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The modernization process
The modernization process from the 14th to the 20th century transformed agrarian, tradition-bound societies into complex, technologically driven ones. According to Ronald Inglehart’s framework, this long-term shift occurs along two cultural dimensions: from traditional to secular-rational authority and from survival values to self-expression values. Economic development and rising existential security drive these changes, first by weakening the hold of religion and custom, then by allowing populations to prioritize autonomy, tolerance, and quality of life once basic material needs are reliably met.
The Renaissance (roughly 14th–17th centuries) initiated the break with medieval traditionalism. Humanism revived classical learning and celebrated individual achievement, artistic creativity, and empirical observation. Although still embedded in a Christian worldview, Renaissance thought began to emphasize human agency and worldly inquiry over purely divine or communal dictates, planting early seeds of secular-rational orientation.
The Enlightenment (17th–18th centuries) accelerated the move toward secular-rational values. Thinkers such as Locke, Voltaire, and Kant argued that reason and empirical science, rather than inherited authority or revelation, should govern politics, ethics, and knowledge. This period promoted ideals of progress, individual rights, and rational governance, directly challenging traditional religious and monarchical legitimacy. In Inglehart’s terms, the Enlightenment represented a decisive step away from the traditional pole of the cultural map.
The Industrial Revolution (late 18th–19th centuries) translated these intellectual shifts into material reality through mechanization, urbanization, and capitalist expansion. Scientific and bureaucratic rationality became central to organizing production and administration, further advancing secular-rational authority. Yet the era’s widespread insecurity—harsh factory conditions, cyclical unemployment, and rapid social dislocation—kept survival values dominant. Mass populations remained focused on economic security, physical safety, and material accumulation rather than self-expression.
Only in the second half of the 20th century, amid unprecedented postwar affluence in advanced economies, did a new generational shift occur. Cohorts raised in conditions of relative security developed post-materialist or self-expression values, emphasizing personal autonomy, environmental protection, gender equality, and tolerance for diversity over economic survival. This cultural turn coincided with the emergence of the Information Age, characterized by digital technologies, knowledge work, and global information networks. In post-industrial societies, creativity, self-realization, and quality-of-life concerns moved to the center of social priorities, completing the long modernization trajectory Inglehart traces from traditional-survival societies through industrial secular-rational ones to post-industrial self-expressive ones.
Across these centuries, guiding societal values therefore evolved in step with changing material conditions: from sacred and communal in the Renaissance, to rational and progressive during the Enlightenment, to productive and materialist in the industrial era, and finally to expressive, pluralistic, and quality-of-life oriented in the Information Age. Inglehart’s analysis shows that these value shifts are not incidental but constitutive of modernization itself, reshaping institutions, politics, and everyday life as societies move from scarcity to abundance.
The following sections discuss each era more in-depth in terms of the modernization process and related values.
Go to Renaissance (14th-17th century).
References
Inglehart, R., & Welzel, C. (2005). Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence. Cambridge University Press.
Inglehart, R. (2018). Cultural Evolution: People’s Motivations are Changing, and Reshaping the World. Cambridge University Press.
World Values Survey. (n.d.). Findings and insights and The Inglehart-Welzel cultural map. https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org
