Dizon, Kurt Zeus L. January 29, 2016Pol Sci 504: Politics of Modernization

David Lerner’s Modernization Theory

Daniel Lerner was an American scholar and writer known for his studies on modernization theory. Lerner's study played a critical role in shaping American ideas about the use of mass media and US cultural products to promote economic and social development in post-colonial nations. Lerner's book “The Passing of Traditional Society” is a great deal of attention has been given to communication as an instrument to accelerate development.

The Passing of Traditional Society

“The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East” was among the first book-length publications to set out psychosocial theory of modernization.

The book was based on research that the U.S. State Department funded in the late 1940s.

The original purpose of the research was to determine whether people in the Middle East were listening to Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts and, if so, to ascertain their reactions to the programming.

In the mid-1950s, Lerner reanalyzed the data in light of a new conceptualization revolving around the notion that Western values and ideas disseminated by Western mass media could help transform countries of the Middle East from traditional and primitive nations into countries with modern forms of social, economic, and political organization.

The book was a study based on roughly three hundred surveys conducted in each of six countries—Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Syria—in 1950 and 1951.

Respondents answered 117 questions about their living conditions, their opinions on politics and foreign countries, their use of mass media, their level of happiness, and their basic demographic characteristics. Based on a final total of about 1,600 respondents across all countries, Lerner statistically extracted three types or categories of people and nations—the traditional, the transitional, and the modern.

1. The Village Chief and the Grocer

In the first part of his book, he introduced the Chief of Balgat, (Balgat –village in Turkey) a man steeped in traditional values that were depicted as outdated and out of step with the modern world. Lerner presented the Chief as hopelessly parochial, judging all issues and events from the perspective of his “traditional virtues” and possessing old-fashioned wisdom about “wives and cows.” The Chief had no desire to leave his village and only wanted his sons to be good soldiers and his daughters to

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marry well. The Chief had the only radio in the village, and he carefully monitored and controlled the use of this “Devil’s Box.” Although he invited village elites to his home to listen to the news from Ankara, he alone interpreted its meaning and significance for the gathered crowd

The grocer, on the other hand, was brimming with opinions, particularly regarding other people's business. Moreover, the interviewer learned that villagers sought out the grocer's opinions on such issues as what movies to watch when they visited Ankara. The chief and the shepherd, at opposite ends of the social spectrum, were pious, contented, and cautious; the grocer, a marginal figure, was skeptical, self-conscious, and with an eye for the main chance.

Transitional Personality

Lerner's theme is the psychology of the "transitional personality," the grocers whose restlessness would unsettle established orders and lifeways, hastening the advent of modernity.When Lerner first visited Balgat in 1954 he found the village transformed. A new road and bus line, as well as municipal water and electricity, made it a suburb of the capital. The chief's sons were now grocers and the original grocer was dead but remembered as a prophet.

What is modern?

Lerner’s modernization theory was clear in its position that any nation could be modern. No nation was destined to be traditional and backward.

To be modern, a nation’s citizens had only to emulate the actions and ideas of people in the Western nations that had earlier moved away from tradition bound backwardness and into the modern world. People (and nations) unwilling or unable to accept Western norms and adapt to the “new ways” of the modern West were not deemed naturally or genetically incapable of change but thought to be unsteadily by backwardness characterized by traditional cultural practices.

Lerner’s Modernization Theory

He argues that the Western modernization process is the basic model that any society might follow in order to achieve modernization.

Western society still provides the most developed model of societal attributes (power, wealth, skill, rationality). The notion of mobility is central to Western modernization. (Industrial revolution: large numbers of people have shifted from rural to urban areas)

He further argues that "it is modernization, not capitalism that accounts for the basic shape of social mobility in Western societies. "Regarding such massive movements in the West due to people's search for a better life, Lerner stresses that they "became intimate with the idea of change by direct experience.

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He further argues that this physical mobility brings about social mobility and with it "came into operation a 'system' of bourgeois values that embraced social change as normal

Social Mobilization

• Social mobilization makes people more available for change. It does so by inducing them or teaching them to change their residence, their occupations, their communications, and their associates among other factor.

• Social mobilization gives rise to new needs, new aspirations and new demands. Social mobilization implies increased political development of the population, but also increased challenges to political development of the institutions.

• Lerner depicts rationality as a distinct feature of Western societies and emphasizes that a "mobile society has to encourage rationality, for the calculus of choice shapes individual behavior and conditions its rewards. People come to see their future as manipulate rather than ordained and their personal prospects in terms of achievement rather than heritage."

Development from Traditional to Modern

Drawing from the history of Europe and North America, Lerner said modernization began through social mobilization when a nation’s rural population started moving from the countryside to cities as he said “from farms to flats, from fields to factories”.

Growing population density brought about by urbanization then led to demand for schools, mass media, markets for free trade, and other modern and democratically organized institutions.

Finally, as literacy and media consumption grew, so did the general levels of economic participation (in the form of higher levels of material consumption) and political participation (in the form of voting in free elections). For Lerner, the ability to buy things and vote were among the clearest indicators of a modern nation.

Role of Mass Media

Mass media were assigned the key task of making this modernization model attractive and irresistible.

Lerner assumed that exposure to media messages and images from the West would help people in the postcolonial world replace old traditional ways of thinking and doing with modern ways of thinking and doing.

Lerner considered mass media to be a multiplier and enhancer of the modernization process. The driving cognitive mechanism for this process

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was “empathy” or “psychic mobility,” the ability and desire to project oneself into unfamiliar situations and places such as the modern world that the West represented and the aspiration to experience those conditions.

Empathy and Psycho Mobility

His key concept of empathy is defined by "the inner mechanism which enables newly mobile persons to operate efficiently in a changing world. Empathy is the capacity to see oneself in the other fellow's situation or the individual with a capacity to envision himself in another's place, a place better than his own.

The main hypothesis of Lerner's theory is that "high empathic capacity is the predominant personal style only in modern society, which is distinctively industrial, urban, literate and participant."

In brief, what creates empathy is the psychic mobility. So empathy is psychic mobility; in the first stage, physical mobility creates it. In turn a mobile psyche creates a psychologically mobile individual, which is a key element of modern societies and that the mass media fostered its expansion.

Lerner, "suggested that the mass media of communication are particularly effective in non-formal teaching, because they simplify reality, presenting information in a context that facilitates perception and learning."

"Empathy," as Lerner called this quality, stirred people from traditional apathy, leading them to question old ways and hierarchies and making them full participants in the economic and political life of the new nation. Lerner's theory later provided a conceptual foundation for the strategic hamlet program and the forced depopulation of the Vietnamese countryside as a counterinsurgency measure.

Literacy

Lerner offers a careful definition of several key factors in the modernization process and explains in what order they occur.

He takes into consideration four other variables, namely urbanization, literacy, media participation and political participation.

Concentration of people makes possible mass education which provides literacy skills. It thereby helps to form a market for mass media.

Literacy was followed by a rapid increment of media consumption. Lerner defines media participation "as the proportion buying newspapers, owning radios, and attending cinemas."

In turn, this higher consumption of media brings about political and economic participation.

Lerner advances the following argument: "rising media participation tends to raise participation in all sectors of the social system.

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References:

Lerner, Daniel. (1958). The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. New York: Free Press.

Baressi, Mariana. (1989). Analysis on David Lerner’s Theory of Communication and Development. https://www.academia.edu/14725102/ANALYSIS_OF_DANIEL_LERNERs_THEORY_OF_COMMUNICATION_AND_DEVELOPMENT.

Wilkins, Karin. (2004). Considering “Traditional Society” in the Middle East: Learning Lerner All Over Again. Department of Radio-TV-Film, University of Texas.

New American Nation. (2013). Development Doctrine and Modernization Theory - The Rostovian Revolution. http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/A-D/Development-Doctrine-and-Modernization-Theory-The-rostovian-revolution.html#ixzz3y1NCAVAI. Advameg, Inc.

http://www.temple.edu/tempress/chapters_1800/2142_ch1.pdf

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