Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 06:08:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jozsef Borocz <jborocz-AT-rci.rutgers.edu>
Subject: modernization theory


On Tue, 7 May 2002, bob brown wrote:

|jozsef, i am very interested in yur point linking modernization theory and
|fascism/racism. could yu give me a summary of modernization theory, and some
|quotations as examples of this smilarity of language and thinking? what
|specifically do yu refer to? thanks bob

well, there lurks a huge genie in this inocuous bottle. here is what I was
able to think of, by way of summarizing the issue in brief:

modernization theory (MT) is what happens when an analysis operates with the
following four assumptions:

1 that there is a single direction for large-scale social change (history)
(=the teleological assumption)

2 that that direction is knowable (=epistemological optimism)

3 that we (i.e., the speaking subject) actually know that direction

4 that that direction points toward the "west"

Initially, MT came from the "west," and it is most unabashedly perpetuated
there even today, but scholars elsewhere have also picked it up, particularly
because it offers one attractive feature: a simple blueprint. (That
blueprint--follow the "west"--is, however, untenable, and in fact often
outright disastrous, which has been the tragedy of much of at least partly
well-intended "second-" and "third-world" modernizationism for the last three
generations.)

In its sociological form, MT emerged from Talcott Parsons' simplifying
translation of some important but extremely ambiguous passages by Max Weber
when north American and west European sociology were established (in the
thirties through fifties). Both in the U.S. and in western Europe, it was
made into a tool whereby comparative sociology could imagine itself, and act
like, a "science". Under the sudden world hegemony of the U.S. after World
War II, a whole industry of modernizationist studies sprang up (the two most
succesful representatives were Walt Rostow and Alex Inkeles). (Readers might
also enjoy knowing that for much of his career--at the height of the cold
war, i.e., a period when it did appear that there was a set of real
alternatives to "western"-style liberal capitalism for the postcolonial world
freshly baptized as the "third world", i.e., the next one after the "second
world", i.e., the socialist bloc--Parsons was in fact head of the Russian
Studies Institute at Harvard.)

The main result of this mode of theorizing has been the practice of
interpreting contemporary variation in the social form (a.k.a. otherness) *as
part of the "past"*. This was the essence of a hugely transparent clue
regarding Durkheim's eurocentrism in his Sociology of Religions, picked up by
cultural anthropology for generations, and amply criticized by Johannes
Fabian in his notion of "the denial of coevalness". A large part of
postcolonial studies has been developed as a non-European critique of the
same (e.g., Guha, Chatterjee, Chakrabarty all develop their superb
scholarship partly as a criticism of MT). I made the shorthand reference to
MT in my previous message because I kind of assumed much of this literature
is known to people on this list.

As for Fortuyn, in his interviews broadcast repeatedly on BBC during the last
four weeks or so, he argued the essentially the following: "Immigration to
the Netherlands must be stopped immediately because the NL is a modern
society, the foreigners come from traditional cultures, hence they are unable
to assimilate. Their religion is backward, and because of their communal
mentality they are unable to take individual responsibility for their
actions." He also linked crime with immigration and said that he was not in
favor of deportations (which, he claimed, distinguished him from his French
counterpart Le Pen.) Then he would lean back and sip his tea served by his
butler. He had received over 30% support of the votes in the local elections
in Rotterdam, a city with one of the highest rates of population of non-Dutch
origin in the NL (most of whom of course cannot vote). National elections in
the NL are coming up soon, and Fortuyn's name has not been removed from the
list (i.e., the Dutch extreme right will vote for a dead man). Most scary,
the European media to which I have access here unanimously describes him as
"having boldly expressed the views of many Dutch people". That is either
true, which is frightening, or not true, which is then equally scary, as it
shows what the media is doing...

sorry for the long post.

best,

József Böröcz




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