ABSTRACT
The attention of students of modernization seems to be the very opposite of the focus of inquiry of other sociologists. The fact that they were ignored by modernization theory may add substance to the belief that much of this theory is but an extension of the American dream. The suspicion that some social scientists think otherwise may have led their critics to advance the charge of ethnocentric bias against the modernization subdiscipline. The results of the examination should help to discover whether the proposition that modernization is basically the replication of the process of change undergone by the United States can be substantiated. There is yet another apparent reason for those who suspect ethnocentric bias in modernization theory to be concerned with possible "export" of the American dream under the guise of modernity. The concepts of modernism and modernization denote empirical referents that include Americanism and Americanization; America is modern, but not all that is modern is American.
