The Sociology Of Modernization And Development

"David Harrison writes very well, and presents a good, well-balanced and perceptive appraisal of current perspectives."--"Times Higher Education Supplement" This title available in eBook format. Click here for more information. Visit our eBookstore at: www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk.

During the past four decades, the field of development has been dominated by three schools of research. The 1950s saw the modernization school, the 1960s experienced the dependency school, the 1970s developed the new world-system school, and the 1980s is a convergence of all three schools. Alvin Y. So examines the dynamic nature of these schools of development--what each of them represents, their contributions, how they have criticized each other, how they have defended themselves, and how they were transformed. He reviews a variety of empirical studies, focusing on the "classical" and the "new" models, to show how each of the perspectives affects the study of development. In addition, this book features a unique emphasis on the research implications of the three perspectives, involving changes in orientation, agenda, methodology, and findings.

This text provides a comprehensive introduction to the latest debates in the sociology of development, linking theoretical and empirical issues of social change primarily though not exclusively through reference to the Third World. This book covers general conceptions of modernisation and underdevelopment and points to new attempts at their synthesis as well as exploring the policy implications of different development models.

This work places in historical and theoretical contexts the work Germani in the area of modernization, especially as it relates to Latin America. Germani views modernization as the touchstone of the twentieth century. His notion of modernization has to do with how a society can harness technology for distinctly political ends and link science to distinctly economic ends.

Originally published in 1980, this work answers the crucial question of how social change should be guided in the developing countries. Professor Varma begins by posing the problems of the general scope of modernization and the general criteria used in the modernization process. He examines carefully some of the models that have been used for this purpose in the past, providing extensive summaries of the views on modernization of theorists in various social science disciplines, including sociology, politics, economics, and anthropology, and stresses the importance of these views in guiding policy decisions. The book concludes with a comparison of the development processes of the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Japan and India.

"David Harrison writes very well, and presents a good, well-balanced and perceptive appraisal of current perspectives."--"Times Higher Education Supplement" This title available in eBook format. Click here for more information. Visit our eBookstore at: www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk.

The Sociology of Development Handbook gathers essays that reflect the range of debates in development sociology and in the interdisciplinary study and practice of development. The essays address the pressing intellectual challenges of today, including internal and international migration, transformation of political regimes, globalization, changes in household and family formations, gender dynamics, technological change, population and economic growth, environmental sustainability, peace and war, and the production and reproduction of social and economic inequality.

After a period of relative confidence about the future of modernizing societies, scholars are now questioning with renewed urgency the directions of the modernization trend. This book, the result of nearly a decade of collaborative efforts by scholars in twelve countries, examines the modernization process with particular attention to how it is affected by cultural–and especially socioeconomic–variables. The authors describe major theoretical approaches to the idea of modernity and point to the sociological issues interlinked with modernization. They also consider specific factors such as nationalism, ethnicity, and traditional institutions and show how they can determine differing modernization trajectories. The concluding section of the book focuses on nation- and culture-specific examples of modernization, presenting case studies that illustrate the range of modernization attempts. The authors also explore the extent to which modernization may in fact be a generalization of the American way of life.

Assessing critical theory today, José Maurício Domingues’ Emancipation and History focuses on the connection between history and emancipation, centering on the trends that structure modernity and may lead us beyond it. Classical and contemporary sociology and social theory are mobilized to recover a robust theory capable of going beyond recurrent empirical, and therefore weaker, perspectives in emancipatory thought. Collective subjectivity and social creativity, history and sociology, analytical concepts and trend-concepts, social existential questions, the role of equal freedom and of immanent critique, secularization, capitalism, the modern state, 'populism', the family and the meaning of citizenship, Marx, Weber, Bhaskar, Habermas, Laclau, Sousa Santos and Negri are topics and authors that stand out in the book.