“Modernization, Convergence, and Exclusionist State Practices: the case of Brazil

• In Event: Pautas para a democratização: anos 1950, 1960 e 1970

Abstract

Cold War’s self-serving modernization teories of economic development preached that capitalist economics would liberate the “under-developed” world from its “feudal” patterns and beliefs. Conflating “modernization” with “democracy,” the latter was usually empirically indicated by elections and voting. Modernization’s sister theory of “convergence” argued that, as the world became more industrialized—a necessary indicator of development—the industrialized countries would become more like one another and their social institutions would be positively shaped by “industrialization.” Allegedly, Latin America and other “under-developed” countries could eliminate poverty by becoming industrialized, with such social institutions as education, politics, and social control, benefitting positively as well. Having explicitly challenged modernization and convergence theories for most of my career (Huggins, 1982, 1983, 1984; 1991, 1998, 1999), I now realize that “convergence” theory was correct that ‘Westernization’ and ‘industrialization’ likely nurtured—usually through direct and indirect force—industrial convergences, although not always in the manner functionalist pro-capitalist romanticism proposed. Capitalism and modern “democracy” are associated today in the US and Latin America with racial, gender, sexuality, and political and economic exclusion; high rates and types of state violence; militarized police practice founded on the devisive un-democratic premise of ‘us against them.’ This presentation, which will focus on Brazil and the US, explores these and other negativities associated with capitalist “globalization” and convergence.

Author

• Martha K Huggins, Tulane University Emerita