From The Post-American World (Fareed Zakaria, 2008) pp73-7
Modernization
The issue that non-Western reformers were struggling with in the twentieth century has returned as a central question for the future: Can you be modern without being Western? How different are the two? Will international life be substantially different in a world in which the non-Western powers have enormous weight? Will these new powers have different values? Or does the process of becoming rich make us all the same? These are not idle thoughts. In the next few decades, three of the world’s four biggest economies will be non-Western (Japan, China, and India). And the fourth, the United States, will be increasingly shaped by its growing non-European population.
Some contemporary scholars, most famously Samuel P. Huntington, have argued that modernization and Westernization are wholly distinct. The West, Huntington argues, was Western before it was modern. It acquired its distinctive character around the eighth or ninth century but became “modern” only around the eighteenth century. Becoming a modern society is about industrialization, urbanization, and rising levels of literacy, education, and wealth. The qualities that make a society Western, in contrast, are special: the classical legacy, Christianity, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, civil society. “Western civilization,” Huntington writes, ”is precious not because it is universal but because it is unique.”14
Add to this intellectual case the visceral strangeness of non-Western lands – the fact that they look, feel, and sound so different. The Japanese offer the most common illustration of this point. Japan is a highly modern nation. In terms of technology – high-speed trains, cell phones, robotics – it is more cutting-edge than most Western countries. But to outsiders, particularly Western visitors, it remains strange and foreign. If wealth did not Westernize Japan, the argument goes, it will not Westernize the rest. A world in which Indians, Chinese, Brazilians, and Russians are all richer and more confident will be a world of enormous cultural diversity and exoticism. Still, the West has been around for so long and has spread so far that it isn’t clear what the break between modernization and Westernization will mean. So much of what we think of as modern is, at least outwardly, Western. Today’s forms of government, business, leisure, sports, vacations, and holidays all have their origins in European customs and practices. Christmas is celebrated in more places today than ever before – even if it means no more than champagne, lights, and gifts (champagne itself, of course, is a Western invention). Valentine’s Day, named in honor of a Christian saint and commercialized by Western greeting card companies, is becoming a thriving tradition in India. Blue jeans were created as the perfect fit for rugged California gold miners, but now are as ubiquitous in Ghana and Indonesia as in San Francisco. It’s difficult to imagine what the modern world would look like without the impact of the West.
Kishore Mahbubani, a thoughtful Singaporean diplomat and intellectual, recently predicted that, in the emerging world order, non-Western powers would retain their distinctive ways even as they got richer. In India, he argued in a speech in 2006, the number of women wearing saris (the traditional Indian dress) would actually grow. 15 But in fact, while Mahbubani was proclaiming the sari’s rise, the Indian press was reporting precisely the opposite phenomenon. Over the last decade, Indian women have been casting aside the sari for more functional attire. The elaborate sari industry, with its different materials, weaves, and styles, is declining even in the midst of India’s heady boom. (Why? Well, ask a young Indian professional to explain whether wrapping herself in six to nine yards of fabric, often starched, then carefully pleating and folding it, is something of a bother.) Increasingly, Indian women are following a kind of fusion fashion that combines indigenous and international styles. The Indian salwar kurta (a loose-fitting pant-tunic combination), for example, has gained widespread use. Saris are being relegated to special and ceremonial occasions, just like the kimono in Japan. This might seem superficial, but it isn’t. Women’s clothing is a powerful indicator of a society’s comfort with modernity. Not surprisingly, the Muslim world has the biggest problems with its women wearing Western-style clothes. It is also the region where women remain the farthest behind by any objective yardstick – literacy, education, participation in the work-force. The veil and chador might be perfectly acceptable choices of dress, but they coincide with an outlook that rejects the modern world in other ways as well. For men, Western clothing is ubiquitous. Ever since armies began dressing in Western-style uniforms, men around the world have adopted Western-style work clothes. The business suit, a descendant of a European army officer‘s outfit, is now standard for men from Japan to South Africa to Peru – with the laggard (or rebel) once again being the Arab world. The Japanese, for all their cultural distinctiveness, go one step further and on special occasions (such as the swearing in of their government) wear morning coats and striped pants, the style for Edwardian diplomats in England a hundred years ago. In India, wearing traditional clothes was long associated with patriotism; Gandhi insisted on it, as a revolt against British tariffs and British textiles. Now the Western business suit has become the standard attire for Indian businessmen and even many young government officials, which speaks of a new post-colonial phase in India.* In the United States, of course, many businessmen in new industries dispense with formal dress altogether, adopting a casual jeans-and-T-shirt style. This, too, has caught on in some other countries, especially with younger people in technology-based industries. The pattern remains the same. Western styles have become the standard mode of work dress for men, signifying modernity.
* Not entirely. The gender difference persists. While successful Indian men in government and business now routinely wear Western dress, many fewer prominent Indian women do the same.
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