A collection of essays from twenty-five American academics regarding modernization, particularly the characteristics of economic growth, westernization, and variety of changes in behavior, economics, and politics that arise in developing regions.
Myron Weiner was an American political scientist and renowned scholar on India, South Asia, internal and international migration, ethnic conflict, child labor, democratization, political demography, and the politics and policies of developing countries.
Weiner was born in New York City in 1931. He received a BSS degree from the City College of New York in 1951 and MA and PhD degrees from Princeton University in 1953 and 1955. He taught at Princeton and the University of Chicago before coming to MIT as an associate professor in 1961, where he worked for 38 years before retiring in April 1999.
Professor Weiner served as a consultant to the World Bank, the Agency for International Development, the US State Department, and the U.S. National Security Council. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society, and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Council on Foreign Relations, and a past president of the New England Association of Asian Studies. He held visiting appointments at Oxford University's Balliol College, Harvard University, Delhi University, Hebrew University and the University of Paris. Dr. Weiner was chair of the External Research and Advisory Committee of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 1996 until his death.
He was the author or editor of 32 scholarly books and numerous peer-reviewed articles. His most recent research involved three projects: child labor and education policy in India and other developing countries; comparing immigration, refugees and citizenship policies in Japan, Germany, South Africa and the USA; and analyzing the causes and effects of migration and refugee flows.
Prof. Weiner died of brain cancer on June 3, 1999, at his home in Moretown, VT, at age 68. He was married to Sheila Leiman Weiner. They had two children, Saul Weiner of Chicago and a daughter, Beth Weiner Datskovsky, of Bala Cynwyd, PA.