Leading Macroprocess traditional society to the modern, called modernization. To clarify what modernization is, it is necessary to consider various meanings, of which this concept mainly consists.
Three meanings
First of all, this term is applied to the internal development of the countries of North America and Western Europe, relating to the European Modern time.
What is modernization in the second meaning? Here we are catching up with modernization practiced in countries that do not belong to the first group, but strive for it.
And the third value speaks of the processes of evolutionary development in the most modernized societies (North America and Western Europe). This concept is interpreted as a permanent process of modernization, that is, the introduction of innovations and the implementation of reforms leading to the construction of post-industrial society.
The emergence of the concept
Anthropologists - Taylor, Herskovitz, White, Kroeber, who examined the evolution of traditional local cultures, began to study archaic, that is, traditional forms of human coexistence. They identified two of its main forms, with the help of which the essence of modernization, correlated with the general classical modernization processes, was clarified. This is, firstly, progressive evolution, which runs linearly through the stages: from a simple society to an increasingly complex one. Much has been written about this in England - Spencer, Lebok, McLennan, Fraser, Taylor, in Germany - Lippert, Weitz, Bastian, in France - Leturno, in the USA - Morgan.
Secondly, the famous scientist Eisenstadt considered in a slightly different guise what modernization is. He wrote that this is also a multilinear development of different types of cultures, where modernization processes are peculiar, and, as a result, modernity is varied. He considered this evolution of society through the prism of the realization of diverse, but by history itself conditioned types.
Story
The word modern was first used at the end of the fifth century in Europe, distinguishing between the Christian present and the pagan past. Subsequently, the content of the concept has repeatedly changed. Only the era of Enlightenment gave him a meaning that is fully consistent with modern. Spontaneously updated current spirit of the time and what helps this process is considered modern, modern. Thus, in connection with the acceleration of the movement of society along this path in the New Age, a European civilization of modernity has developed, which was radically different from traditional societies.
The changes occurred due to the emergence of the Protestant work ethic, the development of a market economy, legal system and bureaucracy. This process is not fast, it took Europe several centuries to feel what modernization is, to survive the English industrial revolution, the politicization and strengthening of the bourgeoisie, as well as its gaining power as a result of revolutions: English, American and French. Scientists come to the conclusion that modernization, in principle, cannot have an end, these processes continue to this day and will continue as long as there are communities of people.
The principles of modern society
In modern society, several basic institutions coexist, at least four: a market economy, competitive democracy, mass communication, and general prosperity. The basis of an autonomous society is a market economy, with it all borders are overcome and an open society is created.Modern society is significantly different from traditional, as it is based on other principles. The main ones are:
- suffrage;
- legality;
- universal rights of citizens;
- institutions of social change;
- secular culture;
- secularization of society;
- urbanization;
- autonomy of subsystems;
- rationalization;
- the dominance of a market economy;
- bureaucratization;
- professionalization;
- mass literacy;
- media;
- growth of professional and social mobility.
In a modern society, citizens have inalienable rights - social, political and civil. Technological progress and the scientific revolution led to the creation of a national society from disparate local communities as early as the seventeenth century. Modern modernization has gone even further. Society is becoming supranational.
Modernization program
Distinctive features of a modernized modern society are: in politics - a constitutional democratic state, in state building - a national state, in science and education - an autonomous science, in economics - capitalism. Modernization transformations are universal. The level of sociocultural organization in society, thanks to modernization, is moving from industrialism to post-industrialism in the economy, from authoritarian to democratic regime in politics, moving from customary law to legal.
The very justification of the world order shifts from the sacred to the secular, in philosophy, the monoistic outlook becomes pluralistic, the purity of the genre disappears in art: stylistic unity tends to polystylistics, and in science objectivity is replaced by anthropism. Supporters of the theory of modernization are confident that such a program will bring humanity an absolute improvement in living conditions and social life. Convergence and modernization are considered necessary, irreversible, endogenous and beneficial processes.
Stages
Modernization transformations must go through certain stages (stages) in their path. For example, from traditional through transition to modern. Or from the traditional to the stage of preconditions for the start of measurements, then after the start of continuous growth until maturation and achievement of the bar of mass consumption. Here, the contrast between the worlds “first” and “third” is most often taken into account, guided by the Eurocentrism of the historical process, considering the path of the most diverse peoples to rationalism and economic centrism.
Regarding the stages, as the starting points of this path, two radically different concepts were considered. Classical evolutionary - the idea of gradualism in the liberation of mankind from ignorance and fear in achieving higher levels of civilization. Diffusive - when modernization is planned and carried out from above through reforms and innovations undertaken by the power elite or (more often) through interaction between a more developed society with a less modernized one.
Types of modernization processes
Transforming states see the development of the countries of Western civilization as an example and understand modernization as a direct and accurate transfer of alien norms, models of work and leisure, various values, and state institutions to their soil.
Non-Western societies can use both the evolutionary (endogenous) and diffusionist (exogenous) types in the modernization process. The classification will be quite ramified. The endogenous type of modernization is determined as a process with sociocultural dynamics: a set of internal causes, self-development, social self-transformation (North America, Western Europe).
Catch up and overtake
Catching up (adaptive) species is practiced by states that are not related to the above, starting with the adaptive reaction to the dynamics of the social culture of modern countries by the type of "challenge-response". Here it should be noted self-modernization, initiated to achieve internal goals (including overcoming technological gaps and maintaining independence), which is also divided into subspecies.
- Defense modernization: strengthening the state with the help of military and political potential (it must be taken into account that only the first modernizing nations can autonomously follow their own path without feeling external pressure, all the others are affected by the rearguard and vanguard of modernization).
- Liberal modernization: the change of society and the liberation of man, the borrowing of the processes themselves that Western countries went through: a genealogy of institutions, values, norms and patterns of behavior.
External custody
This type of modernization involves the transformation of the sociocultural system with the participation of one or more states of Western civilized modernity, and sovereignty is most often not preserved. Here, too, two subspecies coexist.
- Partial responsibility is colonial policy, when colonies serve the interests of the metropolis, developing one or more sectors it needs, while leaving the rest without development. For example, in 1949, after the end of British colonial rule, in India, less than one percent of those who know the letters of the aborigines remained, and everything that was possible was taken from England to the values.
- Systemic responsibility when fully modernized states patronize the territories of backward countries. As an example, Japan or Germany after the Second World War.
This whole scheme, of course, is conditional, since practice presents the most diverse interweaving of modernization processes.
Examples
Here you can see how the modernization of education and the economy is going on in Russia. Since the 90s of the last century, a huge number of concepts, programs, reforms, innovations have collapsed on society - all of them were purely commercial. As a result of these borrowings (very expensive), the country did not expect anything comforting over the past quarter century. And all because modernization as such was not foreseen, since it was not in the interests of the "civilized" states that introduced it in our country. The completely unnecessary plans, which included, for example, the modernization of the economy, were overfulfilled, and the necessary ones failed completely.
The number of secondary schools in the last decade has decreased by fifteen thousand, a higher school has become a black market for selling diplomas (how many horrifying videos on the network, where successful graduates, such as the Russian State Humanitarian University, cannot answer the simplest questions about employment: what is modernization, devaluation, denomination, even of what the country's gold and foreign exchange reserves consist). Primary, secondary and vocational education is in a deplorable state. It’s all because priorities have changed. Previously, in our "non-modernized" country, they treated and educated and educated well, and did not provide services for free. Thus, the spiritual content of social work was destroyed. But the modernization of society took place, which significantly expanded its vocabulary and learned tolerance.