Modernisation Imperative: (Societas)

This book argues that contemporary society in Western democracies is generally misunderstood to be a pyramidal hierarchy dominated either by government or the economy. Neither view is correct. We live in a fundamentally pluralistic society divided into numerous 'modular' social systems each performing different functions; these include politics, public administration, the armed forces, law, economics, religion, education, health and the mass media. Because each is specialized, none of these systems are dominant and there is no overall hierarchy of power. Modernizing societies are therefore structured more like a mosaic than a pyramid. Modernization is the tendency for growth in the adaptive complexity and efficiency of the social systems. Growth in complexity is shaped by selection processes which maintain the functionality of social systems. The best examples are the market economy, science and democratic politics. The process of modernization is both inevitable and, on the whole, desirable: this constitutes the modernization imperative. Therefore, the proper question should not be whether society should modernize, but how.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Chapter 1: Defining Modernization Modern societies Modernization and complexity Social cohesion Economism 'Scissors, rock, paper' interdependency The inevitability of modernization Politicians and modernization The desirability of modernization The ethos of modernization Chapter 2: Education and Modernization Economic drives towards educational expansion Political drives towards educational expansion Education in flexible abstraction Education and social progress Chapter 3: Politics and Modernization Modernization and democracy Moral modularity Morality and democracy The priority of process Single issue politics and morality Chapter 4: Opposition to Modernization High status intellectuals and modernization Environmentalism against modernization Optimism versus pessimism Modernization and alienation Modernizing alienation Chapter 5: The Future of Modernization Appendix: Systems Theory Where do systems come from? System boundaries Humans as communication units Advantages of complexity Selection and functionality System 'languages' The power of cognitive specialization Rationality and selection The modernization imperative Bibliography

About the Author :
Modernisation gets a bad press in the UK, and is blamed for increasing materialism, moral fragmentation, the dumbing-down of public life, declining educational standards, occupational insecurity and rampant managerialism. But modernisation is preferable to the likely alternative of lapsing back towards a 'medieval' world of static, hierarchical and coercive societies -- the many and serious criticisms of modernisation should be seen as specific problems relating to a process that is broadly beneficial for most of the people, most of the time. This book explains the importance of modernisation to all societies and analyses anti-modernisation in the UK.

Review :
"This book presents a powerful and new analysis of how modernisation alters society, why it is both inevitable and desirable -- and why we need to understand it properly. The authors are not fooled, like many academics, by golden-age nostalgia." -- Matt Ridley, author Nature via Nurture, Genome, Origins of Virtue and The Red Queen "An excellent statement of our conditions, full of insights and clarifying connections." -- Martin Trow, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley "Charlton's and Andras' thesis is itself a prescriptive method of analysis which provides instructions not on whether to 'modernise', but how." -- Nathalie Rothschild Culture Wars