Modernization Theory: what's Brosslandia got to do with it?

My trip to La Paz has been a pilgrimage – no, not of religion or of self-discovery but rather of learning to see, to know, to learn. Of self-reflection, sure, my pilgrimage has been, but while I have learned about a lot about myself, I have learned more-so about the world, Latin America, Bolivia, La Paz, the individual neighborhoods…

If I could coin this Bolivian summer, it would be “Learning to Learn.” Out of the boundaries I was taught in grade school, my evangelical and Protestant church, my parents, and even college, I am learning to learn. The importance of confronting one’s differences and personal prejudices in order to see has been stressed over and over again, a hard and difficult process that is necessary in order to be a good social scientist. To be an ethnographer, a sociologist, a political scientist, a historian, one must remove the ideas cumulated over a lifetime of socialization to see the world as it is.

I sat in front of Brosslandia, a clever mixture of Las Vegas, Disneyland, and gaudiness, in El Prado the other day. The restaurant has an ice cream bar, full of every flavor and topping a person could want. But I watched – an Amaryan woman was selling her homemade ice cream directly in front. And I wondered, is it possible to maintain age-old tradition and custom in the middle of such rapid development?

What I have been taught in school would lend itself toward impossibility, but like I said, I am learning to learn.

So, instead, I am choosing to shake off my preconceived thoughts of modernization theory and economic development, what I thought I knew about the world. I do not know the answer to my question, but I have a feeling that if any place is going to prove me wrong and teach me something I never knew, it is going to be this incredible and expanding and sometimes-a-little-weird city. And I have a feeling that Brosslandia and the entrepreneurial viejita have got a lot to teach me, too.