Release:
2017, Vol. 3. №4About the author:
Maria A. Lastochkina, Cand. Sci. (Econ), Associate Professor, Senior Research Associate of Department of a Research of Level and Way of Life of the Population, Vologda Research Center of the RAS; mashkop@mail.ruAbstract:
This article provides a short analysis of fundamentals of the theory of modernization. In response to transformation of historical reality and gain of correlation between developed and developing countries within the last decades theoretical views of processes of economic and sociocultural development of the countries have considerably changed.
The author aims to show the need for the countries to move towards modernization, which is understood as a complex method for solving social, economic, political, and cultural development tasks. Relying on the study of scientific sources, the author reveals the essence and specifics of modernization as a process of bigger (on the civilization scale) changes; the process, caused by new demands of both the society and an individual in the changing environment. The author discovers that movement of the countries on the way of modernization happens nonuniformly and asynchronously. The main delimiter of speed of modernization processes is their considerable differentiation on the level of social and economic and institutional development. The paper establishes the importance of distinguishing modernization stages, quantitative assessing, and, accordingly, determining problem zones and vectors of development for each country.
The author distinguishes the integrating modernization, which represents the process of double conversion (including the transition from an agricultural civilization to industrial and from industrial to a civilization of knowledge), as well as the interactions between these two conversions and the continuous advance to a civilization of knowledge. Such process requires new industrialization, a new urbanization, intellectualization, informatization, democratization, ecologization, globalization, welfare, and culture preservation. In case of this type o modernization being implemented, there is a formation, development, conversion, and the international interaction of the modern civilizations, universal distribution of innovations, choices, and the international rivalry, in which the countries try to reach the top world level. The paper reveals that the way of the integrating modernization will allow the lagging behind, preliminary developed and moderately developed countries to reach high social and economic development and to catch up with the leading countries in the modernization race.
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