then one is fully modern. If this is so, then we may indeed be seeing an end to
modernity. Increasingly the recent is not automatically well-evaluated, and
increasingly doubts are cast on both the possibility and desirability of endless
progress. Sociologically it is probably safe to say, therefore, that a modern
society is one with a high degree of individualism; a high regard for autonomy
and privacy; a near sacredness attached to human rational endeavor and rational
economic planning; a faith in science and the human capacity to control the
environment and; master our own fates. A modern society is secular, free from
the restraints of tradition and essentially utilitarian in ethics. The idea that the
height of human civilization was at some stage in the past—the Greeks, the
Italian Renaissance, a religious golden age, or any other option—is simply
ridiculous to the modern mind. This modern mind appears to be increasingly
perturbed, however, and there are signs in contemporary politics of conserva-
tive attempts to return to so-called ‘traditional values’. Much of the argument
of ecological groups, after all, suggest the non-sustainability of technical
progress. Furthermore, modern science is increasingly raises issues where an
ill-developed but resilient moral sense, widely if inchoately felt, suggests real
caution. Certainly the bio-sciences now cause worry as the idea of experi-
mentation with genetic structures becomes more and more plausible. Mod-
ernity has often enough been declared as something that is tautologically
impossible, and many more people might find themselves drawn topost-
modernism, were it less theoretically impenetrable, than at any stage in the
recent past.
Modernization
Modernization entered political science and political discourse from sociology,
and refers generally to the capacity of countries from outside the European/
North American/OldCommonwealthcountries, (theFirst World, in other
words), to develop the economic and political capacity, and the social institu-
tions, needed to support aliberal democracysuch as is found in parts of the
First World (seepolitical development). While this approach in political
science is obviously at risk of being biased in terms of Western values, there is a
strong tradition in social and political theory of studying change in this way,
much of it derived from MaxWeber. In fact all the classic sociological theorists
of development,Marxas much asDurkheim, conceive of something like
‘modernity’ as a stage all societies have to go through. The main thesis is that a
form of politicaldivision of labouris needed, in which the political system
moves from having only a few, all-embracing, authoritative posts, a tribal
chieftain, perhaps, to highly specific and task-specialized roles in a modern
bureaucratic and governmental system. At the same time changes in social
conditions, especially communications and education, are seen as steadily
Modernization