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...
Because it provided the dominant framework for -development- of poor, postcolonial countries, modernization theory ranks among the most important c...
Beginning in the 1950s, the theory of modernization emerged as the dominant paradigm of economic, social, and political development within the American foreign policy establishment. Purporting to explain the stages through which all nations pass on the road to industrial modernity, it provided a rationale for a broad range of cultural and political projects aimed at fostering Third World growth while simultaneously combating communism.
But modernization theory was more than simply an expression of Cold War ideology. As the essays in this volume show, the ideal of modernization...
Beginning in the 1950s, the theory of modernization emerged as the dominant paradigm of economic, social, and political development within the Amer...
