foar 701: modernisation theory: part 2

‘The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world. Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations.’

Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation

FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701

FOAR701: Research paradigms (2016)

Modernisation theory: case studies

Greg DowneyDepartment of AnthropologyFaculty of ArtsMacquarie [email protected]@gregdowney1

mailto:[email protected]

– A. R. Radcliffe-Brown‘On the concept of function in social science,’ American Anthropologist 37: 401 (1935).

…one ‘explanation’ of a social system will be its history, where we know it — the detailed account of how it came to be, what it is and where it is. Another ‘explanation’ of the same system is obtained by showing… that it is a special exemplification of laws of social psychology or social functioning. The two kinds of explanation do not conflict but supplement one another.


Painter Charles Baudelaire, ‘The Painter

of Modern Life’ (1864)

Modernité: fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in the city…

Portrait of Baudelaire, by Gustave Courbet c. 1848


Transition from ‘traditional’ to ‘modern’

Change in the nature of subjectivity linked to change in economy,

politics & society.

Causal ambivalence.


Key components of modernisation theory• Strong diachronic foundation for analysis.• Periodisation crucial, with focus on discontinuities.• Ideal typical modelling (use of ‘ideal types’).• ‘Idealism’: societies & institutions elaborate core principles

(even if these are not articulated; contrast to materialism).• Emphasis on ‘rationalisation’ (whether or not ‘rational,’ a

‘logic’ or tendency in a society worked out over time).


Contrast of modernisation theory (Weber)• For Weber, emergence of capitalism in US (& not in Germany) is

the explanatory problem; unlike Marx, he does not see capitalism as inevitable.

• Weber: generative conditions are day-to-day practices, motivated by a particular interpretation of core theological concepts (pre-destination, ‘elect,’ ‘vocation’).

• Individuals are thoroughly socialised (encultured) & act to bring world into consistency with their principles (rationalisation, institutionalisation).

• Causation is not automatic, nor is only one set of conditions sufficient to create social predisposition for capitalism (or other formation).


Modernisation theory very

broadly construed

Again, the theory is widely divided; for

example, in anthropology, discussion of

‘modernities.’


Urban disenchantment and

self-transformationCase study: capoeira in Brazil


photo by Greg Downey2

Capoeira (ca-poo-air-ah)


Milton Santos‘Mestre Bobó’


The ‘old guard’ (velha guarda)


Rafael Alvez FrançaCobrinha Verde


‘capoeiras’‘privileged target of the

violence of the State’Carlos Eûgenio Líbano Soares


Illustration by Kalixto from Kosmos, Revista Artistica, Scientifica e Literaria, 1906, Rio de Janeiro.


Illustration by Kalixto from Kosmos, Revista Artistica, Scientifica e Literaria, 1906, Rio de Janeiro.

http://www.capoeira-palmares.fr/histor/kosmos.htm




Monopolising violence Modern state & its

subjectsFACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701

Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro The disenchantment of the street


Military police occupy ‘Complexo do Alemão’ 2010, Rio de Janeiro


‘Modernisation’ is a radical re-ordering

of social world.The ‘capoeiras’’ identities

became untenable (pre-modern).

Modernity meant an end to vadiação (vagrancy).

Capoeira became a ‘martial art’ and ‘physical education.’


Variety of historical ideo-technical processes• Globalisation• Consumerisation.• Bureaucratisation• Hygiene revolution• Demographic transition• Secularisation• Automation• McDonaldisation (George

Ritzer)• Disneyification (Sharon Zukin,

Alan Bryman, Jeff Ferrell)• Enlightenment (Horkheimer &

Adorno)• Urbanisation


Modern trade: Globalisation Containerisation


Containerisation• 1955, Malcolm McLean

invents the intermodal container.

• International Organisation for Standardization (1970).

• Reduced the cost of international shipping (producing cheap imports), while also removing the need for longshoremen.

• Increased globalisation, ease of international relocation.

• Has made ports one of the most automated industries. Leading the way in robotics.FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701

Containerisation• Huge decrease in shipping

costs.1956: cost to ship = $5.86/ton2016: = $.16/ton

• 90% of all items purchased today have been carried inside a shipping container.2.5 cents to ship a sweater; before, 25% of cost was shipping.

• 17 million+ containers in the world today.

• The largest container ship can carry over 17,000 TEUs.Only the size of Straits of Malacca may limit size.FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701

Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of

Consumerism Colin Campbell points out

that contemporary consumption also required

rupture of traditional habits.

Instead of a ‘work ethic,’ the production of new

needs.FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701

Romantic consumption• Uniqueness of personality &

expression of ‘self.’• Restless desire &

consumption as end in itself; not ‘Protestant’…

• Patterns of consumption disrupted — no guide.Advertising to cultivate new needs & dissatisfactions.

• Campbell: consumption is the attempt to make daydreams real.

• Effect was paradoxical given that romantics rejected industrial revolution.FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701

“the course of development involves… the bringing in of calculation into the traditional brotherhood, displacing the old religious relationship.”

– Max WeberGeneral Economic History (Dover 2003): 356.


Focus on a key innovation &

thresholdThat innovation often as much

a logic or psychological state as it was a technology.

For example, modernisation unleashed by theological innovation; link between

democracy & wealth.


RationalisationFor Weber, replacement of

traditions, norms & emotions (like loyalty) with efficiency, means-rationalisation, and

calculation.Linked both to

modernisation & bureaucratisation.


“Rational calculation… reduces every worker to a cog in this bureaucratic machine and, seeing himself in this light, he will merely ask how to transform himself… to a bigger cog… The passion for bureaucratization at this meeting drives us to despair.”– Max WeberEconomy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. (U of California Press, 1978): lix.


Weber on ‘rationalisation’• If Marx & Engels predicted

irresolvable conflict, Weber predicted increasingly rationalised bureaucracy.(Some would say the Soviet Union was precisely what Weber, not Marx, anticipated.)

• Lenin, just after Russian revolution, vowed to organise ‘the whole national economy on the lines of the postal service.’

• In Weber, not ‘progress’: fear of ‘iron cage.’FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701

The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so.…This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism… with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt. In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the “saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment.” But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.– Max WeberThe Protestant Ethic and the Spirt of Capitalism. (Taylor & Francis, 2005 [1930]): 123.


Strengths of ‘modernisation’ paradigm• Evolutionary and diachronic, but supple in terms of what

sort of rationalisation is occurring…

• Ideal types, as long as they are clearly posted as heuristics, are evocative & facilitate comparative analysis.

• Recognises that fundamental change has occurred: speed of social transformation accelerating.

• Agnostic about causation — held out the possibility of weak causation, multiple causation and ‘predisposing’ conditions.

• Relationship between principle and instantiation in day-to-day practice & technology captures complex phenomena (ideational as well as practical).


Criticism of modernisation paradigm• Confounds modernisation with other processes (such as

Westernisation, Americanisation, neoliberalisation…).• Eurocentric & social evolutionist.• Hides that ‘modern’ condition depends upon history of

exploitation of ‘underdeveloped’ countries (e.g., underdevelopment theory like Andre Gunder Frank).

• Politically naive in taking ‘democracy’ claims at face value.

• Multiple ‘modernities’ (Shmuel Eisenstadt) and holdovers of the pre-modern in contemporary systems.

• Simplifies dynamics of transition & the way that parts of society ‘advance’ at different paces due to internal tensions.FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701

Thanks for your attention!

Bibliography online at iLearnPhotos public domain at Pixabay or as indicated.


Additional readings• Bauman, Zygmunt. 1989. Modernity and the Holocaust. Cornell University Press.• Campbell, Colin. 2005. The romantic ethic and the spirit of modern consumerism.

WritersPrintShop. (parallel article in Sociological Analysis here)• Cassis, Youssef. 2006. Capitals of Capital: A History of International Financial Centres,

1780-2005. Cambridge University Press.• Eisenstadt, Shmuel Noah. 2003. Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities, 2

vols. Brill.• Ferrell, Jeff. 2001. Tearing Down the Streets: Adventures in Urban Anarchy. St. Martin's

Press.• Graeber, David. 2015. The Utopia of rules: On technology, stupidity, and the secret joys

of bureaucracy. Melville House. • Marc Levinson. 2006. The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller

and the World Economy Bigger. Princeton University Press.• Ritzer, George. 2009. The McDonaldization of Society. Los Angeles: Pine Forge Press.• Stearns, Peter N. 2006. Consumerism in world history: The global transformation of

desire. Routledge.• Weber, Max. 2005 (1930) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Taylor &

Francis. (online edition here)• Zukin, Sharon. 1996. The Cultures of Cities. Blackwell Publishing.FACULTY OF ARTS | FOAR701

http://www.facoltaspes.unimi.it/files/_ITA_/COM/Campbell.pdf

http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/1095/The%20Protestant%20Ethic%20and%20the%20Spirit%20of%20Capitalism.pdf

foar 701: modernisation theory: part 2

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