Foucault and Modernization Theory

As we move into Part 2 of the course, I hope that everyone is beginning to formulate some thoughts about what they would like to write on for their final papers. I am meeting with one student today during my office hours, and I hope that others will also take the opportunity to meet with me about their papers. Since we have been reading so much theory in the course, it may be helpful to go over the ideas you have about how to connect the coursework to your ongoing dissertation or master's thesis projects.

There are a few important questions to consider as we begin our analysis of modernization theory, with some specific attention to the postwar situations in Japan and South Korea:

1) What correlations can we see between the intellectual discourse of modernization theory and Michel Foucault's analysis of security, territory, and population? Although we ended with Foucault at the end of the 18th century, and will continue with his analysis of the 20th century in week 9, I think we can already begin to make connections. One important issue to consider is the status of "liberalism." In the political discourse of the United States, "liberalism" tends to refer to a public policy which advocates the redistribution of wealth, federal funding of egalitarian public programs, and, finally, tolerance of difference in the realm of cultural values. However, we have to consider the "polysemy" of the term liberalism; that is, "liberalism" is made to signify a wide variety of positions on politics, economy, and culture.

When Foucault discusses the perceived "naturalness" of economic adjustments which emerged in the late 18th century with the Physiocrats, we have to recognize there the roots of classical liberalism. Adam Smith's discussion of the "invisible hand" of the market claimed that there was a realm of the economy that should be free from government interference. In the "Birth of Biopolitics," Foucault will show how this argument of classical liberalism gradually changed into that of neo-liberalism, which insists that the state and other public institutions should intervene to ensure the freedom of the market. It is not enough to set off a realm of freedom for the economic individual, but rather the absolute freedom of the market's movement, control, and governance must be guaranteed. In neo-liberalism, market relations and market concerns begin to govern the state.

Now, without getting too far ahead of ourselves, we have to ask what Nils Gilman means by "American liberalism" in Mandarins of the Future. It seems to me that the liberalism of modernization theory is not precisely akin to either classical liberalism or neo-liberalism. In order to differentiate its discourses from communism, modernization theorists had to argue for the historical necessity of capitalist development (even when they were loathe to actually use the term "capitalism"). At the same time, however, they also proposed that modernization should lead to a welfare state and to an egalitarian civil society in which all nation-state subjects were politically and legally equal. However, because they were so concerned that political participation would lead to political conflict and produce the potential for the rise of leftist or communist governments, they sought to create environments of political quietism in which consumer society and the entrenchment of cultural values allowed for the smooth functioning of state bureaucracies and an uninterrupted national-historical development. Therefore, the "liberalism" of modernization theory was "liberal" in the sense of supporting government intervention in the distribution of wealth and economic development, but it also prefigured "neo-liberalism" in that state intervention was to guarantee the free functioning of the market, and a smooth transition to a capitalist economy with a national-cultural basis. In this regard, both articles on neo-liberal economic reforms in Japan and South Korea will point out continuities between proponents of a national economy and proponents of neo-liberal reform.

Therefore, in comparing the various versions of "liberalism" we are confronted with here, it is necessary to look more closely at the apparatuses of security proper to each, and the versions of humanism that each of these apparatuses relies on. For example, as Gilman shows, Talcott Parson's theory of "social action" was the epistemological foundation of much modernization theory. Social science made claims about the fundamental qualities of the human being, particularly the human individual acting within society. Following Foucault, we could say that the political effects of modernization theory lie as much in these articulations of a human subject as they do in the policies this knowledge led to. Is it possible to consider the theory of "social action" to be an apparatus of security? What does it attempt to secure or protect society against? Did modernization theory apply a cost/benefit analysis to historical action and political intervention? What norms did it attempt to institute? How did statistical information contribute to its conclusions concerning society and governance?