ABSTRACT
In the distribution of geographical areas of interest, modernization theory has not reserved a prominent place for the United States. The attention of students of modernization seems to be the very opposite of the focus of inquiry of other sociologists. The very term “Americanism,” as much as the word “modernism,” suggests something like a set of attitudes or a way of life. That is why a scholar anxious to establish the relation between the two will most likely think in frameworks developed as part of the psychosociological theories of modernization. The entire American society can be seen as having originated from a kind of social contract. Unlike most societies in the world, America can legitimately refer to a definite moment in the past when it began to exist, after a large number of self-conscious and purposeful individuals decided to settle in the Western Hemisphere.
