ABSTRACT
Many of Germani's concepts of modernization were developed under the crazy-quilt system of Peronism. Modernization for Germani was a problem of political systems, not economic backwardness. Argentina had in common with Italy the mobilization of a political system for modernizing ends. The long sojourn from Italy to Argentina resulted in a curious blend of concerns: developmental interest in backwardness, modernization, and immigration. Issues that can hardly be avoided in a national like Argentina—coupled with political interest in mass society, party identification, and integrating mechanisms in a period of rapid change. For Germani, marginality became typical of modern society, typical of the way postindustrial people survive. Mobilization became the public expression of the authoritarian syndrome and conversely, modernization becomes its personal expression. Marginality became the general theory of alienated social classes, the way mobilization yields its private self to public control. Privatization became the opposite of socialization, both expressed ways in which the public and private are opposite.
