ABSTRACT
In all parts of the world, the process of "modernization" has involved a destruction of the traditional social order, either gradually or radically. To non-Western societies, modernization has often meant to be an incorporation into the "universal norms" defined by Western ideas and practices of "modernity." The worldwide influence of Western modernity, as a distinct form and mode of social life and organization, can be characterized by the following institutions:
[T)he nation-state and an international system of states; a dynamic and expansionist capitalist economic order based on private property; industrialism; the growth of large scale administrative and bureaucratic systems of social organization and regulation; the dominance of secular, materialist, rationalist and individualist cultural values; and the formal separation of the 'private' from the 'public' (Hall et aI., 1996, p.3).
