhi

Ritzer, George 2000. Modern Sociological Theory. 5th edition. McGraw Hill Higher
Education

Singh, Y. 1977. Modernisation of Indian Tradition. Thomson. Faridabad

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