Back to Modern

The Open Stax series of good quality textbooks is available for free. I've enjoyed reading social science for a chance, and it's very nice to get a recent perspective on sociology (some readers may have noticed that I've previously read some old classics).

Like any decent textbook, Sociology 2e mentions "modernism" as a way of thinking of development. Briefly, this can mean that agencies like the U.S. foreign aid and international organizations encourage developing countries to imitate the culture, business and government of rich countries - that is, to modernize. This idea was later (already in the 1960's) seen as a kind of cultural imperialism - developing countries should find they our ways rather than follow a fixed pattern.

I read a few pages of the book today in Skytrain (Bangkok has a very good public transport system) on my phone, checked my bank account balance (disappointing) with the same phone and after stepping out, added some money to my Skytrain card. All of this was done with modern efficiency. So maybe there's still something in modernism, after all. Furthermore, most good universities (Thailand's Chulalongkorn is now ranked in top 300 in the world) emphasize modern practices in business, health, technology etc. Would this mean that everything in every country is going to be uniform and boring, like a new "end of history"? Emm .. we have a global pandemic, probably a big recession looming, turbulent politics, private companies providing space flight .. so, no.