Asynchrony, Modernization, and Industrialization

Suárez’s Hypothesis

Abstract

In the early seventies, through his book The Argentine economists. The institutionalization of new professions, Francisco Suarez established a classification of societies based on two variables: the degree of modernization and its degree of industrialization, both of them taken as asynchronous aspects of the social transition process towards development. According to Germani, the notion of integration implies asynchrony. The different speeds of change would result in the coexistence of partial structures corresponding to different models of global structure (coexistence of partial modern and traditional structures). Such coexistence could be perceived differently depending on the view taken by the observer. What is judged as the disintegration of traditional societies could be taken as an upgrade from the standpoint of modern society. But what is a developed society? Why does everyone want to achieve development? Obviously, this article does not intend to answer these questions, or any in particular, but simply to review, from a nowadays point of view, the assumption about asynchrony between “modern” and «industrial» countries that Francisco Suarez displayed in his work.