9_Law and State_Volume 17

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Underdevelopment, Dependenda, and Modernization Theory 63 repeatedly challenged by the rise and the strength of its northern Anglo- Amencan neighbour, to give vent to its feelings. Dependenda seems to explam the deeply felt inferiority toward the U.S.A. and those West European states to which Latin Americans - as incidentally do North Americans - feel culturally and intellectually bound; and dependenda theory’s reference to the complicity of international capitalism makes this inferiority appear externally caused. It is also surely no coincidence that the monocausal explanation of dependenda as a consequence of the development of world capitalism, together with geographic or climatic factors, suppresses those explanations of developmental divergence between North and South America or Western Europe and South America which would have to start from a recognition of the fact that, in the majority of Latin American countries, there is no racial homogeineity and that class differences have been stabilized via the conservation of racial barriers. Just as it cannot be ignored that the dependencia discussion so far has released forces which could contribute to the elimination of dependency and the promotion of independent development, so for the time being it is an open question whether, now that the guilty party has been established, namely international capitalism, Latin Americans will proceed to the next phase — that of searching for deficiencies in one’s own back yard. It is high time to realize, for example, that the scholarly discussion surrounding developmental problems during the past decade was by no means identical with the dependencia debate. In a truly remarkable learning process —which the dependencia school, apart from a few laudable exceptions, quite overlooked — social scientists engaged in the study of modernization have drawn conclusions from bitter experience. Three developments have forced would-be explanatory theories to become more modest in scope: the failure of both the western and Soviet-socialist developmental models in the Third World, the shortcoming of ambitious plans for development, and the loss of confidence in general theories claiming universal validity and purporting to be realizable. And now, with the rediscovery that there are many historical factors, these theories have become more related to reality. Modernization theory, using the comparative method, has become increasingly aware that present-day developmental problems, as problems of catching up, cannot simply be compared to the starting situations of western industrial societies development. The non-linear theoretical construct: “traditional versus modern has been abandoned. The modernization process has been recognized as an ongoing symbiosis of the most varied “traditional and modern elements, whereby the concepts “modern” and “traditional each desig-
64 Johann Hellwege !sion between elements of the social process which « is t and defined in detail, and the definable requirements of the devel- States. IV IU U C U llL d U U U tjbuvMww —---------- * e . f . J . 31 social science aware of the limitations and relativity of its findings . Some of the reasons why this has happened are: observation of the grea variety of traditional starting situations, diversity of possible reference societies for today’s “stragglers”, different historical periods which were and are available for modernization, and not least of all the faltering course and frequent breakdowns of the process of modernization. The normative statements of modernization theories - like all theories forced to explain the overall process of social change - are being more and more explicitly formulated and supported, so that the opponents of modernization theories are compelled to lay bare their own criteria o comparison and to show how the costs and opportunities, sacrifices and progress in pursuit of their own normative refuge (which are directed against modernization theories) are or can be greater or lesser. It is noteworthy that Europe and North America have again found their way mto the centre of modernization studies, whereas the Third World no longer represents the central focus of research or enjoys the predominance it did in the early years of modernization theories. The arrogant-instructing intentions of the first years have faded away as it became more evident that, although modernization can be conceived as a systematic process during which general problems are posed, modernization as a historical process has produced quite different solutions. The ideological ballast of the first years has been largely thrown overboard. Against this background, we may briefly summarize a few advantages of historical-comparative modernization studies to Latin American social sciences. Inasmuch as historical modernization theory helps to illuminate the preconditions and consequences of the rise of modern industrial soae-
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9_Law and State_Volume 17

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