Public Administration Journal

Theoni

A Century of Progress title of the 1933 Chicago World 's Fair
Science Explores, Technology Executes, Mankind Conforms motto of the 1933 Chicago World 's Fair

Enthraled with Modernity: The
Histori(2il Context of Knowledge and Theory Development in Public
Administration
Guy B. Adams, University of Missouri-Columbia
What impact has the "culture of modernity" had on the field of public administration? Guy B. Adams contends that the American cultural preoccupation with modernity has shaped the study of puhlic administration into an ahistorical and atemporal field that stresses technical rationality and has limited capacity to address critical questions facing society. This approach to public administration puts its emphasis on professionalism and the "scientific" and "rigorous" study of the field.
Adams calls for greater attention to history that produces a "genuinely open inquiry" in the field.

Much has been written in the last decade on knowledge and theory development in the field of American public administration (White, 1986; Ventriss, 1987;
Hummel, 1991; Box, 1992; McCurdy and Cleary, 1984;
Perry and Kraemer, 1986). Although beneficial, none of these analyses has taken a self-consciously historical approach to questions of knowledge and theory development in public administration, ' This article seeks to place this discourse in its historical context.
The most important aspect of the historical context is the culture at large within which American public administration is practiced, researched, and taught.

Today, the culture at large may be characterized as one of modernity (Turner, 1990; also Bernstein, 1985;
Bauman, 1989; and Rabinbach, 1990). Modernity is the culmination of a centuries-long process of modernization. Intellectual strands of modernity reach back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but as the defining characteristic of our own culture, modernity coalesced only within the past century. Modernity describes a social, political, and

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