Considering “Traditional Society” in the Middle East: Learning Lerner All Over Again

More than fifty years ago Daniel Lerner published his classic text on the Passing of Traditional Society (1958). While this text has served as an illustration of a dominant paradigm in the field of development communication broadly, this specific work also delves into a particular approach to the modernization of the Middle Eastern region specifically. Despite prominent critiques in the academic community regarding the patriarchal, xenophobic, and simplistic character of this model of social change, the dominant themes articulated in Lerner’s model live on in current public discourse in the U.S. This study explores this discourse in USAID publications and U.S. news. Overall, U.S. discourse on development in the Middle East follows an Orientalist perspective, projecting the U.S. as the best model of development, seen as engaging in benevolent giving to poor, traditional societies hampered by problematic religious beliefs. “What America is... the modernizing Middle East seeks to become.” (Lerner, 1958, p. 79) More than fifty years ago Daniel Lerner published his classic text on the Passing of Traditional Society (1958). Although many have worked within and from a modernization paradigm, Lerner’s work is singled out in this text as being emblematic of an Orientalist approach (Said, 1978) to development work in the Middle East. His juxtaposition of a modern entrepreneur in relation to a traditional chief underscores a linear path of inevitable transition, as individuals develop empathic potential once exposed to media. While this text has served as an illustration of a dominant paradigm in the field of development communication broadly,