Modernization Theory

Abstract

Modernization theory (MT) developed in the context of de‐colonization and Cold War in which there were threats to the economic‐geopolitical security of the US from a poverty‐stricken Global South attracted to communism. Out of the consequent need to promote socioeconomic development in the Global South, MT emerged as an intellectual project in which many disciplines, including geography, participated. It elaborates the differences between “traditional” and “modern” societies and explains these basically by the absence of modern sociocultural values. MT has numerous problems, including its ethnocentrism and stagist thinking and its neglect of the materiality of culture and of imperialism. MT has lost some of its original popularity but continues to inform development thinking and practice. However, whether it is the traditional version of MT or any of its modern refinements or indeed the postmodernist ideas appearing to be critical of MT as a Western grand theory, the point common to all is that they fail to mount a fundamental intellectual‐political challenge to the dominance of the capitalist and imperialist economic system.