S. N. Eisenstadt

In this chapter I reexamine theories of modernization in the framework of a more general reappraisal of the classical theories of social change, especially the evolutionary and semievolutionary theories. I first reexamine some of the basic assumptions of classical evolutionary theories of change and then proceed to the presentation of a somewhat new approach to the processes of social change—from the point of view of what can be called a "civilizational" perspective. I conclude with a reexamination of theories of modernization from this perspective.

1. Theories of Social Change

1.1 Some Assumptions of the Classical Evolutionary Perspective

The classical evolutionary perspective in social change was based on several assumptions. First, the classical perspective assumed that structural differentiation is manifest in the development of relatively specialized roles that organize the flow of resources and the consequent social division of labor in all institutional spheres: technological, economic, political, religious, and the like.

Second, the classical approach accepted a relatively closed systematic view of society. It strongly emphasized that the social division of labor is manifest both in different degrees of structural differentiation and in the development of specialized roles and institutional spheres that organize the flow of resources. The classical perspective held that these features explain the basic characteristics and dynamics of any given institutional structure.

Third, this perspective maintained that criteria similar to those already employed in the study of institutional differentiation could be readily applied, without modification, to examinations of the cultural sphere.

Fourth, the classical evolutionary perspective assumed that there is a "natural" tendency toward the parallel development of differentiation in all spheres. Exceptions to this tendency, such as partial or delayed differentiation, were generally treated as unusual or problematic.

The major criticisms of this perspective, as they have developed in the social sciences, are well known and need not be repeated here. Rather, I attempt to point out some new directions for the analysis of social change from the point of view of a more general approach to the study of the construction of social order.

1.2. Elites, Cultural Orientations, and Systems of Control

This approach to the analysis of the construction of the social order and of the major social actors participating in it stresses that any institutional setting is brought into being by a combination of several major components. The first component is the level and distribution of resources among different groups in society, that is, the type of division of labor that is predominant in a given society. The second component is the institutional entrepreneurs or elites that are available—or competing—for the mobilization and structuring of such resources and for the organization and articulation of the interests of major groups generated by the social division of labor. The third component is the nature of the conceptions or, especially, ontological "visions" that inform the activities of these elites and that are derived from the major cultural orientations of codes prevalent in a society.

The institutionalization of these visions provides the arena for both concretizing the charismatic dimension of social order and striving for a meaningful social order. This institutionalization is effected and crystallized by the activities of the major elites. The most important among such elites are, first, the political elites, who deal most directly with the regulation of power in society, second, the articulators of the models of the cultural order whose activities are oriented to the construction of meaning, and third, the articulators of the solidarity of the major groups, who address themselves to the construction of trust.

The structure of these elites is closely related to the basic cultural orientations or "codes" prevalent in a society. In other words, different types of elites are carriers of different types of ontological visions and orientations. These elites tend to exercise different modes of control over the allocation of basic resources in the society in connection with their types of cultural orientation. In this way they combine the structuring of trust, the provision of meaning, and the regulation of power with the division of labor in society, institutionalizing the charismatic dimension of the social order.

Such control is exercised by these elites (or rather by coalitions of elites) primarily through control over access to the major institutional markets (economic, political, cultural, etc.), control over the conversion of the major resources between these markets, and control over the production and distribution of information that is central in the structuring of the cognitive maps of the members of their society, that is, the members' perceptions of the nature of their society in general and of their reference orientations and reference groups in particular.

Different coalitions of elites, together with the modes of control they exercise, shape the major characteristics and boundaries of the social systems that they help to construct, namely, the political system, the economic system, the system of social stratification and class formation, and the overall marosocietal system. The differing modes of control shape the power aspects of the institutional structures in different societies. Especially important among these structures are the structure of authority, the conception of justice, and of political struggles, the principles of social hierarchy, and the definition of the scope of membership of different communities.

However, the concretization of these tendencies takes place in different political-ecological settings. Two aspects of such settings are of special importance. The first aspect, heavily stressed in recent research, is the importance of international political and economic systems. The places of societies within these systems and the different types of relations of hegemony and dependency are issues of particular importance. The second aspect is the recognition of the great variety of political-ecological settings of societies, including differences between small and large societies, their respective dependence of internal or external markets, and the like. Both of these aspects greatly affect the ways in which institutional contours and dynamics tend to develop.

The approaches developed here have several implications for the analysis of the systematic qualities of social life.

1.     The construction of the boundaries of collectivities and social and, above all, political system is a basic component or aspect of human social life.

2.     Such systems and boundaries do not exist—as has often been assumed in sociological, anthropological, and historical analysis—as natural closed systems. Rather they are continuously constructed, open, and very fragile.

3.     No human population is confined within any single such system. Rather human populations exist in a multiplicity of only partly coalescing organizations, collectivities, and systems.

4.     Such systems—and the division of labor that they entail and that is not naturally given—are constructed by special social actors and carriers, especially by carriers of different ontological visions. In the process of such construction, ideological, power, and material components are always closely interwoven.

5.     Such construction of boundaries denotes the delineation of the definite relations of the various collectivities or systems with their respective environments. However, such environments are not given in "nature"; they are themselves constructed by social actors through the construction of the boundaries of social systems.

6.     Of central importance in the construction and maintenance of such systems are different integrative mechanism that acquire an autonomy of their own. The assurance of the working of these mechanisms is of crucial importance in the maintenance and change of societies or civilizations.

7.     Such integrative mechanism becomes more important and autonomous the more complex social and political systems and civilizational frameworks become.

8.     Such complexity is manifest not only in the different levels of structural differentiation and the division of labor but also in other dimensions, such as the degree of overlap or coalescence of the degree of difference among different organizations and collectivities. These dimensions, in turn, are influenced by different ideological and power elements.

Thus the process of the construction of collectivities, social system, and civilizational frameworks is a process of continuous struggle in which ideological, material, and power elements are continuously interwoven. These processes are structured, articulated, and carried by different social actors. The boundaries of these systems and frameworks are defined by different coalition of such actors.

Several types of social actors or carriers have to be distinguished. First, there are those who structure the division of labor in a society, that is, its economic differentiation and ecological setup. Second, there are carriers who articulate ideologies and political control. Finally, there are carriers who are extremely important in the study of the construction of boundaries of collectivities, namely the carriers of solidarity for different ascriptive groups.

Among these different carriers there develops a very complex interaction that goes beyond what has been assumed in sociological, anthropological, and historical analysis in general and in the literature that deals with collapse in particular.

1.3. Protest, Conflict, and Change

Thus different coalitions of elites construct the boundaries of social systems, collectivities, and organizations. Yet no such construction can be continuously stable. The crystallization and reproduction of any social order, of any collectivity, organization, political system, or civilizational framework is shaped by the different forces and factors analyzed in the preceding section and generates processes of conflict, change, and possible transformation.

Conflict is inherent in any setting of social interaction for two basic reasons. The first reason is the plurality of actors in any such setting. The second reason is the multiplicity of the principles inherent in the institutionalization of any such setting—the multiplicity of institutional principles and of cultural orientations—and the power struggles and conflicts among different groups and movements that any such institutionalization entails.

Any setting of social interaction, but particularly the macrosocietal order, involves a plurality of actors—elites, movements, and groups—with different levels of control over natural and social resources. These elites continuously struggle over the control, ownership, and the possibility of using such resources, generating ubiquitous conflicts on all levels of social interaction.

The ubiquity of conflicts in any setting of social interaction is intensified by the interweaving of the plurality of actors with the basic characteristics of the social division of labor and the establishment of institutional principles. Such specification entails conflicting principles, premises, and prerequisites, each of which is carried by a different social actor who may also carry different cultural orientations. Different actors may stress the centrality of their respective spheres and develop their own autonomous dynamics at the expense of others, thus generating different types of systemic contradictions.

The processes of institutionalization of any social order entail a certain heterogeneity and pluralism. Such heterogeneity is above all rooted in the multiplicity of actors and cultural orientations inherent in any such institutionalization and in the incipient tendencies toward the development of alternative ontological visions mentioned above.

Accordingly, whatever the success of the attempts of any coalition of elites to establish and legitimize common norms, these norms are probably never fully accepted by all those participating in a given order. Most groups tend to exhibit some autonomy and differences in their attitudes toward these norms and in their willingness or ability to provide the resources demanded by the given institutional system. Some groups may be greatly opposed to the very premises of the institutionalization of a given system. Others may share its values and symbols only to a very small extent and accept these norms only as a necessary evil and as binding on them only in a very limited sense. Still others may share these values and symbols and accept the norms to a greater degree but may look on themselves as the more truthful depositaries of these same values. They may oppose the concrete levels at which the symbols are institutionalized by the elite in power and may attempt to interpret them in different ways. They may not accept the models of cultural and social order that they think are upheld by the "center" as the legitimator of the existing distribution of power and resources, and they may uphold cultural orientations different from or counter to those upheld by the center. Other groups may develop new interpretations of existing models.

In any social order, then, there is always a strong element of dissension about the distribution of power and values. Hence, as we have seen, any institutional system is never fully homogeneous in the sense of being fully accepted or accepted to the same degree by all those participating in it.

Even if for very long periods of time a great majority of the members of a given society may identify to some degree with the values and the norms of the given system and be willing to provide it with the resources it needs, other tendencies develop in connection with intergroup conflicts, demographic changes, and the development of heterodox ontological visions and these changes may give rise to changes in the initial attitudes of any given group to the basic premises of the institutional system.

Thus "antisystems" may develop within any society. Although the antisystems often remain latent for long periods of time, they may also constitute, under propitious conditions, important foci of systematic change. The existence of such potential antisystems is evident in the existence in all societies of themes and orientations of protest. These social movements and heterodoxies are often led by different secondary elites. Such latent antisystems may be activated and transformed into processes of change by several processes connected with the continuity and maintenance, or the reproduction, of different settings of social interaction in general and the macrosocietal order in particular. Such processes include, first, shifts in the relative power positions and aspirations of different categories and groups of people, second, the activation in members of the new generation, particularly in young members of the upper classes and elites, of the potential rebelliousness and antinomian orientations inherent in any process of socialization, and third, several sociomorphological or sociodemographic processes through which the biological reproduction of the population is connected with the social reproduction of settings of social interaction, and fourth, the interaction between such settings and their natural and intersocietal environments, such as movements of population, conquest, and the like. The crystallization of these potentialities of change usually takes place through the activities of secondary elites, who attempt to mobilize various groups and resources in order to change some aspects of the social order as shaped by the ruling coalition of elites.

The possibility of the failure of integrative and regulative mechanisms is inherent in any society. Every civilization and every type of political and economic system constructs some specific systematic boundaries within which it operates. But the very construction of such civilizations and social systems also generates within them various conflicts and contradictions that may lead to change, transformation, or decline, that is, to different modes of restructuring their boundaries.

Although these potentialities of conflict and change are inherent in all human societies, their concrete development, their intensity, and the concrete directions of change and transformation they engender differ greatly among different societies and civilizations. Societies vary in their specific constellation of the specific forces analyzed here, that is, different constellations of cultural orientations, elites, patterns of the social division of labor, and political-ecological settings and processes.

My approach makes four assumptions. First, at all levels and in all types of technological and economic development and structural differentiation, the interaction between various aspects of the social division of labor and the activities of the major elites generates the different patterns and the different dynamics of centers and institutional formations. Second, at any given level or in any given type of differentiation or social division of labor, a very wide variety of such patterns may have developed in different circumstances. Third, the differences in such dynamics are principally shaped by the crystallization of different coalitions of elites. And fourth, some aspects of these dynamics may be relatively similar (even if they can never be exactly the same) across the different levels and types of the social division of labor and social differentiation.

1.4. The Perspective of International Systems in the Study of Social Change

A crucial component of my approach is the importance of international systems. Such an approach, however, entails a reappraisal of the initial literature on this subject. In this reappraisal I criticize this literature's assumptions that the modern capitalist world system is the most important single determinant of the dynamics of all contemporary international systems, that the dynamics of the modern capitalist world system epitomize the dynamics of all contemporary international systems, and that this system is the embodiment of a full-fledged international system. The reappraisal also criticizes the literature on international systems for its tendency to reify the (capitalist) international system. This reification is often made in terms similar to those allegedly employed by the structural-functional school in its analyses of social systems, which has been the butt of many of the criticisms of the scholar who have stressed the new international perspective.

The international systems approach has not recognized (1) that any single dominant, hegemonic international system, such as the Roman Empire, exists in close ecological relations with other systems or political units; (2) that within the confines of any seemingly single international framework, there may in fact develop several different international systems—political, economic, cultural, etc.—each with some autonomy of its own; and (3) that the interrelations among these systems are of crucial importance for the understanding of other dynamics.

Also, this approach, because of its emphasis on the international system and its neglect of the internal structure of both the hegemonic and the dependent units, has been unable to analyze fully the different types of impact of the various hegemonic centers, the different responses of potentially dependent units to the impact of the hegemonic center, and the shifts of power in different international systems or the possibilities of their internal transformation.

2. A Reappraisal of Theories of Modernization

2.1. The Development of the Problem in Modern Social Analysis

The problem of the distinctive characteristics of modern societies in general, and of the first such society—Western Europe—in particular, and of the differences between modern and other societies has constituted a basic concern of modern social thought from its very beginning in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries observers emphasized the uniqueness of modern Western society in comparison with other societies, but even then the exact nature of this uniqueness constituted a rather difficult problem.

To the evolutionists this uniqueness seemed to lie in the fact that modern European societies were the apogee of the evolutionary potential of humanity, an apogee that had not been reached elsewhere. For Marx European society was the only society in which capitalism developed. Although he sometimes could be interpreted as believing that all societies would go through the same basic stages of evolution, his concern with the Asiatic mode of production shows that he was aware of the distinctiveness of Western civilization,—the only one that had generated a capitalist system and the one from which this system was spreading throughout the world.

Perhaps the most articulate formulation of the uniqueness of Western civilization can be found in the work of Max Weber. At the same time, however, Weber's work contains some of the more problematic aspects of this approach, especially when it is applied to the study of the spread of modernization beyond Europe. Weber's basic Problemstellung was to explain the specificity and uniqueness of European modernity, to explain why the "radical" tendency to rationalized the world developed in the West and not in other civilizations. Weber saw this specificity in the tendency toward the overall rationalization of social life. Major manifestations of this tendency occurred in all spheres of social life: in the emergence of capitalist civilization, in the bureaucratization of different forms of social life, in the secularization of the world view, and in the development of modern science and the so-called scientific world view, which bears within itself the radical tendency toward Entzauberung, the disenchantment of the world. He saw the roots of all these processes in the potentially rationalizing tendencies of the Protestant religious orientations.

In order to understand the specific transformative potentialities of these orientations, Weber compared Protestantism with other world religions. He attempted to combine the analysis of world religions and the analysis of the internal dynamics of their civilizations, especially the tendencies toward rationalization inherent in them. He then compared these dynamics with those that had taken place in the West. He stressed (and this is indeed one of his great contributions) that the non-Western modes of rationalization, together with their related institutional systems, differed greatly from the Western mode. Thus he recognized, at least implicitly, that each mode of religious rationalization develops its own pattern of dynamics.

However, because of is comparative starting point and his major concern with the uniqueness of the West, Weber did not fully explicate these implicit comparative orientations. He tended to minimize the internal dynamics of these civilizations and the full explication of his implicit recognition of such specific dynamics, and instead to stress in different ways the "traditional", seemingly nondynamic aspects of these civilizations. On the one hand, Weber emphasized the uniqueness of the West and its role, as it were, as the model for the world; on the other hand, he recognized the specificity of the dynamics of other civilizations. This contradiction, although not fully visible in Weber's or Marx's own times when the spread of capitalism and modernization beyond Europe and the West were only in the incipient stage, became much more visible in the later stages of the development of modernization studies after the Second World War.

2.2 Studies of Modernization after the Second World War

In the first stages of the burgeoning of modernization studies after the Second World War, a burgeoning that signaled the revival and fuller systematic development of macrosociological and comparative historical studies, the contradiction between the uniqueness of the West and the specificity of other civilizations became perhaps even more dimmed than in Marx's or Weber's original works. This development occured because these studies of modernization and development involved a very far-reaching shift in their basic orientations compared with earlier "classical" studies. Instead of stressing the specificity of European civilization and European modernity, these studies assumed that the development of modernity constituted the apogee of the evolutionary potential of mankind and that the kernels of this process are in principle to be found in most human societies. Hence they asked questions about which conditions facilitate and which conditions impede the development of such modernization in all human societies. At the same time, however, they took for granted that the European (and perhaps also the American) experience constitutes the major paradigm of such a modern society and civilization. One of the most important offshoots of these studies was that of the convergence of industrial societies, perhaps best illustrated in the work of Clark Kerr.

In these works observers attempted to combine studies of micro settings and various social processes—communication, urbanization, value-transformation, and the like—with a broader macrosocietal framework. The first studies of modernization and the development, and many later ones that continued in this vein, evaluated societies by various indices of modernity, development, and modernization. They then tried to determine either the extent to which the societies studied approximated the model or models of modern industrial society or the factors that impeded their advance in terms of these indices. The possibility that a modern social order might develop from within various societies was recognized and explored.

Although with the passing of time there developed a growing recognition of the possible diversity of transitional societies, observers still assumed that such diversity would disappear in the final stage of modernity. This assumption was evident in the theory of the convergence of industrial societies. To quote Goldthorpe:

The diversity within the industrializing process which he [Kerr] emphasizes turns out to be that evident in the relatively early stages—in Rostovian language, those of the "break with traditionalism," "take-off," and the "drive to maturity." And when the question arises of the "road ahead"— for already advanced, as well as developing societies—Kerr's view of the logic of industrialism is in fact such as to force him, willy-nilly, away from a multilinear and towards a unilinear perspective; or, to be rather more precise, to force him to see hitherto clearly different processes of industrialization as becoming progressively similar in their socio-cultural correlates. As industrialism advances and becomes increasingly a world-wide phenomenon then, Kerr argues, the range of viable institutional structures and of a viable system of value and belief is necessarily reduce. All societies, whatever the path by which they entered the industrial world, will tend to approximate, even if asymptomatically, the pure industrial form. (Goldthorpe 1971, 263)

Behind these theories there loomed a conviction of the inevitability of progress toward modernity—be it political, industrial, or cultural—and toward the development of a universal modern civilization.

The ideological and institutional developments in the contemporary world, however, have not upheld this vision. The fact the great institutional variability exists among different modern and modernizing societies—not only among the transitional but also among the more developed and even the highly industrialized societies—became more and more apparent. The growing recognition that great symbolic and institutional variability and different modes of ideological and institutional dynamics attend the spread of modern civilization gave rise to a search for a systematic explanation. Two major approaches have developed in response to the disintegration of the initial model of modernization. The first approach stresses the importance of the traditions of different societies. The second approach referred to above stresses the dynamics of the international, especially the capitalist, system as the major factor explaining the variability and dynamics of different modern or modernizing societies.

These approaches have indeed pointed to very important factors that influence the dynamics of modern or modernizing societies. Yet they have also encountered many difficulties in their attempts to explain systematically the great variability of the dynamics of these new modern civilizations, the concrete patterns of change that have been taking place in different traditional societies, and the relations of these patterns to their respective historical experiences and the new situations created by the spread of modernity.

2.3. New Indications—Modernity as a New Civilization and its Differential Expansion

Out of these various controversies emerge some indications of a possible new perspective for the understanding of the contemporary world. This perspective is based on a particular combination of elements from the classical paradigms of modernization, from Marx (especially his analysis of the Asian mode of production), from Gramsci, but, above all, from Weber, especially from his powerful insights about the internal dynamics of different civilizations. This perspective recognizes, on the one hand, the uniqueness of the civilization of modernity and its component of economic development and, on the other hand, the great variability of the symbolic, ideological, and institutional responses to it and the variability of the ways in which different civilizations and societies interpret different symbolic premises of modernity and different modern institutional patterns and dynamics.

This perspective entails a far-reaching reformulation of the vision of modernization and modern civilization. It does not view the process of modernization as the ultimate end point of the evolution of all known societies. It does not assume that the process of modernization brings out the evolutionary potential common to all societies. And it does not assume that the European experience is the most important and succinct manifestation and paradigm of the modernization process. Rather it considers that modernization or modernity is one specific type of civilization that originated in Europe and spread throughout the world, encompassing—especially after the Second World War—almost all of it.

The cyrstallization of this new type of civilization was not unlike the spread of the great religions or the great imperial expansions in past times. But because the expansion of this civilization almost always combined economic, political, and ideological aspects and forces, its impact on the societies to which it spread was much more intensive than in these other historical cases.

This perspective also entails the recognition that when historical civilizations expand, they challenge the symbolic and institutional premises of the societies that are incorporated into them. This challenge calls for responses from within these societies, which has the effect of opening up new options and possibilities. A great variety of modern or modernizing societies have developed out of these responses. They share many common characteristics but also evince great differences among themselves. These differences crystallized out of the selective incorporation—hence also the transformation—of the major symbolic premises and institutional formations of the original Western civilization as well as of their own civilizations.

This perspective necessitates the analysis of the basic characteristics and premises of this new, modern civilization, that is, the basic premises of European and Western civilization. The most salient of these premises, from the point of view of my concern, has been, first of all, the "revolutionary" origins of its visions and orientations. The revolutionary orientations that were at the root of most breakthroughs to modernity have been oriented toward a far-reaching transformation of the nature and content of the centers of the social and cultural orders, the rules of participation in them and access to them, and the relations between these centers and the periphery. For these centers the major transformation that occurred concomitantly with modernity was the growing secularization of the centers, the rejection of the "givenness" of the centers' traditional contents and symbols, and the spread of the assumption that these contents and symbols can indeed be reexamined. These changes were closely connected with the growing autonomy of the political, cultural, and societal centers and above all with the changes in the relations between these centers and the periphery. They were also linked to the growing impingement of the periphery on the center, the periphery's increased access to the center, and the permeation of the periphery by the center, all of which often culminated in the obliteration of the differences between center and periphery, and made membership in the collectivity tantamount to participation in the center.

These processes were also closely related to changes in the basic orientations toward tradition and the bases of the legitimation of authority. The sanctity and givenness of the past as the major symbolic regulator of social, political, and cultural change and innovation gave way to the acceptance of innovation and an orientation to the future as the basic cultural dimensions.

Such changes were of course very closely connected in Europe with the assumption that the human and natural environments can be directed, and even mastered, by the conscious effort of man and society. Indeed, the central premise of European modernity was the possibility of the active transformation of crucial aspects of social, cultural, and natural orders by conscious human activity and participation. The fullest, although not the only, expression of these premises could be seen in the transformations and repercussions of the Protestant ethic in the economic, scientific, and political spheres and later in the impact these transformations had on the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution. Accordingly, the special characteristics of European modernity were initially focused on attempts to form a "rational" culture, an efficient economy, a civil (class) society, and nation-states where these rational tendencies could become fully articulated and within which major social actors, leaders, and influences could create a social and political order based on freedom.

The new civilization of modernity, which emerged from this background, was based ideologically and politically on the assumption of equality and the growing participation of the citizens in the processes of the center. These trends were most clearly evident in the establishment of universal citizenship and suffrage and some semblance of a "participant" political and social order, which gave rise to ideologies of participation.

Such goals were aimed at the establishment of a social and cultural order characterized by a high degree of congruence between the cultural and the political identities of the territorial population, a high level of symbolic and affective commitment to the centers, a close relationship between these centers and the more primordial dimensions of human existence, and a marked emphasis on common, politically defined, collective goals for all members of the national or class community.

In many ways these characteristics of the European nation-state were derived or transmitted from several parts of their premodern sociopolitical traditions: from their imperial traditions and from their city-state and feudal traditions. They combined the strong activist orientation of the city-state, the broad conception that the political order was actively related to the cosmic and cultural orders of many imperial traditions and the traditions of the great religions, and the pluralistic elements of the feudal traditions. In the European (especially Western European) traditions these various orientations were rooted in a social structure that was characterized by a relatively high degree of commitment by various groups and strata to the cultural and political orders and their centers and a high degree of autonomy in their access to these orders and their respective centers.

The ideology of economics development, which became an important component of this civilization, developed out of the combination of the strong sanctification, under the impact of Protestantism, of economic activity as an arena of salvation, the conception of human mastery of the human and nonhuman environments, and the development of science and technology. This emphasis on technological and economic development became one of the major premises of European civilization.

These ideological or symbolic developments in Europe were very closely connected with the processes of economic development, which was evident first in commercial and later in industrial expansion, and with the unprecedented growth of technology and economic expansion. These trends culminated in the first self-sustained industrial system, that of industrial capitalism.

The structural-economic and the more symbolic aspects of development and modernity were very closely connected. Yet even in Europe, a single, one-to-one relationship between them did not exist. They developed to some degree independently of one another, but they always constituted continuous interrelated challenges to the societies in which they developed and on which they impinged.

2.4. The Construction of Multiple Modern Civilizations

The new civilization that developed in Europe later spread throughout the world, creating a series of international systems. Each system was based on some of the premises of European civilization, but at the same time each system had its own internal process of change. The expansion of European civilization resulted in a tendency toward the development of universal, worldwide institutional and symbolic frameworks. Such frameworks are unique in the history of mankind. The expansion of Europe also resulted in not one but several worldwide systems developing. Although these different systems originated in the same place—in Western Europe—and were closely interrelated, the centers of power and influences within each system were not identical. Each developed a dynamic of its own and each often reacted to the others. Most important, within the international ideological and cultural systems, very strong reactions developed against the problems generated by the international economic system. These reactions were most evident in a variety of national and social revolutionary ideologies.

The spread of the various modern ideologies and premises of European civilization throughout the world has been accompanied by far-reaching structural and organizational changes, especially in the economic and political fields. This diffusion took place through a series of social, political, and cultural movements that, unlike movements of change and rebellion in many other historical situations, tended to combine protest with strong tendencies toward institution-building and center-formation. As a result of this combination, it has been difficult to isolate the different international systems from one another and to maintain any one of them in a continuous equilibrium. The interrelations among systems are never static or unchanging in any given international setting. Indeed, the dynamics of such settings give rise to continuous changes in the interrelations among the different systems and the forces created by them, thus generating various processes of change in these systems.

At this point it is important to recognize the nature of the historical process by which modernity spread beyond Europe and how it differs from the development of modernity in Europe. Within Western Europe, modernity, despite great differences among different societies, largely developed indigenously through the fruition of the internal transformative potentials of some of its groups and through a continuous interaction among these groups. In contrast, the spread of modernity beyond Europe was much more in the nature of the impingement of the external Europe on traditional societies and civilizations. Hence the premises of Western European societies constituted the major challenge to which different responses developed. Needless to say, within the various Asian, African, and Latin American civilization different modes of response developed.

2.5. Some New Indications: Problems and Possibilities

The continuous expansion of international systems and movements gives rise to the incorporation of societies and civilizations that do not share either the basic symbolic premises of this new civilization or most of its specific institutional contours. Such an expansion also, of course, undermines the symbolic and institutional premises of these non-Western societies, opens up new options for various groups within them, and generates within them far-reaching processes of change, responses to these changes, and the concomitant crystallization of new symbolic and institutional formations.

These responses are shaped by the continuous interaction among several basic factors. First, the patterns of response are affected by the "point of entry" of any society into the new international systems and the specific aspects of its institutional structure that are undermined by this entry, the options that this entry opens, and the continuous development and changes of these processes. Second, the patterns of responses are influenced by the modes of technology and economic formation existing in these societies. Third, the responses are shaped by the basic premises of the civilizations and societies on which they impinge, that is, by the basic perceptions of the relationship between the cosmic and the social orders, the social and cultural orders, and hierarchy and equality that are prevalent in them. They are also shaped by the structure of the predominant elites that are the carriers and articulators of these perceptions and visions and the modes of control that these elites exercise. Fourth, the responses are shaped by the tradition of responses to the historical situations of change that have developed in most of these civilizations. In the "great" or "axial age" civilizations, particular experiences or traditions of external and internal changes, and of responses to these changes, have crystallized.

Here it might be fruitful to follow Weber's emphasis on the great importance of heterodoxies in the dynamics of different civilizations. Such heterodoxies are of course found in Europe and Weber concentrated on the split between Catholicism and Protestantism and especially on the innovative and transformative potentialities that developed.

Heterodox groups and movements vary according to the cultural orientations predominant within them, the structure and autonomy of the religious institutions and organizations prevalent in their respective societies, and their internal cohesion and relations to broader strata of the society. The relationship of these aspects of the different heterodoxies to the respective orthodoxies of their civilization greatly influence the direction and the transformative capacities of different civilizations, their responses to change, and their innovative directives. Such was also the case with respect to the development of modernity in Europe. The different innovative potentials that are carried and articulated by different primary and secondary elite groups in different orthodoxies and heterodoxies within these civilizations are not only of one kind. They are always varied and heterogeneous and often move in different directions. This variety indicates that the different transformative potentials of any civilization may move in different directions, depending on concrete historical situations that facilitate or favor some lines of development and not others.

The continuous interaction and feedback among all these processes—the basic premises of the civilizations and societies on which the new modern international systems impinge; the points of entry of these societies into these international systems; the types and models of technology and economy prevalent in these civilizations; the tradition of response to situations of change; and the traditions of heterodoxy, rebellion, and innovation that have developed in the history of these civilizations has generated the varying institutional and symbolic contours of different modern and modernizing societies, their dynamics, and the different patterns of economic development within them. Out of these processes crystallize, in different societies and different modes of incorporation and reinterpretation of the premises of modernity, the different symbolic reactions to modernity. And from these processes develop the different modern institutional patterns and dynamics, or conversely, the different modes of reinterpretation of the premises and historical traditions of these civilizations. These different symbolic and institutional constellations develop with respect to the interpretation of the basic symbolic conceptions and premises of the different modern civilizations. They develop according to the ways in which these basic symbolic premises modernity are selected and reinterpreted in relation to the new "modern" traditions, according to these societies' conceptions of themselves and their past, and according to their new symbols and collective identity and their negative or positive attitudes toward modernity in general and to the West in particular. In other words, within different modern societies there develop different cultural meanings and programs of modernity.

Such processes of reinterpretation also apply to the basic conception of economic development. Although the emphasis on economic and technological development has become part of each modern or modernizing society, they differ greatly with respect to the meaning of such development in the context of their overall cultural and social premises. Above all, they vary in the degree to which the emphasis on economic development is connected with an emphasis on the mastery of the environment rather than adaptation to it, in the relative importance of economic goals in the panorama of human goals, and in the conceptions of the social order. The vary in having productive or distributive economic orientations, in their type of political regime (authoritarian, pluralist, or totalitarian), in their major modes of political protest and participation, and in their conceptions of authority, hierarchy, and equality.

Similarly, the crystallization of different constellations has been continuously taking place, in close relation to those on the symbolic level, with respect to the different modes of modern organizational and institutional levels. Although such processes as urbanization, industrialization, and the spread of modern communications are common to all these societies, the concrete institutional answers to these problems tend to vary greatly. This variation is closely related, of course, to the basic conceptions of social and political order that have developed within each society.

As in all cases of historical change, the crucial element in the process of the crystallization of new symbolic and institutional formations is old and new elites, that is, the leadership groups on different levels of the social structure in continuous interaction with broad social sectors, the visions they carry, and the various coalitions among them, including coalitions with different external forces in the new international systems. These groups are of crucial importance in shaping the different responses to the continuous challenges of modernization. As in the case of the different heterodoxies analyzed above, these groups are not uniform. They are indeed quite variable, and even the new elites that have developed are much more influenced by the various traditions of response to change and the heterodoxies and innovation existing in any society than has often been assumed.

The systematic comparative exploration of all of these processes is still very much before us, but it constitutes a very important—even if every difficult and arduous—part of the agenda on the comparative sociological and historical research of modernization, modern civilizations, and the contemporary world.

Reference

Goldthorpe, John H. 1971. Theories of industrial society: Reflections on the recrudescene of historicism and the future of futurology. Archives Européennes de Sociologie 12:263–88.