Lerner’s piece The Grocer and the Chief offers a glimpse of the modernization of the non western world. What distinguishes this story from the same modernization of the west is that traditional values are were more present during the modernizing transition in the east than they were in the west. Here in the beginning of Lerner’s piece the Chief or head of the, then pre-modernized, village of Balgat is said to hold most close to him steadfast personal/moral values of “obedience, courage, and loyalty” and disperse them to his constituents. In the west, traditional moral values such as those aforementioned had already started to be contested, starting with the more radical parts of the enlightenment, the revolutions of America and France and then culminating, albeit after much of the modernizing had already occurred, with the first world war. Lerner being of the west comes in with an attitude that denounces the significance of the old world core values that the unmodernized village exhibits and operates by. By doing this he does not notice what the village is leaving behind in its modernization. While the village is evolving, every aspect of its evolution isn’t necessarily positive. By using the yardstick of the Western timeline Lerner reduces the Modernization of Baglat into the simplest terms of binary which decreases the amount and level of insight and analysis that can be undergone relating to the phenomenon.