Non-Western Modernities in the Middle East: The Israeli Experience of Development and Social Change

Abstract

Could the unique and divergent modernization experiences of non-Western societies be the proof of a challenge to Western modernity? Could Israel be evaluated as a non-Western modernity model in contrast to the common assumption that Israel is a Western country? This article hinges on the argument that the State of Israel is not a Western country as its type of modernity has significantly diverged from the globalization thesis claiming to eventually unite all societies around Western modernity. This argument is based on a non-Western modernization perspective inspired by the insights of the Multiple Modernities Paradigm (MMP) and the Uneven and Combined Development Theory (U&CD). Today, Israel can be regarded as an economically modern society as it is a highly industrialized and urbanized society with high average living standards. However, what is the most remarkable fact observed in Israeli economic trajectory is that Israeli economic development has been mostly driven by state-led initiatives rather than by private initiatives such as a capitalist bourgeoisie class in the Western trajectory (France, Britain and the USA) where capitalist bourgeoisie class has become primary initiator and driving force of economic modernization. Moreover, this economic divergence naturally impacted on all other transformation trajectories of Israel such as its democratization and secularization processes. Contemporary Israel is neither a fully secularized society nor a liberal democratic one as the Eurocentric globalization thesis expected it to be after a long and arduous process of modernization. Therefore, the case of Israel shows that modernization processes do not follow a fixed, single and determinate way as they produces unexpected and uneven patterns, particularly in non-Western societies – even if they try to Westernise.