Angleichung, nachholende Modernisierung oder eigener Weg? Beiträge der Modernisierungstheorie zur geographischen Transformationsforschung

摘要

The global processes, in whose progression over the last 200 years the "modern" society of the Western World has emerged, are the topic and subject-matter of the theory of modernization. The modernization theorists construed the transformation as a catch-up revolution, whose outcome would be the rectification of the failures of the last 45 years. Especially with regards to the GDR, the issue being dealt with is one of a modernization process, in which the goal was already solidly predefined by the institutional structure of the Federal Republic of Germany. However the fact must not be overlooked that the GDR was a specific type of industrial society with its own embodied social structures. Therefore, for this reason alone, the modernization is not only of a purely 'catch-up nature', because even the GDR along with other socialistic countries undertook certain specific steps to modernization. With the emergence of social and economic disturbances in the transforming states the revitalized modernization theory became anew a target of criticism. The adherers of modernization theory saw themselves confronted with a series of anomalies: instead of an equalizing boom we are experiencing grave economic depression as well as ethnic and religious motivated demarcation and fragmentation. The difficulties and conflicts in the progression of transformation are however only conditionally justified objections against the theory of modernization. If one refrains from the early phase of the theory formation, such "breakdowns of modernization" were foreseen and prognosticated.