Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, in particular, one marked by the move from feudalism (or agrarianism) toward capitalism, industrialisation, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance (Barker 2005, 444). Conceptually, modernity relates to the modern era and to modernism, but forms a distinct concept. Whereas the Enlightenment invokes a specific movement in Western philosophy, modernity tends only to refer to the social relations associated with the rise of capitalism. Nevertheless modernity may characterise tendencies in intellectual culture: particularly, those movements intertwined with secularisation and post-industrial life, such as Marxism and existentialism, as well as the formal establishment of social science. In context, modernity has been associated with cultural and intellectual movements occurring between 1436 and 1789, and extending to the 1970s or later (Toulmin 1992, 3–5).
Contents |
The term "modern" (Latin modernus from modo, "just now") dates from the fifth century, originally distinguishing the Christian era from the Pagan era, yet the word entered general usage only in the seventeenth-century, derived from the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns — debating: "Is Modern culture superior to Classical (Græco–Roman) culture?" — a literary and artistic quarrel among the Académie française in the early 1690s.
From these usages, "modernity" denoted the renunciation of the recent past, favouring a new beginning, and a re-interpretation of historical origin. Moreover, the distinction between "modernity" and "modern" did not arise until the nineteenth century (Delanty 2007).
According to Berman's books,[1] modernity is periodized into three conventional phases (dubbed "Early," "Classical," and "Late," respectively, by Peter Osborne[2]):
Some authors, such as Lyotard and Baudrillard, believe that modernity ended in the mid or late twentieth century and thus have defined a period subsequent to modernity, namely Postmodernity (1930s/1950s/1990s–present). Other theorists, however, consider the period from the late 20th century to present to be merely another phase of modernity; this phase is called "Liquid" modernity by Bauman or "High" modernity by Giddens (see: Descriptions of postmodernity).
In sociology, a discipline that arose in direct response to the social problems of "modernity" (Harriss 2000, 325), the term most generally refers to the social conditions, processes, and discourses consequent to the Age of Enlightenment. In the most basic terms, Anthony Giddens describes modernity as
...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 open to 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 culture, lives in the future, rather than the past (Giddens 1998, 94).
Modernity aimed towards "a progressive force promising to liberate humankind from ignorance and irrationality" (Rosenau 1992, 5). With new social and philosophical conditions, however, arose fundamental new challenges. The era is characterised socially by industrialisation and the division of labour, and philosophically by "the loss of certainty, and the realization that certainty can never be established, once and for all" (Delanty 2007). Central to this loss of certainty is the loss of religion. Various 19th century intellectuals, from Auguste Comte to Karl Marx to Sigmund Freud, attempted to offer scientific and/or political ideologies in the wake of secularisation. Modernity may be described as the "age of ideology."
For Marx, what was the basis of modernity was the emergence of capitalism and the revolutionary bourgeoisie, which led to an unprecedented expansion of productive forces and to the creation of the world market. Durkheim tackled modernity from a different angle by following the ideas of Saint-Simon about the industrial system. Although the starting point is the same as Marx, feudal society, Durkheim emphasizes far less the rising of the bourgeoisie as a new revolutionary class and very seldom refers to capitalism as the new mode of production implemented by it. The fundamental impulse to modernity is rather industrialism accompandied by the new scientific forces. In the work of Max Weber, modernity is closely associated with the processess of rationalization and disenchantment of the world. (Jorge Larraín 2000, 13)
Theorists such as Theodor Adorno and Zygmunt Bauman propose that modernity represents a departure from the central tenets of the Enlightenment and towards nefarious processes of alienation, such as commodity fetishism and the Holocaust (Adorno 1973; Bauman 1989). Contemporary critical theory presents the concept of "rationalization" in even more negative terms than those Weber originally defined. Processes of rationalization—as progress for the sake of progress—may in many cases have a negative and dehumanising effect on modern society.
Consequent to debate about economic globalization, the comparative analysis of civilisations, and the post-colonial perspective of "alternative modernities," Shmuel Eisenstadt introduced the concept of "multiple modernities" (2003; see also Delanty 2007). Modernity as a "plural condition" is the central concept of this sociologic approach and perspective, which broadens the definition of "modernity" from exclusively denoting Western European culture to a cosmopolitan definition, thereby: "Modernity is not Westernization, and its key processes and dynamics can be found in all societies" (Delanty 2007).
The American Revolution (1775–1783) and the French Revolution (1789–1799) established republics upon explicitly modern political theory, modelled upon the earlier Republic of Corsica (1755–1769) (Saul 1992, 55–61). Liberalism, the modern political system, empowered the disenfranchised Third Estate; elected political power supplanted traditional hereditary monarchy.
Art history keeps the term "modernity" distinct from the terms Modern Age and Modernism - as a discrete "term applied to the cultural condition in which the seemingly absolute necessity of innovation becomes a primary fact of life, work, and thought. . . . Modernity is more than merely the state of being modern, or the opposition between old and new" (Smith 2009).
In the essay "The Painter of Modern Life" (1864), Charles Baudelaire uses the literary, best-known definition: "By modernity I mean the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent" (Baudelaire 1964, 13).
Of the available conceptual definitions in sociology, modernity is "marked and defined by an obsession with 'evidence'," visual culture, and personal visibility (Leppert 2004, 19). Generally, the large-scale social integration constituting modernity, involves the:
|
||||||||