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"Modernization Theory" published on by Oxford University Press.

Reviews the various debates in which ecological modernization theory has been engaged, starting with a historical perspective on some of the earlier debates that paralleled ecological modernization from its birth in the early 1980s to its maturation. Initial debates with earlier neo-Marxists & deindustrialization/counterproductivity theorists were formative for ecological modernization theory, but are no longer all of similar relevance today; more contemporary discussions only to some extent reflect similar topics. Constructivists & postmodernists are confronted on the material foundation of social theory, controversies with ecocentrists on radical vs reformist environmental reforms are refined, & social inequalities in environmental problems & reform are viewed through a neo-Marxist lens. 83 References. Adapted from the source document.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China remains the world's only major communist society. Will China's regime go the way of its Soviet counterpart, or might it survive well into the next century and beyond? I do not undertake to answer this question directly. But my analysis of one sector of contemporary Chinese society—the legal system—suggests that the Communist party is losing its tight control over several major areas of Chinese society. In the long-run the party will be progressively weakened by current trends toward legal modernization. These trends encourage more liberal (because noninstrumentalized) forms of political, and not only legal, organization.

This study focuses on the nature of the Lebanese encounter with modernity in Lebanese fiction over the past forty years or so, a time of great ideological, political, and cultural upheavals. The first part traces the effect of modernity on works by Lebanese writers since the 1950s, a period of "revolutionary political and social change," and of learning and cultural and social ferment. The second part of the study focuses on Rashid al-Daif's novel עAzizi al-Sayyed Kawabata. My choice of this particular novel is related to the fact that it is a representative work that underlines the impact of modernity on Lebanese individuals and society during and in the wake of the civil war. The novel raises questions about rationality, ideology, the individual self, and the relevance of these Western constructs to the local situation in Lebanon. The structure of the novel itself and the use of the epistolary and autobiographical modes of writing underscore the novel's obsession with modernity. Within this context, one could say that al-Daif's novel can be viewed as a complex work of fiction that encompasses different forms of modernity, the tensions between these modernities, and between modernity and authenticity.

Since the putative end of the Cold War, modernization is increasingly reimagined as a global process— as an expanding liberal zone of peace, a global civil society, or as emerging forms of global governance. Thus, new forms of modernization theory, what we call neo-modernization, have emerged as important theories of International Relations (IR). Such a convergence of events and theory permit us to examine the logical overlap between IR and modernization theory. IR fails to herald a unique contribution to social theory because it persistently avoids and denies the historical problem from which it surfaces, namely, the problem of what to do about cultural difference. Modernization theory provides an essential contribution to IR's avoidance of this central problem. While modernization theory implicitly relies on IR's freezing of difference into geopolitical containers, it also projects a natural and universal developmental sequence through which all cultures must pass. In this way modernization theory anticipates the eventual total homogenizing of difference into sameness. Surprisingly, while partners with IR in the joint venture to contain and then eradicate difference, modernization theory also offers an alternative vision. This recessive theme, what we call an ethnological politics of comparison, has the potential to transform IR into the science and art of facing, understanding and addressing difference.