Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-l82ql Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-29T08:38:36.370Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Modernity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2020

By
Peter Wagner
Edited by
Peter Kivisto
Peter Kivisto
Affiliation:
Augustana College, Illinois
Get access

Summary

Within social theory, the term ‘modernity’ is most often used to refer to societies that are built on the principles of individual freedom and instrumental mastery.Furthermore, such societies are assumed to have emerged in Western Europe and North America from the late eighteenth century onwards.All debate notwithstanding, this has remained the core understanding of modernity. Even critical positions, including de/postcolonial ones, have been developed against a backdrop of some such notion of modernity.The objective of this essay is neither to merely portray the rich debate nor to add a further nuance to the positions advanced.Rather, by contextualizing the existing debates, it aims to widen the horizon on thinking about modernity.

Autonomy, freedom, global history, individual, instrumental reason, modernity

Peter Wagner is Research Professor of Social Sciences at the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Societies (ICREA) and at the University of Barcelona, as well as project director at Ural Federal University, Ekaterinburg. His research aims to combine globally oriented historical-comparative sociology with conceptual concerns in social theory and political philosophy.His recent books include: Collective Action and Political Transformations: The Entangled Experiences in Brazil, South Africa, and Europe (with Aurea Mota, 2019); European Modernity: A Global Approach (with Bo Stråth, 2017); and Progress: A Reconstruction (2016).

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Social Theory , pp. 143 - 162
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arendt, Hannah. 1951. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Schocken.Google Scholar
Arjomand, Said (ed.). 2014. Social Theory and Regional Studies in the Global Age. Stony Brook, NY: SUNY Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arjomand, Said, and Reis, Elisa (eds.). 2014. Worlds of Difference. London: Sage (ISA series ‘SAGE Studies in International Sociology’).Google Scholar
Arnason, Johann. 1989. ‘The Imaginary Institution of Modernity.’ Revue européenne des sciences sociales 27(86): 323–337.Google Scholar
Arnason, Johann 2003. Civilizations in Dispute. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Arnason, Johann 2018. ‘Questioning Progress: Retreat, Revision or Revival?’ Social Imaginaries 4(2): 171–189.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal (ed.). 1973. Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. Reading, UK: Ithaca Press.Google Scholar
Bayly, C. A. 2004. The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich. 1986. Risikogesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Boltanski, Luc. 2009. De la critique. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Boltanski, Luc, and Chiapello, Eve. 1999. Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Boudon, Raymond. 1984. La Place du désordre. Paris: PUF.Google Scholar
Bringel, Breno, and Domingues, José Mauricio (eds.). 2015. Global Modernity and Social Contestation. London: Sage (ISA series ‘SAGE Studies in International Sociology’).Google Scholar
Castoriadis, Cornelius. 1989. ‘Fait et à faire.’ In Busini, Giovanni et al. (eds.), Autonomie et autotransformation de la société. Geneva: Droz.Google Scholar
Darwin, John. 2007. After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400–2000. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Dlamini, Jacob, Mota, Aurea, and Wagner, Peter (eds.). 2016. Trajectories of Modernity: Towards a New Historical-Comparative Sociology. Special issue of Social Imaginaries 2(2).Google Scholar
Domingues, José Mauricio. 2008. Latin America and Contemporary Modernity. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Domingues, José Mauricio.2012. Global Modernity, Development, and Contemporary Civilization. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dussel, Enrique. 2003. Política de la liberación. Madrid: Trotta.Google Scholar
Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. 2000. ‘Multiple Modernities.’ Daedalus 129(1): 1–29.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 1981. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen.1985. Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Hall, Peter A., and Soskice, David (eds.). 2000. Varieties of Capitalism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Halperin, Sandra. 2004. War and Modern Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. 1996. Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Honneth, Axel. 2011. Das Recht der Freiheit. Berlin: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Karagiannis, Nathalie. 2016. ‘Democratic Surplus and Democracy-in-Failing: On Ancient and Modern Self-Cancellation of Democracy.’ In Rosich, Gerard and Wagner, Peter (eds.), The Trouble with Democracy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Karagiannis, Nathalie, and Wagner, Peter (eds.). 2007. Varieties of World-Making: Beyond Globalization. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press.Google Scholar
Kaya, Ibrahim. 2004. Social Theory and Later Modernities: The Turkish Experience. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press.Google Scholar
Koselleck, Reinhart. 1979. Vergangene Zukunft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Larrain, Jorge. 2000. Identity and Modernity in Latin America. Cambridge, UK: Polity.Google Scholar
Lessenich, Stephan. 2016. Neben uns die Sintflut. Die Externalisierungsgesellschaft und ihr Preis. Munich: Hanser.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François. 1979. La Condition postmoderne. Paris: Minuit.Google Scholar
Mannheim, Karl. 1940 [1935]. Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mazlovskiy, Mikhail. 2018. ‘Russia against Europe: A Clash of Civilizations?’ European Journal of Social Theory. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431018768623.Google Scholar
Mayer, Arno. 1981. The Persistence of the Old Regime. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mishima, Kenichi. 2016. ‘The Long Shadow of European Self-Interpretation in Another Modernity.’ Social Imaginaries 2(2): 183–197.Google Scholar
Mota, Aurea, and Wagner, Peter. 2018. ‘The Amazon, the Rhino and the Blue Sky over the Ruhr: Ecology and Politics in the Current Global Context.’ Changing Societies and Personalities 2(4): 6–21.Google Scholar
Mota, Aurea, and Wagner, Peter 2019. Collective Action and Political Transformations: The Entangled Experiences of Brazil, South Africa and Europe. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noiriel, Gérard. 1991. La tyrannie du national. Paris: Calmann-Lévy.Google Scholar
Osterhammel, Jürgen. 2008. Die Verwandlung der Welt. Munich: Beck.Google Scholar
Parsons, Talcott. 1971. The System of Modern Societies. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Polanyi, Karl. 1944. The Great Transformation. New York, NY: Farrar and Rinehart.Google Scholar
Pomeranz, Kenneth. 2000. The Great Divergence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Randeria, Shalini. 1999. ‘Geteilte Geschichte und verwobene Moderne.’ In Rüsen, J, Leitgeb, H, and Jegelka, N (eds.), Zukunftsentwürfe. Ideen für eine Kultur der Veränderung. Frankfurt am Main: Campus.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Reckwitz, Andreas. 2017. Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Rostow, W. W. 1971. The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Volker H. 2014. Global Modernity. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Shapin, Steven, and Schaffer, Simon. 1985. Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Stråth, Bo. 2016. Europe’s Utopias of Peace. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Stråth, Bo, and Wagner, Peter. 2017. European Modernity: A Global Approach. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Streeck, Wolfgang. 2013. Gekaufte Zeit. Berlin: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Toulmin, Steven. 1990. Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wagner, Peter. 1994. A Sociology of Modernity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wagner, Peter.2000.‘The Bird in Hand: Rational Choice as the Default Mode of Social Theorising.’ In Archer, Margaret and Tritter, Jonathan (eds.), Challenging Rational Choice (pp. 19–35). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wagner, Peter.2010. ‘Successive Modernities and the Idea of Progress.’ Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal for Social Theory 21 (October): 9–24.Google Scholar
Wagner, Peter.2013. ‘Transformations of Democracy: Towards a History of Political Thought in Long-Term Perspective.’ In Arnason, Johann P., Raaflaub, Kurt, and Wagner, Peter (eds.), The Greek Polis and the Invention of Democracy: A Politico-Cultural Transformation and Its Interpretations (pp. 47–68). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wagner, Peter.2014. ‘Europe and the Sociology of Modernity.’ In Kyrtsis, Alexandros-Andreas and Koniordis, Sokratis (eds.), Handbook of European Sociology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wagner, Peter.2015. ‘Autonomy in History: Teleology in Nineteenth-Century European Social and Political Thought.’ In Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Subrahmanjan, Sanjay and Trüper, Henning (eds.), Historical Teleologies in the Modern World. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Wagner, Peter.2017. ‘The Question of Freedom: Social and Political Progress under Conditions of Modernity.’ Revue internationale de philosophie 3(281): 281–297.Google Scholar
Welzel, Christian. 2013. Freedom Rising: Human Empowerment and the Quest for Emancipation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Modernity
  • Edited by Peter Kivisto, Augustana College, Illinois
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook of Social Theory
  • Online publication: 03 December 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316677452.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Modernity
  • Edited by Peter Kivisto, Augustana College, Illinois
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook of Social Theory
  • Online publication: 03 December 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316677452.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Modernity
  • Edited by Peter Kivisto, Augustana College, Illinois
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook of Social Theory
  • Online publication: 03 December 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316677452.009
Available formats
×