As Modernization of Ideology: Social Sciences and U.S. Policy toward the Third World

Author: Lei Xunma
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-08-01
Features: Few works have demonstrated the power of the idea of "thought convergence" in international history as fully as Modernity as Ideology. In the "New Cold War History" series, it is the most popular work。——John Lewis Gaddis
Beautiful, accurate, and knowledgeable. 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 on an unprecedented scale and depth. When the United States 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 declining, and culturally distorted "backward nations," social scientists were given space to exercise their academic expertise. These "outstanding individuals" believed they had grasped the essence of the historical development of human society and could prescribe a "prescription" for emerging nations to achieve "development" and "modernity." This was the historical and sociological context in which the "modernity" theory, which once dominated mainstream U.S. social sciences and was widely "consumed" in third-world countries, flourished. Through meticulous and in-depth 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 the 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.