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Modernization Theory (modernization + theory)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

Prospects for an Environmental Economic Geography: Linking Ecological Modernization and Regulationist Approaches

ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2006
David Gibbs
Abstract: Although the "new" economic geography has explored links between the subdiscipline's traditional areas of study and cultural, institutional, and political realms, environmental issues remain comparatively underresearched within the subdiscipline. This article contends not only that the environment is of key importance to economic geography, but also that economic geographers can make an important contribution to environmental debates, through providing not just a better analysis and theoretical understanding, but also better policy proscription. Rather than claim new intellectual territory, the intention is to suggest potential creative opportunities for linking economic geography's strengths with those insights from other theoretical perspectives. In particular, this article focuses upon linking insights from ecological modernization theory, developed by environmental sociologists, with regulationist approaches. [source]

The theory of human development: A cross-cultural analysis

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2003
CHRISTIAN WELZEL
This article demonstrates that socioeconomic development, emancipative cultural change and democratization constitute a coherent syndrome of social progress , a syndrome whose common focus has not been properly specified by classical modernization theory. We specify this syndrome as ,human development', arguing that its three components have a common focus on broadening human choice. Socioeconomic development gives people the objective means of choice by increasing individual resources; rising emancipative values strengthen people's subjective orientation towards choice; and democratization provides legal guarantees of choice by institutionalizing freedom rights. Analysis of data from the World Values Surveys demonstrates that the linkage between individual resources, emancipative values and freedom rights is universal in its presence across nations, regions and cultural zones; that this human development syndrome is shaped by a causal effect of individual resources and emancipative values on freedom rights; and that this effect operates through its impact on elite integrity, as the factor which makes freedom rights effective. [source]

FROM REVOLUTION TO MODERNIZATION: THE PARADIGMATIC TRANSITION IN CHINESE HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE REFORM ERA

HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 3 2010
HUAIYIN LI
ABSTRACT Chinese historiography of modern China in the 1980s and 1990s underwent a paradigmatic transition: in place of the traditional revolutionary historiography that bases its analyses on Marxist methodologies and highlights rebellions and revolutions as the overarching themes in modern Chinese history, the emerging modernization paradigm builds its conceptual framework on borrowed modernization theory and foregrounds top-down, incremental reforms as the main force propelling China's evolution to modernity. This article scrutinizes the origins of the new paradigm in the context of a burgeoning modernization discourse in reform-era China. It further examines the fundamental divides between the two types of historiography in their respective constructions of master narratives and their different approaches to representing historical events in modern China. Behind the prevalence of the modernization paradigm in Chinese historiography is Chinese historians' unchanged commitment to serving present political needs by interpreting the past. [source]

Political Sophistication Among the Mass Publics of Confucian Asia

ASIAN POLITICS AND POLICY, Issue 1 2009
Ting Yan
The concept of "Confucian Asia" is often used without a validity check. But are Asian societies homogeneous in Confucian orientations as the term suggests? If not, how can one explain the variation? By examining the East Asia Barometer survey data, this article challenges the homogeneity of Confucian Asia and finds that Confucian orientations are unevenly distributed even among commonly accepted Confucian societies. In exploring the possible explanations for this Confucian orientation variation, this article argues that political sophistication is the direct mechanism to explain the variation of mass commitment toward Confucianism. By comparing other alternative explanations such as modernization theory, the article finds that the effects of political sophistication are independent and potent. [source]

Business, environmental reform and technological innovation in Hong Kong

BUSINESS STRATEGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, Issue 4 2004
Peter Hills
Within a framework of ecological modernization theory this paper focuses on the process of environmental reform in Hong Kong. It argues that there is significant inertia within the environmental policy process in Hong Kong, but that with leadership from the business sector there exists the potential for positive change. We identify ways to further drive the process of environmental reform through an emphasis on the role of the business sector and technological innovation. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source]