Modernization and Industrialization

1. Differentiation. Specialised institutions take over functions the family and the community performed, which is the pattern set out in [The Family: Meaning and Functions].
2. Achievement replaces ascription as the basis for position, at least in principle. This is Maine's status to contract restated.
3. Rationality and a secular outlook: decisions taken by calculation of consequences rather than by custom or ritual prescription, which is Weber's rationalisation.
4. Mass education and literacy.
5. Urbanisation.
6. Social and geographical mobility.
7. Mass communication.
8. Political participation: franchise, parties, an administration governed by rules rather than by persons.
9. Empathy and a widened outlook, the capacity to imagine lives other than one's own, which Daniel Lerner made central to his account.
10. A rising standard of living and the expectation that it will rise.

The criticisms of modernization theory

These must be given, because the theory is dated and an answer that presents it uncritically is weak.

1. It is ethnocentric. Modern was defined as resembling the industrial West, so modernisation became Westernization under a neutral name, which is exactly the objection made to the ladder in [The Evolutionary Perspective].
2. It assumes one path, which the evidence does not support: Japan, and later East Asia, modernised without following the western sequence, and did so while retaining much that the theory expected to disappear.
3. Tradition and modernity are not opposites. This is the most important criticism for an Indian answer. The theory assumed that tradition must give way; India shows traditional institutions surviving inside modern ones and being used by them. Caste operates through elections, matrimonial websites search by caste, and family firms run modern corporations. Rudolph and Rudolph's phrase, the modernity of tradition, is the reference.
4. It ignores power and history. The condition of the societies described as underdeveloped was produced partly by colonial relations, which the theory treats as a starting point rather than as a cause. Dependency theory is the standing counter-argument.
5. It underrates the costs: displacement, environmental damage, inequality and the destruction of communities.

The four processes distinguished

Students routinely merge these, and the table is the fastest way to keep them apart.

The relations between them: industrialisation is the usual engine of modernisation; Westernization is modernisation with a specific cultural source named; and a society can industrialise without Westernizing, which Japan demonstrated and which is why the terms must be kept apart.

A worked example

A district in western Maharashtra with a sugar economy.

Industrialisation arrives as cooperative sugar factories: machine processing, wage employment, a factory calendar, and a cash crop grown for a market.

Modernisation follows and is broader. Schools and a college; a hospital; roads and buses; a cooperative bank; electoral politics organised around the factory; literacy rising; families smaller; and a generation whose work is not their father's.

Westernization is visible in particulars: dress, English-medium schooling, the vocabulary of rights, medical practice.

Sanskritisation runs alongside, as the newly prosperous cultivating households advance ritual claims, exactly as in the previous chapter.

And the finding that matters is the third criticism above. The cooperative sugar factory, the most modern institution in the district, is controlled through caste networks and family alliances. Tradition did not give way to modernity; it took up residence inside it. A student who can state that, with an example, has understood the whole topic, and it is the single most useful correction to the textbook account of modernisation.

Quick revision

1. Industrialisation: machine production in factories with inanimate power, detailed division of labour, wage labour, production for a market, workplace separated from household.
2. Its consequences: production leaves the household; urbanisation; a new class structure; occupational mobility; the nuclear household; formal education; alienation; unions and industrial relations; and protective labour legislation, the legal signature of industrialisation.
3. Modernization: differentiation; achievement replacing ascription; rationality and secularism; mass education; urbanisation; mobility; mass communication; political participation; empathy (Lerner); rising expectations.
4. India: industry began under colonial rule; planned heavy industry after independence; and since 1991 a large service sector without the usual manufacturing employment, leaving most workers in agriculture and informal work.
5. Criticisms of modernization theory: ethnocentric; assumes one path, refuted by East Asia; tradition and modernity are not opposites (Rudolph and Rudolph, the modernity of tradition); ignores colonial history and power; underrates the costs.
6. A society can industrialise without Westernizing.
7. In India, traditional institutions operate inside modern ones: caste through elections, caste categories on matrimonial sites, family control of modern firms.

Test yourself

1. Define industrialisation and state five of its social consequences. The transformation of an economy from one based on agriculture and handicraft to one based on machine production in factories using inanimate power, with a detailed division of labour and wage labour. Its consequences include the removal of production from the household and the family's loss of its economic function; urbanisation as people move to the work; a new class structure of owners and wage workers; the weakening of hereditary occupation; and the appearance of protective labour legislation to supply what household and community arrangements no longer provided.

2. What are the characteristics of modernisation? Structural differentiation, with specialised institutions taking over functions the family and community performed; achievement replacing ascription as the basis of social position; rational and secular attitudes in place of customary and ritual prescription; mass education and literacy; urbanisation; high social and geographical mobility; mass communication; political participation through franchise and parties with a rule-governed administration; a widened capacity to imagine other lives; and rising living standards and expectations.

3. Give three criticisms of modernization theory. That it is ethnocentric, since it defines modern as resembling the industrial West and so restates Westernization in neutral language; that it assumes a single path of development, which East Asian industrialisation refutes; and that it wrongly treats tradition and modernity as opposites, whereas traditional institutions demonstrably survive within modern ones and are used by them, which Rudolph and Rudolph called the modernity of tradition.

4. Distinguish modernisation from Westernization. Modernisation is the acquisition by a society of the characteristics associated with industrial societies: differentiation, achievement, rationality, education, urbanisation, mobility and participation. Westernization names a specific cultural source, the changes produced in a society by contact with the West at the levels of technology, institutions, ideology and values. The distinction matters because a society can modernise without adopting western culture, as Japan did, so the two processes are separable in fact as well as in definition.

5. Give an Indian example showing that tradition and modernity are not opposites. A cooperative sugar factory in western Maharashtra is a thoroughly modern institution, with machine processing, wage labour, formal accounts and an elected board, and its control commonly runs through caste networks and family alliances. Comparable examples are the use of caste categories as the search terms on matrimonial websites, and the family control of large modern corporations. In each case the traditional institution has not given way to the modern one; it operates inside it.