Modern common illness

Author: Yin Baoyun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1999-01-01
Features: The purpose of this book is to clarify the universal crises or problems in the process of modernization. As the name suggests, the term "common malady" refers to frequently occurring issues. Modernization common maladies are crises or problems that are easily encountered in the modernization process. The use of the concept "modernization common malady" is to illustrate that many crises and problems are associated with specific stages of social transformation in the modernization process, reflecting historical inevitability. In a certain sense, they may even serve as markers of social progress and development. The various crises and problems in the modernization process can be divided into two categories: one that appears in all countries, such as inflation, unemployment, wealth inequality, labor-capital conflicts, financial crises, and cyclical economic recessions; the other that occurs only in developing countries, such as transnational capital monopoly, social dual structure, and excessive bureaucracy. Both categories of crises and problems serve as indicators of modernization reaching a certain stage or as reactions to the process of social reform. In a village plagued by hunger and poverty, there cannot be patients suffering from obesity; a self-sufficient agricultural society would not experience inflation; a tribal society or a fragmented nation would not face the issue of centralized bureaucratic system expansion; a completely closed economy would not have the monopoly of transnational corporations or the exploitation of "neo-colonialism."