Week 7

(Ever since I woke up this morning, I have been feeling vertigo, so it has been a bit difficult for me to keep focus and gather my thoughts. I apologize in advance for any muddled sentences or unclear terms.)

Nils Gilman's insight into the rise of modernization theory in the U.S. shares two of the themes that we have dealt with in our revious readings, namely, universalism and social sciences. The rise of modernization theory meant "the end of ideology" because, as reflected in Truman's Point Four, Merriam's behavioralism and etc. modernization theory was a departure from pure ideology in that it was founded upon social theories. It also functioned as a struggle against the dominance of the field of economics in postcolonial development studies as modernization theoriests brought various disciplines of social studies into the discussion of postcolonial studies; for example, Lerner, Lasswell and Pye focused on psychological factors and Almond on structural-functional approach to politics, while Rostow modified and elaborated on the role of economics.

What these scholars sought to discover through the social theories was "the total political process" (129) that will prove to be relevant to almost all countries in the world. They argued that all postcolonial states, regardless of their history, tradition, language, and etc., were all destined to leave behind their "traditional" society toward "modern" society because the countries (meaning the elites) desired such outcome. The two political systems that enabled attainment of modernization were democracy and communism, but they reasoned that communism was doomed to destruction. As a result, in order to become a healthy and thriving modern society, all postcolonial states were to emulate the U.S. model of development. According to them, the ideal world was where all states were culturally, socially and politically universalized under the American rubric.

One another thing I found interesting was that Gilman emphasized that modernization theory was as much about America's own identity as it was about modernization/Westernization of postcolonial states--that it not only looked at the normative modernization process of the postcolonial states but it also was an "obsessive search for 'the' national identity by American scholars" (17). Moreover, he also wrote "In creating modernization theory...the modernization theorists had to enact and embody modernity themselves" (146). Both of these points reminded me of Foucault's "empirico-transcendental doublet."