"Towards a Definition of Modernization", 1966

TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF MODERNIZATION

by Reinhard Bendix
University of California, Berkeley

L. Ideal Types or Generalizations?
Despite ita vagueness "modernization" ie a useful term because it
tends to evoke similar associations in our minds. Some will think only of
| modern technology; others will apply the term te the whole technological
revolution since the 18th century. Some will think only of Western democratic
institutions today; others wili apply the term to the whole political trans~
formation since the French Revolution. Whether narrowly or widely applied,
most people using the term associate with it some version of the idea of
progress, if only in the sense that "modernization" involves evolution away
from a nonmodern, and towards a modern, condition of society. -- In this
neutral sense the idea of progress is synonymous with the idea of change
since the 18th century. It merely asserts that in significant respects a
later condition of society differs from an earlier one, and thus contrasts
with other world views such as the idea of eternal recurrence which deny change.
Any distinction between befere and after means that we must specify the
earlier (nonmodern) and later {modern) social structure by two lists of

' mutually disjunctive attributes.* Although indispensable, such lists pose

*#C£. Reinhard Bendix, "The Comparative Study of Historical Change,"
to be published in a volume edited by S. B. Saul and Tom Burns (Tavistock
Institute, London, 1966), where I discuss this “before and after" model.

all the unresolved preblems made manifest by the discussions of Max Weber's
ideal type. An enumeration of what characterizes "traditional" or "modern"

society necessarily exaggerates and simplifies, es Weber pointed out, and

says nothing either about the strength or generality . >


with which any one attribute must be present, or about specific societies

in which one or another attribute is missing. Contrasts of this kind have
been reformulated many tines in the recent history of social thought, and
its modern formulation by Taicott Parsons is clearly the most useful
because it is most abstract. Even a high degree of abstraction, however,
does not eliminate the Weberien problem, for the utility of these concepts
depend upon further specifications, and more than one cluster of concepts
or ideal type may be found indispensable. The point may be illustrated in
terms of Parsons’ contrast between universalism and particularism. In
Europe, treditional society involved a major element of universalisn

through the Christian faith and the institutions of the Catholic church;

in China it involved other universalist elements through Confucianism and

the examination systen; in India, ou the other hand, it involved an extreme
degree of particularism through Hindu religiosity and the caste system.

fo attribute one meaning to the term "tradition" in the light of such
divergences is useless, and the same considerations apply mutatis mutandis
to the concept “Modernity.”

These problems are compounded when we turn from the contrast between
social structures "before and after" to a consideration of change from the
ome to the other. In this respect we can be guided tc some extent by Max
Weber's own discussion of this problem:

Developmental sequences too cam be constructed into ideal
types and these constructs can have quite considerable heuristic
value, But this quite particularly gives rise to the danger

that the ideal type and reality = be confused with one
enother.*

&Max Weber, The ey of the Social Sciences (Glencoe: The
Free Press, 1949), p. LOL.


Accordingly, ideal-typical constructs of development must be
from the actual sequence of historical changes
sharply distinguished, but Weber notes that this distinction is “uncommonly

difficult" to maintain. For in constructing a developmental sequence we

will use illustrative materials in order to make clear what we mean and
hence will be greatly tempted to confuse the sequence of ideal types with
an historical course of events.

The series of types which results from the selected
conceptual criteria appears then as an historical sequence
unrolling with the necessity of a law. The logical classi-
fication of analytical concepts on the one hand and the
empirical arrangements of the events thus conceptualized
in space, time, and causal relationship, on the other, — |
appear to be so bound up together that there is an almost
irresistible temptation to do violence to reality in order
te prove the real validity of the construct.*

*Ibid., pp. 102-103.

The hazards referred to by Weber have not gone unnoticed. Following the
tradition of Maine, Durkheim, and Toennies, Robert Redfield compared four
contemporery communities in Yucatan. He emphasized that his method was
mot to be recommended to these wishing to raise questions

as to whether changes in any of the characters are related

te or conditioned by changes in any of the others, and as

te hew they are interrelated....
But while Redfield clearly stated that he had not answered such questions,
he nevertheless supposed that

there is some natural cr interdependent relation among some

or all of the characters in that change with regard to

certain of them tends to bring about or carry with it change
with respect to others of them....*

*Robert Redfield, The Folkculture of Yucatan (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1941}, pp. 342-344.


In thus seeing his problem as one of causal "relations among variables"

Redfield unwittingly disregarded his own warning concerning the disjunction
between ideal types and historical sequences. We should try to understand
why this confusion is as widespread as Weber already suggested.

In operating with a "pefore~and-after" model of the society under
consideration, cne has difficulty in resisting the view that the two sets

of attributes characterizing the earlier and the later social structure
constitute generalizable systems of interrelated variables. What is more
natural than to treat the various elements of a modern economy as precon-
ditions of modernization? We may observe the coexistence and causal ©
relation between A and B in the past. Assume the appearance of one such
precondition in the present oF future. If we expect to see the appearance
of the other element, we hypothesize in effect that the two are causally
related in the present and the future as well es in the past. In this
procedure we entirely ignore that the specification of a list of attri~
butes is ideal-typical and hence simplifies and exaggerates the evidence.
If we are to avoid mistaking ideal types for accurate descriptions,

we must take care to treat the clusters of attributes as hypothetically,
mot as ectually correlated. We need these clusters to distinguish between
social structures, we illvstrate thea by historical examples, but these

are still abstractions, constructs that can only be used as tools of |
analysis. Redfield, for exemple, suggested that the relative isolation

and the occupational homogeneity ef communities coexisted in many instances
and was perhaps causally related. No doubt there are many isolated communi-

ties with relstively little division of labor, but degree of isolation and

occupational differentiation sre correlated very imperfectly, and over time

we erent

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communities heave varied independently in both dimensions. If one wishes

to get away from the artificiality of ideal types one can visualize two
overlapping frequency distributions in which either isolation or occupa~
tional heterogeneity are treated as the devendent variable. Such distri-
butions would approximate historical reality more closely, whereas the
ideal type of an isolated and homogeneous commanity is best employed as

a suggestion for the investigation of isolated communities with consider-
able ddvieion of labor, or nonisolated communities that are relatively

homogeneous. *

&C£, the related discussion in Reinhard Bendix, "Concepts and —
Generalizations in Comparative Sociological Studies," Americen Sociological
Review, Vol. 28 (1963), pp. 532-539. Note the analysis of "orerequisites”
of economic development by Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness
in Historical Perspective (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965),ch. Ii.
My indebtedness to Gerschenkron will be evident throughout; the discussion
before is 2 sociological extension of points first suggested by him in the
context of economic history.

The preceding coneiderations bear in one way or another on the social
scientist's use of historical experience. Comparative studies of moderni-
gation necessarily rely on that experience when they construct developmental |
sequences. This is relatively harmless in en historical context where the
actual relation between cause and effect can be contrasted with the constructed
sequence. It becomes hazardous where past experience is extrapolated as in
studies of societies which have been called backwerd, underdeveloped,
developing, ot transitional. This profusion of terms testifies not only
to the impact of diplomacy on scholarship, but to genuine intellectual

uncertainties. In their book, Industrialism and Industrial Man, Clark Kerr


and his associates explicitly emphasize that the "logic of industrialism"

they have constructed tuvolves abstractions on the assumption that the
“eransition stage of industrialization" has passed. Indeed, they empha-
size that tendencies deductively arrived at (albeit by illustrative
reference to the experience of “developed” eoctetias) are not likely to

be fully realized in the actual course of history. Yet, throughout the
volume phrases recur which betray the confusion between deductive and
historical sboventen against which Max Weber warned. On the same page
tendencies are alternately called logically constructed and inherent (33-34),
emphasis on the contrast between abstraction and history is followed by the
assertion that “the empire of industrialism will embrace the whole world"
(46) , industrialization is called an “invinetble process," while the uncer-
tainties of the future are relegated to variations of length and difficulty
in the transition ex to the several roads of industrialization (19-20,

47 f£.). Perhaps the most arresting feature of this deterministic view

of the future is that the “industrialism’® of the whole world is predicated,
not on the organization of production as in Marx, but on the initiating or
manipulating actions of five different elites whose capacity to "“indus-
trialize" whole societies is simply assumed. Exceptions, delays, failures,
and what not are seen as deviations which "cannot prevent the transformation

in the long run."* Seldom has social change been interpreted in so managerial

&Clark Kerr, John T. Dunlop, Frederick Herbison, and Charles A. Myers,
Industrialiem and Industrial Man (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960),
p. 49 and passin.

a fashion, while all contingencies of action, especially those of politics,


are treated as mere historical complications which cannot alter the "logic '

of industrialism." In this case the construction of developmental sequences
appears in the end as e substitute, rather than a tool, for
the study of historical sequences.

The example may be extreme, but it is not an isolated one. A more
common version of the same difficulty may be seen in studies which derive
ideal types from past historical experience and then use them as contingent
generalizations. The decline of kinship ties and the concomitant rise of
individualism was an aspect of Western modernization. Today we are
learning how many meanings and exceptions were in fact compatible with
this overall tendency, though these are quite pieverly ignored when we
construct an ideal typical sequence. . But, vathee than using that sequence
to show how and why actusil historical developments deviate fron it, we use
it to make contingent predictions about the future of "developing"
societies. to be sure, no one ig likely to say simply thet these societies
will develop; we state instead ut they will not develop unless kinship
ties decline, or conversely that this decline is e “functional prerequisite"
of development. There are at least three things wrong with this procedure:
(a) it ignores the exaggerations and simplifications which went fato the
formulation of the ideal type in the first place, end hence blinds us to
the role which kinship ties and collectivism pleyed in the modernization
of Western Europe: {b) accordingly, it alse blinds us to the possible wav
in which kinship ties and collectivism might be, or might be made, compatible
with the modernization of cther areas (tacitly we have misused the ideal type
as a generalization); (c) also, it diverts attention from the very real

possibility that modernization may never arrive at modernity, that the


disruption of "traditional" societies can be an enduring characteristic
of social structures worthy of study in its own right, because terms like
"development" or "transition" are misnomers when applied to societies
whose future condition may not markedly differ from the present. The
persistent neglect of these obvious points may be due to the technocratic
fallacy in which the genuine desire for knowledge merges imperceptibly |
with the wish of naking sure that the knowledge attained will play a

constructive role in human affairs.* I now turn "towards a definition

*An example of this fallacy appears in Daniel Lerner's well-known
study which was based on the "Western model of modernization" because the
“eomponents and sequences" of that model were believed to be giobal. In
his preface to the paperback edition of 1964, Professor Lerner considers
his model vindicated, though he acknowledges that the revolution of
rising expectations has turned into one of rising frustrations. But the
proposition that "modernization requires a systematic ‘transformation of
life-waye' if growth is to be made self-sustaining" is dubious, since
not one but several developments have led to such transformations (as
in Russias, Japan, Western Europe, the United States, etc.) and there is
no assurance that growth will be self-sustaining. Whieh model are we to
use for purposes of prediction and with what assurance can we predict?
See Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Seciety (New York: The
Free Press, 1964), pp. vwii~viii, 46-47, 438, and passim. Note the very
diluminating intreduction to this volume by David Riesman which raises
some of these questions already.

of modernization" which seeks to avoid the dangers pointed out above.

Il. The Meaning of Modernization

My objective. is to define the term so that it refers clearly to
change in a long, but limited historical period. At the same time, I
want to show that throughout the designated period the process of change
has certain overall characteristics.

By “modernization" I wish to refer to a type of secial change which


originated in the industrial revolution of England, 1760-1830, and to

the political revolution in France, 1789-1794. One can set the inception
of the changes here considered differently, and this is in fact advisable
for certain purposes. The expansion of Europe, for example, antedated
the late 18th century; some aspects of modernization like the diffusion ©

of modern weapons can be traced back to the 15th century.* Also, particular

*Carlo Cipolla, Guns and Sails in the Early Phase of European
Expansion, 1460-1700 (London: Collins, 1965), passim.

antecedents of modernization can be traced back very far, as in the instance
of printing or of representative institutions or ideas of equality, and
many others. Nevertheless, there are reasons of scale which make it
advisable to separate the transformations of European societies and their
world-wide repercussions since the 1&th Gentury from earlier economic and
political changes.
. trans formations

Three aspects of these / may be cited to substantiate this
consideration. One of these concerns the proportion of the world’s active
population engaged in agricultural production. Until 1750 that proportion
was probably above 80 per cent and two centuries later it had fallen to
about 60 per cent. But in the countries which had pioneered the develop-
nent of a modern, industrial society that proportion had by 1950 declined
much farther: in Great Britain to 5 per cent, in Germany to 24 per cent,

in France to 30 per cent, in the United States te 13 per cent. In Russia

and Japan it had declined to 45 and 49 per cent respectively.* A second

*See Carlo M. Cipolla, The Economic History of World Populations
(Baltimore: Penguin Books Inc., 1964), pp. 24-28.


aspect concerns the political mobilization of the population. As Karl

Mannheim hes stated, "modern industrial society stirs into action those
classes which formerly only played a passive part in political life."

The extent of this fundamental democratization of society can only be

appreciated, if it is contrasted with the fundamental elitism of societies

prior to the 18th century.* The extension of the franchise is the most

®See Karl Mannheim, Maan and Society an an Age of Reconstruction
(New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1941), p. 44 and passim and the highly
illuminating discussion by Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost (London:
Methuen & Co., 1965), ch. II. Laslett states that in i7th-century England
“there were a large number of atatus groups but only one bedy of persons
capable of concerted action over the whole area of society," and that this
body consisted of a very small segment of English society. See ibid.,
p. 22 and passin. |

- ebviows index of democratization. In the countries of Western Europe that
extension was relatively gradual during the 19th century and the establish-
ment of fully universal suffrage dates only from the first World War or

the early 1920's.* Of the 118 countries which have attained independence

*Stein Rokkan, "Mass Suffrage, Secret Voting, and Political Partici-
pation,” Archives Evropeennes de Sociologie, II (1961), pp. 132-152. Note
the summary chart on p. 141.

since 1945, adopted universal euffrage at (or near) the beginning of
their existence as independent states. -- The third aspect concerns the.
development of the means of communication. No single index is entirely
satisfactory, but increases in the number of radiog available in different
countries give some evidence for the speed with which ideas have come to

be communicated to large masses. Im 1961 the world—total came to 13.2


radio receivers per 100 persons. While earlier enumerations are spotty

and difficult to compare, some impression of the development of the radio
as a means of communication can be obtained by a comparison of selected
countries in a single year (19597). At the low end of thie scale, we
find figures per 1,000 perzonsa like 1 for the Congo, 2 for Pakistan, 3 |
for China and India, while at the high end we find between 250-300 (per
1,000) for France, the United Kingdon, West Germany, over 500 for Sweden,

and 2 saturation-point of 1,000 for the United States.* Other examples

*See Wilbur Schramm, Mess Media and National Dewelopment (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1964), p. 95 and by the game author, Mass
Communications (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1960), p. 666. It
may be added that Argentina, Japan, Poland, and the USSR had between 100
and 200 radio receivers per 1,000 pergons. .

could be given, but the three cited here have been chosen to exemplify

changes in the economic, political, and social order.* They may suffice

*These examples are cited without prejudice to the question of their
causal significance which would have to be considered on its own merits.

ag an indication that it is useful to consider the transformations since

the 18th century a distinctive phenomenon of social change which we call

“modernization.”
At this point it is appropriate te distinguish "modernization" from
"modernity." I have commented already on the tendency to list the charac-

teristics of modern society and then read these characteristics into the

past ag indispensable steps toward the modernization of society.* As

*fhe number of such lists is large and constantly growing; inevitably
they are all variations of each other, though they also reflect the speciali-
zation of the scholars who compile them. See, for example, Kerr, et al.,
op. cit., ch. 2; Lerner, op. cit., ch. 2. A recent effort to synthesize
such lists is contained in Wilbert Moore, The Impact of Industry (Englewood
Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1965), passim.

indicated earlier, this procedure is inadvisable. Several attributes of


“modernity” like literacy or modern medicine have appeared or have been

adopted in isolation from the other attributes of "modernity." Hence,
modernization may occur without resulting in "modernity." Moreover, the
process of modernization is neither uniform nor universal, because the
economic and political "breakthrough" which occurred in England and France
at the end of the 18th century put every ether country of the world into
a position of backwardness. This division of the world into "advanced"
and "follower" societies is one, basic element in the definition of

modernization as I envisage it.*

*The terms of that distinction do not stay put. Before the "modern"
period England was a "follower" society while Holland and Sweden were
"advanced," especially in the production of cannons. Cf. Cipolla, Guns
and Saile..., pp. 36-37, 52-54, 87n. Im the 20th century the Russian
revolution, the Fascist regimes, and the Chinese revolution have added
their own special modifications of this distinction as an aspect of
"modernization."

Simple as this distinction is, it implies a major shift in intellectual
perspective. The traditional posture of sociological theory goes back to
influences emanating from Plato and the legacies of Western philosophy as
traced by Arthur Lovejoy in The Great Chain of Being. In this perspective,
change is siow, gradual, continuous, and intrinsic to the societies changing.
Accordingly, modernization is seen aa a wniform process evolving in such a
| way that wherever it occurs, it will repeat in essentials all the charac-

teristics found in the previous modernization of ancther country.* In.

For the link between the theological conception of emanationism with
theories of social evolution and functionaliem cf., in addition to the work
of Arthur Lovejoy, Karl Loewith, Meaning in History (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1949), and Kenneth Bock, "Theories of Progress and Evolution,"
in Werner. J. Cahnmann and Alvin Boskoff, eds., Sociology and History (Glencoe:
the Free Press, 1964), pp. 21-41.


13.

partial opposition to this position social change is here conceived as always
consisting of intrinsic and extrinsic changes. Every social structure is
characterized by internal differentiation and an external setting; change in
one sector cannot occur without having some repercussion in the other, and
this is of special relevance in studies of modernization. Every social struc-
ture possesses enduring characteristics which may aid or hinder the moderni-

gation of society.* At the same time, modernization is characterized by a

*Recent writings make clear that the earlier identification of “tradi-
tion" as an obstacle per se is much too simple. Cf. Ralph Braibanti and
Joseph Spengler, eds., Tradition, Values and Socio-Economic Development
oe. University of North Carolina Press, 1961), passim.

precipitous increase in the speed and intensity with which ideas and techniques
pass from "advanced" to "follower" societies. Within a relatively short historical —
period there are few societies that have remained immune from these external
impacts upon their social structures. This juxtaposition of internal structure

and external setting together with the demand that both be considered as inter-
related but independent levels of abstraction, should be considered as a deli~
berate contrast with the approach which examines societies as if they were

closed systems.* | | a

*An early formulation of this emphasis on internal structure and external
setting is found in Otto Hintze, "Staatenbildung und Verfassungsentwicklung,"
Staat_und Verfassung (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962), pp. 34-51.

This article was published in 1902.

Diffusion of ideas and techniques may be a by-product of expansion by
"advanced" societies, but it occurs even in the absence of expansion because of
the gap created by the economic and political breakthrough in the 18th century. :

As Gerschenkron has pointed ovt, the response to this gap among the leading

strata of "follower" societies is one reason why the processes of modernization


diverge. In the context of economic development he has noted particularly

the tendency of such “follower” societies to introduce the most modern,
capital-intensive technology, in order to close the "gap" as rapidly as

possible.* This tendency, however, is part of a

*Gerschenkron, op. cit., pp. 26, 44, and passim.


larger context:

---one way of defining the degree of backwardness is
precisely in terms of absence, in a more backward country
/of “follower" society as I have termed it here/, of
factore which in a more advanced country served as prere-
quisites of development. Accordingly, one of the ways of
approaching the problem is by asking what substitutions and
what patterns of substitutions for the lacking factors
oecurred in the process of industrialization in condition
of backwardness.*

*Tbid. +] Pp. 46 e

Such substitutions may be adopted in the belief that they represent

shorteuts to "modernity." They are part of the effort to avoid the

difficulties encountered in the modernization of the “advanced” country.
of the "advantages of backwardness"

It is interesting that this idea/ did not originate with Leo Trotsky (es

has sometimes been supposed) but was expressed already in the late 17th

century.* The implication of this perspective is that all aspects of

&Cf. the analysis of this complex of ideas in the work of Gottfried
Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716), particularly with regard to the moderni-
zation ef Russia by Peter the Great, in Dieter Groh, Russland und das
Selbstversteendnis Europas (Neuwwied: H. Luchterhand Verlag, 1961),
pp. 32~43.

modernity are up for adoption simultaneously, and it depends upon avail-
able resources, the balance of forces in the "follower" society, and the
relative ease of transfer which aspects will be given priority. The fact
that such items as medication, printed matter, educational innovations,
political practices like the franchise are more easily transferred than
advanced technology requiring heavy capital investment is another aspect

of the divergence of precesses of modernization.


Many writers have observed that in this setting of ‘follower

societies" governments play, or attempt to play, a decisive role.* The

*In addition to Gerschenkron ef. Talcott Parsons, Structure and

Process in Modern Societies (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1960), p. 116;
add others.

special utility of this perspective for codisaiattve studies of moderniza-
tion is evident from a recent, comprehensive analysis of English, French,
and German industrialization since the 18th century. In that context,

David Landes states that for the governments of Europe “industrialization

was, from the start, a political imperative."*

*David Landes, “Technological Change and Development in Western
Europe, 1750-1914," in H. J. Habbakuk and M. Postan, eds., The Cambridge

Economic History of Europe, Vol. Vi, The Industrial Revolutions and After

(Cambridge: “At the University Press, 1965), I, p. 366.

Governments may be more or less successful in meeting the imperatives
confronting them, and their attempts to do so will be affected throughout
by the structural attributes of their societies. But these allowances do
not negate the generalization that governments play a larger role in the
modernization of relatively backward than of relatively advanced societies.
Since this generalization applies to "follower societies" since the 18th

century, and since most societies of the world are (or have been) in that

-eategory, the proposition is perhaps only another aspect of modernization,

i.e. of the distinction between the two types of societies. The difference
can be of strategic importance for modernization, since "follower societies"

are by definition lacking in some of the elements cf modernity found in


"advanced societies." Where governments manage to provide "functional

equivalents” or “substitutes" for these missing elements, they may
succeed in reducing the backwardtiess of their societies, though this
presupposes the existence of efficient government which a number of

writers consider a sign of relative modernity or advance.*

*Cf., for example, the frequency with which "political unity"
appears as an index of wodernity in the several lists of attributes
presented in Marius Jansen, ed., Changing Japanese Attitudes Towards

Modernization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 18-
19, 20-24, and passim. ;

Here again a major shift in intellectual perspective is implied.
The view that government is en integral part of the secial structure, but
may have the capacity of altering it significantly, is not in the nain-
stream of social theory. The opposite view is more common that formal
government and its. actions are epiphenonena, the product of forces arising
from the social and economic structure of society. Related to the
"“emanationist" and “evolutionary” intellectual tradition mentioned earlier,
this view was re-enforced by a particular historical constellation in early
Sth century Europe. Writers of quite incompatible political views never-
theless agreed that government is an epiphenomenon, either because the
real determinants of social change are found elsewhere (Marx), or because
government is more artificial and hence less wiable than customary rules
(e.g., Savigny, de Bonald, Coleridge), or because acvernaent (unless it is
restrained) interferes with the market-mechanism to the detriment of
national wealth (e.g., Adam Smith). This uncommon agreement still influences

modern social thought, but this intellectual legacy is an outgrowth of the


"advanced" countries and hence a special case of rather limited appli-

cability. For reasons I have discussed elsewhere I believe it is more
useful (especially in studies of modernization) to approach social change
in complex societies on the basis of considering social structure and
government, or society and the state, as interdependent, but also rele-

tively autonomous spheres of thought and action.*

*Cf. Reinhard Bendix, Nation-Building and Citizenship (New York:
John Wiley & Sons, 1964), pp. 15-29.

The gap created between advanced and follower societies, the
efforts to close it -- together with the more or less ad hoc adoption of
items of modernity, in many instances produce obstacles standing in the.

way of successful modernization (in any of its variant modes) .* In hia

*0n the “ad hoc diffusion" of items of modernity cf. the illuminating
discussion by Theodore H. von Lave, "Imperial Russia at the Turn of the
Century," Comparative Studies im Seciety and History, III (1961), pp. 353-
367 end Mary C. Wright, "Revolution from Without?", Comparative Studies in
Society and History, IV (1962), pp. 247-252.

discussion of the "new states" that have come into being since World War II,

E. A. Shile has characterized these obstacles as a series of internal,

f

structural "gaps":

Tt is the gap between the few, very rich and the mass of
the peor, between the educated and the uneducated, between
the townsman and the villager, between the cosmopolitan or
mational and the local, between the modern and the tradi-
tional, between the rulers and the ruled.*

*E. A. Shils, "Political Development in the New States," Comparative
Studies in Society and History, II (April, 1960), p. 281.


Though such tensions exist in "advanced" states as well, they are far more

pronounced not only in the “new states" of today but also in the follower
societies of the past which can be ranked, albeit roughly, by their rela-

tive degree of backwardness.* The analogy between “backward” or

&Gerschenkron, op. cit., pp. 41-44. Include here references to
the works of Karl Deutsch.

"underdeveloped" social structures then and now should not be pressed too
much, since the Continental countries possessed many cultural and economic
attributes that were relatively more favorable to modernization. But it
is also true that during the 19th century there was a gradient of back- .
wardness within Europe such that the countries to the East paralleied the
"gaps" found in the "new states" of today more closely than the countries

of Western Europe.*

#Cf. Landes, op. cit., pp. 354, 358.

The analogies or parallels noted here are especially close at the
cultural level. For the "pap" created between advanced and follower
societies pute a premium on ideas and techniques which the follower society
way use in order to “come up from behind,” and this places the educated
minority cf that society iato a position of strategic importance -- while
widening the always existing gulf that divides the educated from the
weducated. In a world marked by gradations of backwardness the compara-
tive study of modernization must attend to the "reference society" that

becomes the focus of attention in the follower society, especially for the


educated minority that seeks to utilize advanced ideas and techniques in

order to "catch up." Here one can see at a glance that ideas about social
change focussing on the internal division of labor necessarily made much

of standard social classes like workers and capitalists, whereas a focus

on the distinction between advanced and follower societies, and on the
communcations-effects of modernization, necessarily gives prominence to the
role of intellectuals and of education. ‘tt is as typical of backward
countries to invest heavily in education in order to "bridge the gap,” as
it is for an intelligentsia to develop and engage in an intensified search

for a way out of the backwardness of their country.* A typical part of

*Cf. the succinct overview of the "intelligentsia" by Hugh Seton-
Watson, Neither War Nor Peace (New York: Frederick Praeger, 1960), pp. 164-
187. See also Bendix, Nation-Building..., pp. 231 ff.

this search consists in the ambivalent job of preserving or strengthening
the indigenous cheracter of the native culture while attempting to close

the gap created by the advanced development of the “reference society or
of

uy |
societies.’ The bifurcation/cultural life into “westernizers" and "nativists" f

|

!

is, therefore, a recurrent aspect of “follower societies,"

though the terms
of this debate change with the “reference” society taken as a basis of

comparison.*

&The most sensitively probing analysis of this bifurcation I have
found in the literature is the study by Joseph Levenson, Modern Chine
and its Confucian Past (Garden City: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co.,
1964), passim.


20.

Modernization, then, is a type of social change since the 18th
century consisting in the economic and political "advance" of some
pioneering society and subsequent changes in follower societies. At the
| end of the 19th century it would have been possible to make this formula-
tion more specific by referring to Eagland and France as the "advanced"
countries and all others as follower societies, though even then the state~
ment vould have omitted several other "pioneering" countries such as
Holland, Spain, Germany, and the United States. Since then the process
has remified much further, because follower societies of the past such as
Russia and China have become advanced societies today which are taken as
models in turm by the satellite dependencies of Eastern Europe, for example,
or by sone African and Asian societies that heave won their independence
since World War II. With regard to each of the countries that have come
to play the role of "pioneer" with regard to some follower society it is
appropriate to combine the structural perspective with the perspective
focussing on externally induced changes - at some earlier time, though
with the success of modernizatioa the emphasis on this second dimension
may become less salient than it was before. Put another way: each follewer
society - as long as it remains in that category - confronts the problem
ef relating its histericalily transmitted structure and its characteristic
tensions (including the impulse to modernize) to the impact of ideas and
techniques coming to it from abroad. In the preceding discussion I have
distinguished four aspects of the process of modernization: |

a. Reasons of scale auggest that since the 18th century the external

setting of societies, and especially the "gap" created by the early indus-

trialization of England and the early democratization of France, have imparted

ups Haat jem Near uer Gare kas


21.
'

to the “degree of backwardness" the special significance of an “obstacle”
and a "challenge" to modernization.

b. In their endeavor to bridge this "gap" follower societies
typically search for substitutes to the factors which were conditions
of development in the advanced countries. Within the limitations imposed |
by nature and history all aspects of modernity (as developed abroad) are
up for adoption simultaneously, and the problem is which of the adoptable
items represents e shortcut to modernity. Since successful modernization
is not assured until it is achieved, it is part of this process that the
adoption of items of "nodernity" may have effects that militate against
modernization, or may be irrelevant to it.

c. This common setting of follower societies in turn imparts

special importance to government. Typically, governments attempt to play

a major role in the redernization of the society at the same time that they

seek to cvercome the sources of their own instability which erise from the

special tensions created by backwardness.*

*Cf. the analysis of these tensions by E. A. Shils, "Political
Development in the New States," cited above.

ad. The division of the world into advanced and follower societies,
together with the relative ease of communication, put a premium on educe-
tion as a means to modernization which is more readily available than the
capital required for modern technology. Education and modern communications
also encourage the development of an intelligentsia and a cultural product

which -—- as Wilhelm Riehl noted already in 1850 -- is in excess of what the

vege pe gtenih. We yearn,

t
re

=

'


country can use or pay for. This recurrent phenomenon is reflected in

a mushrooming of efforts to overcome the backwardnese of the country by
attempts to reconcile the strength evidenced by the advanced society with

the values inherent in native traditions.


23

IIL. Comparative Aspects of Social Stretification

Tne purpose of this concluding section is to outline en approach to
the study of social stratification, in keeping with the perspectives dis-
cussed above. Most students of social change have employed a “before-and-
after" model of society, i.e., some variant of the contrast between tra-
dition and modernity. We saw thet Max Weber already warned against mistak-
ing this model for an accurate account of social change, a danger that is
admittedly enhanced by an emphasis on the breakthrough achieved in the early
modern period by the economic and political transformations of England and
Prance. Yet, however sharp the contrasts between different social structures
if looked at over a time-span of centuries, social change is a continuous
process. Ideal types emphasizing contrasts or discontinuities are indispens-
able, analytic aids, but they turn into obstacles where they are mistaken
for descriptive accounts.

It is eppropriate to reiterate this point with reference to social
stratification. The simplified contrast between medieval and modern society
shows us that the first was ruled by a landowning aristocracy and the second
by a bourgeoisie owning the means of production. If one conceives of the
transition from tradition to modernity as the decline of one set of attributes
and the rise of another, one gets the simple picture of a declining aristoc-
racy and a rising bourgeoisie. Possibly Marx has contributed more than any~
one else to this conception. His interpretation of the bourgeoisie as the
collective, historical agent which "created" the revolutionizing effects of
modern industry, has produced a tendency to read a "rising bourgeoisie" back

inte the last 1000 years of Furopean history.*

*For a vigorous critique of this tendency cf. J. H. Hexter,

2k

Reappraisels in History (New York: Harper Torchbooks, Harper & Row, 1963),
passim. Note also the cautionary comments regarding the problem of his-~
torical continuity in Gerschenkron, op. cit., pp. 37-39. |

The broad effect of this tendency has been to make the merchants of pre-L8th

century Europe into direct precursors of 19th century industrial entrepre-
neurs «-~ without benefit of evidence, to fasten upon them a corresponding
degree of striving and social protest when in fact they Pit quite well into
the social structure of feudal Europe, and hence to antedate the decline of
the aristocracy by some centuries in order to provide room for the rising

bourgeoisie.* But the evidence concerning changes of social stratification

# For a more balanced assessment of the European bourgeoisie Cf. Otto

Brunner, Neue Wege der Sozielgeschichte (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1956), pp. ~115.

in the course of industrialization does not present the simple picture of a
declining aristocracy and a rising bourgeoisie. In most European countries
there is evidence rather of the continued social and political preeminence

or pre-industrial ruling groups even when their economic fortunes declined,

ag well as of the continued, subordinate social and political role of the

“middle classes" even when their economic fortunes rose. In Europe this pattern

applies rather generally to the period of transition to an industrial society.
Here is how Joseph Schumpeter puts the case with reference to England , while

pointing out that in modified form the same applies elsewhere:

The aristocratic element continued to rule the roost zieat to
the end of the period of intact and vital capitalism. No

doubt that element -- though nowhere so effectively as in
England -- currently absorbed the brains from other strata that
drifted into politics; it made itself the representative of
bourgeois interests and fought the battles of the bourgeoisie;


25

it had to surrender its last legal privileges; but with
these qualifications, and for ends no Longer its own, it
continued to man the political engine, to manage the state,
to govern. The economically operative part of the bour-
geois strata did not offer much opposition to this. On
the whole, that kind of division of Labor suited them and
they liked it. Where they did revolt against it, or where
they got into the political saddle without having to re-

volt, they did not make a conspicuous success of ruling
and did not prove able to hold their own.#

*. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York:

Harper & Brothers, 1947), pp. 136-137. See also pp. 22-13 for a more

generalized statement.

Schumpeter weakens his case by attributing to aristocrats a born capacity,

and to capitalists an occupational incapacity, to rule, but his general

thesis is more valid than this quasi~psychological explanation.

It is beyond dispute that in the modernization of Europe aristocracies
reteined political dominance long efter the economic foundations of their
high status had been impaired and after alternative and more productive eco-

nomic pursuits had brought bourgeois strata to social and economic prominence.*

Cf. the general discussion by Carl Brinkmann, “Aristokratie im

kapitalistischen Zeitalter," Grundriss der Sozialoekonomik.

The "capacity to rule” obviously varied among the various aristocracies, as
did the degree to which other strata of the population tended to accept their
own subordinate position. In Europe, these legacies were eroded eventually,
but only after the transition to an industrial society was effected by the
general pattern to which Schumpeter refers. This pattern of a continued

political dominance by traditional ruling groups even under conditions of

rapid modernization reflects an earlier condition of the social structure,


when families of high social and economic status had privileged access to

official positions while all those below the line of gentility were ex-
cluded. Pre-modern European societies were characterized by ea vast number
of status-differences and clashes of interest of all kinds, but by only
“one body of persons capable of concerted action over the whole area of

?

society." That is, a tiny, possessing minority of the well-born was cap-
able of concerted action and hence constituted a class, while the whole
mass of unorganized and, under these conditions, unorganizable persons were

set apart by their common lsck of access to positions of privilege.* Ac-

* Cr. Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost (London: Methuen & Co.
1965), p. 22 and passim. I am greatly indebted to Laslett'’s work.

cordingly, Europsan societies conformed at one time to a pattern in which
class and authority were more or less synonymous terms, but this identity
diminished very gradually in the course of modernization and was replaced

eventually by the principle of separation between office and family status.*

#It is, therefore, an historical anachronism to take the difficulty
. of defining the meaning of social class in a modern, industrial society as

a reason for identifying class with authority, as Ralf Dahrendorf has done
in Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, i9 }; DD.

This "gemocratization" of public employment is an aspect of moderni-
zation which makes sense of the assumptions we bring to this field of study.
We do not consider government employment a basis, or an index, of social
stratification. Typically, our impulse is to approach government employment

(even in high positions) as a dependent variable, for example when we examine


the distribution of public officials by social origin. Yet this perspective

presupposes the seperation of goverment office from the claims a family
can make by virtue of its social status and economic position. These as-
sumptions were less applicable in an earlier phase of European societies, |
and today they are less appliceble/foLiover societies that are economically
backward. These governments play, or attempt to play, a major role in the
process of mdernization, as we have seen. Under these conditions sovern-
ment employment provides one of the major bases of social mobility, economic
security and rélative well-being. In economically backward countries the
government is in fact one of the major economic enterprises. Hence, govern-

ment officials partake of the prestige of ruling, even if their positions

are humble, and -- in view of the power at the disposal of govermnent -=

both access to goverument office and influence upon the exercise of authority

are major points of contention -- in the personalized sense characteristic
of societies in which intereaction is kinship-oriented.* While this impor-

“Cf. Clifford Geertz, "The Integrative Revolution," in Geertz, ed.,
Old Societies and New States (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1963), pp. 105 fe.

Cf. my article "Bureaucracy" in the forthcoming edition of the International

Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.

tance of government employment is associated with economic backwardness and
the weakness of middle strate in the occupational hierarchy, it can also

divert resources from uses which might overcome these conditions. The para~
dox of this situation is ‘that in the absence of viable economic alternatives
government employment itself becomes a major basis of social stratification.
Be it noted, however, that the identification of class with authority occurs

under these conditions across a wide range of status differences, since these


new polities frequently institutionalize plebiscitarian, equalitarian prin-

ciples at the outset. This identification of class with authority differs
fundamentally from the elitism of medieval European societies, in which
only a privileged minority had access to positions of authority.

| If we now move from the top ‘to the bottom ranks of the social hier-
archy, it is useful to make the “pefore-and-after" model once more our point
of departure. The fundamental elitism,i.e., convergence of wealth, high
status and high office, implies that the lower strate are fragmented in
household enterprises of a patriarchal type. Karl Marx has analyzed this
condition effectively with regard to the French peasantry:

The small peasants form a vast mass, the members of which
live in similar conditions, but without entering into mani-
fold relations with one another. Their mode of production
isolates them from one another, instead of bringing them

into mutual intercourse. The isolation is increased by
France's bad means of communication and by the poverty of

the peasants,... Each individual peasant family is almost
self-sufficient; it itself directly produces the major part
of its consumption and thus acquires its means of life more
through exchange with nature than in intercourse with society.
The small holding, the peasant and his family; alongside them
another small holding, another peasant and another family....
Insofar as there is merely a local interconnection among these
small peasants, and the identity of their interests begets no
unity, no national union and no political organization, they
do not forma class. They are consequently incapable of en-
forcing their cless interest in their own name, whether
through a parliament or through a convention. They cannot
represent themselves, they must be represented. Their re-
presentative must at the same time appear as their master,

as an authority over them, as an unlimited governmental
power, that protects them against the other classes and sends
them the rain and the sunshine from above. The political in-
Fluence of the small peasants, therefore finds its final ex-
pression in the executive power subordinating society to it-
self ,.#

*Karl Marx, The L8th Brumaire of Lovis Bona (New York: Inter-
national Publishers, Nod.) p. 109.


Probably, Marx would have agreed that this analysis of peasants in 19th

century France applied mutatis mutendis to the small craftsmen of the tows
and the manorial estates as well as the independent peasant freeholds in
medieval Europe. The family-based enterprise fragmented the lower strata
into as many units of patriarchal household rule over family, servants and
apprentices, in contrast with the heads of households who would join with
' others in guilds, exercise authority in official capacities, at the apex
join in the deliberation of representative assemblies, and thus constitute
a "class"or "classes" in the sense of groups capable of concerted action.
In this setting "fundamental democratization" refers to the whole
process of class-formation by which the fragmentation of the lower strata
is gradually overcome, not only to the extension of the franchise. Geogra-
phic mobility increases, literacy rises along with the diffusion of news-
papers, patriarchal rule and household enterprises decline as conditions of
work lead to an aggregation of large masses of people in economic enterprises
providing opportunities for easy communication.* As Marx noted, these con-

*See John Stuart Mill, Erinctples of Political Economy (Boston:
Charles C. Little end James Brown, LO}, PPe -_ ° ’

- ditions gave rise to trade unions, political organizations, and a heightened
_Class-consciousness due to repeated conflicts with employers. He was too
preoccupied with "industry" to note that other groups than workers and other
meens of communication than direct contact at the place of work might come

into play. He was also committed to an evolutionary perspective to

*CP. the analysis of growing class consciousness among workers in


30

Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (New York: International Publishers,
n.d.), pp. 145-86, but note also the evidence adduced by David Mitrany,
Marx against the Peasants (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1951), passim.

note the importance of the beliefs upholding the legitimacy of the traditional
"ruling class” even in an industrializing society. Large masses of people
at the bottom of the social. hierarchy retained their own loyalty to the es-
tablished order, even in the face of the ? physical and psychological depri-

vations so suddenly placed upon them.* This loyalty is evident in the

#fo discount such beliefs because they disappeared eventually, is no
more plausible than to make the aristocracy's role decline in anticipation
of its eventual demise. Cf. the discussion of the “traditionalism of labor" _
in my book Work and Authority in Industry (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1946),

pp. 34 ff.

numerous references to the real and imaginary rights enjoyed under the old
order. Protest based on such references meant, among other things, the de-
mand for equality of citizenship. That equality was proclaimed by the Tegal
order and by the appeals to national solidarity in an era of well-publicized
empire-building, but in practice it was denied by the restriction of the
franchise, the dominant ideology of class-relations, and ‘the partisan in-~
plementation of the law. As I have stated elsewhere, the rising awareness
of the working class in this process of "fundamental democratization" ex-

presses an experience of political alienation, a sense of not having a recog-

nized position in the civic community of an emerging industrial society.
During the 19th century nationalism was so powerful in part because it could
appeal directly to this longing of the common people for civic respectability,
and only when this quest was frustrated for too long did large masses of

people turn instead to the socialist alternative of building a new civic


31

comunity to which they too could belong.* Before turning to a more or less

*For a fuller statement of this interpretation cf. Reinhard Bendix,
Nation-Building and Citizenship (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1964), pp.

61-74.

parallel consideration of intellectuals it is well to contrast this general,

interpretation of working-class agitation in Europe with the problems en-

countered today under conditions of much greater economic backwardness.#

*As always, the contrast is not absolute. During the 19th century,
as one went eastward in Europe, one encountered certain parallels to the

"underdeveloped syndrome" of today, namely an increased importance of govern-
ment and rather weakly developed middle strata. Cf. the illuminating state-
ment by David Landes: "The farther east one goes in Europe, the more the
bourgeoisie takes on the appearance of a foreign excrescence on manorial
society, a group apart scorned by the nobility and feared or hated Y Cor
unknown to) a peasantry still personally bound to the local seigneur

See andes, op. cit., p. 358.

In employing the English development as the prototype of later develop-
ments in other countries Marx mistook the exception for the rule, a con-
sideration which also applies to his analysis of an emerging working-class.
As English workers attained a level of group-consciousness in the late 18th
and early 19th century they necessarily became aware of England's preeminent
position as a world-power, in contrast to follower societies in which an
emerging class-awareness would necessarily focus on the relative backwardness
of the society. Also, early working-class agitation in England occurred in
an anti-mercantilist context which militated against protective legislation
during a transitional period or greatly intensified deprivations in contrast
to follower societies in which the greater reliance on government made and
makes social legislation a natural concomitant of early industrialization. *


“The debate concerning the deprivations of early English industriali-
zation continues. But whatever its final resolution in terms of the chang-
ing standard of living, there is probably less disagreement on the psycho-
logical repercussions. The separation of the worker’s home from his place
of work, the novelty of factory discipline which had previously been asso-
ciated with the pauper’s workhouse, the brutelization of work conditions
for women and children merely by the shift away from home, and related
matters constitute impressive circumstantial evidence. Note also that the
statement in the text makes sense of Germany's pioneering in the field of
social legislation as an attribute of an early follower society.

In England the work-force in the early factories was separated effectively
‘from the land and population increase in the countryside as well. as the city
roughly corresponded to the increasing demand for labor, whereas the work-
force in many follower societies retains its familial and economic ties to
the land and population increase in city and country is well in sdvance of
the demand for iabor .* This contrast has many ramifications, which very with

Cf. Landes, op. cit., pp. 31-347 for a summary analysis of the labor-
supply problem in the Eegtich industrial revolution in terms of the current |
state of research. These findings can be contrasted readily with comparative
materials on various follower societies contained in Wilbert Moore and Arnold
Feldman, eds., Labor Commitment and Social Change in Developing Areas (New
York: Social Sefence Research Council, 1960), passim. Cf. especially the
contributions by Morris, Fallers ? . ‘

the degree of industrialization achieved locally and the degree of govern-
mental control over internal migration, to mention just two relevant con-
siderations. The permanent separation. of workers from their ties to the
land obviously facilitates the growth of class consciousness in Marx's sense
of the word. On the other hand, a continuation of these ties may result _
either in a weak commitment to industry (and hence weak group solidarity),
or in the emergence of an industrial work-force as the agitational and or-

genizational spearhead of segmental peasant-work alliances in urban and


33

national politics. Where this latter alternative exists (as in the Congo
if I am correctly informed), one can begin to appreciate how important it
is to consider such phenomena in their own right, rather than treat them

as transitions that are bound to disappear with increasing modernization.*

*We do not know after all what forms modernization might take where
separation between town and countryside fails to occur, at least for a con~

siderable period of time. Note that Marx and others with him considered
that separation a prerequisite of capitalist development. Cf. the discus-
sion of the distinctive position of workers in African countries by Lloyd A.
Fallers, “Equality, Modernity and Democracy in the New States,” in Clifford
Geertz, ed., op. cit., pp. 187-190.

Having considered ruling strata and industrial workers in the light
of the preceding discussion, I wish finally to turn to a brief analysis of
education and intellectuals. Both are dimensions of social stratification,
properly considered. In the case of England, for example, education had
been a privilege associated. with high status until in the course of religious
controversies several sectarian groups instituted private school systens —
so as to preserve the integrity of their beliefs. The idea of making edu-
cation available beyond these narrow circles immediately raised the question
of danger to the social order because workers and peasants would Learn to
read and write. This apprehension is quite understandable when one con- |
siders that the basic dividing line between those who officially ranked as
"gentlemen" and the vast majority of the people was identical with the di-
vision between the Literate end the illiterate. Still, the social mobili-
zation of the population due to commerce and industry undermined the old
hierarchy of ranks and posed the problem of ensuring that the people would

retain their old regard for rank, and this led to the gradual spread of edu-

cation, initially with a strong emphasis on religion. The ambivalence


34

accompanying this spread of education was not unlike the parallel problem
of military conscription: both were corollaries of "fundamental democ-
ratization" and as such gave rise to unexplored political problems with

regard to people who could read ani -- in times of emergency -- had guns.*

*In these respects there are of course striking differences between
France and England which can be considered symptomatic of the radical and
the conservative approach to education and conscription. For a comparative
treatment of these issues cf. Ernest Barker, The Development of Public Ser-
vices in Western Europe (New. York: Oxford University Press, 1944), chaps.

2 and 5..

These issues are trensformed in follower societies which seek to achieve the

benefits of an industrial society , but, if possible, by a speedier and less
costly transition than occurred in England. In these societies popular
end higher education provide the easiest shortcut to industrialization since
by this means the skill level of the population is raised while the highly
educated increase their capacity of learning advanced sechni.ques from abroad.
Under these conditions governments in follower societies usually push edu-
cation, even though in so doing they elso jeopardize their ow political
stability. They may attempt to avert such dangers through restrictions of
the franchise, censorship control of associations , etc., and one can dif-
ferentiate between follower societies of the 19th and the 20th centuries in
terms of their respective degrees and types. of control over a mobilized
population.

Such contrasts in the role of education are paralleled by contrasts
in the role of intellectuals. Many educated persons engage in intellectual
pursuits from time to time, but the term “intellectuals” is usually (if

vaguely) restricted to those persons who engage in such pursuits on a full-time


35

basis and as free professionals rather than "hired hends."* Intellectual

*The circularity of this statement is unavoidable. In a general
sense pursuits engaging the intellect refer to the creetion and maintenance

(transmission) of cultural values, but each of these terms (cultural values,
creation, maintenance, transmission) is the subject of constant debate, and
that debate Ltself is an important intellectual pursuit. Since this debate
involves pejorative as well as appreciative use of these terms, and by that
token the endeavor of speakers to "belong" to the positive side of the

/ cultural process (in however marginal a fashion), no one set of defining

terms will be wholly satisfactory. In view of this difficulty the most
reasonable alternative is to set up a typology of intellectual pursuits and
leave the group of persons called “intellectuals” undefined. For one such
attempt cf. Theodor Geiger, Aufgaben und Stellung der Intelligenz in der
Geselischaft (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke Verleg, 1949), po. 1-2, 81-101.

pursuits occur in all complex societies, but “intellectuals” as a distinct

social group emerged as 2a concomitant of industrialization. In Western
Europe men of letters underwent a process of emancipation from their pre-
vious subservience to the Church and to private patrons, because industriali-
zation created a mass public and @ market for intellectual products. The
whole process was one of great complexity, but it can be simplified for
present purposes. Intellectuals tended to respond to their emancipation by
anew, cultural elitism, and to the new mass-public by responses which
vacillated between a populist identification with the people and a strong

apprehension concerning the threat of mass-culture to humanistic values.#

Cf. the case study of this process in England by Leo Lowenthal and
Marjorie Fiske, "The Debate over Art and Popular Culture," in Mirra

Komarovsky, ed., Common Frontiers of the Social Sciences(Glencoe: The
Free Press, 1957), pp. 33-112

None of these responses was quite congruent with the materialism of the ad-

vanced industrial societies. The intellectual's experience of social and


36

moral isolation should, therefore, be considered a concomitant of moderni-~
zation. Perhaps its most striking feature is that the great economic and
political successes of advanced European societies during the 19th century |

re-enforced, rather than assuaged, that estrangement because intellectuals

took no direct part in that success, or were excoriated if they did .*

*I avoid the term "alienation" because misuse has made it worthless.
For a scholerly treatment of this intellectual response to “bourgeois so-
ciety" in 19th century Europe cf. Karl Loewith, From Hegel to Nietzsche
(New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964), passim, Cf. also the analysis
of the social distance between "intellectuals" and "practical men" in
Joseph Schumpeter, op. cit., pp. 145-155 as well as the unusual acceptance
of that distance by at least one great artist, William Faulkner, who speaks
of writers "steadily occupied by trying to do the impossible" while keeping
"out of the way of the practical and busy people who carry the burden of
America." See Faulkner's speech on the occasion of receiving the National
Book Award in The New York Times Book Review (February 6, 1955), p. 2.

‘The response of intellectuals briefly sketched here was Largely in-
ternal to the most advanced societies of Europe. At the same time, the
breakthrough achieved by the industrial and political revolutions of England
and France made other countries into follower societies. The economic ad-
vance of England and the events of the French revolution were witnessed from
afar by men to whom the backwardness and autocracy of their own country
appeared stili more backward and autocratic by comparison. Under these con-
ditions cultural life tends to become polarized between those who would see
their country progress by imitating the “more advanced countries," and those
who denounce that advance as alien and evil and emphasize instead the well-
springs of strength existing among their own people and in their native cul-
ture. This reaction was typified by the Westernizers and Slavophils of

Tsarist Russie, but the generel pattern hes occurred again and again. Since


37

then it has been a mainspring of nationalism and of movements for national
independence. In this setting intellectuals do not remain estranged wit-

nesses of a development carried forward by others; they tend to turn into

leaders of the drive towards modernization.*

tSee E. A. Shils, “Intellectuals, Public Opinion and Economic Develop-
ment,” World Politics, Vol. 10 (1958), pp. 232-255.


TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF MODERNIZATION

by Reinhard Bendix
University of California, Berkeley

I. Ideal Types or Generalizations?

Modernization is a term which became fashionable after World War IT.
It is useful despite is vagueness because it tends to eveke similar ase
ciations in contemporary readers. Their first impulse may be to think in
terms of present-day technology with its jet-travel, space exploration, and

nuclear power. But the common sense of modera encompasses the whole era

Since the 18th century when inventions like the steam engine and the spinning

Mt

jenny provided the initial, technical basis for the industrialization G
societies. The economic transformation of England coincided with the move-
ment of independence in the Anerican colonies and the creation of the nation~
state in the French revolution. Accordingly, the word “modern” alse evekes
associations with the democratization of societies, especially the destrec-
tion of inherited privilege and the declaration cf equal rights of citizen-
ehip.

Wherever it has occurred, the modernization of societies originated
in social structures marked by inequalities based on kinship ties, heredi-
tary privilege, and established authority of varying stability. By virtue
eft their common emphasis on a hierarchy of inherited positions, pre-industrial
societies have certain elements in common. The destruction of these features
of the old order with the consequent rise of equality appear as one hallmark
of modernization. As a result, most (if not ali) thinkers of. the iSth

century:


-- exhibit the same burning sense of society's sudden,

convulsive turn from a path it had followed for millenia.

All manifest the same profound intuition of the disappearance

ef historic values ~ and, with them, age-old securities, as

well as age-old tyrannies and inequalities ~- and the coming

of new powers, new insecurities, and new tyrannies....
And, as Professor Nisbet adds, “socielogy in Europe was developed almost
wholly around the themes and anti-theses cast up by the two revolutions
and their impact upon the old order."7 We owe meny insights to this intel-~
lectual tradition, but it will be my contention that it has outlived its
usefulness. However plausible it is to emphasize the contrast between
traditional and modern societies, this perspective gives an cversimplified
view of both structures and of the transition from one te the other.

Such oversimpli fications are needed to ebtein benchmarks for the
study of social change, but they should not be mistaken for generalizations
or for descriptive accounts. In this respect it is well to be guided by
Max Weber's discussion. After pointing out that it may be very useful to

construct developmental sequences from one ideal type toe another, he speci-

fically warns thet it is “uncommoniy diffieult" te avoid the confusion
between such constructs and the actual sequences of change. The illustra~
tions we use te make clear what we mean by the types we have constructed,
easily
»eeappear as an historical sequence unrolling with the
necessity of a law. The logical classification of analytical
concepts on the one hand and the empirical arrangements of

the events thus conceptualized appear to be so bound up

together that there is an almost irresistible temptation

to do violence to reality in order to prove the real
validity of the construct.”

These warnings have been ignored whenever ideal-typical contrasts between
tradition and modernity have been used to make contingent predictions about
the future of modernizing societies, or to construe the attributes presently
found in modern societies as necessary prerequisites of successful moderni-
zation. Rather than take the time to extend this critical discussion, I

turn towards a definition of modernization which seeks to avoid the dangers

to which I refer.

It. The Meaning of Modernization

My objective is to define the term so that it refers clearly to change
im a long, but limited historical period. At the same time, I want to show
that throughout the designated period the process of change has certain
overall characteristics.

By modérization I wish to refer to a type of social change which

originated in the industrial revolution of Engiand, 1760-1830, and to the

political revolution in France, 1789-1794, One can set the inception of
the changes here considered differently, and this is in fact advisable for
certain purposes. The expansion of Europe, for example, antedated the late
18th century: some aspects of eideratentica like the diffusion of modern
weapons can be traced back to the i5th century.“ Also, particular ante-
cedents of modernization can be traced back very far, as in the instance of
printing or of representative institutions or ideas of equality, and many

others. Nevertheless, there are reasons of scale which make it advisable


to separate the transformations of European sccieties and their world-
wide repercussions since the 18th century from earlier economic and poli-
tical changes.

From the vantage~point of Western, industrial societies one can list
the characteristics of a modern society, but it is not advisable to read
these characterfaties into the past as indispensable steps of modernization.
Several attributes of modernity like literacy or modern medicine have
appeared or have been adopted in isolation from the other attributes of
modernity. Hence, modernization may cecur without resulting in modernity.
Moreover, the process of modernization is neither uniform nor universal,
because the economic and political breakthrough which occurred in England
and France at the end of the 18th century put every other country of the
world into a pesition of relative backwardness. This division of the
world into advanced and follower societies is one, basic element in the
definition of modernization as I envisage 4t.?

Simple as this distinction is, it implies a major shift in intellec-
tual perspective. The traditional posture of sociological theory goes back
to influences emanating from Plato and the legacies of Western philosophy

as traced by Arthur Lovejoy in The Great Chain of Being. In this perspective,

change is slow, gradual, continuous, and intrinsic to the societies changing.
Accordingly, modernization is seen as a uniform process evolving in such a
way that wherever it occurs, it will repeat in essentials ail the charac-

teristics found in the previous modernization of another country.° In partial

opposition to this position social change is here conceived as always consisting

of intrinsic and extrinsic changes. Every social structure is characterized

by internal differentiation and an external setting; change in one sector

cannot occur without having some repercussion in the other, and this is

of special relevance in studies of modernization. Every social structure
possesses enduring characteristics which may aid or hinder the moderniza-
tion of society.’ At the same time, modernization is characterized by a
precipitous increase in the speed and intensity with which ideas and techni-
ques pass from advanced to follower societies. Within a relatively short
historical period there are few societies that have remained immune from
these external impacts upon their social structures. This juxtaposition of
internal structure and external setting together with the demand that both
be considered as interrelated but independent levels of abstraction, should
be considered as a deliberate contrast with the approach which examines
societies as if they were closed systens.©

Diffusion of ideas and techniques may be a by-product of expansion

by advanced societies, but it occurs even in the absence of expansion because

of the gap created by the economic and political breakthrough in the 18th
century. As Gerschenkron has pointed out, the response to this gap among
the leading strata of follower societies is one reason why the processes
of modernization diverge.
«seone way of defining the degree of backwardness is
precisely in terms of absence, in a more backward country
fot follower society as I have termed it here/, of
factors which in a more advanced country served as prere-
quisites of development. Accordingly, one of the ways of
approaching the problem is by asking what substitutions and
what patterns of substitutions for the lacking factors

occurred in the process of industrialization in condition

of lgebuasdoess.”


Such substitutions may be adopted in the belief that they represent

shortcuts to modernity. They are part of the effort to avoid the diffi~
culties encountered in the modernization of the advanced country. [It is
interesting that this idea of the " advantages of backwardness" did not
originate with Leo Trotsky (as has sometimes been supposed) but was
expressed already in the late 17th cantury.*° The implication of this
perspective is that all aspects of modernity are up for adoption simul-
taneousiy. It depends upon available resources, historical legacies, the
balance of forces in the follower society, and the relative ease of trans-
fer which aspects will be given priority. A functional mode of analysis
is appropriate where attention is focussed on these internal contingencies
of action. It becomes less appropriate where attention shifts to the

fact that items such as medication, printed matter, educational innovations,
political practices like the franchise are more easily transferred than
advanced technology requiring heavy capital investment. These intrusions
into the social structure are an important aspect of modernization and
account in some measure for divergent processes of change.

Many writers have observed that in this setting of follower
societies governments play, or attempt to play, a decisive role. The
special utility of this perspective for comparative studies of moderniza-
tion is evident from a recent, comprehensive analysis of English, French,
and German industrialization since the 18th century. In that context,
David Landes states that for the governments of Europe “industrialization
was, from the start, a political imperative."

Governments may be more or less successful in meeting the imperatives

confronting them, and their attempts to do so will be affected throughout


by the structural attributes of their societies. But these allowances do

not negate the generalization that governments play a larger role in the
modernization of relatively backward than of relatively advanced societies.
Since this generalization epplies to follower societies since the 18th
century, and since most societies of the world are (or have been) in that

category, the proposition is perhaps only another aspect of modernization,

Bale Mita is: Aided deren dinlvedabeec

i.e. of the distinction between the two types of societies. The difference
can be of strategic importance for modernization, since follower societies
are by definition lacking in some of the elements of modernity found in
advanced societies. Where governments manage to provide functional equi-
valents or substitutes for these missing elements, they may succeed in
reducing the backwardness of their societies, though this presupposes the
existence of efficient government which a number of wettéee consider a
sign of relative modernity or advance. *”

Here again a major shift in intellectual perspective is implied.
The view that government is an integral part of the social structure, but
may have the capacity of altering it significantly, is not in the main-
stream of social theory. The opposite view is more common that formal
government and its actions are epiphenomena, the product of forces arising
from the social and economic structure of society. Related to the emana-
tionist and evolutionary intellectual tredition mentioned earlier, this
view was re-enforced by a particular historical constellation in carly i9th
century Europe. Writers of quite incompatible political views nevertheless
agreed that government is an eiiphasomenen; either because the real deter-
minants of social change are found elsewhere (Marx), or because government

is more artificial and hence less viable than customary rules (e.g., Savigny,


' pronounced not only in the

/

de Bonald, Coleridge), or because government (unless it is restrained)

interferes with the market-mechanism to the detriment of national wealth
(e.8e, Adam Smith). This uncommon agreement still influences oadayn
social thought, but this intellectual legacy is am outgrowth of the
advanced countries and hence a special case of rather limited applica~
bility. For reasons I have discussed elsewhere, I believe it is more
useful (especially in studies of modernization) to approach social change
in complex societies on the basis of considering social structure and
government, or society and the state, as interdependent, but also rela-
tively autonomous spheres of thought and action.2>

The gap created between advanced and follower societies, the

efforts to close it -- together with the more or less ad hoc adoption of

items of modernity, in many instances produce obstacles standing in the

way of successful modernization (in any of its variant modes) 14 Tn his
discussion of the "new states" that have come into being since World War
II, E. A. Shils has characterized these obstacles as a series of internal,
structural gaps:

It is the gap between the few, very rich and the mass of
the poor, between the educated and the uneducated, between
the townsman and the villager, between the cosmopolitan or
national and the local, between the moderm and the tradi-
tional, between the rulers and the ruled.

Though such tensions exist in advanced states as well, they are far more
'

‘new states” of today but also in the follower

societies of the past which can be ranked, albeit roughly, by their rela-

tive degree of backwardness. *° The analogy between backward or "underdeveloped"


social structures then and now should not be pressed too much, since the

Continental countries possessed many cultural and economic attributes that
were relatively more favorable to modermization. But it is also true that
during the 19th century there was a gradient of backwardness within Europe
such that the countries to the East paralleled the gaps found in the “nen
1?

states” of today more clesely than the countries of Western Europe.

The analogies cr paraliels noted here are especially close at the

cultural level. For the gap created between advanced and follower societies
puts a premium on ideas and techniques which the follower society may use
in order to come up from behind, and this places the educated minority of
that society into a position of strategic importance -~- while widening the
always existing gulf that divides the educated from the uneducated. Ina
world marked by gradations of backwardness the comparative study of moderni-
zation must .attend to the "reference society" that becomes the focus of
attention in the follower society, especially for the educated minority
that seeks to utilize advanced ideas and techniques in order to catch up.
Here ore can see at a glance thet ideas about social change focussing on

the internal division of labor necessarily made much of standard social
elesses like workers and capitalists, whereas a focus on the distinction
between advanced and follower societies, and on the communications-effects
of modernizetion, necessarily gives prominence to the role of intellectuals
and of educetion. It is as typical of backward countries to invest heavily
in education in order to bridge the gap, as it is for an intelligentsia to
develop and engage in an intensified search foe @ way out of the backward-
ness of their country.” A typical part of this search consists in the

ambivalent job of preserving or strengthening the indigenous character of


the native culture while attempting the close the gap created by the
advanced development of the reference society or societies. The bifurca- _
: tion of cultural life into westernizers and nativists is, therefore, a
recurrent aspect of follower societies, though the terms of the debate
: change with the reference society taken as a basis of comparison.»”
Modernization, then, is a type of social change since the 18th
century consisting in the economic and political advance of some pioneering

society and subsequent changes in follower societies. At the end of the

19th century, it would have been possible to make this formulation more
specific by referring to England and France as the advanced countries and
all others as follower societies, though even then the statement would

have omitted several other pioneering countries such as Holland, Germany,
and the United States. Since then the process has ramified much further,
because follower societies of the past such as Russia aud China have become
advanced societies teday which are taken as models in turn by the satellite
dependencies of Eastern Europe, for example, or by some African and Asian
secieties that have won their independence since World War If. With regard
to each of the countries that have come to play the role of pioneer with
regard to some follower society, it is appropriate to combine the structural
perspective with the perspective focussing on externally induced changes —

at some earlier time, though with the success of modernization the emphasis

on this second dimension may become less salient than it was before, Put
another way: each follower society -- as long as it remains in that cate-
gory -~ confronts the problen of relating its historically transmitted
structure and its characteristic tensions (including the impulse to modernize)

to the impact of ideas and techniques coming to it from abroad. in the


preceding discussion, I have distinguished four aspects of the precess of

modernization:

a. Reasons of scale suggest that since the 18th century the external
setting of societies, and especially the gap created by the early industriali~
zation of England and the early democratization of France, have imparted to
the degree of backwardness the special significance of an obstacle and a
challenge to modernization.

b. In their endeavor to bridge this gap follower societies typically
search for substitutes to the factors which were conditions of development
in the advanced countries. Within the limitations imposed by nature and
history all espects of moderaity {as developed abroad) are up for adoption
simultaneously, and the problem is which of the adoptable items represents
a shortcut to modernity. Since successful modernization is not assured
until it is achieved, it is part of this process that the adoption of items
of modernity may have effects that militate against modernization, or may
be irrelevant to it.

ec. This common setting of follower societies in turn imparts special
importance to government. Typically, governments attempt to play a major
role in the modernization of the society at the same time that they seek to
overcome the sources of their ow instability which arise from the special
tensions created by backwardness.”

d. The division of the world into advanced and follower sccieties,
together with the relative ease of communication, put a premium on educa~
tion as a means to modernization which is more readily availiable than the

capital required for modern technology. Education and modern communications

also encourage the development of an intelligentsia and a cultural product


which ~~ as Wilhelm Rich] noted already in 1850 -- is in excess of what the

country can use or pay for. This recurrent phenomenon is reflected in a
mushrooming of efforts to overcome the backwardness of the country by
attempts to reconcile the strength evidenced by the advanced society with

the vaiues inherent in native traditions.

Iit. Comparative Aspects of Social Stratification

The purpose of this concluding section is to outline an approach to
social stratification which ts in keeping with the perspective just discussed.
I began with the observation that ideal types which emphasize contrasts or
discontinuities are indispensable, analytic aids, but turn into obstacles
where they are mistaken for generalizations or descriptive accounts. Social
change is a continuous process, however sharp the contrasts between different
social structures if icoked at over a time-span of centuries. This point
bears directly on the study of soctal stratification.

The simplified contrast between medieval and modern society shows us
that the first was ruled by a landowning aristocracy and the second by a
bourgeoisie owning the means of production. If one concefves of the transi-
tion from tradition to modernity as the deciine of one set of attributes and
the rise of another, one gets the simple picture of a declining aristocracy
and a rising bourgeoisie. Possibly Marx has contributed more than anyone
else to this conception. His interpretation of the bourgeoisie es the
collective, historical agent which created the revolutionizing effects of
modern industry has produced a tendency to read a rising bourgeoisie back
into. the last 1,000 years of European history.” The broad effect of this

tendency has been to make the merchants of pre-18th century Europe into direct


precursors of 19th century industrial entrepreneurs ~~ without benefit of

evidence, to fasten upon them a corresponding degree of striving and secial
protest when in fact they fit quite weil into the social structure of
feudal Europe, and hence to antedate the decline of the aristocracy by
some centuries in order to provide room for the rising bourgeoisie. -~

But the evidence concerning changes of social stratification in the course
of industrialization does not present the simple picture of a declining
aristocracy and a rising bourgeoisie. In most European countries there

is evidence rather of the continued social and political pre-eminence of
preindustrial ruling groups even when their economic fortunes declined,

as well as of the continued, subordinate social and political role of the
middle classes even when their economic fortunes rose. In Europe this
pattern applies rather generally te the period of transition to an indus-
trial society. Here is how Joseph Schumpeter puts the case with reference
to England, while pointing out that in modified form the same applies
elsewhere:

The aristocratic element continued to rule the roost ripht

to the end of the period of intact and vital capitalism.
No doubt that element -~- though nowhere so effectively as
in England ~- currently absorbed the Sistine from other
strata that drifted into politics; it made itseif the
representative of bourgeois interests and fought .the.
battles of the bourgeoisie; it had 6° surrender its last
legal privileges; but with these qualifications, and for
ends no longer its own, it contisieed to man the political

engine, to manage the state, to govern, The economicaily


operative part of the bourgeois strata did not offer

much opposition to this. On the whole, that kind of
division of labor suited them and they liked it. Where
they did revolt against it, or where they got into the
political saddle without having to revolt, they did not
make a conspicuous success of ruling and did not prove
able to hoid their own. 29
Schumpeter weakens his case by attributing to avi ihecvate a born capacity,
and to eapitalists an occupational incapacity, to rule, but, his general
thesis is more valid than this quasi~psychological explanation.

It is beyond dispute that in the modernization of Europe aristocracies
retained political dominance long after the economic foundations cf their
high status had been impaired end after alternative and more productive
economic pursuits had brought bourgeois strata to social and economic
prominence. The capacity to rule obviously varied among the various aristo~
cracies, as did the degree to which other strata of the population tended
te accept their own subordinate position. In Europe, these legacies were
ereded eventually, but only after the transition to an industrial society
was affected by the general pattern te which Schumpete refers. This pattern
of a continued political dominance by traditional ruling groups even under
conditions of rapid modernization reflects an earlier condition of the social
structure, when families of high social and economic status had privileged
access to official positions while ail those below the line of gentility
were excluded. Premodern Evropean societies were characterized by a vast

number of status-differences and clashes of interest of ail kinds, but by

only “one body of persons capable of concerted action over the whole area


of society." Theat is, a tiny, possessing minority of the well~born was

capable of concerted action and hence constituted @ class, while the whole
mass of unorganized and, under these conditions, unorganizable persons
were set apart by their common lack of access to positions of privilege.-“
Accordingly, European societies conformed at one time to a pattern in which
class and authority. were more or less synonymous terms, but this identity
diminished very gradually in the course of modernizaticn and was replaced
eventually by the principle of separation between office and family status
and hence by a widening access to public euploynent..7”

As a result of these developments, we do not consider government
employment a basis, or an index, of social stratification. Typically, our
impulse is to approach government employment (even in high positions) as
a dependent variable, for example when we examine the distribution of public
officials by social origin. Yet this perspective presupposes the separation
of government office from the claims a family cen make by virtue of its
social status and economic position. These assumptions were less applicable
in an earlier phase of European societies, and today they are less appli-
cable in the follower societies that are economically backward. These |
governments play, or attempt to play, a major role in the process of moder-
nization, as we have seen. Under these conditions government employment
provides one of the major bases of social mobility, economic security, and
relative well-being. In econemically backward countries the government is
in fact one of the major economic enterprises. Hence, government officiais

partake of the prestige cf ruling, even if their pesitions are humble, and

-- in view of the power at the disposal of government -~ beth access to

government office and influence upon the exercise of authority are major


points of contention ~~ in the personalized sense characteristic of societies

in which interaction is kinship-oriented.7° While this importance of govern-
ment employment is associated with economic backwardness and the weakness

of middle strata in the occupational hierarchy, it can also divert resources
from uses which might overcome these conditions. The paradox of this situa-
tion is that in the absence of viable economic alternatives government
employment itself becomes a major basis of social stratification.~!

Having considered ruling strata in the light of the preceding discus~
sion, I turn secondly to a brief analysis of education and intellectuals.
Both are dimensions of social stratification, properly considered. In the
case of England, for example, education had been a privilege associated with F
high status until in the course of religious controversies several sectarian
groups instituted private schcol systems so as to preserve the integrity of
their beliefs. The idea of making education available beyond these narrow
circles immediately raised the question of danger to the social order because
workers and peasants would learn to read and write. This apprehension is
quite understandable when one considers that the basic dividing line between

those who officially ranked as gentlemen and the vest majority.of the people
was identical with the division between the literate and the illiterate.

Still, the social mobilization of the population due to commerce and industry
undermined the old hierarchy of ranks and posed the problem of ensuring that
the people would retain their old regard for rank, and this led to the gradual
spread of education, initially with a strong emphasis on religion. The ambi~
valence accompanying this spread of education _ not unlike the paraliel
problem of military conscription: both were corollaries of democratization

and as such gave rise to unexplored political problems with regard to people

\


hood
tons
7

who could read and -~ in times of emergency ~~ had guns.-° These issues
are transformed in follower societies which seek to achieve the benefits
of an industrial society, but, if possible, by a speedier and iess costly
transition than occurred in England. In these societies popular education
appears to provide a shortcut to industrialization since by this means the
skill level of the population is raised. At the same time those who are
highly educated can increase the country's capacity of learning advanced
techniques from abroad. Under these conditions governments in follower

societies usually push education, even though in so doing they also jeopar-

Ss oe ie tom | Seana gems st wo

dize their own political stability. They may attempt to avert such dangers
through restrictions of the franchise, censorship control of associations,

etc. Perhaps one can differentiate between follower societies of the 19th

and the 20th centuries in terms of the degrees and types of control over

a mobilized population.

Such contrasts in the role of education are paralleled by contrasts
in the role of intellectuals. Many educated persons engage in intellectual
pursuits from time to time, but the term "intellectuals" is usually (if
vaguely) restricted to those persons who engage in such pursuits on a fuil~
time basis and as free professionals rather than hired hands." Intellec-
tual pursuits occur in all complex societies, but intellectuals as a
distinct social group emerged as a concomitant of industrialization. In
Western Europe men of letters underwent a process of emancipation from
their previous subservience to the Church and to private patrons, because
industrialization created @ mass public and a market for intellectual
preducts. The whole process ves one of great complexity, but it can be

simplified for present purposes. Intellectuals tended to respond to their

emancipation by a new, cultural elitism, and to the new mass~public by

ae which vacillated between a populist identification with the
people and a strong apprehension concerning the threat of mass-culture
to humanistic values, >2 None of these responses was quite congruent with
the materialism of the advanced industrial societies. The intellectual's
experience of social and moral isolation should, therefore, be considered
a concomitant of modernization. Perhaps its most striking feature is
that the great economic and political successes of advanced European
societies during the 19th century re-enforced, rather than assuaged, that
estrangement because intellectuals took no direct part in that success,
or were excoriated if they ata.>t
The response of intellectuals briefly sketched here was largely
internal to the mest advanced societies of Europe. At the same time, the
breakthrough achieved by the industrial and political revolutions of
England and France made other countries into follower societies. The
economic advance of England and the events of the French revolution were
witnessed from afar by men to whom the backwardness and autocracy of their
own country appeared still more backward and autocratic by comparison.
Under these conditions cultural life tends to become polarized between those
who would see their country progress by imitating the more advanced countries,
and those who denounce that advance as alien and evil and emphasize instead
the wellsprings of strength existing among their own people and in their
native culture. This reaction was typified by the Westernizers and Slavophilis
of Tsarist Russia, but the general pattern has occurred again and again.

Since-then it has been a mainspring of nationalism and of movements for

national independence. In this setting intellectuals do not remain estranged

ft
oO
o

witnesses of a development carried forward by others; they tend to turn

into leaders of the drive towards modernization.--

IV. Concluding Comment

In this paper I have attempted to restructure the evidence of
modernization which is familiar to all students of the subject. My
intention was to provide a framework of interpretation; much work remains
to be done. The argument in favor of this framework is, I believe, that

it admits of a more comprehensive account of the facts than the available

alternatives.

Footnotes

1. See Robert A. Nisbet, Emile Durkheim (Englewood Cliffs:

Prentice-Hali, 1965), p. 20.
2. Ibid., p. 21n.

3. Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences (Glencoe:

The Free Press, 1949), pp. 102-103.

4. Carlo Cipolla, Guns and Sails in the Early Phase of European.

Expansion, 1400-1700 (London: Collins, 1965), passim.

5. The terms of that division do not stay put. Before the 18th
century England was a follower society while Holland and Sweden were
advanced, especially in the production of cannons. Cf. Cipolia, op. cit.,
pp. 36-37, 52-53, 87m. In the 20th century the Russian revolution, the
Fascist regimes, and the Chinese revolution have added their own special
modifications of this distinction as an aspect of modernization. ~ The
distinction between advanced and follower society is used in the text
as a shorthand description of collective awareness. Englishmen in the
19th century considered themselves advanced, while Germans or Russians
sought to emulate then.

6. For the link between the theological conception of emanationisnm
with theories of social evolution and functionalism Cf.,., in addition to

the work of Arthur Lovejoy, Karl Loewith, Meaning in History (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1949), and Kenneth Bock, "Theories of Progress

and Evolution,” in Werner J. Cahnmann and Alvin Boskoff, eds., Sociology

and History (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1964), pp. 21-41.

7. Recent writings make clear that the earlier identification of

“tradition as an obstacle per se is much too simple. Cf. Ralph Braibanti

and Joseph Spengler, eds., Tradition, Values and Secio-Economic Development


(Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), passim.

8. An early formulation of this emphasis on internal structure
and external setting is found in Otto Hintze, "Staatenbildung und Verfas~

sungsentwicklung," Staat and Verfassung (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck &

Ruprecht, 1962), pp. 34-51. This article was published in 1902.

9. Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical

Perspective (New York: Frederick A, Praeger, 1965), p. 46.

10. Cf. the analysis of this complex of ideas in the work of
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716), particularly with regard: to 7 !
the modernization of Russia by Peter the Great, in Dieter Groh, Russland ~ |

und das Selbstverstaendnis Europas (Neuwied: H. Luchterhand Verlag, i

1961), pp. 32-43.

ll. David Landes, “Technological Change and Development in Western

Europe, 1750-1914," in H, J. Habbakuk and M. Postan, eds., The Cambridge

Economic History of Europe, Vol. VI, the Industrial Revolution and After
(Cambridge: At the University Press, 1965), I, p. 366.
12. Cf., for example, the frequency with which political unity

appears as an index of modernity in the several lists of attributes

| e
_ presented in Marius Jansen, ed., Changing Japanese Attitudes Towards ‘
Modernization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 18- .
19, 20-24, and passin. |

13. Cf, Reinhard Bendix, Nation-Building and Citizenship (New York:

“John Wiley & Sons, 1964), pp. 15-29.
14, On the ad hoe diffusion of items of modernity ef; the illuminating

discussion by Theodore H. van Laue, “Imperial Russia at the Turn of the

Century," Comparative Studies in Society and History, ITI (1961), pp. 353-367

and Mary C. Wright, "Revolution from Without?", Comparative Studies in

Society and History, IV (1962), pp. 247-252.

15. E. A. Shils, "Political Development in the New States,"

Comparative Studies in Society and History, II (April, 1960), p. 281.
16. Gerschenkron, op. cit., pp. 41-44.
17. Cf. Landes, op. cit., pp. 354-358.
18. Cf. the succinct overview of the intelligentsia by Hugh

Seton-Watson, Neither War Nor Peace (New York: Frederick Praeger, 1960),

pp. 164-187. See also Bendix, op. cit., pp. 231 ff.
i9, The most sensitively probing analysis of this bifurcation I
have found in the literature is the study by Joseph Levenson, Modern

China and its Confucian Past (Garden City: Anchor Books, Doubleday &

Co., 1964), passin.
20. Cf, the analysis of these tensions by Shils, op. cit.
21. For a vigorous critique of this tendency cf. J. H. Hexter,

Reappraisais in History (New York: Uarper Torchbooks, Harper & Row, -

1963), passim. Note also the cautionary comments regarding the problem
of historical continuity in Gerschenkron, op. cit., pp. 37-39.
22. For a more balanced assessment of the European bourgeoisie

cf, Otto Brunner, Neue Wege der Sozialgeschichte (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck

& Ruprecht, 1956), pp. 80-115.

23. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy

(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947), pp. 136-137. See also pp. 12-13

for a more generalized statement.

24, Cf, Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost (London: Methuen

& Co., 1965), p. 22 and passin.


EB 25. lt is, therefore, an historical anachronism to take the diffi-
culty of defining the meaning of social class in a modern, industrial
) society as a reason for identifying class with authority, as Ralf

Dahrendorf has done in Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society

(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 19 )pp.
26. Cf. Clifford Geertz, "The Integrative Revolution,” in

Geertz, ed., Old Societies and New States (Giencce: The Free Press,

ae ee OTN PO Pt or POR | Hye OER Ear Ene ©

1963), pp. 105 ff. Cf. my article "Bureaucracy" in the forthcoming

ieee ees a

edition of the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.

27. As Morroe Berger has noted with regard to Egypt, for example,

“the middle class has been weak in numbers and influence, and civil

cts ee gt Se ae a”

servants have comprised a large proportion of iz." See his Bureaucracy

£ eres

and Society in Modern Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1957), p. 46. |

28. In these respects there are of course striking differences

between France and England which can be considered symptomatic of the

oe hepa eae ee EE eee wee

radical and the conservative approach to education and conscription. For

a comparative treatment of these issues cf. Ernest Barker, The Development

er on ane

of Public Services in Western Europe (New York: Oxford University Press,

aw omcet ee

1944), chs. 2 and 5. | |
29, The circularity of this statement is unavoidable. Ina general

sense pursuits engaging the intellect refer to the creation and maintenance

creation, maintenance, transmission) is the subject of constant debate, and

|
|
|
(transmission) of cultural values, but each of these terms {cultural values, |
that debate itself is an important intellectual pursuit. Since this debate

involves pejorative as well as appreciative use of these terms, and by that

Do G0 0 ete ee tate He 009 ARO IS  PEONUIREPON 08g Oe ee tH


token the endeavor of speakers to "belong" to the positive side of the

cultural process (in however marginal a fashion), no one set of defining
terms will be wholly satisfactory. In view of this difficulty the most
reasonable alternative is to set up a typology of intellectual pursuits

and leave the group of persons called "intellectuals" undefined. For

one such attempt cf. Theodor Geiger, Aufgaben und Stellung der intelligeng
in der Geselischaft (stuttgart: “Ferdinand Enke Verlag, 1949), pp. i-24,
81-101. |

30. Cf. the case study of this process in England by Leo Lowenthal
and Marjorie Fiske, "The Debate over Art and Popular Culture,” in Mirra

Komarovsky, ed., Common Frontiers of the Social Sciences (Glencoe: The

Free Press, 1957), pp. 33-112.
31. I avoid the term "alienaticn" because misuse has made it

worthless. For a scholarly treatment of this intellectual response to

“bourgeois society" in 19th century Europe cf. Kari Loewith, From Hegel

to Nietzsche (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964), passim. Cf.

also the analysis of the social distance between "intellectuals" and
"practical men" in Schumpeter, op. cit., pp. 145-155 as well as rhe
unusual acceptance of that distance by at least one great artist, Willian
Faulkner,who speaks of writers "steadily occupied by trying to do the
impossible" while keeping “out of the way ef the practical and busy people
who carry the burden of America." See Faulkner's speech on the occasion

of receiving the National Book Award in The New York Times EBook Review

(February 6, 1955), p. 2.
32, See E. A. Shils, “Intellectuals, Public Opinion and Economic

Development," World Politics, Vol. 10 (1958), pp. 232-255.


- mee : * C arwha i
Bendix, "Towards a Definition of Modernization"

boa =

Peds

So; 6,:<

lines 9 and 10. The use of terms like "nonmodern" and "modern" seem to
contradict what is made clear in later vages, namely, that you are interested
in using the term "modern" to signify a "type of social change" as discussed
on vages 8-10, All that I am suggesting here is that the reader could easily
be misled here by the use of "modern and "progress" on page one. In your
attemnt to introduce the reader to what follows, you could easily mislead

him about the central notion of the paper. I guess I am bothered by the term
"modernization" because it seems to connote value considerations that are not
intended in your discussion, Why not talk about complex social changes as
contrasted with the kind of change described by H.G, Barnett in his Innovation?
The particular forms of change you discuss seem quite clear, as do the im-
lications for any understanding of social organization, but I feel you will

not smEax separate your position from that of people like Lerner if you use
Similar terms,

Lom
ow

I like the discussion on this page (lines 1-22), but what I am bothered by
continually is: How do sociologists decide that they have presented the

reader with "adequate descriptions?" It is here that I feel we are most
xguxnax ignorant of the importance of language and animal studies as crucial
indications of the kinds of conmlex problems we haven't evan faced in
sociology. The literature on economic development and social change is
especially vague, in my opinion, on what constitutes an adequate description.
The use of demographic data and survey materials obfuscates the problem, while
the users continually say that they are the "best" indicators available, I
would argue that the indicators everyone uses (after, occasionally, a few
apologies) enables us¢-~es continually, make the kind of mistake you refer to

as "mistaking ideal tynes for accurage descrintions," I feel that the in-
dicators are anything but accurate descrintions, but more like ecological
correlations, I am tired of the argument that "it is best the we can do for
now." J think most people who use any indicator they gan get their hands on
are lazy or ignorant of what else they could do. |

I like the argument here, as well as the following pages (7 and 8). I think
the argument could be made stronger by trying to pinnoint how selection of
historical materials, like the selection of demographic data or survey items
that "scale," enable the researcher to fall into the ideal type fallacy you
mention above, and which is extended to the deterministic view you discuss
in the Kerr et al volume, I think we are back to the problem of adequate
description, but in a more involved way. Jif the theory is sufficiently
abstract, the data selected accordingly, then I think it is difficult to get
out of an ideal tyne fallacy. The vroblem of deciding how "we know what we
know" begins with an attempt to objectify our observations or the inferences
we make about data assembled by others, or utterances made by others, The
problem seems to be mentioned briefly (p. 12?) of the Nation-Building book,
but not discussed thereafter, I think you hit the problem indirectly on p. 7
when you mention (line 8) kinship ties and the rise of individualism (line 9)
and then note on lines 10-12 that there are"many meanings arid exceptions"
that were "compatible with this overall tendency," but "ignored when we con-
struct an ideal typical sequence." Can we generalize about kinship and
individualism cross-culturally so that "adequate" descriptions of their

form and influence are easily identifiable? I think Neil Smelser's present
study of kinshin and economic development assumes that we know enough to use
labor force data and khmship organization as adequate for making use of
kinshin as the crucial independent variable in exnlaining develonment. I
would not go along with this, I do not think the anthrorologists have been

able to tell us that much about kinship as it in fact is socially organized
in day-to-day tribal life or village life, but have given us too many ideal

type constructions,


Bendix, "fowards a Definition of Modernization" - 2

s, 10

Pe 3

PerBbps you regard it as trivial, but I find your discussion of the develop-
ment of "the means of communication" (bobtom of page) to be too general in

that you begin citing some presumed facts (I have no Yidea of how one
documents the variety of countries involved), and the reader must assume

that the figures mean a great deal. The consequences of having radios is

not clear. You have a disclatmer on page 11 (the footmote after the Schramm |
footnote), but I think the figures seem to imply precisely what you want to
disclaim,y Let me shift my rambling slightly, The structural discussion of
modernization and modernity (np. 11-12) you present argues at the same level
of abstraction as those you criticize, but it seems to me that the grounds

for your criticism require that you somehow articulate the structural with
day-to-day processes that will avoid the ideal type-ecological fallacy. The
internal differentiation of social structure you mention is not adequately
represented by gross indicators because such indicators do not restrict the
frame of possibilities sufficiently. Instead, the indicators allow--invite--
fox a variety of alternative exnlanations,after the fact, because the level

of abstraction nermits such vagueness, How this can be altered required the
use of data at the level of day-to-day process that can be articulated with
the abstractions we (often loosely) label structure, What you call the
"traditional vosture of sociological theory"(p. 12, last para) tends to be

a kind of elegant rhetoric that has little or nothing to do with our ability
to step outside the ideal-type-ecological correlation fallacy, Writers like
Lerner think they have Wawe gome beyond the ideal type problem by invoking
"hard data," but the use of such "data" occurs within the same kind of logical
fallacy. An attempt to do commarative research that does not attemnt to
impose a kind of western or American sociological pvosture by fiat upon the
develoniwent of other countries, requires understanding a given society from
"within" before seeking to commare standardized categories wholesale. The
contrast here is between the anthronologist who sees everything from the
nersnective of "his" village and refuses to generalize, and the sociologist why
assumes or susnends the mxeitvexf relevance of the "view from within" when he |
hapoily cross-tabulates ad hoc categories from several countries,

The general argument about"internal differentiation and and external setting"
as opposed to the view that sees societies as closed systems reminds me of
some.discussions we had a few years ago when you were concerned that my
methods book was too far removed from "substantive sociology." It seems to
me that you have been arguing in this paper that manywriters have tendedto
elose their substantive arguments prematurely before broadening their
theoretical horizons, My concern with "how we know what we know" in sociology
stems from the feeling that our substantive concerns ignore (as irrelevant)
the ways in which we achieve solutions to the problem of verification, The
(for me erroneous) assumtion is that when we use terms like "industrialization
or "kinship" or "communication," "for the governments of Europe 'industriali-
zation was, from the start, a volitical imnerative," and the like, that we
"know" the referents clearly, can document them empirically (or need not),
and that the chief task that lies before us is to concoct a theory that is
sensible and can "explain" how everything hangs together. When you say

(no, 15, lines 7-9 fromthe bottom) "But these allowances do not negate the
generalization that governments vlay a larger role in the modemization of
relatively backward than of relatively advanced societies" I am concerned
with how the notion of "governments" is intended, I obviously think I "know
what you intend; at the same time I think our ability to conceptualize and
pla what we mean by such terms is inadequate to avoidd the ideal-tyne
fallacy.


Bendix, "Towards a Definition of Modernization" - 3

p. 16 - Lines 1-5 imly that we can identify those elements (versons as tynes?) in
governments that generate activities we label "functional equivalents" or
"substitutes" for the "elements of modernity" found in "advanced societies."
Your nice argument on the same page about "formal government and its actions
/as/ epiphenomena" as onposed to being "an integral nart of the social

structures" is a related voint., While political scientists like Weiner, Apter,
and Pye are concerned with the day-to-day workings of governments, the
articulation of their findings with the broader abstractions of "modernization"
remains obscure because their use of social structure is truncated and not
open. Social structure becomes epiphenoymena,

vo. 17 - Distinguishing between modernization and modernity assumes that"ad hoc
adontion of items of modernity" can be dicumentéd at both the level of the
social organization of daily activities and at the level of abstract theori-
zing. My feeling that work on social change and economic develonment or
comparative social structure skim over such vroblems and remain in the ideal-
type-ecological correlation fathlacy.

pd. 18 - Last three lines and top of p. 19, The notion of "reference society" seems
to be a case of over-abstraction of the tyne I have been alluding to all along.
How one svecifies groups or individual actors, their socially organized
activities, continues to be a mystery to me, I am not saying that you must
svell out such details in this paver, I am saying, however, that the few
works I am familiar with (and those you cite) seldom do more thahy use such
notions in unsnecified ideal tyne ways. To mention the difference between
workers and capitalists”as onnosed to“advanced and follower societies’or the
“role of intellectuals and of education,’ seems to invite overly abstract
theory and data, and the ideal-tyne fallacy.

al

Dp. 20 - Lines 5-9 from the bottom. (",..its characteristic tensions (including the
impulse to modernize) to the impact of ideas and techniques...) To me such
statements presuppose a theory of social organization at the level of daily
activities that is not elaborated in works on modernization or economic
development, and the like. I feel that the writer is presupvosing an awful
lot, especially when the causal elements of his analysis is often buried in
assumptions about change and daily routines in everyday activities, I am not
trying to "reduce" everything to social interaction, but asking what is it
about social interaction that we presuppose on an ad hoc basis for making our
structural theories "wrk," How can we use information at the level of daily
activities for demonstrating the re@evance of structural generalizations?

I have rambled enough, My remarks tend to be rather general, but I think I can defend
with considerable detail, I am esnecially interested in arguing the importance of
language xm when we seek to make inferences from conversations on the one hand, and
documents of various,kinds, on the other hand. To me a theory of social organization
can be found in how,understand the ways in which conversations and douuments are
produced within different societies, and how they are interpreted by members of the

society, and become binding or not on their subsequent actions. More when we get
todgether,


Ili. Comparative aspects £ of stratification.

The purpose of this concluding section is to outline an approach
to social stratification which is in keeping with the perspectives
$keve-s¥e-
discussed above. S#nee-the-nest-fundenentat It-apsearvs-that/twe- we
views-e£-nedornisation-axe-diametiera--
Two, incompatible views of modernization have been put forward. The first,
in the course of social change societiss
gkierxanit evolutionist view holds thaty +n-tkhe-pkhrsesminfs-of-kert-
undergo a process of internatx differentiation such earlier, traditional
Mevx;s the-eountry-theat-ts-meve-devetosed-tndustriaity-enty-shors;—-ee
economic and social structures are replaced by later, modern ones
the~bess-develoseds-the-tmase-of-tts-onn-futuves+-
------ (Kkavk-Hawx;-Septter- (New-York +-Fhe-Hodern-bibrerys -£936}5-pr-b34}-
The second, comparativist view holds that the industrial revolution in
England and the political revolution in France, at the end of the
18th century, represent "breakthroughs" because of the magnitude of
the changes then initiated, so that ever since other societies have had
to be (at.one time or another) follower societies seekming to bridge
Pe For reasons indicated earlier
‘ the "gap" jcreated by the advanced countries. i-have-trvied-to-make-etear
. : in
_MkX The second perspective appears to me more useful fer the comparative
study of modernization, but this is not deny the relative utility of
the evolutionary perspective akmm. For the distinction between "advanced"
and "follower" societies already implies that we will put more emphasis
upon intrinsic changes in our study of the first type and mmz more

}/ emphasis upon the interrelations between intrinsic and extrinsic changes

} in studies of the second.
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Definition. . Reinhard Bendix

1.

26

30

Since modernization as a type of social change is te be defined, it is
appropriate to specify the most general meaning of social change here
considered.

The traditional posture of sociological theory - going back to influences
emanating from Plate and the traditions of Western philcsophy as traced
by Arthur Lovejoy in The Great Chain of Being ~ is to consider change

as intrinsic to the society changing. The idee of slow, gradual,
continuous and intrinsic change is characteristic of evolutionism and
functionalism.

Against this position social change is here conceived as always con~-
sisting of intrinsic and extrinsic changes. Every social structure
is characterized by internel differentiation and an external setting,
although the relevance of the latter for an understanding of social

change varies.

Modernization is a type of social change originating in the industrial
revolution in England, 1760-1820, and the political revolution in France,
1789-i79s. ‘These transformations of European society have had vorld-
wide repercussions ever since. They are separated from earlier or
other economic and political changes and considerad in a class by
themselves for reasons of gtale. Hever before has man’s productive
potential increased so quickly over so short a period of time (cf.
Cipolia), nor hed there been a previous period of such "fundemental
dencoratization” of political life (Mannheim), nor had there previously
been & developacent of coumunicaticons technology which was comparable

ia reducing the speed of transmitting ideas and hence inereasing the
distances over which communication has beceme effective.

Modernisation, then, is a type of social change consisting of the

econemic and political “advance” by some pioneering scciety and subsequent
social changes in follower sceieties confronted with the political
probiem of reconciling their historically transmitted internal tensions
under the impact of ideas end techniques coming to them from abroad.

A typical part cf this problem consists in the ambivalent job of
preserving or strengthening the indigenous character of the culture

while attempting te close the gap created by the advanced development of
the “reference society or societies.“


Definki tiong. S eee Pal, ts Oa

1.

V
Since modernization as a type of social change is to be £& defined,

it is appropriate to specify the most general meaning of social
change here considered.

The traditional posture of sociological theory - going back to
influences emanating from Plato and the traditions of Western philosophy
as traced by Arthur Lovejoy in The Great Chain of Being - is to

consider change as intrinsic to the society changing. The idea of

Slow, gradual, continuous and intrinsic change is characteristic

of evolutionism and functionalisn.

Against this position social change is here conceived as always con-
Sisting of intrinsic and extrinsic changes. Hvery social structure

is characterized by internal differentiation and an external setting,
although the relevance of the latter for an understanding of social change
varies.

Modernization is a type of social change originating in the industrial
revolution in England el760-1820, and the political revolution in
France, 1789-1794. Ths transformations of European society have had
world-wide repercussions ever since. They are separated from earlier
or otherfe economic and BEpolitical changes and considered in a class
by themselves kemausz for reasons of scale. Never before has man's
productive potential increased so quickly over so short a period of
time (cf. Cipolla), nor had there been a previous period of such
"fundamental democratization" of political life (Mannheim), *

Mautexruzxa Modernization, then, is a type of social change consisting

of the economic and political "advance" by some pioneering society and
subsequent social changes in Yukkuwingxsarkekies follower societies
confronted with the pukxke political problem of reconciling their
historically transmitted intermal tensions wkkm under the impact of
ideas and techniques coming to them from abroad. A typical part of this
problem consists in the ambivalent job of preserving or strengthening
the indigenous character of the culture while attempting to close the
gap created by the advanced development of the "reference society or

gee societies."

nor® had there previously been mmwek a development of communications

technology Which mede-pessi5t+e-t4 8s -antencous-svansmissien-ef-tdess-—
&eress was comparable in reducing the speed of transmitting ideas

and hence increasing the distancesayzr over which communication has

become effective.


aes CUUa ting

Modernization is a type of social change initi&ted by the industrial
revolution in England, 1760-1820, and consisting of subsequent social
changes in follower societies wereh awe confronted with the political
task offmanipulatin their internal tensions unddér the impact ofa ~—
ideas and techniques coming to them from abroad. fynikeaxk A typical
part of that task consists in the ambivalent job of preserving or
Strenkkethening the ghararker indigenous character of the culture while
attempting to "close the gap" created by the advanced development

of the "reference society (7),"