Beyond Tradition and Modernity in Madras

Abstract

The study of the modernization of non-Western cultures has been dominated by the metaphor of the ‘take-off’ introduced by the economists and by the assumption of incompatibility between ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ cultures. These interpretations of modernization are shared by both those who view it as a process of diffusing Western culture and by those who view it as an internal process of development which may require an external stimulus to ‘trigger’ the ‘take-off’. On either view, modernization becomes a problem of suddenly transforming a ‘traditional’typeof culture, society, and personality into a ‘modern’type. This view of modernization is supported, and perhaps suggested, by the classical nineteenth-and early twentieth-century social science theory of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ societies as opposed types, a theory associated with the names of Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Maine, and Tönnies, among others.