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In-Depth Information
Modernisation
Modernisation has been defined as socio-economic development which
follows an evolutionary path from a traditional society to a modern society,
such as North America or Western Europe (Schmidt, 1989). There is a shift
from agriculture to industry and from rural to urban (see Lewis, 1954), and
the money market plays a central role. The influence of the family declines
and institutions become more differentiated while modern values and insti-
tutions opposed by tradition are introduced (Harrison, 1988).
Modernisation has roots in a variety of different perspectives applied by
non-Marxists to developing countries in the 1950s and 1960s (Harrison,
1988). Its early roots can be traced to growth theory, grounded in economics
based on the transfer of Keynesian models for analysing economic growth
developed in the US and Europe (Brohman, 1996b). Thinking in the time
period immediately after World War II was dominated by functionalist mod-
ernisation (Svenson, 1991) and influenced by Keynesian economics, which
advocates a high degree of state involvement (Asimakopulos, 1991). Rostow's
(1967 )
Stages of Economic Growth
posited that for development to occur, a coun-
try passes through the following stages: traditional society, pre-conditions
for take off, the take off, the drive to maturity and the age of high mass
consumption. Developed countries had passed the stage of take off into self-
sustaining growth while underdeveloped countries were still in the tradi-
tional society or the preconditions stage. Rostow (1967: 1) argued that the
stages were 'in the end, both a theory about economic growth and a more
general, if still highly partial, theory about modern history as a whole'.
Adherents to the
Stages of Economic Growth
believed that countries must save
and invest a proportion of their GNP in order to have economic growth.
Countries able to save 15-20% of GNP would develop at a much faster rate
(Todaro, 1994).
The initial economic focus expanded to include the sociological tradi-
tions of evolutionism, diffusionism, structural functionalism, systems
theory and interactionism along with input from other disciplines such as
political science, anthropology, psychology, economics and geography (Harri-
son, 1988). Economic growth was measured in terms of per capita income
and GNP, while social development indicators included literacy rates, access
to medical services and ownership of consumer durables (Harrison, 1988).
Harrison (1992a: 9) identifies modernisation as the process of 'westerniza-
tion, whereby the internal structures of “developing” societies become more
like those of the West allegedly by emulating Western development patterns'.
Theories and strategies of regional economic development which focus, in
part, on the transmission or diffusion of growth impulses (Browett, 1980;
Higgins & Higgins, 1979; Hirschman, 1958; Myrdal, 1963; Perroux, 1955
(note see Perroux, 1988); see also Preston, 1984; Schumpeter, 1934, 1961), can
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