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Modernization and Conditions of Sustained Growth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

S. N. Eisenstadt
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

The nature of modern society, the quality of the modern social, civil, and moral order, has been in the forefront of sociological thought and inquiry since the very beginning of sociology. This interest has been greatly reinforced by the growing preoccupation with the extension of the processes of modernization beyond their initial place of origin in Western Europe and the United States to Eastern Europe and later to Asian and African countries. The continuous processes of modernization in these societies have greatly added to the store of knowledge about the nature and variety of modern society, and they also have enabled us to reformulate many of the most crucial problems in this area.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1964

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References

1 See, e.g., Higgins, Benjamin, Economic Development: Principles, Problems and Policies (New York 1959)Google Scholar, esp. 3 and 4; Hoselitz, Bert F., “Some Reflections on the Social and Cultural Conditions of Economic Productivity,” Civilisations, XII, No. 4 (1962), 489–99.Google Scholar

2 For some complementary analysis, see also Eisenstadt, S. N., “Modernization, Divarsity and Growth,” Carnegie Faculty Seminar on Political and Administrative Development, Department of Government, Indiana University (Bloomington 1963).Google Scholar

3 The discussion here follows Eisenstadt, S. N., “Bureaucracy and Political Development,” in LaPalombara, Joseph, ed., Bureaucracy and Political Development (Princeton 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Eisenstadt, S. N., “Initial Institutional Patterns of Political Modernization: A Comparative Study,” Civilisations, XII, No. 4 (1962), 461–73.Google Scholar

4 For some very pertinent analyses of protest in modern societies, see Kaplan, Morton A., ed., The Revolution in World Politics (New York 1962)Google Scholar, esp. Part 11 (“Protest Movements in Developed Areas”) and Part III (“Revolutionary Protest Movements in Underdeveloped Areas”).

5 See, e.g., Rupert Emerson, “The Erosion of Democracy in the New States,” in Harry Eckstein and David E. Apter, eds., Comparative Politics: A Reader (New York 1963), 635–44; and Michael Brecher, “Political Instability in the New States of Asia,” in ibid., 617–35. See also S. N. Eisenstadt, “Breakdowns of Modernization,” Economic Development and Cultural Change (forthcoming).

6 Deutsch, Karl W., “Social Mobilization and Political Development,” American Political Science Review, LV (September 1961), 494, 495.Google Scholar See also United Nations, Report on the World Social Situation (New York 1961).Google Scholar

7 Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe, I11., 1958)Google Scholar; Hoselitz, Bert F., “Noneconomic Factors in Economic Development,” American Economic Review, XLVII (May 1957), 2841Google Scholar; Moore, Wilbert E., “The Social Framework of Economic Development,” in Braibanti, Ralph J. and Spengler, Joseph J., eds., Traditions, Values and Socio-Economic Development (Durham, N.C., 1961), 5783Google Scholar; Joseph J. Spengler, “Theory, Ideology, Non-Economic Values and Politico-Economic Development,” in ibid, 3–56. A good summary is provided by Kahl, Joseph A., “Some Social Concomitants of Industrialization and Urbanization,” Human Organization, XVIII (Summer 1959), 5374.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Leighton, A. H. and Smith, R. J., “A Comparative Study of Social and Cultural Changes,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, XCII (April 1955), 7988Google Scholar; Firth, RaymondFisher, F. H., and Macrae, D. C., “Social Implications of Technological Change,” in International Social Science Council, Social and Economic and Technological Change: A Theoretical Approach (Paris 1958).Google Scholar

8 See some of these views as expressed, e.g., in the earlier writings of Levy, Marion J. Jr., The Family Revolution in Modern China (Cambridge, Mass., 1952)Google Scholar; and Hoselitz, Bert F., Sociological Aspects of Economic Growth (Glencoe, Ill., 1960)Google Scholar, esp. chaps. 2 and 3—both of whom have since greatly modified their views. A more recent work which seems to have similar implications is Rostow, W. W., Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge, Eng., 1960).Google Scholar

9 See, e.g., Kuznets, Simon, “Economic Requirements of Modern Industrialization,” Transactions of the Fifth World Congress of Sociology (Washington, D.C., 1962), II, 7390.Google Scholar

10 See, e.g., U.N., World Social Situation; Echavarriá, J. Medina, “Relationship Between Social and Economic Institutions: A Theoretical Model Applicable to Latin America,” Economic Bulletin for Latin America, VI, No. I (1961), 2741Google Scholar; and Report of the Expert Working Group on Social Aspects of Economic Development in Latin America, ibid., 51–64.

11 See also Lerner, Daniel, “The Reviving Civilizations,” in Lasswell, Harold D. and Cleveland, Harlan, eds., The Ethic of Power: The Interplay of Religion, Philosophy and Politics (New York 1962), 307–22Google Scholar; and Lerner, Daniel, “Toward a Communication Theory of Modernization,” in Pye, Lucian W., ed., Communications and Political Development (Princeton 1963).Google Scholar

12 See, e.g., Feldmesser, R. A., “Social Classes and Political Structure,” in Black, C. E., ed., The Transformation of Russian Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 235–53Google Scholar, as well as all of Part III of this volume and esp. Alex Inkeles, 338ff.

13 Some of the most interesting analyses of these varied aspects of Japanese social structure can be found in Pelzel, J. C., “Social Stratification in Japanese Urban Economic Life,” unpublished dissertation, Harvard University, 1949Google Scholar; Herbert Passin, “The Stratigraphy of Protest in Japan,” in Kaplan, ed., Revolution in World Politics, 92–100; Vogel, Ezra F., Japan's New Middle Class (Berkeley 1963)Google Scholar; Bellah, R. N., “Values and Social Change in Modern Japan,” in Studies on Modernization of Japan, Asian Cultural Studies, No. 3, International Christian University, Tokyo (October 1962), 1357Google Scholar, as well as the other studies in this volume. See also Matsumoto, Y. C., “Contemporary Japan: The Individual and the Group,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, N.S., L (1960), 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ward, Robert E., “Political Modernization and Political Culture in Japan,” World Politics, XV (July 1963), 569–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 See Emerson, “Erosion of Democracy”; and Eisenstadt, “Breakdowns of Modernization.”

15 See Emerson, “Erosion of Democracy”; Kling, Merle, “Towards a Theory of Power and Political Instability in Latin America,” Western Political Quarterly, IX (March 1956), 2135Google Scholar; Sayeed, Khalid B., “Collapse of Parliamentary Democracy in Pakistan,” Middle East Journal, XIII (Fall 1959), 389406.Google Scholar

16 See Eisenstadt, “Breakdowns of Modernization.”

17 See Durkheim, Emile, De la division du travail social (4th edn., Paris 1922)Google Scholar, chap. 7 and Conclusion. On the interweaving of these two types of mechanisms in primitive societies, see Fortes, M., “Ritual and Office in Tribal Societies,” in Gluckman, M., ed., Essays on the Ritual of Social Relations (Manchester, Eng., 1963), 5389.Google Scholar On problems of application of the anthropological model, as related to these mechanisms, to more complex societies, see Eisenstadt, S. N., “Anthropological Studies of Complex Societies,” Current Anthropology, 11 (June 1961), 201–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 One of the best analyses of such a situation can be found in Feith, Herbert, The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia (Ithaca 1962).Google Scholar

19 On the concept of modernizing elites, see Kerr, Clarket al., Industrialization and the Industrial Man (Cambridge, Mass., 1960)Google Scholar; McClelland, David C., The Achieving Society (Princeton 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hagen, Everett E., On the Theory of Social Change (Homewood, Ill., 1962)Google Scholar, esp. chap. 10; Geertz, Clifford, Peddlers and Princes: Social Change and Economic Modernization in Two Indonesian Towns (Chicago 1963)Google Scholar; and Eisenstadt, S. N., “The Need for Achievement” (review of McClelland, op.cit.), Economic Development and Cultural Change, XI (July 1963), 420–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 The two need not, of course, be entirely antithetical in the analysis of concrete cases, and yet they always entail great differences of emphasis. A very instructive example of such differences is the shift in the interpretation of Japanese modernization from the “class” interpretation in Norman, E. H., Japan's Emergence as a Modern State (New York 1960)Google Scholar, to the more recent “elite” interpretations in Craig, A. M., Chöshü in the Meiji Restoration (Cambridge, Mass., 1961)Google Scholar, and Jansen, Marius B., Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration (Princeton 1961).CrossRefGoogle Scholar I am also indebted here to Professor R. N. Bellah for showing me a manuscript written by him and Professor Craig on different interpretations of the Meiji revolution. Perhaps the most important conclusion that can be derived from the confrontation of these two approaches is that although, obviously, both are extremely important in any process of modernization, the conditions giving rise to each may greatly differ.

21 See Kerr, Industrialization and Industrial Man.

22 See Eisenstadt, “Initial Institutional Patterns.”

23 See Mannheim, Karl, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (New York 1940)Google Scholar, esp. ii; Shils, Edward A., Political Development in the New States (The Hague 1962)Google Scholar, esp. 13–38; and Feith, Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia.

24 See Eisenstadt, “Initial Institutional Patterns.”

25 Some initial attempts in this direction have been made in Eisenstadt, S. N., Essays on Sociological Aspects of Political and Economic Development (The Hague 1961)Google Scholar, esp. 19–99. See also Nash, Manning, “Some Social and Cultural Aspects of Economic Development,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, VII (January 1959), 137–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 See Eisenstadt, Essays, esp. 49–53.

27 This conclusion entails a basic reformulation of the usual approach to the problem of the relation between degrees of traditionalism and success in adaptation to modern conditions. The preceding analysis indicates that the structural features that characterize a traditional society are not in themselves necessarily the most important determinants of the degree of adjustment or adaptation to modern conditions. The important characteristics seem to be the degree of solidarity of the family and of the community, flexibility of elites and of systems of stratification, and probably other factors that are not always directly related, in a one-to-one way, to the structural, “typological” characteristics of traditional societies. They seem to exist in both more and less traditional societies, and to be more closely related to the cultural differentiations and interrelations between different subgroups that exist with the common framework of these different types of societies than to their overall structural characteristics. See Eisenstadt, Essays, ii; and Bert F. Hoselitz, “Traditions and Economic Growth,” in Braibanti and Spengler, eds., 83–113.

28 See Vogel, Japan's New Middle Classes; Feldmesser, Robert, “Toward a Classless Society?” in Inkeles, Alex and Geiger, Kent, eds., Soviet Society (Boston 1961), 573–82Google Scholar; De Witt, Nicholas, “Upheaval in Education,” Problems of Communism, VIII (January-February 1959), 2534.Google Scholar

29 Eisenstadt, “Initial Institutional Patterns.”

30 Bellah, Robert N., Tokugawa Religion (Glencoe, I11., 1957).Google Scholar See also Geertz, Peddlers and Princes; and Parsons, Talcott, Structure and Process in Modern Societies (Glencoe, Ill., 1959).Google Scholar

31 For a fuller exposition of some of these points, see Eisenstadt, “Breakdowns of Modernization.”