Modernization

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Modernization is a slippery term with manifold relations to science and technology. In a narrow sense, it is often synonymous with bringing more advanced science or technology to bear, as in modernizing a construction process or production plant. In a broader sense, social scientists describe modernity as a particular form of culture or society dependent on and supportive of science and technology, with the process of creating such a society defined as modernization. (Related concepts are urbanization, the concentration of population into cities, and secularization, the recasting of society from a basis in religious beliefs to one based on rationality, science, and technology.)

Insofar as modernization in the broader sense connotes an undermining of traditional values and is presented as a program with its own normative character, it is also of ethical significance, and has been assessed in both positive and negative terms.

Modernization is a somewhat more neutral term for a concept known in the nineteenth century as the "civilizing" process, and during the first half of the twentieth century as "Westernization." The term gained widespread currency in the 1950s, but began attracting substantial criticism during the 1960s.

In social, economic, and political theory, modernization is characterized by the achievement of industrialization, high urbanization, secularization, and rationalization. In a 1983 essay submitted for a symposium on Cultural Identity and Modernization in Asian Countries at Japan's Kokugakuin University, Robert M. Bellah analyzed the tension between tradition and modernization, then noted that when these forces successfully collaborate, the results may be remarkable: "A viable tradition should continue to guide individuals and societies in their quest for what is truly good, and modernization should simply supply more effective means for that quest" (Bellah 1983, Internet site). Bellah concludes that although the marriage of tradition and modernization is often over-stated, "the amazingly successful economic modernization" of Japan and the Pacific Rim countries is largely due to "[t]he spirit of the people, their work ethic, their social discipline, their ability to cooperate ... all ... more or less rooted in one or another aspect of the tradition."

The Cold War vision of modernization as a weapon against the spread of Communism strongly differed from this vision of a consensual and beneficial partnership between tradition and the modern. In an influential 1968 article, Samuel Huntington urged "forced-draft urbanization and modernization which rapidly brings the country in question out of the phase in which a rural revolutionary movement can hope to generate sufficient strength to come to power." Rather than basing modernization on the consent of the governed, Huntington posited that less developed nations could be dragged into modernity—an approach applied in the Strategic Hamlets Program in Vietnam, where populations were forcibly removed at gunpoint to new "modern" surroundings, and their old homes burned.

Thus, proponents of modernization saw the process in two entirely different lights: one as a good that could be forced on subjects regardless of their wishes, and the other as a consensual step, greatly desired by the participants, toward participation in "a world of industrial, competitive nations interacting in a capitalist, free-trade, global framework" (Adas 2003, p. 37).

While modernization sounds more neutral than a phrase such as "Westernization," critics complain that it nonetheless carries with it substantial Western baggage. Modernization assumes that the sole criteria of success of a society are gross national product (GNP) and the degree of industrialization. Underlying the theory of modernization is an almost entirely unexamined premise that all other nations should seek to imitate the West, and particularly the United States.

The process of modernization has been described as a cover for the introduction of capitalism without regard for the well-being of local populations. Rather than elevating all nations to equal opportunity participation in free markets, thereby lifting their citizens to higher living standards, critics say that modernization leads perversely to increased impoverishment and greater dependency of former colonies. "Modernization and development have previously been built on considerable exploitation of certain segments of the society and have involved a degree of ruthlessness. Imperialism aided them substantially" (Dube 1988, p. 5). Modernization, of course, also brings with it the glitches experienced by Western capitalist nations, including cycles of recession, inflation, and unemployment.

Other critics question whether it is really an absolute good to eliminate diversity and make people the same everywhere. Ironically, modernization, like Marxism, holds that there is a universal historical process in which "a single modernity" will eventually emerge (Gilman 2003, p. 56).

Modernization has also been said to be based on the premise that science and technology can solve all human problems, rendering unnecessary any specific consideration of ethical implications of their introduction. Yet high technology may lead to high unemployment in third world countries, and therefore modernization theory needs to be modified by the addition of an ethical element, wholly lacking from the work of most writers on the topic. One view is that science and technology should specifically be used to address "social needs ... tempered with distributive justice" (Dube 1988, p. 32).

The countervailing forces to modernization include fundamentalism, anomie, violence, decay of norms, and the dysfunction of social institutions. Aslam Siddiqi offers an interesting critique from a Third World and Islamic perspective in a 1974 work; he says that modernization is an essentially materialistic concept lacking higher ethical value. "Human personality has no sanctity ... Abundance of goods is its greatest achievement, and hedonism is the proper way of life" (p. 13). Siddiqi does not propose the rejection of science and technology, but instead says that it is necessary to "identify the framework for society and to find accommodations between modernization and Islamic requirements" (p. 194).

The term modernization is invested with meanings that are better unpacked and examined individually, to see what assumptions are necessary to support them. While in the early twenty-first century, few people argue that a decentralized, agrarian, low-technology way of life is preferable, there is a consensus that development has moral implications that require close analysis and planning.

Building Codes;; Development Ethics;; Enlightenment Social Theory;; Green Revolution;; Industrial Revolution;; Secularization;; Sustainability and Sustainable Development;; Urbanization.

Adas, Michael. (2003). "Modernization and the American Revival of the Scientific and Technological Standards of Social Achievement and Human Worth." In Staging Growth: Modernization, Development, and the Global Cold War, ed. David C. Engerman et al. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Dube, S.C. (1988). Modernization and Development: The Search for Alternative Paradigms. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books.

Gilman, Nils. "Modernization Theory, the Highest Stage of American Intellectual History." In Staging Growth: Modernization, Development, and the Global Cold War, ed. David
C. Engerman et al. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Huntington, Samuel (1968). "The Bases of Accommodation." Foreign Affairs 46(4): 642–656.

Siddiqi, Aslam. (1974). Modernization Menaces Muslims. Lahore, Pakistan: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf.

Bellah, Robert M. (1983). "Cultural Identity and Asian Modernization." Available from http://www2.kokugakuin.ac.jp/ijcc/wp/ci mac/bellah.html.

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