Tradition as modernizing force: Alternative patterns of historical change
Historical change, on both a theoretical and an empirical level, is discussed in this article. The focus is on the modernization process, above all agrarian development during the last two centuries. The discussion of historical change is also connected to the radical societal upheaval experienced today.
Swedish agrarian history, like much other history writing, has been dominated since the 1970s by framework of interpretation rooted in the classical theories of modernization, connected to Marx, Tönnies, Weber, Elias etc. These mainly discussed the upheaval of their own time, that is, the transition from a society dominated by agriculture to an industrial society. In the agricultural history written in the latest decades of the twentieth century, very little of the contradictory development has been involved in the analyses. This applies, for example, to the still dominating family farming in Western agriculture and to the complexity of supply patterns within the agrarian household. Although more critical perspectives on the modernization theories have appeared today, for example, within cultural sociology, history of mentalities and gender studies, the classical modernization perspective with its positivistic, masculine and Western structures, has not been seriously threatened.
In the empirical parts of the article, four alternative pattern of historical change are captured and discussed. These patterns become visible on the individual and everyday level of action. The complexity which can be seen here indicates the strong continuity that existed throughout the transition process. It seems legitimate to ask whether the contradictions and the features of traditionalism even strengthened the possibility of farreaching modernization. These more complex patterns of change are worth testing further, also on a more comprehensive societal level.
The article closes with arguments for a more humanistic history of modernization. In this perspective, fruitful communication between the discipline of ethnology, with its focus on today, whole and complexity, and the discipline of history, with its focus on yesterday, society and development, is possible. A humanistic instead of a social science perspective on historical change also has the chance of deepening and qualifying the discussion of the current transition from an industrial to a post-industrial society.
