Third World Modernization in Transnational Perspective

Abstract

"Modernization" is the progressive organization of societies at the national level in the context of an evolving global network of such societies. This formulation raises a number of questions, for example: how we think about change at the individual level in relation to societal change; contrasts between "organic" and "technological" evolution (borrowing the terms from the biologist Wald); and the causal relevance of a society's position in international networks, and of the characteristics of those networks, to its modernization. The fundamental hypothesis is that the modernization of today's Third World countries—in the sense of their development as national societies—is unlikely within the context of the Western-centered or capitalist portion of the international political economy. Moreover, our theories of modernization may well obscure the key problems of Third World development.