Modern Reflections

By revealing the social, political, and economic forces involved in the development of modernization theory, Nils Gilman accomplishes two major objectives.  First, he demonstrates that the way in which these American scholars viewed other peoples and cultures was prefigured on their own historical assumptions.  Because these men sought to impose their ostensibly universal ideas of modernization rather than respond to local conditions, their failures are hardly inexplicable.  Second, Gilman enjoins that we reflect on our present circumstances.  While we may lay claim to a more enlightened viewpoint than the proponents of modernization theory, we are still subject to many of the same apparatuses of power that structured the world in the 1950s.  Where do we stand in relation to this power?  How might we position ourselves more constructively when looking at other cultures?  And what ideals (if any) continue to motivate us in our work?

Modernity remains a defining boundary in area studies, with scholars grouped into modern and premodern factions.  Is this merely an artificial division, or does it indicate an epistemological rupture to which academics have been obliged to respond?  In terms of influence on departmental structure, the only boundaries comparable to this line of modernity are those between nation-states.  I suspect that we will address this issue more thoroughly next week with our reading of Harry Harootunian, but I would like to raise it now in the hopes that we can begin to think productively about how we approach, structure, and articulate our research.