Questions of Modernization
Coding Speech, Regulating Attitude in Survey Research
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2108937 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Begüm Adalet (0000-0003-0910-1548, New York University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 912-941 |
| Publication date | 2015-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0010417515000390 |
| OpenAlex | W2196552308 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 16 |
Foucauldian analyses and studies in the sociology of knowledge have provided vibrant accounts of the effects and lives of knowledge practices, yet they have been less attuned to their unexpected consequences upon reception in disparate settings. This article examines the employment of survey methodology as a means to enact modernization theory in non-Western areas during the early phases of the Cold War. An examination of the original questionnaires employed in sociologist Daniel Lerner's seminal text, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East, reveals an alignment between the ideal subject of modernization theory and the expectations placed upon the respondent. These expectations included familiarity with the conditions of the survey setting, impersonal relationships, the promise of anonymity, and the capacity for having and voicing opinions regarding otherwise improbable situations. Lerner's work and the studies it spawned did not merely measure and describe the attitudes of peasants, students, and administrators; they were intended to be performative: the interviews were designed to occasion the forms of subjectivity and interpersonal relations articulated and idealized by modernization theory. However, the researchers' interest in the very activity of survey-taking as a modernizing edifice was undercut by skeptical respondents, disorderly interviewer behavior, and the relentless remaking of coding procedures. In this reading, the questionnaires and their specific stipulations surface as artifacts of knowledge practices that nonetheless overflow the intentions of their coders, sponsors, and creators
Epistemology · Modernization theory · Performative utterance · Political science · Sociology · Subjectivity · American History and Culture · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · German Social Sciences and History · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology
Democratic Politics and Survey Research
A Scale Pattern of Opinion Correlates
The Ottoman Legacy in Cold War Modernization
Surveying Peasant Attitudes in Turkey
Surveys in India
The Values of Turkish College Youth
Studying Expert Informants by Survey Methods
Social Science in the Cold War
Comparative Politics of Non-Western Countries
Seeing Like a Survey
Democratic Technologies of Speech
Interviewing Frenchmen
Social Class and Modes of Communication
Do the social sciences create phenomena
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |