modernization

Introduction & Top Questions
Becoming modern
- The revolution of modernity
- The West and the world
- The dual revolution
The nature of modern society
- General features
- Economic change
- Population change
- Urbanism as a way of life
- Work and the family
- Social structure
- Secularization and rationalization
- Social problems
Modern society and world society
- Western and non-Western routes to modernity
- One world or many
Postmodern and postindustrial society
- Developments in economic and social structure
- New patterns of urban life

References & Edit History Related Topics

Images & Videos

Examine urbanization in South America by viewing Lima, Santiago, and Valparaíso

At a Glance

modernization summary

Related Questions

How can modernization increase social mobility?
How can technological advances improve living standards while also creating social strains?
How did Enlightenment thinkers connect progress with knowledge and technology?
How did Ferdinand Tönnies distinguish Gemeinschaft from Gesellschaft?
How did Karl Marx explain transitions between stages of society?
How did Marx’s idea of alienation criticize industrial society?
How did Weber link rationality to capitalism, science, and bureaucracy in Western society?
How did dependency theory differ from world systems theory in its main focus?
How did dependency theory explain underdevelopment in former colonies?
How did modernization theorists view foreign trade, investment, and aid?
How did neoevolutionism differ from nineteenth-century evolutionism?
How did suburbanization and exurbanization spread urban life beyond city centers?
How did world systems theory divide the capitalist world economy into core, periphery, and semiperiphery?
How did Émile Durkheim connect the division of labour to anomie?
How do internal elites in developing countries contribute to dependency theory’s explanation of underdevelopment?
How do mass communication and literacy contribute to modernization?
How do postcolonial critiques challenge Western ideas about development?
How do rising expectations create challenges for modern societies?
How does human development measure progress differently from economic growth alone?
How does industrialization change where people live and work?
How does modernization change a traditional rural agrarian society?
How does modernization contribute to secularization?
What did Weber mean by the disenchantment of the world?
What is the difference between the core and periphery in dependency theory?
What were the three major historical ideas about social change?
Why can problems created by modernization exceed the power of individual nation-states to solve?
Why can the second phase of modernization produce discontent?
Why did Max Weber reject the idea that every civilization follows the same path of development?
Why did Spencer believe growing societies become more specialized and interdependent?
Why did dependency theorists argue that trade could keep peripheral countries poor?
Why did ethnic movements and subcultures grow in some late industrial societies?
Why did export-oriented strategies leave some countries with heavy foreign debt?
Why did import-substitution industrialization struggle in many countries?
Why did modernization theory encourage developing countries to follow Western industrial models?
Why did some developing countries adopt export-oriented industrialization strategies?
Why did urbanization and migration weaken some traditional social controls?
Why does modernization develop unevenly within a country?
Why does neoevolutionism focus on differences and interactions among societies?
Why does the human development approach give the state an important role in development?
Why have critics called modernization theory Eurocentric?
Why were nineteenth-century theories of social evolution criticized?

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External Websites

Social Sci LibreTexts - Modernization
Pressbooks Create - Modernization Theory
Simply Sociology - Modernization Theory: Definition and Examples
Brooklyn College - Modernization Theory and the Comparative Study of Societies: A Critical Perspective
Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research - Impact of Modernization on life
The Ohio State University Pressbooks - Keys to Understanding the Middle East - Modernization Versus Westernization
National Center for Biotechnology Information - PubMed Central - Is modernization widening cultural differences?

modernization

sociology

Written by

Krishan Kumar

Professor of Social and Political Thought, University of Kent at Canterbury, England. Author of Prophecy and Progress and others.

Krishan Kumar

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

Britannica Editors

Last updated

Oct. 1, 2026 •History

modernization, in sociology, the transformation from a traditional, rural, agrarian society to a secular, urban, industrial society. Modern society is industrial society. To modernize a society is, first of all, to industrialize it. Historically, the rise of modern society has been inextricably linked with the emergence of industrial society. All the features that are associated with modernity can be shown to be related to the set of changes that, some 250 years ago, brought into...

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