In six pages this paper discusses modernization and rationalization's role in a comparative analysis of the perspectives of Habermas and Weber. Five sources are cited in the bibliography.
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The exact role which the process of rationalization has played in the development of modern society has occupied philosophic thought for centuries. Two of the
most interesting contributors to this subject are Max Weber and Jurgen Habermas. Each of these philosophers, however, adds a slightly different view of the importance of rationalization in modernization.
To understand these views we must first explore the concept of modernization itself. The term "modernization theory" was first coined by Emill
Durkheim in 1987 and then by Max Weber in 1992 (Zhang, 1994). The concept of modernization is broad in scope. In some instances, for example, it refers to
the social changes which when a lesser developed country, termed a "preindustrial society" by Zhang (1994), undergoes a shift from largely home-based employment to factory-based employment as a result of
industrialization. In many cases, however, modernization , although it does increase individual prosperity to some degree, demands a continual and unending cycle of greater and greater development and greater
and greater transition from traditional cultures to industrial cultures (Billett, 1993). Numerous concepts come into play with modernization. These include urbanization,
a move of the general populace from the country to the city, and bureaucratization, the formation of large formal organizations (Zhang, 1994). Each of these is, of course, accompanied
by change in the traditional institutions of family, religion, and education (Zhang, 1994). Society as a whole is affected as the entire hierarchy of its previous organization is changed
and people take on new and different relations to one another in terms of responsibility and power (Zhang, 1994). Habermas, a