ficed analytical precision to a comprehensive typology that abstracted certain contrasts from their historical context, attached new labels to them, but counted on the familiarity of the old images to provide the illusion of explanation. Modernization theorists confused classification with analysis.

They disregarded the admonition, regularly issued by the founders of sociology, against the substitution of disembodied concepts for historical facts. "Ideas or concepts, whatever name one gives them, are not legitimate substitutes for things," Durkheim wrote. "... They are like a veil drawn between the thing and ourselves, concealing them from us the more successfully as we think them most transparent." Weber pointed out that when "developmental sequences" are twisted into ideal types, the resulting constructs take on the appearance of a "historical sequence unrolling with the necessity of a law." The " 'before-and-after' model," as Bendix called it, nevertheless continued to dominate the study of modernization ; Bendix himself, even though his discussion of modernization theory was quite critical, on the whole, maintained that the "distinction between tradition and modernity" could not be dispensed with "entirely."

The concept of modernization no longer dominates the study of economic development in the non-Western world; but the conceptually seductive images with which it is associated still color the West's view of its own history. It was the transformation of Western society by the industrial revolution that first gave rise to the concepts of tradition and modernity, and the habit of charting our course by these familiar landmarks lingers on. Critics have again and again exposed the inadequacies of the modernization model, even for an understanding of the West. It still stands, however—a deserted mansion, its paint peeling, its windows broken, its chimneys falling down, its sills rotting; a house fit only for spectral habitation but also occupied, from time to time, by squatters, transients, and fugitives.

Modernization theory, the critics say, ignores the independent role of

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