As Modernization of Ideology: Social Sciences and U.S. Policies towards the Third World

Author: Lei Xunma
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-08-01
Features: Few works have as fully demonstrated the power of the concept of "thought convergence" in international history as Modernity as Ideology. In the "New Cold War History" series, it is the most popular book. —John Lewis Gaddis
Beautiful, accurate, and erudite. As an outstanding study of diplomatic history, it shows how critical diplomatic history, when it expands its scope based on broad historical evidence, can achieve so much. —Anders Stephenson
In the Cold War era, the relationship and support between the U.S. government and academia were unprecedentedly strengthened, and social scientists were involved in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy with an unprecedented breadth and depth. When the U.S. set out to establish a set of policy concepts and action plans for the "underdeveloped world," eagerly seeking to impose aid and "development guidance" on these economically stagnant, politically decayed, and culturally distorted "backward nations," social scientists were given space to exercise their academic expertise. These "outstanding individuals" believed they grasped the essence of the historical development of human society and could prescribe a "prescription" for emerging nations to achieve "development" and "modernization." This was the historical and sociological background in which the "modernization" theory, once dominant in mainstream U.S. social sciences and widely "consumed" in Third World countries, flourished.
Through meticulous historical analysis and case studies, historian Lei Xunma reveals:
First, how U.S. mainstream social scientists who believed in "free developmentism" influenced and even shaped U.S. "development" policies toward the Third World;
Second, to what extent U.S. social sciences, which claimed to pursue the objectivity of knowledge, became conscious or unconscious supporters and followers of U.S. national ideology, and to what extent this damaged the scientific quality and practical effectiveness of U.S. social sciences.