Modernization theory attributed underdevelopment to internal cultural deficits in the colonized

Evidence

Turner calls these theories “internalist” because they are based on the assumption that a society’s capacity for change is retarded by certain archaic features of the beliefs or personalities of individuals, their traditionalist orientation to social problems, their magical beliefs or their inability to save for future growth. The absence of Weberian ingredients of growth—asceticism, rational law, bureaucracy, free labour—is an internal social virus which incapacitates the economic system … development is treated as a process through a series of necessary stages—primitive, pre-modern, modern, post-industrial—which lead to an end-state society. The actual process of development takes the form of a gradual evolutionary unfolding of some inner essence (rationality) or the maturation of that essence (the modernisation process). The outcome of development is the achievement of a stationary end-state which is a faithful replica of the liberal democracies of Western capitalism. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 248

Categorization

• XREF: Shows the intellectual template that Aziz/Razack/Rana argue gets redeployed against Muslims post-9/11 — internal cultural pathology blamed for Muslim political failure. — connects to: Modernization theory pathologized non-Western societies as internally deficient — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 248; Modernization theory blamed underdevelopment on internal cultural flaws within societies; Modernization theory located blockage to progress inside non-Western societies (+6 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The ‘internal social virus’ framing is a precise mechanism connecting cultural deficit claims to policy justification — paradigmatic for the whole imperial-knowledge cluster.

Broader Connections

• Modernization theory blamed underdevelopment on internal cultural flaws within societies #corroborates (1.00)
• Modernization theory located blockage to progress inside non-Western societies #corroborates (0.95)
• The Orientals-cannot-self-govern claim runs from Oriental despotism through modernization theory #expands (0.85)
• Modernization theory pathologized resistance to Western influence as laggard traditionalism, not rational choice #expands (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 262
• Modernisation theory sees development as linear industrial progression from primitive to developed #corroborates (0.85) — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 11
• Early neoliberal development theory echoed colonial assumptions about non-Western peoples #expands (0.78) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1290
• Colonialism systematically dispossesses the colonized of resources under a justifying discourse of hierarchy #expands (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 246