SY4 Modernisation Theory

in this world sociology screencasts when I take a look at one of the most important post-war theories of development and global inequality and the perspective that we're looking at is this perspective modernization theory and let's begin with a broad overview of this perspective and I think in a nutshell modernization Theory argues that development is a process of poorer countries becoming more like us in other words this is a perspective that believes in the Western capitalist model development as a template as a model for developing countries and in terms of looking at the barriers to development the focus of this perspective is on the things that are wrong with poor countries on the internal barriers both economic and also some of the cultural barriers to development that you find inside poorer countries and then the final thing in terms of our overview of modernization theory is this belief that overseas development assistance or international aid is extremely important part of helping poorer countries to develop and the most important name to remember for the exam when you discuss in this perspective is this American scholar war Rostow and walk rhaskos version of modernization theory suggested that development should be viewed as an evolutionary process in which poorer countries progress up a development ladder of five different stages and this 5 stage model development follows the pattern of development that the developed capitalist countries had allegedly experienced between the late 18th and 20th centuries so let's take a look very briefly at Rosco's five stages of development so the first stage the least developed stage is the traditional society and that this stage of development production is largely based around subsistence agriculture technology's very basic people based in small communities with jobs that are passed on through the family line and for countries to move to this second stage the key thing that needs to occur a technological innovations represented by this tractor and these technological innovations should allow producers to become more efficient to generate surpluses which can then be sold for profit so you begin to get a bit of trade in this second stage of development the countries to progress to the third stage of development Rostow argued that you needed the emergence of entrepreneurs willing to reinvest their profits into new forms of technology and new forms of infrastructure and for rosto the critical level of reinvestment is 10 percent of gross domestic product and when that occurs then you really begin to see the economies of poorer countries begin to take off and it's during this stage that we begin to see a process of industrialization marked by a growth of manufacturing and the growing industrialization of the economy generates a range of new social and logistical needs such as educated workers represented by this cartoon and this means that there's a need for the role of the state to expand an investment in new forms of infrastructure including state education and state healthcare for example and then finally as countries progress to the highest stage of development on Roscoe's evolutionary ladder stage 5 more and more wealth begins to trickle down to the population as a whole as workers wages improve and this fuels demand for consumer goods and services that go beyond those which meet their basic needs and that's why this highest stage of development Rostow called the age of mass consumption now modernization theories argue the under development and global inequalities occur because poorer countries often lack the key ingredients that they need to move from one stage to the next so as we can see on this slide therefore the key practical challenge for this perspective is to identify those barriers which prevent poorer countries from developing and then coming up with suggestions practical interventions which allow them to overcome those barriers so for example in traditional societies there are certain aspects of their economy that prevent poorer countries from modernizing and developing so the fact that their economies are largely based around substance agriculture that there's the use of very basic technologies this prevents trade and the types of surpluses that would be needed to invest in new technology and to modernize the economy and therefore from the perspective of modernization Theory what needs to happen a large injections or capital large injections of money often in the form of overseas development aid to help poorer countries to break out of this cycle of poverty and in addition to the economic barriers to development modernization theories such as talk up Parsons argue that they're also aspects of the traditional culture that can also impede development so according to talk up Parsons traditional cultures are that would look in there's a kind of fatalistic outlook on life individual achievement is prevented by the emphasis on ascribed status and also collectivism and from this perspective the waiter overcome these cultural barriers is again to use things like aid to invest in things like education to bring about a change in people's cultural outlooks a more kind of modern way of looking at the world so just a quick reminder again about the basic assumptions of modernization theory so they say that the West is best that development means that poorer countries have got to follow the path to development already experienced by Western capitalist countries to do that they need to overcome their internal barriers to development both economic and cultural and and finally to help poorer countries overcome these internal barriers they need foreign assistance they need aid to help them invest in the technological advancements to create the industrial infrastructure that is required to achieve economic takeoff now as we shall see in a moment modernization theory is heavily criticised as a perspective however having said that there are some strengths to this perspective some modernization Theory unlike some of the other theories has very practical solutions to the problems of under development and global inequalities and a key public intellectual core Jeffrey Sachs I think adopts a perspective that is very very similar to what Roscoe's perspective so Jeffrey Sachs argues that the poorest countries in the world are trapped into a cycle poverty and to help them to break out of that cycle there needs to be a doubling in the amount of international aid going to poorer countries and Jeffrey Sachs argues the a lot of aid that has gone to poorer countries has actually been very successful in helping them to develop and overcome some of their barriers to development particularly in the fields of the at health however neoliberal theories such as Bill easterly and dambisa Moyo are much more critical at the modernization Theory description of overseas development aid and they would argue that in many cases Aid actually makes the problems of poorer countries worse so for example they would argue that it leads to poor governance that it leads to more corruption for example dependency theory I think would also be critical modernization theory and their main criticism would be the idea that modernization theorists focus far too much on the internal barriers to development and don't really take into consideration some of the external factors that they would see as being much more significant so dependency theory for example argues the under development is caused not by internal factors primarily but by the fact that you've got a rich group of core nations mainly in the north who are able to exploit the raw materials the cheap labor and suck out the wealth of this bigger periphery group of poorer nations that are mainly in the global self and I think the counter industrial theorists would argue that the main problem with the modernization theory is this idea that the West is best so they would argue that the main floor of modernization theory is its ethnocentrism so the criticism here is the idea the riders like what Rostow and talk at Parsons romantic eyes Western capitalist industrial society implying that it has no problems and at the same time they underestimate traditional societies implying that their economies and cultures have no value and I think we can link this criticism to the work of Buddhist economists such as Schumacher who construct a very deep critique of Western development and consumerism arguing that this type of society does not necessarily lead to greater happiness and well-being and furthermore they would argue that the type of mass consumerism advocated by modernization theories is simply not in but in the long-term and finally in romanticizing the West may be modernization theory doesn't really emphasize the types of problems that do exist in western capitalist nations and what we got on this slide is a reference to an article that I read a few years ago written by an Indian academic who thought that she knew everything about poverty because of her experiences in India and then she visited Glasgow the poorest city in the UK for the first time and she thought the poverty that she witnessed in Glasgow when you took into account things like social exclusion break down a community drug addiction a sense of hopelessness and despair she thought that that type of poverty was actually worse than the material poverty that she had experienced in rural India and actually life expectancy for men in the poorest areas of Glasgow is actually significantly lower than the average life expectancy in India

Channel: Steve Bassett

Views: 30,808

Rating: 4.7142859 out of 5

Keywords: Sociology, A2, SY4, World Sociology, Development, Global Inequalities, Modernisation Theory, A Level, Park College

Id: P9s4MhPATZ0

Length: 12min 2sec (722 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 08 2013