Unsolicited Lesson on Modernity and the So-Called Developing World
- T. Donohue
- Nov 4, 2019
- 5 min read
The streets are absolutely teeming with people, cars, tuk tuks, cows, and dogs, so many dogs. The honking is enough to drive the most resilient New Yorker crazy. The smog is thick, penetrating and unescapable. And yet, it felt quite… normal. My sense of normalcy is surely skewed by living in Tanzania, but I was welcomed by a sense of familiarity. The smells, a mixture of curry, masala, urine, smog, and jasmine. The sounds, a symphony of honking, people selling their wares, kirtan music, and laughter. The feeling, a relief in the dry heat and equatorial sun on my skin, the pashmina fabric draping my neck, the pain in my feet from eleven miles walked. And the tastes. The perfection of a spicy curry, the sourdough flavor of a dosa, the addicting flavor of masala chai. It is chaotic, it is, I suppose foreign, but it also felt like yet another amazing opportunity to dive deeper into the world around me, and through doing so, deeper into myself.
I found myself reflecting a great deal those first two days on our ideas about modernity, development, “the third world” and what it means to be “Western.” As we walked around Delhi that first day, we were startled to find ourselves passing familiar stores and restaurants: Nike, Lacoste, Clarks, Adidas, Taco Bell, and the holy grail, a Starbucks. And, of course, it is ridiculous to be surprised that a city with a population of 29 million people and a GDP of $167 to $369 billion (making it the second-most productive metro area in India) would be so modern. But we have to negotiate ourselves with the fact that we are sold very tailored images of other countries, and these images are more often than not, inaccurate.
Delhi was teeming with a fresh and familiar energy. While, yes, being very different than, say, America, it is no less a modern and growing city. Our first night in Delhi we attended an evening yoga class and then went to Juggernaut, an amazing South Indian restaurant in Kailash Colony, an affluent neighborhood in South Delhi. On a Friday night the place was filled with people, families, couples, old friends, and us, four American women bonding over delicious masala dosas. Afterwards we had a couple glasses of wine at the bar next door, Café 27. The sense of nostalgia and déjà vu was uncanny. Had it not been for the Indian club music and the all Indian patronage, I could have easy imaged this place being a rooftop in Brooklyn.
In the current climate where wokeness is associated with some sort of virtue that makes one immune to the pitfalls of racism, imperialistic thought, sexism and so on, we are quick to challenge each other’s language, ideas, and beliefs. I will be the first to say this is wholly unproductive. I am also willing to dare greatly, step into the arena, and admit, I don’t know everything. I am always making mistakes and learning more about the world. And the fact that I was surprised there was a Starbucks in India is a small example of that. Innocuous, but informative about how my ideas about other countries have been shaped by media representation.
As a gender studies major, whose focus was in transnational feminism (i.e. wildly complicated theoretical concepts about globalization, capitalism, and gender inequality), I found myself walking the streets of Delhi reconceptualizing some key terms and ideas we are quick to throw around. And so, behold my unsolicited gender studies lesson.
Let’s begin with modernity and modernization. Modernity can be described as, “a condition of social existence that is radically different to all past forms of human experience.” In order words, modernity represents a sociological shift. This shift occurs through modernization, which can we understood as, “the transitional process of moving from ‘traditional’ or ‘primitive’ communities to modern societies.” We are, knowingly and unknowingly, being educated and socialized around the implicit assumption that the, “historical experiences of Western Europe are the defining experiences” that have created modernity. What follows is the assumption that any move towards modernity must follow the particular geocultural experiences of Western Europe. And thus, we view any country that operates outside of this structure to be somehow backwards, primitive, or lacking. We use terminology such as: third-world and developing world to discuss countries such as the one I am calling home, Tanzania, or the countries I am visiting, India, without having any idea what the implication is. The term “third-world” was born out of Cold War era geopolitics. A French demographer, Alfred Sauvy, published an article in L’Observatear in 1952, making note of “three worlds, one planet.” This was in reference to the idea that during the fight between Western capitalism and Soviet socialism, there existed three worlds: the first world consisted of the US, Western Europe and its allies, the second world was the Soviet Union, China and Cuba, and the third world were those countries that aligned with neither group. It just so happened that many of these countries were impoverished due to ongoing colonization or the immediate aftermath of post-colonization. The issue with this terminology is that it is sorely outdated. The First World is by no means complete with its development, as there are still significant issues with health care, poverty, and inequality.
And so, we move on to the term “developing country.” The concept relies on the idea that there are countries which are under-developed and are moving towards development in regard to: health, education, maternal mortality, nutrition, and sanitation. You would be challenged to find someone who does not agree that development in these areas is a positive for any country. I struggle with the fact that those countries we perceive as having already reached the status of “developed” (i.e. US and Western Europe) still are sorely lacking in development in these arenas for major demographics in their countries. For example, in the United States, women of color are statistically provided education, maternal/general health care, proper access to nutrition, and sanitation at drastically lower levels than other more socio-economically privileged demographics. Additionally, the idea of developing causes me to ask the question, developing towards what? We are again reminded that the idea of modernity is implicitly linked to the modernization of Western Europe. The misguided idea that certain countries remain in a state of ongoing development might strengthen the misconception that the people in these countries are backwards, irresponsible, lazy or ignorant. As Shose Kessi, a social psychologist at the University of Cape Town argues, “the developed-developing relationship in many ways replaces the colonizer-colonized relationship. The idea of development is a way for rich countries to control and exploit the poor. You can see this through the development industry where billions of dollars are spent but very little gets achieved.”
And so, I am left wandering through different parts of India, trying to negotiate myself with the ideas I had before coming here. The idea that I would be roughing it more than I am in Tanzania. That I would inevitably get sick. That I would have trouble finding clean drinking water. And yet, my experience could not have been further from those ideas. And yes, my experience was largely influenced by my time being spent in metropolitan areas. As I return to Tanzania, I am more aware than ever the complex realities that exist when we consider development, modernization and social change. And, perhaps, I have more clarity and more questions than I had before I went on this journey, but if that isn’t the point of travel, then I don’t know what is.
Shilliam, Robbie. "Modernity and Modernization." Oxford Research Encyclopedia November 2017.
Silver, Marc. "If You Shouldn't Call It The Third World, What Should You Call It?" National Public Radio 4 January 2015.
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