Global Modernization Review: New Discoveries And Theories Revisited

New Discoveries and Theories Revisited

Alberto Martinelli, Chuanqi He

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9789814616089
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Science General
• Index: Biological Sciences

Modernization has effected a profound change in human civilizations and is a global trend since the 18th century. It includes not only the great change and transformation from traditional to modern politics, economies, societies and cultures, but also all human development and protection of the natural environment. Almost all nations in the world are undergoing some kind of modernization consciously or unconsciously, and the modernization drive can also be set as a national goal if they will. The first International Modernization Forum: Modernization and Global Change was held in Beijing in 2013. This volume, emanating from invaluable discussions at the forum, covers research on global modernization, multiple modernities, modernization theory, modernization science, modernization policy, and world modernization indexes.

Global Modernization Review offers a collective understanding of the modernization phenomenon and provides invaluable guidance for further study, and significant international and interdisciplinary cooperation for researches on modernization.

Contents:

• Modernization Theory Reconsidered
• Modernization and World Economy
• Modernization and Social Change
• Modernization and Environment Change
• Modernization and Regional Development
• Modernization and Urbanization

Readership: Academics, professionals, undergraduate and graduate students interested in modernization, urbanization, developmental economics, environmental economics and international relations.
Key Features:

• The first comprehensive book on the global modernization
• Written by top scholars on global modernization from 14 countries including the United States, Italy, Germany, China, Russia etc.

Part I

Modernization Theory Reconsidered

Global Modernization and Multiple Modernities^*

Alberto Martinelli

Political Science and Sociology, University of Milan, Italy

Which are the basic dimensions of modernity? Has modernity become a global social condition? Are there different paths toward and through modernity? Are there different ways to be modern? The prevailing approach in contemporary studies of modernization as exemplified by authors like Eisenstadt, Gaunkar, Taylor and Wittrock — argues for the existence of multiple modernities, affirming that the paths toward and through modernity are different and even alternative, but it arises the criticism of those who, like Schmidt, prefer to speak in terms of varieties of the same basic model.

In this essay, I will discuss the contemporary literature on multiple modernities, I will argue that modernity has gone global and at the same time takes different forms, exposing some ideas which I have developed in my book Global Modernization (2005).

1. The Multiple Modernities and Some Critical Arguments

First of all, the proponents of the multiple modernities approach take a clear stand on the question of the convergence, arguing that the paths of modern and modernizing societies are rather diverging from each other, and rejecting the identification of modernization and westernization. They also argue that modernity is first and foremost a cultural program rather than a structural condition or an institutional reality and that “the history of modernity is a story of continual constitution and reconstitution of a multiplicity of cultural programs”.

At the root of this multiplicity lies the fact that the civilization of modernity as it first developed in the West “was from its beginnings beset by internal antinomies and contradictions, giving rise to continual critical discourse and political contestation” (Eisenstadt, 2000: 7). The first radical transformation of the premises of cultural and political order took place with the expansion of modernity in the Americas and now the crystallization of distinct patterns of modernity has spread to the whole world, since modernity has become a “common global condition”.

In contemporary discussions both academic and non-academic — about the uniformity or diversity of modern societies two positions occupy a prominent place, as Wittrock recalls. The first position is what he calls “liberal historicism”: “in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, liberal democracy and market economy, in the particular form that these institutional practices have come to exhibit in recent decades in parts of North America and Western Europe, are seen to provide the sole legitimate models of social organization. These forms will then come to be embraced, if with time lags, across the world” (Wittrock, 2000: 53). The proponents of the first position are not so naive as to assume that this type of global diffusion will entail a development toward cultural, or even linguistic, homogeneity, but think that there is no reason to expect any fundamental institutional innovation that would transcend these types of liberal institutional arrangements. To conclude, this position “simply elevates the experiences of a single country to the status of a world historical yardstick” (Wittrock, 2000: 54).

The alternative position, which stresses the multiplicity of modernities, “focuses attention on the current array of cultural life forms and assigns each of them to a larger civilization entity”. It recognizes the Western European origin of a set of modern technological, economic, and political institutions that have become diffused across the globe, although it seems to think that they spread more in the form of a set of ideals than as working realities. It affirms that “these processes of diffusion and adaptation, however, do not at all mean that the deep-seated cultural and cosmological differences between say Western Europe, China, and Japan are about to disappear”, since “in their core identities, these societies remain characterized by the form they acquired during much earlier periods of cultural crystallization” (Ibid.: 55).

Wittrock argues that the latter position, although a valid critique of different convergence theories, is not a valid critique of his conception of modernity as a global condition, since modernity “is not so much a new unified civilization, global in its extensiveness, unparalleled in its intrusiveness and destructiveness; rather, modernity is a set of promissory notes, i.e. a set of hopes and expectations that entail some minimal conditions of adequacy that may be demanded of macro-sociological institutions no matter how much these institutions may differ in other respects”. In order to sustain this position Wittrock reminds us that “modernity from the very inception of its basic ideas in Europe has been characterized by a high degree of variability in institutional forms and conceptual constructions”, and argues that “the existence of a common global condition does not mean that members of any singular cultural community are about to relinquish their ontological and cosmological assumptions, much less their traditional institutions; it means however that the continuous interpretation, reinterpretation and transformation of those commitments and institutional structures cannot but take account of the commonality of the global condition of modernity” (Ibid.: 56).

I agree with the gist of these critiques, i.e. the rejection of any kind of unilateral evolutionary model of modernization. I share both Wittrock’s critique of what calls “liberal historicism” — which can be seen as an updated version of the unilateral evolutionary model of modernization and his main thesis that the global condition of modernity surely entails different paths toward and through modernity. However, some critical qualifications are in order, which imply a reappraisal of some aspects of the multiple modernities’ literature.

1.1. The European origins of modernity

My first critical remark has to do with the European/Western origins of modernity: It should be made clear that arguing for the existence of multiple modernities should not mean underplaying the fact that the contemporary global condition originated in the modernity of Europe and has been shaped by this historical experience (Elias, 1976; Rokkan, 1975). The most sophisticated versions of the multiple modernity approach take history in full account, but others tend to neglect it since they are unable to distinguish two different phenomena. On the one hand, the existence of multiple modernities is a matter of empirical evidence; we should look at modernization from a trans-national and trans-cultural perspective, and reject the view that modernization, once activated, moves inescapably toward establishing a certain type of mental outlook (scientific rationalism, pragmatic instrumentalism, secularism) and that certain types of institutional order (popular government, bureaucratic administration, market-driven industrial economy) are indifferent to the culture and politics of a given place. On the other hand, it is also a matter of empirical evidence that modernity was born as a distinct European (Western) phenomenon — which shaped European identity as a cultural attitude of endless search and quest for knowledge, as going beyond the limit (expressed in such literary figures as Dante’s Ulysses and Goethe’s Faust), of individual freedom and religious tolerance, which crystallized into a set of specific institutions (market-led industrial capitalism, sovereign nation-state, research university). As Gaunkar argues, “To think in terms of alternative modernities does not mean one blithely abandons the Western discourse on modernity. This is virtually impossible. Modernity has traveled from the West to the rest of the world not only in terms of cultural forms, social practices, and institutional arrangements, but also as a form of discourse that interrogates the present. The questioning of the present, which is taking place at every national and cultural site today, cannot escape the legacy of Western discourse on modernity: Marx, Weber, Baudelaire, Benjamin, Habermas and Foucault. One can provincialize Western modernity only by thinking through and against its self-understandings, which are frequently cast in universalistic idioms” (Gaunkar, 2001: 14, 15). And one should add at least the other major sociological interpretations of modernity, Weber and Durkheim that the advocates of the concept of multiple modernities too hastily dismiss. In fact, they proudly affirm that their approach does not only go against the view of the theories of modernization and of the convergence of industrial societies prevalent in the 1950s, but also against the classical sociological analyses of Marx, Durkheim and even Weber since they “all assumed that the cultural program of modernity as it developed in modern Europe and the basic institutional constellations that emerged there would ultimately… prevail throughout the world”. But, “the actual developments in modernizing societies have refuted the homogenizing and hegemonic assumptions of this Western project of modernity” (Eisenstadt, 2000: 1). This statement is based on a one-sided reading of the works of the great sociological classics, who were well aware of the cultural diversity of different societies.

1.2. The convergences of different paths toward and through modernity

The second critical qualification stems from the fact that I see greater elements of convergence in contemporary global modernity than some advocates of the multiple modernities’ approach would admit; more specifically, in most developing countries I see greater similarities with already modern countries and with other modernizing ones than with their own past. The reason is twofold: On one hand, there is the continuous selection, reinterpretation, and reformulation of the imported ideas and institutional patterns of the original Western modern civilization by leaders, elites and collective movements producing innovations and showing an ambivalent attitude toward modernity in general and the West in particular. On the other hand, there are the different responses given to and the different strategies worked out to cope with the structural problems of modernization, such as industrialization, the opening of markets, social differentiation, urbanization, and mass migrations (Geertz, 1963).

There are different national routes to modernization which are shaped by the structural location of a given country in the world system of economic and political relations (or, in other words in the global division of labor and distribution of power), by its specific genetic code, and by the strategies of those individual and collective actors endowed with cultural and organizational resources which are the key agents of modernization. In this sense, different countries work out what we may call cultural and institutional equivalents to cope with common problems. The advocates of the multiple modernities approach tend to neglect the global dimension and to overemphasize local and national specificities, tend to stress actors’ cultural codes and underestimate the structural context.

Most accounts of multiple modernities do not answer satisfactorily such relevant questions as: What kinds of diversity exist between different modern societies? How profound are the existing differences? And what are their future prospects? Are they more likely to persist, to withstand further social change in a globalizing world, perhaps even to deepen as a result of and a form of resistance to globalization, or do we have reason to expect that they will diminish in the long run? Moreover, if we all experience the modern global condition, does this imply that all societies are equally modern now? Or is modernity a matter of degree? What does it exactly mean to be modern anyway?

Schmidt (2004) argues that since questions such as these have not been satisfactorily answered in the affirmative they cannot justify the language of multiple modernities. Rather it would be more appropriate to speak of “varieties of modernity”. According to him the problem is “whether Japan, China, India or whichever region or country one may consider — is so unique as to justify — or even ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Modernization Announcement: The Concluding Announcement of the First IMF
• Part I Modernization Theory Reconsidered
• Part II Modernization and World Economy
• Part III Modernization and Social Change
• Part IV Modernization and Environment Change
• Part V Modernization and Regional Development
• Part VI Modernization and Urbanization
• Appendices