2. Theories of Social Change, Modernity

What is ‘modern’?

• The notion arose during 18th c. - “Age of Reason”

• Enlightenment

  • Early 19th century:

    • Modernity was no conceived as the opposite of tradition

    • Modernity and tradition coexisted in a dielaticel relation

    • Modernity was not perceived as “positive” or “better” than tradition

  • Questions: problems to resolve rationally

    • Questions are not isolated

    • Inquiry as the fundamental mode of solution

    • Reason, nationalism vs. tradition

• Juxtaposed with tradition/backwardness

• Rupture and linear temporarily of progress

• Turn of 19th/20th century

  • Modernity was conceived as the complete denial of tradition

  • Modernity was often regarded as “better” as “overtaking” tradition

  • Modernity questions/rejects tradition, priories individualism, freedom and formal equality, is the period of the development of nation state, representative democracy, public education (etc.)

Why do we need theories of modernity? — Questions of why, the importance of it, the explanation of it, etc.

Social Science Paradigms of Modernity

Dominant social scientific paradigms (~1950/60s - 2000s) that searches for answers: ‘How and when did modern societies emerge?’

1. Modernization theories

• Developed dominantly in Western economics and sociology

  • Daniel Lerner: The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (1958)

    • Comparative analysis of Middle Eastern countries

    • Concerned with modernization on the individual level

    • Strongly biased from a Western point of view (modernization = diffusion of individualistic values)

  • Walt W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960)

  • A.F.K. Organski, The Stages of Political Development (1965)

    • Basic characteristics of modernization theories:

      • Historical concepts are based on a holistic understanding of society: economy, politics, societal relations are determined by general characteristics of society

      • (Un)Linear conception of historical development

      • Investigation from a western point of view: modern in opposition with traditional

2. World/Globalization System theory

• Late 15th-16th c.: modern world system (WST, see below) emerged with states

• Global network system of economic exchange

• Far from being homogeneous in cultural, political, economic terms

• → Fundamental differences in social development, accumulation of political power & capital

• Weak & strong states

• By 19th c., the world became one complex network of economic exchange relationships

• Dominated by a capitalist center in an unequal division of labour, with semi-periphery & periphery

• Not geographically fixed; relative to each other

• Interdependence system

• Almost frozen/strange temporarily

• How much is it institutional?

  • Good institutions create efficient economy → which creates democracy

• Why the theory needs semi-periphery?

• Modern era is after the world empires?

3. Theory of multiple modernities

• Focuses on the various interplay(s) between cultural & structural processes of change > process of economic development

• Radically challenges modernization theories when stating:

  • Modernity continues to have an undeniable global impact, but this impact is so radically mediated by the historical and cultural backgrounds of each society it encounter, that it makes more sense to speak of the concept in the plural

Multiple modernities (late 1990s):
Denies: - Linearity, universality, uniformity, priority of the Western pattern

• How much multiple modernities can be just variations?

  • Human agency

  • Institutional variations

  • Patterns

  • Depends on how we define modernity

• Classic & new social history:

  • Demographic transitions/classes/urbanization etc.

• Western centric and relational like Rostow:

  • Change is the result of encounter and adaptation

Implications

• How did the first modern society arise out of trad. societies?

• Are the periods qualitatively the same?

• Is it really always the same process from trad. → modern?

  • It’s a uniform process globally — it is an important theory in itself, relating in a sense that changes towards “reconditions of take off” (stages), simply: the experience of strengths and power of another stage. If there is no relation there, there wouldn’t be any change to society.

• A new paradigm:

  • backward =/= trad.

  • backwardness is always relative (modernity too)

• Development & underdevelopment go hand in hand

WST “World System Theory” - Immanuel Wallerstein

• Contrary to modernization theories: WST states that differences between countries can not and will not be overcame as the system evolves

• Developed societies were able to fuel their own development by depriving the backward societies of their resources → exploiting them

• Global division of labour — including the existence of independent political units

• No political center (e.g. Empire) → the world-system is identified by the global market economy

• Development is not homogenous all over the world and not unilinear

Theories of modernity and social history

• Classic (C) or New (N):

  • Rostow:

    • Economy drives changes

    • Structural, linear, dynamic presentism (C)

  • World system theory:

    • Economic system defines

    • Structural, rigid, Jongue durée* (C)

  • Gerschenkron:

    • contextual, structural, dynamic (C)

  • Multiple Modernities:

    • Change is inevitable but human agency and context

    • Dynamic, cultural (N) but probably just variations (C)