Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America

الغلاف الأمامي
JHU Press, 2003 - 329 من الصفحات

Because it provided the dominant framework for "development" of poor, postcolonial countries, modernization theory ranks among the most important constructs of twentieth-century social science. In Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America Nils Gilman offers the first intellectual history of a movement that has had far-reaching and often unintended consequences.

After a survey of the theory's origins and its role in forming America's postwar sense of global mission, Gilman offers a close analysis of the people who did the most to promote it in the United States and the academic institutions they came to dominate. He first explains how Talcott Parsons at Harvard constructed a social theory that challenged the prevailing economics-centered understanding of the modernization process, then describes the work of Edward Shils and Gabriel Almond in helping Parsonsian ideas triumph over other alternative conceptions of the development process, and finally discusses the role of Walt Rostow and his colleagues at M.I.T. in promoting modernization theory during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. By connecting modernization theory to the welfare state liberalism programs of the New Deal order, Gilman not only provides a new intellectual context for America's Third World during the Cold War, but also connects the optimism of the Great Society to the notion that American power and good intentions could stop the postcolonial world from embracing communism.

 

المحتوى

Modernization Theory and American Modernism
1
From the European Past to the American Present
24
The Harvard Department of Social Relations and the Intellectual Origins of Modernization Theory
72
The Rise of Modernization Theory in Political Science The SSRCs Committee on Comparative Politics
113
Modernization Theory as a Foreign Policy Doctrine The MIT Center for International Studies
155
The Collapse of Modernization Theory
203
The Postmodern Turn and the Aftermath of Modernization Theory
241
Notes
277
Essay on Sources
313
Index
318
حقوق النشر

طبعات أخرى - عرض جميع المقتطفات

عبارات ومصطلحات مألوفة

نبذة عن المؤلف (2003)

Nils Gilman is an independent scholar and practitioner at the Global Business Network in San Francisco.

معلومات المراجع