Modernization Theory

The simplistic and highly misleading view that depicts the poorer world as passive victims at the mercy of the powerful West has meant that postwar paradigms or in-arguments “for how to conceptualize and overcome development challenges” (City of Johannesburg, 2006) have failed to achieve long-term development outcomes. For example, modernization theory (MT) stated that with investment and planning from the Industrial West, all states could follow a liner process of development where traditional sectors of the economy and rigid social structures would be abandoned and replaced by modern social organisation (Nabudere, 1997; Jolly et. al., 2004; MacKinnon & Cumbers, 2011). In other words, it was believed that once Rostow’s ‘take-off’ stage was

However, by accepting the assumptions that underdevelopment was an internal problem; that modernization was a quick fix to development; and that Western values were always superior to traditional social systems, the modernization paradigm failed. As a “big ideological hooray for postwar capitalism” (Greig et. al., 2007, p. 80), the paradigm was arrogant and ignorant of ‘real’ problems such as unequal structures that were created through the expansion of Western capitalism (Frank, 1969). In addition to positing the West as democratic, equal, and conflict-free and the rest as authoritarian and conflict-ridden, MT was guilty of exaggerating the influence of traditionalism and ignoring non-state development actors such as villages and communities (Nnaemeka,

As figure 2 demonstrates, despite 20 years of structural adjustment programmes (SAPS), poverty reduction strategies (PRS), and increased international trade, Africa, Latin America and many parts of Asia continue to remain entrenched in poverty and slow economic growth (Easterly, 2006). Due to public service cuts, privatization, and increased loans, many states suffered from rising indebtedness leading to development disasters. Professor of History George Schuyler (2004) notes that during the 1990s, privatization in Venezuela increased the cost of water and gasoline leading to a drop in the consumption of meat and milk by low-income families. As low wages and high inflation contributed to malnutrition, many unemployed citizens turned to criminal activates as a means to survive. Consequently, “by the mid-1990s, 85,000 Venezuelan children were involved in drug trafficking, prostitution and robbery” (Schuyler, 2004, p.