Modernization As Ideology

by Latham, Michael E.

• ISBN13: 9780807848449
• ISBN10: 0807848441
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

Providing new insight on the intellectual and cultural dimensions of the Cold War, Michael Latham reveals how social science theory helped shape American foreign policy during the Kennedy administration. He shows how, in the midst of America's protracted struggle to contain communism in the developing world, the concept of global modernization moved beyond its beginnings in academia to become a motivating ideology behind policy decisions. After tracing the rise of modernization theory in American social science, Latham analyzes the way its core assumptions influenced the Kennedy administration's Alliance for Progress with Latin America, the creation of the Peace Corps, and the strategic hamlet program in Vietnam. But as he demonstrates, modernizers went beyond insisting on the relevance of America's experience to the dilemmas faced by impoverished countries. Seeking to accelerate the movement of foreign societies toward a liberal, democratic, and capitalist modernity, Kennedy and his advisers also reiterated a much deeper sense of their own nation's vital strengths and essential benevolence. At the height of the Cold War, Latham argues, modernization recast older ideologies of Manifest Destiny and imperialism.

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix
John Lewis Gaddis
Acknowledgments	xi
Modernization as Ideology: Approaching the Problem	1	(20)
American Social Science, Modernization Theory, and the Cold War	21	(48)
Modernity, Anticommunism, and the Alliance for Progress	69	(40)
Modernization for Peace: The Peace Corps, Community Development, and America's Mission	109	(42)
Modernization at War: Counterinsurgency and the Strategic Hamlet Program in Vietnam	151	(58)
Conclusion	209	(8)
Notes	217	(26)
Bibliography	243	(26)
Index	269