Abstract

URIBE LOPEZ, Mauricio  and  JARAMILLO MARIN, Jefferson. Rostow & Parsons: Progress, Individualization and Crisis. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2021, vol.44, n.1, pp.263-287.  Epub Nov 25, 2021. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v44n1.82136.

This article explains the way the heyday of the modernization theory entails, paradoxically, the suspicion of the subjective and objective mechanisms of this very theory. Those mechanisms are related to the notions of progress and individualization as they were presented by two classic authors of the theory of change: Walt Whitman Rostow in economics and Talcott Parsons in sociology. Taking in to account the interpretation of key texts and central categories of these two classics, complemented by the discussion of other texts and concepts discussed by European sociology and Latin American social thought, the article seeks to identify how the condition of modernity is configured in Europe and how the analytical architecture of both Rostow's evolutionary scheme, and the Parsonian social equilibrium system have contributed to the understanding of this condition in the United States and Latin America.

The hypothesis developed is that despite of the intrinsic optimism of the teleological visions of these two authors around the subjective and objective mechanisms, they suggest a series of suspicions that envision, in a somewhat prophetic way, the crisis of this theory. Regarding the subjective mechanisms, the key aspect corresponds to the boredom and the isolation of the subjects: two of the negative effects of the individualization process. Additionally, the tipping point of the structural mechanisms is related to the inequality's increase and the end of the salary society resulting from the welfare state crisis. One of the conclusions of the article is that within the subjective and objective mechanisms that sustain the theory of modernization, there lie old tensions between optimism and failure, hope and decline.

Descriptors: development theory, modernization, social change, social progress.

Keywords : crisis; individualization; Talcott Parsons; social inequality; social progress; sociology of change; Walt Whitman Rostow.

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