العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
EspañolMODERNITY
'Modernity' is a term used to describe the condition of being related to modernism. Since the term "modern" is used to describe a wide range of periods, modernity must be understood in its context, the industrial age of the 19th century, and its role in sociology, which since its beginning in that era examined the leap from pre-industrial to industrial society, sometimes considering events of the 18th century as well. For the period since the Middle Ages, the term Modern Times is used.
Modern can mean all of post-medieval European history, in the context of dividing history into three large epochs: ancient history, the Middle Ages, and Modern Times. In the context of contemporary history, politics and other subjects, it is also applied specifically to the period beginning somewhere between 1870 and 1910, through the present, and even more specifically to the early 20th century, though the ''late modern ''times would be marked by the late 18th century (Industrial, American, and French Revolutions).
"Modernity" is a different term from modern times; it is derived from Modernism, a movement in art based on the consciousness that through the mechanical age of industrialism, humankind has evolved into something very new - what that would be, would have to be explored by art, and all previous concepts questioned. Darwin's Origin of Species and Lyell's Principles of Geology revolutionized the perception of time and race, and that of "mankind" in particular.
"At its simplest, modernity is a shorthand term for modern society or industrial civilization. Portrayed in more detail, it is associated with (1) a certain set of attitudes towards the world, the idea of the world as an open transformation by human intervention; (2)a complex of economic institutions, especially industrial production and a market economy; (3) a certain range of political institutions , including the nation-state and mass democracy. Largely as a result of these characteristics, modernity is vastly more dynamic than any previous type of social order. It is a society - more technically, a complex of institutions - which unlike any preceding cultures lives in the future rather than the past" Anthony Giddens This is a direct quote copied from ''Conversations with Anthony Giddens: Making Sense of Modernity'' 1998. pg.94
Men such as the Emperor Napoleon introduced new codes of law in Europe based on merit and achievement, rather than on a class system rooted in Feudalism. The modern political system of Liberalism (derived from the word "Liberty" which means "Freedom") empowered members of the disenfranchised Third Estate. The power of elected bodies supplanted traditional rule by royal decree. A new attachment to one's nation, culture and language produced the powerful forces of Nationalism. This in turn ultimately drove to several nationalist and social movements and reivindications, often having an impact in arts and literatic currents, or setting the basis for recognition of new cultural, linguistical or even political status. This was smartly used for the rising Burgeoise class, in order to take advantage of, by setting the basis for new independent or republican unified Estates, that led to the establishment of solid and stable inner markets, and their achieving of a more comfortable and preeminent position in society. Such cases were evident in processes such as Italy's and Germany's unifications, the inception of the French Republic, and the appearance of several independent republics in the Americas from the remnants of old Colonial empires. The Burgeoise's new and stronger positions would often end up substituing [Nobility] as a ruling class, either by violent riots, like in the case of French Republic and Revolution, or by gradual and eventual replacing or merging up with. Other times they would live along with the old feudal status,as in Czarist Russia. In several other cases, many of these claims would not become fully satisfied, by becoming in conflict with other centralist or unitary nationalist claims, such as in the case of Basque country or Catalonia, in Spain, though it would end up leading to partial concessions such as autonomical and federal statuses, besides serving as source for new nationalistic political tendences and claims, as Catalanism or Basque nationalism (as opposed to tendences such as Spanish nationalism or Anti-Catalanism), that would be left open, and partly prevalent among those regions, leading to appearing of new political branches. Some most extreme factions of these ultimately contributed to new ideologies such as Fascism, Militarism and Totalitarism tendences.
The desire to claim for rights and better conditions for wide and disfavoured social classes, such as the proletariat, that would eventually become wider and achieve a key role, as workers, in supporting echonomy, incerasingly industrialized, would lead to increasing protests and demonstrations, as well as riots, setting the basis for new ideologies and social movements such as Communism, Socialism or Anarchism, that would seek for and creation of a classless society, fully free and democratic. This would lead to episodes such as Paris commune, in 1871, that would be finally defeated by Prussian forces, as well as October Revolution in Russia, in 1917, whith Tsar execution and creation of first Socialist Estate, as the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (also known as Bolshevist Russia), first to be popularly and democratically ruled by workers, until its gradual bureaucratization and collapse as such, devasted by Russian Civil War, and setting the road for Soviet Union and Stalin's totalitaristic ways.
In Germany, once the Kaiser had abdicated in 1918, chaos ensued, paving the way for the rise of Adolf Hitler and National-Socialism.
The new republic of the United States of America granted the vote to white, male citizens, and placed reins on government based on the new Constitution and created a system of checks and balances between the three different branches of government, the legislature, judiciary, and executive headed by a President who was elected via a national election.
In Indian politics, Mughal (1526-1857) and then the British (1857-1947) invasion and skilful organization gradually brought unification for the first time to a subcontinent of separate states and kingdoms into a strongly united federalist system, and culminating in the world's largest democracy (1947-Present). The European Union is now beginning the equivalent process that the Indian Union has completed over the last 500 years, of a continent becoming a federalist union, with the difference being the willingness of the European states to unite, versus the union being imposed on the Indian states by invaders.
One of the most important aspects of modernity is the encouragement of advance or progress in useful sciences and arts. Politically, this demanded an end to caution in allowing radical ideas to be made public, which radically changed religion and education in European society.
An Industrial Revolution initiated by mechanical automation of the manufacture of cotton cloth and the use of steam engines, commenced in the 18th century in Great Britain, followed in the 19th century by a later series of developments, which saw modern systems of communication and transportation introduced in the form of steamships, railroads and the telegraph. In the late 19th century, a Second Industrial Revolution, prompted by developments in the chemical, petroleum, steel and electrical industries, furthered transformed the modern world.
Warfare was changed with the advent of new varieties of rifle, cannon, gun, machine gun, armor, tank, plane, jet, and missile. Weapons such as the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb, known along with chemical weapons and biological weapons as weapons of mass destruction, actually made the devastation of the entire planet possible in minutes. All these are among the markings of the Modern World.
New attitudes towards religion, with the church diminished, and a desire for personal freedoms, induced desires for sexual freedoms, which were ultimately accepted by large sectors of the Western World. Theories of "free love" and uninhibited sex were touted by radicals only later in the 1960s.
Equality of the sexes in politics and economics, women's liberation movement, gay rights (Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf) and the freedom afforded by contraception allowed for greater personal choices in these intimate areas of personal life.
In Indian culture, caste divisions continued, but lost its affiliation with occupations, as competitive exams became universal.
As a conclusion, homosexual relationships were accepted while the women's rights were trying to gain power.
''Main article: Modern art''
The Modern Age, when used in reference to the arts, reflects a tendency extant during the period from around the beginning of the 20th century up through the present day. Modern art may be typified by self-awareness, and by the manipulation of form or medium as an integral part of the work itself. It contrasts pre-modern Western art, which often sought only to represent a form of reality. Key movements in modern art include cubist painting, typified by Pablo Picasso, modernist literature such as that written by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein, and the 'new poetry' headed by Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot.
Modern music saw the beginning of a fusion movement of different styles and cultures. John Coltrane for example fused jazz with Carnatic music to develop his album ''India''. Elvis Presley popularized rock and roll, fusing country-western and blues.
''See also Postmodern art''
The partisan use of the term "worldwide" gives tremendous emotional appeal, and is used in various countries not only by persons from professional historians to self-taught curmudgeons but by political groups which want to impose their view of reality upon their countrymen and even the whole world. The easiest way to do this is to establish a benchmark year and leave the particulars to specialists.
Russia: It took some time for the European socialists to conceive that the next great revolution would start someplace other than in France. But the Russians have always compared themselves to the French. After the October revolution, the Communist party of the Soviet Union declared that the "modern age" began with Peter the Great and the "contemporary age" began with this Bolshevik revolution.
Japan: The Japanese call the dynasties previous to the Tokugawa dynasty as medieval, and the Meiji Restoration of 1866-1869 is considered equivalent to the French Revolution of 1789, but haven't assimilated a form of the word modern for Tokugawa.
As for the Third World, the obvious benchmarks are colonization by European imperial powers during the "New Imperialism" and the subsequent decolonization in the twentieth century. But "modern" and "contemporary" are not used for this purpose.
The United States of America: A seemingly natural dividing point as far as Spain and the new world are concerned is the voyage of Columbus in 1492. But the need for such an undertaking was underscored by the taking of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire of the Turks in 1453, so historians once took this as their benchmark.
There have been numerous ways of understanding what modernity is, particularly in the field of sociology. A wide variety of terms are used to describe the society, social life, driving force, symptomatic mentality, or some other defining aspects of modernity. They include: bureaucracy, disenchantment of the world, rationalization, secularization, alienation, commodification, decontextualization, individualism, subjectivism, linear progression, objectivism, universalism, reductionism, chaos, mass society, industrial society, homogenization, unification, hybridization, diversification, democratization, centralization, hierarchical organization, mechanization, totalitarianism, and so on.
Modernity may be considered "marked and defined by an obsession with 'evidence'", visuality, and visibility (Leppert 2004, p.19).
Modernity is often characterized by comparing modern societies to premodern or postmodern ones; To an extent, it is reasonable to doubt the very possibility of a descriptive concept that can adequately capture diverse realities of societies of various historical contexts, especially non-European ones, let alone a three-stage model of social evolution from premodernity to postmodernity.
However, in terms of social structure, many of the defining events and characteristics listed above stem from a transition from relatively isolated local communities to a more integrated large-scale society. Understood this way, modernization might be a general, abstract process which can be found in many different parts of histories, rather than a unique event in Europe.
In general, large-scale integration involves:
★ Increased movement of goods, capital, people, and information among formerly separate areas, and increased influence that reaches beyond a local area.
★ Increased formalization of those mobile elements, development of 'circuits' on which those elements and influences travel, and standardization of many aspects of the society in general that is conducive to the mobility.
★ Increased specialization of different segments of society, such as the division of labor, and interdependency among areas.
Seemingly contradictory characteristics ascribed to modernity are often different aspects of this process. For example, unique local culture is invaded and lost by the increased mobility of cultural elements, such as recipes, folktales, and hit songs, resulting in a cultural homogenization across localities, but the repertoire of available recipes and songs increases within an area because of the increased interlocal movement, resulting in a diversification within each locality. (This is manifest especially in large metropolises where there are many mobile elements). Centralized bureaucracy and hierarchical organization of governments and firms grows in scale and power in an unprecedented manner, leading some to lament the stifling, cold, rationalist or totalitarian nature of modern society. Yet individuals, often as replaceable components, may be able to move in those social subsystems, creating a sense of liberty, dynamic competition and individualism for others. This is especially the case when a modern society is compared with premodern societies, in which the family and social class one is born into shapes one's lifecourse to a greater extent.
These social changes are somewhat common to many different levels of social integration, and not limited to what happened to the West European societies in a specific time period. For example, these changes might happen when formerly separate virtual communities merge. Similarly, when two human beings develop a close relationship, communication, convention, and increased division of roles tend to emerge. Another example can be found in ongoing globalization - the increased international flows changing the landscape for many. In other words, while modernity has been characterized in many seemingly contradictory ways, many of those characterizations can be reduced to a relatively simple set of concepts of social change.
At the same time, however, such an understanding of modernity is certainly not satisfactory to many, because it fails to explain the global influence of West European and American societies since the Renaissance. Mere large-scale integration of local communities, seen in the Macedon of Alexander the Great or the Mongolia of the Khans, would not necessarily result in the same magnitude of influence as the West European modernization. What has made Western Europe so special?
There have been two major answers to this question. First, an internal factor is that only in Europe, through the Renaissance humanists and early modern philosophers and scientists, rational thinking came to replace many intellectual activities that had been under heavy influence of convention, superstition, and religion. This line of answer is most frequently associated with Max Weber, a sociologist who is known to have pursued the answer to the above question.
Second, an external factor triggering the later modernity is that colonization, starting as early as the Age of Discovery, created exploitative relations between European countries and their colonies. This view has notably been explored by the world systems theory of Immanuel Wallerstein.
It is also notable that such commonly-observed features of many modern societies as the nuclear family, slavery, gender roles, and nation states do not necessarily fit well with the idea of rational social organization in which components such as people are treated equally. While many of these features have been dissolving, histories seem to suggest those features may not be mere exceptions to the essential characteristics of modernization, but necessary parts of it.
Modernization brought a series of seemingly indisputable benefits to people. Lower infant mortality rate, decreased death from starvation, eradication of some of the fatal diseases, more equal treatment of people with different backgrounds and incomes, and so on. To some, this is an indication of the potential of modernity, perhaps yet to be fully realized. In general, rational, scientific approach to problems and the pursuit of economic wealth seems still to many a reasonable way of understanding good social development.
At the same time, some sociologists hold that modernity also has negative characteristics.
Technological development occurred not only in the medical and agricultural fields, but also in the military. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, and the following nuclear arms race in the post-war era, were considered by some to be negative developments associated with modernity.
Some critics of modernity consider Stalin's Great Purges and the Holocaust (or Shoah)to be examples of outcomes naturally arrived at under modernity, and argue that a truly 'rational' organization of society might involve exclusion, or extermination, of non-standard elements, and thus criticize modernity on the grounds that these outcomes would generally be considered abhorrent.
Some critics argue that modernity is not necessarily sustainable. Pollution is perhaps the least controversial of these, but one may include decreasing biodiversity and climate change as results of development. The development of biotechnology and genetic engineering are creating what some consider to be unknown risks.
Other critics emphasize what they believe to be psychological and moral hazards of modern life - alienation, feeling of rootlessness, loss of strong bonds and common values, hedonism, etc. This is often accompanied by a re-evaluation of pre-modern communities.
There is an ongoing debate about the relationship between modernity and present societies. The debate has two dimensions. First, there is an empirical question of whether some of the present societies can be understood as a developmental continuation of modernity (see late modernity), a variation of modernity (see hypermodernity), or as a distinctive type (see postmodernity). Second, there is a judgement of whether modernization has been, and is, desirable for a society. Seemingly new phenomena such as globalization, the end of the Cold War, ethnic conflicts, and the proliferation of information technologies are taken by some as reasons to adopt a new vision to navigate social development. However modernity came with a structure of self-determination which is greatly seen in contemporary societies
★ Behavioral modernity
★ Postmodernity
★ Leppert, Richard (2005). "The Social Discipline of Listening" in Aural Cultures, edited by Jim Drobnick, 19-35. Toronto: YYZ Books, 2004.
★ Leppert, Richard (2005). "The Social Discipline of Listening" in Aural Cultures, edited by Jim Drobnick, 19-35. Toronto: YYZ Books, 2004.
★ Latour, Bruno. "We Have Never Been Modern", Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
★ Berman, Marshall. "All that is solid melts into air. The experience of modernity." London: Verso, 1993.
★ The Telegraph (India) - Newsarticle arguing that Asians are more modern than the inventors of modernity
Related Terminology
Modern can mean all of post-medieval European history, in the context of dividing history into three large epochs: ancient history, the Middle Ages, and Modern Times. In the context of contemporary history, politics and other subjects, it is also applied specifically to the period beginning somewhere between 1870 and 1910, through the present, and even more specifically to the early 20th century, though the ''late modern ''times would be marked by the late 18th century (Industrial, American, and French Revolutions).
"Modernity" is a different term from modern times; it is derived from Modernism, a movement in art based on the consciousness that through the mechanical age of industrialism, humankind has evolved into something very new - what that would be, would have to be explored by art, and all previous concepts questioned. Darwin's Origin of Species and Lyell's Principles of Geology revolutionized the perception of time and race, and that of "mankind" in particular.
Sociological thought
"At its simplest, modernity is a shorthand term for modern society or industrial civilization. Portrayed in more detail, it is associated with (1) a certain set of attitudes towards the world, the idea of the world as an open transformation by human intervention; (2)a complex of economic institutions, especially industrial production and a market economy; (3) a certain range of political institutions , including the nation-state and mass democracy. Largely as a result of these characteristics, modernity is vastly more dynamic than any previous type of social order. It is a society - more technically, a complex of institutions - which unlike any preceding cultures lives in the future rather than the past" Anthony Giddens This is a direct quote copied from ''Conversations with Anthony Giddens: Making Sense of Modernity'' 1998. pg.94
Men such as the Emperor Napoleon introduced new codes of law in Europe based on merit and achievement, rather than on a class system rooted in Feudalism. The modern political system of Liberalism (derived from the word "Liberty" which means "Freedom") empowered members of the disenfranchised Third Estate. The power of elected bodies supplanted traditional rule by royal decree. A new attachment to one's nation, culture and language produced the powerful forces of Nationalism. This in turn ultimately drove to several nationalist and social movements and reivindications, often having an impact in arts and literatic currents, or setting the basis for recognition of new cultural, linguistical or even political status. This was smartly used for the rising Burgeoise class, in order to take advantage of, by setting the basis for new independent or republican unified Estates, that led to the establishment of solid and stable inner markets, and their achieving of a more comfortable and preeminent position in society. Such cases were evident in processes such as Italy's and Germany's unifications, the inception of the French Republic, and the appearance of several independent republics in the Americas from the remnants of old Colonial empires. The Burgeoise's new and stronger positions would often end up substituing [Nobility] as a ruling class, either by violent riots, like in the case of French Republic and Revolution, or by gradual and eventual replacing or merging up with. Other times they would live along with the old feudal status,as in Czarist Russia. In several other cases, many of these claims would not become fully satisfied, by becoming in conflict with other centralist or unitary nationalist claims, such as in the case of Basque country or Catalonia, in Spain, though it would end up leading to partial concessions such as autonomical and federal statuses, besides serving as source for new nationalistic political tendences and claims, as Catalanism or Basque nationalism (as opposed to tendences such as Spanish nationalism or Anti-Catalanism), that would be left open, and partly prevalent among those regions, leading to appearing of new political branches. Some most extreme factions of these ultimately contributed to new ideologies such as Fascism, Militarism and Totalitarism tendences.
The desire to claim for rights and better conditions for wide and disfavoured social classes, such as the proletariat, that would eventually become wider and achieve a key role, as workers, in supporting echonomy, incerasingly industrialized, would lead to increasing protests and demonstrations, as well as riots, setting the basis for new ideologies and social movements such as Communism, Socialism or Anarchism, that would seek for and creation of a classless society, fully free and democratic. This would lead to episodes such as Paris commune, in 1871, that would be finally defeated by Prussian forces, as well as October Revolution in Russia, in 1917, whith Tsar execution and creation of first Socialist Estate, as the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (also known as Bolshevist Russia), first to be popularly and democratically ruled by workers, until its gradual bureaucratization and collapse as such, devasted by Russian Civil War, and setting the road for Soviet Union and Stalin's totalitaristic ways.
In Germany, once the Kaiser had abdicated in 1918, chaos ensued, paving the way for the rise of Adolf Hitler and National-Socialism.
The new republic of the United States of America granted the vote to white, male citizens, and placed reins on government based on the new Constitution and created a system of checks and balances between the three different branches of government, the legislature, judiciary, and executive headed by a President who was elected via a national election.
In Indian politics, Mughal (1526-1857) and then the British (1857-1947) invasion and skilful organization gradually brought unification for the first time to a subcontinent of separate states and kingdoms into a strongly united federalist system, and culminating in the world's largest democracy (1947-Present). The European Union is now beginning the equivalent process that the Indian Union has completed over the last 500 years, of a continent becoming a federalist union, with the difference being the willingness of the European states to unite, versus the union being imposed on the Indian states by invaders.
Science and technology
One of the most important aspects of modernity is the encouragement of advance or progress in useful sciences and arts. Politically, this demanded an end to caution in allowing radical ideas to be made public, which radically changed religion and education in European society.
Industry
An Industrial Revolution initiated by mechanical automation of the manufacture of cotton cloth and the use of steam engines, commenced in the 18th century in Great Britain, followed in the 19th century by a later series of developments, which saw modern systems of communication and transportation introduced in the form of steamships, railroads and the telegraph. In the late 19th century, a Second Industrial Revolution, prompted by developments in the chemical, petroleum, steel and electrical industries, furthered transformed the modern world.
Warfare
Warfare was changed with the advent of new varieties of rifle, cannon, gun, machine gun, armor, tank, plane, jet, and missile. Weapons such as the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb, known along with chemical weapons and biological weapons as weapons of mass destruction, actually made the devastation of the entire planet possible in minutes. All these are among the markings of the Modern World.
Culture
New attitudes towards religion, with the church diminished, and a desire for personal freedoms, induced desires for sexual freedoms, which were ultimately accepted by large sectors of the Western World. Theories of "free love" and uninhibited sex were touted by radicals only later in the 1960s.
Equality of the sexes in politics and economics, women's liberation movement, gay rights (Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf) and the freedom afforded by contraception allowed for greater personal choices in these intimate areas of personal life.
In Indian culture, caste divisions continued, but lost its affiliation with occupations, as competitive exams became universal.
As a conclusion, homosexual relationships were accepted while the women's rights were trying to gain power.
The Arts
''Main article: Modern art''
The Modern Age, when used in reference to the arts, reflects a tendency extant during the period from around the beginning of the 20th century up through the present day. Modern art may be typified by self-awareness, and by the manipulation of form or medium as an integral part of the work itself. It contrasts pre-modern Western art, which often sought only to represent a form of reality. Key movements in modern art include cubist painting, typified by Pablo Picasso, modernist literature such as that written by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein, and the 'new poetry' headed by Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot.
Modern music saw the beginning of a fusion movement of different styles and cultures. John Coltrane for example fused jazz with Carnatic music to develop his album ''India''. Elvis Presley popularized rock and roll, fusing country-western and blues.
''See also Postmodern art''
Universality
The partisan use of the term "worldwide" gives tremendous emotional appeal, and is used in various countries not only by persons from professional historians to self-taught curmudgeons but by political groups which want to impose their view of reality upon their countrymen and even the whole world. The easiest way to do this is to establish a benchmark year and leave the particulars to specialists.
Russia: It took some time for the European socialists to conceive that the next great revolution would start someplace other than in France. But the Russians have always compared themselves to the French. After the October revolution, the Communist party of the Soviet Union declared that the "modern age" began with Peter the Great and the "contemporary age" began with this Bolshevik revolution.
Japan: The Japanese call the dynasties previous to the Tokugawa dynasty as medieval, and the Meiji Restoration of 1866-1869 is considered equivalent to the French Revolution of 1789, but haven't assimilated a form of the word modern for Tokugawa.
As for the Third World, the obvious benchmarks are colonization by European imperial powers during the "New Imperialism" and the subsequent decolonization in the twentieth century. But "modern" and "contemporary" are not used for this purpose.
The United States of America: A seemingly natural dividing point as far as Spain and the new world are concerned is the voyage of Columbus in 1492. But the need for such an undertaking was underscored by the taking of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire of the Turks in 1453, so historians once took this as their benchmark.
Defining characteristics of modernity
There have been numerous ways of understanding what modernity is, particularly in the field of sociology. A wide variety of terms are used to describe the society, social life, driving force, symptomatic mentality, or some other defining aspects of modernity. They include: bureaucracy, disenchantment of the world, rationalization, secularization, alienation, commodification, decontextualization, individualism, subjectivism, linear progression, objectivism, universalism, reductionism, chaos, mass society, industrial society, homogenization, unification, hybridization, diversification, democratization, centralization, hierarchical organization, mechanization, totalitarianism, and so on.
Modernity may be considered "marked and defined by an obsession with 'evidence'", visuality, and visibility (Leppert 2004, p.19).
Modernity is often characterized by comparing modern societies to premodern or postmodern ones; To an extent, it is reasonable to doubt the very possibility of a descriptive concept that can adequately capture diverse realities of societies of various historical contexts, especially non-European ones, let alone a three-stage model of social evolution from premodernity to postmodernity.
However, in terms of social structure, many of the defining events and characteristics listed above stem from a transition from relatively isolated local communities to a more integrated large-scale society. Understood this way, modernization might be a general, abstract process which can be found in many different parts of histories, rather than a unique event in Europe.
In general, large-scale integration involves:
★ Increased movement of goods, capital, people, and information among formerly separate areas, and increased influence that reaches beyond a local area.
★ Increased formalization of those mobile elements, development of 'circuits' on which those elements and influences travel, and standardization of many aspects of the society in general that is conducive to the mobility.
★ Increased specialization of different segments of society, such as the division of labor, and interdependency among areas.
Seemingly contradictory characteristics ascribed to modernity are often different aspects of this process. For example, unique local culture is invaded and lost by the increased mobility of cultural elements, such as recipes, folktales, and hit songs, resulting in a cultural homogenization across localities, but the repertoire of available recipes and songs increases within an area because of the increased interlocal movement, resulting in a diversification within each locality. (This is manifest especially in large metropolises where there are many mobile elements). Centralized bureaucracy and hierarchical organization of governments and firms grows in scale and power in an unprecedented manner, leading some to lament the stifling, cold, rationalist or totalitarian nature of modern society. Yet individuals, often as replaceable components, may be able to move in those social subsystems, creating a sense of liberty, dynamic competition and individualism for others. This is especially the case when a modern society is compared with premodern societies, in which the family and social class one is born into shapes one's lifecourse to a greater extent.
These social changes are somewhat common to many different levels of social integration, and not limited to what happened to the West European societies in a specific time period. For example, these changes might happen when formerly separate virtual communities merge. Similarly, when two human beings develop a close relationship, communication, convention, and increased division of roles tend to emerge. Another example can be found in ongoing globalization - the increased international flows changing the landscape for many. In other words, while modernity has been characterized in many seemingly contradictory ways, many of those characterizations can be reduced to a relatively simple set of concepts of social change.
At the same time, however, such an understanding of modernity is certainly not satisfactory to many, because it fails to explain the global influence of West European and American societies since the Renaissance. Mere large-scale integration of local communities, seen in the Macedon of Alexander the Great or the Mongolia of the Khans, would not necessarily result in the same magnitude of influence as the West European modernization. What has made Western Europe so special?
There have been two major answers to this question. First, an internal factor is that only in Europe, through the Renaissance humanists and early modern philosophers and scientists, rational thinking came to replace many intellectual activities that had been under heavy influence of convention, superstition, and religion. This line of answer is most frequently associated with Max Weber, a sociologist who is known to have pursued the answer to the above question.
Second, an external factor triggering the later modernity is that colonization, starting as early as the Age of Discovery, created exploitative relations between European countries and their colonies. This view has notably been explored by the world systems theory of Immanuel Wallerstein.
It is also notable that such commonly-observed features of many modern societies as the nuclear family, slavery, gender roles, and nation states do not necessarily fit well with the idea of rational social organization in which components such as people are treated equally. While many of these features have been dissolving, histories seem to suggest those features may not be mere exceptions to the essential characteristics of modernization, but necessary parts of it.
The paradox of modernity
Modernization brought a series of seemingly indisputable benefits to people. Lower infant mortality rate, decreased death from starvation, eradication of some of the fatal diseases, more equal treatment of people with different backgrounds and incomes, and so on. To some, this is an indication of the potential of modernity, perhaps yet to be fully realized. In general, rational, scientific approach to problems and the pursuit of economic wealth seems still to many a reasonable way of understanding good social development.
At the same time, some sociologists hold that modernity also has negative characteristics.
Technological development occurred not only in the medical and agricultural fields, but also in the military. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, and the following nuclear arms race in the post-war era, were considered by some to be negative developments associated with modernity.
Some critics of modernity consider Stalin's Great Purges and the Holocaust (or Shoah)to be examples of outcomes naturally arrived at under modernity, and argue that a truly 'rational' organization of society might involve exclusion, or extermination, of non-standard elements, and thus criticize modernity on the grounds that these outcomes would generally be considered abhorrent.
Some critics argue that modernity is not necessarily sustainable. Pollution is perhaps the least controversial of these, but one may include decreasing biodiversity and climate change as results of development. The development of biotechnology and genetic engineering are creating what some consider to be unknown risks.
Other critics emphasize what they believe to be psychological and moral hazards of modern life - alienation, feeling of rootlessness, loss of strong bonds and common values, hedonism, etc. This is often accompanied by a re-evaluation of pre-modern communities.
Modernity and the contemporary society
There is an ongoing debate about the relationship between modernity and present societies. The debate has two dimensions. First, there is an empirical question of whether some of the present societies can be understood as a developmental continuation of modernity (see late modernity), a variation of modernity (see hypermodernity), or as a distinctive type (see postmodernity). Second, there is a judgement of whether modernization has been, and is, desirable for a society. Seemingly new phenomena such as globalization, the end of the Cold War, ethnic conflicts, and the proliferation of information technologies are taken by some as reasons to adopt a new vision to navigate social development. However modernity came with a structure of self-determination which is greatly seen in contemporary societies
See also
★ Behavioral modernity
★ Postmodernity
Source
★ Leppert, Richard (2005). "The Social Discipline of Listening" in Aural Cultures, edited by Jim Drobnick, 19-35. Toronto: YYZ Books, 2004.
★ Leppert, Richard (2005). "The Social Discipline of Listening" in Aural Cultures, edited by Jim Drobnick, 19-35. Toronto: YYZ Books, 2004.
Further Reading
★ Latour, Bruno. "We Have Never Been Modern", Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
★ Berman, Marshall. "All that is solid melts into air. The experience of modernity." London: Verso, 1993.
External Links
★ The Telegraph (India) - Newsarticle arguing that Asians are more modern than the inventors of modernity
This article provided by Wikipedia. To edit the contents of this article, click here for original source.
psst.. try this: add to faves
