MODERNIZATION

in sociology, the transformation from a traditional, rural, agrarian society to a secular, urban, industrial society. The progression of human civilization from prehistory can be seen as falling into three general stages. The first saw the emergence of primitive societies and communities. In the second, primitive societies were linked and transformed into civilizations. The third started in the 18th century with the Industrial Revolution and continues to the present time, with the spreading of modern industrial culture around the world. The force of the modern has always been partly a reactive one, a force that derived meaning and momentum by a comparison or contrast with, and by rejection or negation of, what preceded it. This point suggests a general view of modernization as a process of individualization, specialization, and abstraction. First, the structures of modern society take as their basic unit the individual rather than, as with agrarian or peasant societies, the group or community. Second, modern institutions are assigned the performance of limited, specialized tasks in a social system with a highly developed division of labour. Third, rather than attaching rights and prerogatives to particular groups and persons or being guided by custom or tradition, modern institutions tend to be governed and guided by general rules and regulations that derive their legitimacy from the methods and findings of science. The conditions for societal transformation that led to modernization grew out of European socioeconomic conditions. Chief among these conditions was the development of commercial capitalism in medieval Europe. For the first time, the economy changed its goal from consumption to production. A new type of exchange market arose, relying on the mechanism of supply and demand. The economy began to be shaped according to the need for future production, giving rise to capital investments. Europe in the Renaissance was the first civilization to create the conditions for uninterrupted change. For the first time, rural and agricultural interests ranked below those of the towns, the centres of trade. Owning land no longer had the social value it did in ancient times; the preeminent position of the landowner was gradually usurped by the merchant and craftsman. The premodern social division between the landed and the landless gave way to the distinction between employer and worker. The importance of the military waned as the central concerns of society were trade and industry. The new bourgeoisie were the prime movers and creators of urban society. No longer was such a great social stigma attached to the merchant trades. The new money economy saw a dissolution of the old social structure. Since its inception, modernity has worn two faces. One is dynamic, forward-looking, and progressive, promising unprecedented abundance, freedom, and fulfillment. The other, equally visible face is grim, revealing the new problems of alienation, poverty, crime, and pollution. Many features of modernity, intensified beyond a certain level, produce a reactive response. Populations from crowded urban centres, for example, recolonize the surrounding countryside with suburbs and exurbs, vitally linked to the city but harking back to a village form of community. Disenchantment with the slickness of mass-produced goods gives rise to renewed interest in handcrafting and natural materials. Protests against rationality and uniformity are seen in the successive waves of youth cultures and religious revivals that have marked late industrial society. As ethnic and religious groups have reasserted their identities, cultural and nationalist movements have emerged worldwide. These developments are considered by some historians to signify the advent of the postmodern period. in sociology, the transformation from a traditional, rural, agrarian society to a secular, urban, industrial society. Modern society is industrial society. To modernize a society is, first of all, to industrialize it. Historically, the rise of modern society has been inextricably linked with the emergence of industrial society. All the features that are associated with modernity can be shown to be related to the set of changes that, no more than two centuries ago, brought into being the industrial type of society. This suggests that the terms industrialism and industrial society imply far more than the economic and technological components that make up their core. Industrialism is a way of life that encompasses profound economic, social, political, and cultural changes. It is by undergoing the comprehensive transformation of industrialization that societies become modern. Modernization is a continuous and open-ended process. Historically, the span of time over which it has occurred must be measured in centuries, although there are examples of accelerated modernization. In either case, modernization is not a once-and-for-all-time achievement. There seems to be a dynamic principle built into the very fabric of modern societies that does not allow them to settle, or to achieve equilibrium. Their development is always irregular and uneven. Whatever the level of development, there are always backward regions and peripheral groups. This is a persistent source of strain and conflict in modern societies. Such a condition is not confined to the internal development of individual states. It can be seen on a global scale, as modernization extends outward from its original Western base to take in the whole world. The existence of unevenly and unequally developed nations introduces a fundamental element of instability into the world system of states. Modernization seems to have two main phases. Up to a certain point in its course, it carries the institutions and values of society along with it, in what is generally regarded as a progressive, upward movement. Initial resistance to modernization may be sharp and prolonged, but it is generally doomed to failure. Beyond some point, however, modernization begins to breed discontent on an increasing scale. This is due in part to rising expectations provoked by the early successes and dynamism of modern society. Groups tend to make escalating demands on the community, and these demands become increasingly difficult to meet. More seriously, modernization on an intensified level and on a world scale brings new social and material strains that may threaten the very growth and expansion on which modern society is founded. In this second phase, modern societies find themselves faced with an array of new problems whose solutions often seem beyond the competence of the traditional nation-state. At the same time, the world remains dominated by a system of just such sovereign nation-states of unequal strengths and conflicting interests. Yet challenge and response are the essence of modern society. In considering its nature and development, what stands out initially at least is not so much the difficulties and dangers as the extraordinary success with which modern society has mastered the most profound and far-reaching revolution in human history. This article discusses the processes of modernization and industrialization from a very general and primarily sociological point of view. It does so also, it should be remembered, from a position within the very processes it describes. The phenomena of industrialization and modernization that are taken to have begun some two centuries ago and that were not until much later identified as distinct and novel concepts have not yet arrived at any recognizable closure. The end of the story, if there is one, is thus not in sight, and the question of an ultimate judgment on the nature and value of this vast historical movement is unanswerable. Additional reading General surveys of modernization Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 4 vol. (183540; originally published in French, 183540), available also in many later revised editions, both of the original French edition and of Henry Reeve's translation, provides the classic statement of the democratic revolution in modern society, with a finely blended mixture of the author's hopes and fears. For an introduction to Marx's passionate, often indignant appraisal of modern industrial capitalist society, with suggestions of how capitalism might be superseded, see Karl Marx, Selected Writings, ed. by David McLellan (1977). mile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (1984; originally published in French, 1893), is a guardedly optimistic exploration of the growth of modern society and of hopes for the future, in a new translation by W.D. Halls. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930, reissued 1985; originally published in German, 1904), is a classic discussion of values that underlie industrial society. The explorations begun in these classic works continues in the writings of the second half of the 20th century: Irving L. Horowitz, Three Worlds of Development: The Theory and Practice of International Stratification, 2nd ed. (1972), studies the impact of the West on modernization in the non-Western world; Peter L. Berger, Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner, The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness (1973), analyzes the social tensions, pains, and conflicts that accompany modernization; Szymon Chodak, Societal Development (1973), surveys in critical detail the theories of modernization and development; Peter Worsley, The Three Worlds: Culture and World Development (1984), compares earlier Western modernization with that taking place in the rest of the world today; Richard L. Rubenstein (ed.), Modernization: The Humanist Response to Its Promise and Problems, new ed. (1985), offers scholarly essays examining religious and philosophical aspects of modernization; and Theodore H. Von Laue, The World Revolution of Westernization: The Twentieth Century in Global Perspective (1987), explores modernization and development as adaptation to Western influences. Industrialization as economic change and development Carlo M. Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 10001700, 2nd ed. (1980; originally published in Italian, 1974), offers a historical survey focusing on the economic conditions of preindustrial Europe; W.W. Rostow, How It All Began: Origins of the Modern Economy (1975), surveys economic history from the beginning of the 17th to the end of the 19th century; David S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (1969), discusses the first Industrial Revolution and its spread throughout Europe and the wider world; Sidney Pollard, Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialization of Europe, 17601970 (1981), examines the original act of European industrialization and its further progress since. Patterns of industrialization in their historical development throughout the world are compared in Tom Kemp, Industrialization in Nineteenth-Century Europe, 2nd ed. (1985), Historical Patterns of Industrialization (1978), and Industrialization in the Non-Western World (1983). Philosophical and political aspects of industrialization as reflected in traditional understanding of market behaviour and economic laws are analyzed in Gregory Claeys, Machinery, Money, and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism, 18151860 (1987). Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (1944, reprinted 1985), explores the novelty of the modern market economy and the social and political problems arising from it; Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy (1979), presents modernization as the growth of a capitalist world economy, dominated by the powerful capitalist nations; Henry Bernstein (comp.), Underdevelopment and Development: The Third World Today (1973), offers a collection of theoretical and empirical essays with a Marxist and neo-Marxist slant; and David Goodman, Bernardo Sorj, and John Wilkinson, From Farming to Biotechnology: A Theory of Agro-Industrial Development (1987), studies the impact of modernization and industrialization on agriculture. Demographic change Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb (eds.), Population and Economy: Population and History from the Traditional to the Modern World (1986), is a collection of excellent scholarship, exploring demographic dynamics of preindustrial society; H.J. Habakkuk, Population Growth and Economic Development Since 1750 (1971), is a monographic history covering both Europe and developing countries; James C. Riley, Population Thought in the Age of the Demographic Revolution (1985), discusses, in a somewhat technical style, the influence of demographic ideas on social policies and choices; R.K. Kelsall, Population, 4th ed. (1979), presents a sociological survey; Paula England and George Farkas, Households, Employment, and Gender: A Social, Economic, and Demographic View (1986), provides an interdisciplinary explanation of the influence of main demographic trends on modern and postmodern society; Michael S. Teitelbaum and Jay M. Winter, The Fear of Population Decline (1985), is a readable examination of demographic and political aspects of negative growth of population in developed economies at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries; and William Alonso (ed.), Population in an Interacting World (1987), is a collection of contemporary studies on the connection between population development and social change. Urbanization as a way of life Paul M. Hohenberg and Lynn Hollen Lees, The Making of Urban Europe, 10001950 (1985); offers a well-illustrated socioeconomic history of urbanization, modernization, and industrialization. Collections of shorter writings on urban history, sociology, culture, and economics, sampling both classic works and contemporary studies, include Richard Sennett (comp.), Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities (1969); Philip Abrams and E.A. Wrigley (eds.), Towns in Societies: Essays in Economic History and Historical Sociology (1978); Fuad Baali and Joseph S. Vandiver (eds.), Urban Sociology (1970); and Gino Germani (ed.), Modernization, Urbanization, and the Urban Crisis (1973). Jane Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life (1984), explores the role of cities in economic development. Theories explaining the relationship between urbanization and modernization are surveyed in R.J. Holton, Cities, Capitalism, and Civilization (1986). E.A. Wrigley, People, Cities, and Wealth: The Transformation of Traditional Society (1987), examines major issues of change from rural into urban society. Sociological studies of urbanization include Brian J.L. Berry, The Human Consequences of Urbanization: Divergent Paths in the Urban Experience of the Twentieth Century (1973); R.E. Pahl, R. Flynn, and N.H. Buck, Structures and Processes of Urban Life, 2nd ed. (1983); and Edward Krupat, People in Cities: The Urban Environment and Its Effects (1985). The nature of work Clark Kerr et al., Industrialism and Industrial Man: The Problems of Labour and Management in Economic Growth, 2nd ed. (1973), sees the apparatus of production as an all-conquering world system, with its own inner logic and dynamism. Development of society where work for industrial production or related service is an issue of survival is studied in Krishan Kumar, Prophecy and Progress: The Sociology of Industrial and Post-Industrial Society (1978); Kenneth Thompson (ed.), Work, Employment, and Unemployment: Perspectives on Work and Society (1984); Reinhard Bendix, Work and Authority in Industry: Ideologies of Management in the Course of Industrialization (1956, reprinted with a new introduction, 1974); Herbert G. Gutman, Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America: Essays in American Working-Class and Social History (1977); and Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (1975). Arne L. Kalleberg and Ivar Berg, Work and Industry: Structures, Markets, and Processes (1987), is an interdisciplinary examination of the role of work in economic development; and Patrick Joyce (ed.), The Historical Meaning of Work (1987), offers observations on historical and social changes in cultural and ideological dimensions of work in the West during the last two centuries. Family in industrial society Frances Gies and Joseph Gies, Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages (1987), looks at one thousand years of family history to the end of the preindustrial period; Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost: Further Explored, 3rd ed. (1984), examines the English household of the preindustrial period; and Lloyd Bonfield, Richard M. Smith, and Keith Wrightson (eds.), The World We Have Gained: Histories of Population and Social Structure (1986), is a collection of essays on family history from the 14th to the 20th century. The modern family is treated in Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (1975); and Michael Young and Peter Willmott, The Symmetrical Family (1974, reissued 1984). Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Alice S. Ilchman, and John J. Sweeney (eds.), Family and Work: Bridging the Gap (1986), analyzes the complex evolutionary relationship between these two social institutions. Specific features of family in industrialized states are surveyed in James Dickinson and Bob Russell (eds.), Family, Economy & State: The Social Reproduction Process Under Capitalism (1986). Changes in social structure and understanding of social problems S.N. Eisenstadt (ed.), Readings in Social Evolution and Development (1970), gathers together classic essays of 19th- and 20th-century authors; Bert F. Hoselitz and Wilbert E. Moore (eds.), Industrialization and Society (1963), analyzes the general impact of modernization on social structure and social institutions; Jason L. Finkle and Richard W. Gable (eds.), Political Development and Social Change, 2nd ed. (1971), studies the political consequences of development, particularly in Third World societies; and Emanuel De Kadt and Gavin Williams (eds.), Sociology and Development (1974), emphasizes the interrelationship of the developed and developing societies. Contemporary social structures are discussed in Salvador Giner and Margaret Scotford Archer (eds.), Contemporary Europe: Social Structures and Cultural Patterns (1978); Anthony Giddens, The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies, 2nd ed. (1981); and Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (1964; originally published in French, 1954). Dilemmas and problems posed for societies by modernization are outlined in Reinhard Bendix, Embattled Reason: Essays on Social Knowledge, 2 vol.: vol. 1, 2nd rev. ed. (1988), vol. 2 (1989); Fred Hirsch, Social Limits to Growth (1976); Adrian Ellis and Krishan Kumar (eds.), Dilemmas of Liberal Democracies: Studies in Fred Hirsch's Social Limits to Growth' (1983); and William Leiss, The Limits to Satisfaction: On Needs and Commodities, rev. ed. (1978). Krishan Kumar