Modernization and Postmodernization [Paperback]

Ronald Inglehart (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 069101180X | ISBN-13: 978-0691011806 | Publication Date: May 5, 1997

Ronald Inglehart argues that economic development, cultural change, and political change go together in coherent and even, to some extent, predictable patterns. This is a controversial claim. It implies that some trajectories of socioeconomic change are more likely than others--and consequently that certain changes are foreseeable. Once a society has embarked on industrialization, for example, a whole syndrome of related changes, from mass mobilization to diminishing differences in gender roles, is likely to appear. These changes in worldviews seem to reflect changes in the economic and political environment, but they take place with a generational time lag and have considerable autonomy and momentum of their own. But industrialization is not the end of history. Advanced industrial society leads to a basic shift in values, de-emphasizing the instrumental rationality that characterized industrial society. Postmodern values then bring new societal changes, including democratic political institutions and the decline of state socialist regimes. To demonstrate the powerful links between belief systems and political and socioeconomic variables, this book draws on a unique database, the World Values Surveys. This database covers a broader range than ever before available for looking at the impact of mass publics on political and social life. It provides information from societies representing 70 percent of the world's population--from societies with per capita incomes as low as $300 per year to those with per capita incomes one hundred times greater and from long-established democracies with market economies to authoritarian states.

Editorial Reviews

Review

[This is] Inglehart's most convincing demonstration of the theory of intergenerational value change, the cornerstone of his scholarship. . . . With data from 43 societies collected over nearly three decades, and representing 70 percent of the world's population . . .the analysis of Inglehart's unprecedented comparative dataset is nuanced, sophisticated, and certain to stimulate the kind of criticism that will deepen our understanding of social change. -- The Review of Politics



Ronald Inglehart is one of the very few scholars to have remained consistently engaged with both the study of political culture and the development of modernization theory over the past few decades. In Modernization and Postmodernization, he presents the cumulative results of decades of research on the interrelationships among cultural values, democracy, and capitalism. His findings are consistently thought-provoking and often surprising and should inspire prolonged and productive controversy. . . . Overall, Inglehart's fascinating book raises tantalizing questions about the long-term trajectory of value change in modern society. -- Stephen E. Hanson, Comparative Politics

Review

This latest book by Ronald Inglehart represents another path-breaking advance in his three-decade-long exploration of cultural change in contemporary societies. Few scholars are as adept as Inglehart in weaving together a broad vision of historical change and a fine-grained analysis of survey results into a coherent account of how the world is changing around us. (Robert D. Putnam, author of "Making Democracy Work" ) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 440 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (May 5, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 069101180X
• ISBN-13: 978-0691011806
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #208,870 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Modernization Theory is Not a Dead Horse, August 12, 2007

By 

Matthew P. Arsenault (SW Michigan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Modernization and Postmodernization (Paperback)

Modernization Theory holds that industrialization, and the subsequent economic development is linked with cultural, political, and economic changes. Additionally, Modernization Theory argues that these linkages and changes can and do form coherent and predictable patterns. However, one of the critiques of Modernization Theory has to do with causality. Both the Marxist and Weberian schools are in agreement with the basic premise that economic, political, and cultural change form coherent patterns, but diverge in regards to the catalysts of said change. The Marxist camp argues that economic and technological change drives political and social change, while the Weberian school postulates that cultural aspects drive economic and political change.

Inglehart, however, suggests that the deterministic arguments posed by both the Marxists and Weberians are oversimplified. Rather, Inglehart argues that economic, political, and cultural variables are mutually dependent and intertwined. He writes, "if you know one component you can predict the other components with far better than random success" (331). Inglehart further critiques Modernization Theory for its emphasis on linearity. Rather than moving in one continuous direction, the author argues that there is a fundamental change in values and motivations, this being the shift to Postmodernization.

With these two critiques, as well as rebuke of the supposed ethnocentricity of the theory, and the assumption that Modernization leads to democracy, Inglehart pursues a new model of economic, political, and cultural change which composes his Modernization and Postmodernization thesis.

Inglehart argues that during the Modernization phase a society undergoes economic, cultural, and political changes. "Economic development is linked with a syndrome of changes that includes not only industrialization, but also urbanization, mass education, occupational specialization, bureaucratization, and communications development, which in turn are linked with still broader cultural, social, and political changes" (8).

We see individuals moving away from status based on ascription, towards status based on achievement; we see a move towards rational-legal authority structures, etc. Additionally, during this time, individual values are based on achieving economic security and material gain. However, as Inglehart points out, advanced industrial societies eventually reach a level of marginal rate of return on economic growth. When a society reaches this threshold, we begin to see a fundamental change in values and institutional structures, or a move to a Postmodern Society. Inglehart writes, "Postmodernism is the rise in new values and lifestyles, with greater toleration for ethnic, cultural, and sexual diversity and individual choice concerning the kind of life one wants to lead" (23). In short, economic growth eventually reaches a point of marginal utility and accompanying value and motivational changes occur.

In explaining the Postmodern transition, Inglehart discusses extensively the theory of Intergenerational Value Change. He writes, "This shift in worldview and motivations springs from the fact that there is a fundamental difference between growing up with awareness that survival is precarious, and growing up with the feeling that one's survival is precarious, and growing up with the feeling that one's survival can be taken for granted" (31). The post-WWII generation experienced high levels of economic growth coupled with the rise of the welfare state. This granted them a great deal of economic and social security. This security allowed society to pursue Postmodern values. The transition to Postmodern values has eroded many of the institutions which characterized industrial/modern society: (1) in a secure environment, people seek the stability of a strong government - such rational-legal authority is no longer in the Postmodern society; (2) this environment of stability/security lessens the importance placed on economic growth; although the Postmodern society has lower rates of economic growth, the subjective happiness of a society is high; (3) traditional social structures also decline in importance, i.e. less importance is placed on religion, the familial structure, sexual norms etc.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars best data on global change, October 5, 2006

By 

Ryan M. Moore "some guy" (boca ration, fl) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Modernization and Postmodernization (Paperback)

Ignore the only other review about this book, which is tremendously silly and obviously written from a right-wing perspective. It is not true that Inglehart opposes materialist and postmaterialist values against tradition: in fact he creates a multi-dimensional model in which the opposition between materialist and postmaterialist values make up one axis, while the opposition between traditional and secular-rational authority constitutes a separate axis. Thus, the US is situated in this model as a society whose people prioritize postmaterialist values but ALSO favor (more slightly) traditional over secular-rational forms of authority. This combination of postmaterialism and tradition seems to explain a lot about Americans today: they increasingly favor qualitative values like free expression, choice, and life satisfaction over quantitative values like money and technology, and yet they adhere more to traditional forms of authority like religion, the family, and nation while being distrustful of secular institutions and the government.

Inglehart's thesis is that cultural, political, and economic changes cluster together and change in relatively predictable ways. Societies undergo tremendous changes as they modernize, industrialize, bureaucratize, urbanize, and so forth, but then they hit a point of diminishing returns when the survival of most people can be guaranteed and scarcity is no longer an issue. This is the point where people seek out postmaterialist values, because the search for more money leaves them existentially empty, and so they seek out more substantive forms of satisfaction and meaning. Perhaps this is the only common ground among Americans of the blue and red states: obviously they aren't simply voting in terms of economic self-interest (in which case their political affiliations would be reversed) but rather on the basis of cultural values: ecology and tolerance for the blue states, God and nation for the red states.

Yes, Inglehart's politics are somewhat leftist, and he does argue that his data supports much of what Marx had to say about modernization, but above all he is a scientist and an empiricist who is most concerned with perfecting his techniques of measurement. That's why it's so ridiculous to dismiss him as politically biased as the previous reviewer and a number of other critics seem to do. The amount of data is this book is astounding. And yet it is still imminently readable, and unlike so much other social science, does not fetishize its methods of data analysis as an end in itself.

The only reason to give this work 4 stars instead of 5 is that I think Inglehart has a hard time explaining the resurgence of fundamentalism that has swept through the world recently. He somewhat persuasively argues that Islamic fundamentalism has taken hold in societies that may be oil-rich but certainly aren't modernized, but when it comes to the US he maintains that religion is declining in influence and that the Christian right is just more organized today in defense of its evaporating power. I'd really like to believe that. But if that's true, why do so many of my damn students wear crosses and "WWJD" bracelets?

3.0 out of 5 stars Post modernization and post materialism expanded, November 6, 2006

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Tom Bryder (Copenhagen Denmark) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Modernization and Postmodernization (Paperback)

Inglehart, one of the pioneers of modern political culture research, has expanded his previous studies, based on mainly US and European research to include those countries where the World Value Surveys are conducted. The book is well illustrated and written, empirically solid and it goes without saying that the traditional paradigm used now gets a more general validation with the inclusion of new countries.

The ecologial variables included now also expands the implications of what the change to post-materialist values means. Still, a considerable part of the book, especially the theoretical part, gives a "deja vue" experience. It would be nice to get some really new ideas from the discoverer of post-materialism, and not just new amassment of data. But granted that the samples used in this book are from completely new and different contexts, it is satifying to see that the post-materialist silent revolution was not really a 1968 cohort industrialist phenomenon, something that critics have said of Ingleharts previous works. The book updates the more theoretically innovative Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society, and can be used as a course book in political culture classes.