ABSTRACT
Modernization is the sort of idea that crosscuts all of the established branches of social science, and it is studied by all of them—anthropology, sociology, psychology, economics, geography, and history. In the world outside the groves of academe, modernization is an ideological, political, bureaucratic, mythic, and messianic idea. The early exuberance and industry of the new wave of social science concern with modernization are not part of the history of science. Even the most committed of the modernization theorists learn from experience—Eisenstadt often uses the concept between quotation marks—and see much that is problematical in its employment. Modernization involves, at the cultural level, a value system geared to the continual search for new knowledge, coupled with a high tolerance for ontological uncertainty. At the level of social structure, modernization implies openness in the sense that political and class groups can face and eventually assimilate the risks and the consequences of innovation.
